You never know who you might bump into in the Cartoon Universe... (reprise)

You might just stumble across a procession of Oodlies on their way to an art gallery in Melbourne for Joi Murugavell's solo opening on 14 June 2011...

Is this Joi Murugavell? Nope... it's just another one of her infamous Oodlies...

Is this Joi Murugavell? Hmmm... it could be... with a bit too much make-up...

Blame it on Facebook. I randomly clicked on a comment Joi Murugavell left on her brother Vijay Kumar's status - and it led me to her website... where I got zapped with a colorful explosion of sheer creative genius and unmitigated zaniness - and it got my mojo all fired up.

Not since I bumped into Nina Paley at a cartoonists conference back in 1989 have I encountered such a succulent energy field, emanating from such smoochable brainlobes. Who is this entity named Joi Murugavell, I wondered... so I sent her a short message... and after a couple of exchanges, I learnt that Joi was born in Malaysia and, in her early teens, she opted to study in New Zealand, then moved to Australia... and never came back, except on vacation.

She knew of me in one of my earlier incarnations as a cartoonist named Kit Leee and asked if I would agree to be interviewed for Oodlies.com. How could I say no to such a vibrant and vivacious young lady? She requested that I scan some of my doodles and send them to her, so she could arrange some sort of blind date with her Oodlies.

Well, my random doodles (first published 1994 in Moth Balls, a collection of my "scatological and eschatological" poems) had been gathering dust in my rusty filing cabinet for decades... they literally hadn't seen the light of day since Joi Murugavell was in kindergarten. I imagine as a kid she must have looked just like an Oodlie...

So I spent an entire afternoon scanning a pile of spontaneous sketches (mostly done while chatting on the phone) and rescuing them from analog oblivion. I have absolutely no idea what Joi is going to do with them (for all I know she may be a sadist or an even worse pervert than I am), but nothing terrible can possibly happen in the Cartoon Universe, so why worry about it?

Anyway, the Cartoon Universe is where I'd like to migrate if those destructive dickheads with heavy investments in the so-called "defence industries" decide to blow up planet Earth.

Meanwhile, before Joi Murugavell gets to work digitally mutating my random doodles (or Oodleees, since I went by the name "Leee" in my cartooning days), I'd like to share a small selection with you...

[First posted 15 May 2011]

OFFICIAL INTERVIEW WITH 

JOI MURUGAVELL

THESE ARE PUNNY TIMES WE LIVE IN...

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's Round Table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his enormous girth from too much pi.

2. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

3. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here, I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

16. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects.

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18. It's not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn't have the balls to do it.

19. A backward poet writes inverse.

20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

21. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

22. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

23. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.




[Contributed by Vernon Cornelius]