#16 - Man hands on misery to man

This Be The Verse

by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

#15 - Everything must go

#14 - Obscene graffito

Old lady: "That's disgusting!"

Word for word it's "What for (a) piggery!" - a Polish idiom that expresses disgust. Prudish old ladies, known in the UK as the "blue rinse brigade" and in Poland, as I have just found out, as "mohair berets", are a stock Raczkowski target.

#13 - Voodoo economics

#1: Explain to me why we don't have any money even though we made the Philosopher's Stone.

#2: It's because we invest all the profits in perpetual motion research.


Here I read - in addition to the obvious gag - a sly joke about how the fruits of economic growth rarely seem to trickle down into the hands of ordinary people.

#12 - God is gay

#11 - Patriotism

Father: You won't get drunk for your country, you little shit?

Ojczyzna is more literally "fatherland", but of course without the connotations that word has for Anglophones. Gówniarz is something like "shitter", pretty vulgar. Raczkowski is fond of drawing connections between loud patriotism and various sorts of crass or thuggish behaviour. A parent terrorising a child is also a common motif.

10 Mar 2015: I changed the translation on the suggestion of an anonymous commenter.

#10 - A voter's dilemma

"I can't decide. They're both so awesome."

The Polish eagle is on the wall and the ballot box is in Polish colours, but the sentiment applies universally.

#9 - All artists are Nazis.

I've got a subscriber so I'll start posting more regularly again. Here's one that I was reminded of yesterday when I read this article on the BBC about Lars von Trier and his mouth. Raczkowski's cartoon came out shortly after the original incident:

HUSBAND: Did you hear that the director Lars von Trier 

                      turned out to be a Nazi?
 WIFE: All artists are Nazis.

#8 - Schoolroom atheism

GOD IS STUPID AND HE DOESN'T EXIST

#7 - The prayers of the footballers

The listener agrees with Lincoln: "Both [the North and the South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes."

#6 - Protest

Kurwa mać literally means "whore mom" and is the rough equivalent of the American term "motherfucker". There are at least two possible readings of this cartoon:

1. It depicts a popular dissatisfaction so general that specific issues are no longer even raised, the only slogan left being a shout of anger: "MOTHERFUCKER!"

2. Racz is mocking the use of free speech to indulge in coarse language, or as Kierkegaard said, "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."

Update: A commenter opines that "motherfucker" is rather the equivalent of skurwysyn (roughly "whore son"), and that the kurwa mać in this cartoon is closer to "god damn it" or "fuck that shit".

Further update: I've made a version of this cartoon with a blank sign so that everyone can put their favorite swear on it. It's here.

Update Feb 2013: An English version now exists!

a photo of Marek Raczkowski

Here's a nice photo of the man.