Cartoon

"In our house, we don't like thrill rides," says Mimi Pond in her latest installment. "Thirty years of self-employment is thrill enough. " She goes on to show bits and pieces of her frugal lifestyle. And yet, she says, "We're still having trouble making ends meet. It's pathetic!" What follows is her quest for a mortgage modification. Note: To enlarge the cartoon, select the control and plus-sign keys at the same time.  ALSO: Photo gallery: Ted Rall cartoons The Supreme Court saved my lifeline Healthcare ruling gives GOP an 'It's.

Los Angeles teachers agreed to shortening the school year by 10 days to 175 days, and to accept a commensurate pay cut. This is the fourth year in the row that the school year has been shortened. Is it only a matter of time before this editorial cartoon becomes a reality? ALSO: A soda ban, L.A.-style Photo gallery: Ted Rall cartoons Marijuana dispensaries: Hands off, City Hall Follow Ted Rall on Twitter @TedRall . Follow Opinion L.A. on Twitter and Facebook .  

The sound of Kristen Schaal, already a notable feature of Fox's "Bob's Burgers"as the voice of wise child Louise Belcher, adds an instant touch of alt-comedy cred to "Gravity Falls," a likable new Disney Channel cartoon series about twins spending a summer with their strange great-uncle in a weird little town in the Pacific Northwest. Cue the"Twin Peaks" reference (though "Eerie, Indiana" is a more apt live-action comparison). As is often the case with the kid channels, there is a "preview" - that's what Friday's airing is being called - before the "premiere," which is scheduled for June 29. Gently twisted, with some Disneyfied action and heart-warming folded in, the series was created by Alex Hirsch, yet another young product of Cal Arts, the Harvard Business School of animation, and a veteran of Disney Channel's "Fish Hooks" and Cartoon Network's "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

It's logged more than 1 billion views on YouTube and is a genuine Internet sensation, even though all the characters are bickering, crudely animated fruits. But will TV audiences find "Annoying Orange" as appealing? Cartoon Network is about to find out Monday with its latest series, adapted from the enormously popular three-minute animated Web clips about a talking citrus with a high-pitched voice and a grating penchant for laughing at his own jokes. Annoyed critics have trashed "Orange" for humor that might not pass muster on a grade-school playground: Imagine"South Park"set in a kitchen, minus the ripped-from-the-headlines outrageousness.

For the Obama campaign, the creation of “The Life of Julia” was the latest campaign gimmick - drawing in female voters through social media to an infographic showing what a young woman's life might look like under the policies of a White House run by Mitt Romney, rather than by President Obama. But Romney does not seem amused. “This little cartoon that they have on the life of Julia really reveals the weakness of the president's policies,” the presumed Republican nominee told Fox News host Sean Hannity during a taped interview that aired Tuesday night.

This week the University of Texas student newspaper let go of its editorial cartoonist after an uproar over a cartoon about the Trayvon Martin shooting -- or, rather, about news coverage of the event and its aftermath. As my colleague Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported, the offending cartoon "showed a mother sitting in a chair labeled 'the media' reading to a child from a book titled, "'Treyvon [sic] Martin and the Case of Yellow Journalism.' "The mother says: "And then the big bad 'white' man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent 'colored' boy.'" . . . "On Wednesday, as students gathered to protest the cartoon with handmade signs saying, 'Daily Texan Racist,' the newspaper's editorial board published an apology editorial , saying that the cartoonist responsible, Stephanie Eisner, had left the paper.

The controversial cartoon that appeared this week in the University of Texas at Austin's Daily Texan showed a mother sitting in a chair labeled "the media" reading to a child from a book titled, "Treyvon [sic] Martin and the case of yellow journalism.” The mother says: “And then the big bad 'white' man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent 'colored' boy.” The cartoon appeared in the paper Tuesday, just as students and residents held a rally in downtown Austin for Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old youth shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida.

"Gravity Falls" doesn't sound like classic Disney animation. The new cartoon comedy series follows twins Dipper and Mabel, whose school vacation plans are dashed when their parents ship them off to spend the summer with cranky old Uncle Stan in Gravity Falls, Ore., where pterodactyls swoop overhead and gnomes plot to abduct Mabel and make her their queen. "Disney wasn't the first place I would have thought of going to," said the show's creator, Alex Hirsch, who grew up watching Fox's irreverent animated comedy "The Simpsons.

Postal Service heroes Re "Recalling first-class kindness," Opinion, Dec. 21 Ben Kamin's article about the U.S. Postal Service brought back pleasant memories. In the 1950s my future husband was in Air Force basic training in San Antonio. I would wait for our postman "Mac" every day; most days I was rewarded with a letter. One day as he walked by our house he called out "Nope, not today. " He was two houses down before he came back with my letter. He thought it was the funniest practical joke.

Crime-fighting canine McGruff the Crime Dog is looking to take a bite out of counterfeiting. The talking cartoon dog, sporting his trademark trench coat, is part of a new anti-counterfeiting campaign by the nonprofit National Crime Prevention Council and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is part of the Justice Department. The campaign seeks to dispel any notion that counterfeiting is a victimless crime. "It costs the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars each year, deprives people of their livelihoods, encourages criminal activities by gangs and organized crime groups, and sometimes results in serious illness or injury," the campaign Web page said.