New, Seasonal, or Temporary Stuff

My new 80-page commentary on our 1986-87 school-year winter sojourn in rural Alaska and the production of our cartoon book Too Far North, A Northern Cartoon Odyssey.  Includes all the cartoons in the original book, colored and updated, plus more than a dozen previously unpublished ones.  Find out why, back before cell phones, some wolves only howled after 11 PM.  Verify that duck hunters fly in "V"s, whereas swans fly in "S"s.  

“Close the door!  It’s cold in here.” 

          “Don’t you mean, ‘Close the door; it’s cold outside?’”

“Either way, close the door.“ 

          "Which?”

“What?”   

          “No, which?” 

“Which what?”

            “Which door do you mean?”

“What do you mean, ‘Which door do you mean?!’”

          “There are three doors.  Do you mean the closest door, the middle distance door, or the farthest away door?” 

“Which door do you think I mean?!” 

          “I think you mean the farthest away door, but I mean to say, whichever door you mean, I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

          “Can’t close the door.”

“Which?!…  No, what?!  Why not?!”

          “I can’t close the closest door - the clothes closet door - or the middle distance door - the indoor upstairs door - because they are both already closed.  I can’t close the farthest away door - the outdoor door - because it’s permanently ajar.”

“How did it become permanently ajar?”

          “It became permanently ajar by being slammed against a jam in the jamb, which jarred it ajar and out of alignment.”

“Then short of reframing the door, let me reframe my request:  Close the gap in the outdoor door!”

          “With what?”

“I don’t know!…  With clothes from the clothes closet, I suppose.”

          “You mean from the closed clothes closet?”

“Yes, of course!”

          “You want me to open the closest closed door, the one to the clothes closet, so I can close the open door by clothing it?”

“Yes, yes!”

          “I can’t.”

“Why not?!”

          “The only clothes in the clothes closet are socks.”

“Well, what else is in the closet?”

          “There are hangers and jam jars and…”

“What else that might work?!”

          “Cloth…”

“Bigger than socks?”

          “Yes.”

“Bigger than…  No!  How big?”

          “Uh, maybe 45 inches by 40 yards…  Depends on the cloth.” 

“You’re talking about bolts of cloth!”

          “Yes, of course.”

“Then just take any bolt!”

          “Which one?  There’s wool, there’s synthetic fleece, there’s denim…”

“Any one!  Denim, for heaven’s sake!”

          “Ah, you want a bolt out of the blue!”

“You set me up.”

7/18/2022

When is a blog not a blog?  When it's a bunch of random items mired in a swamp.  Hence the title.  

Current items in the Duck Blind:

• Seasonal Message
• Superlative State Jobs
• "Hope is the thing with feathers" - w/apologies to Emily Dickinson
• Genomics
• A Short Essay on Uns

Do not go gentle into that dark blind... Just click here.

The author submitted 25 original cartoons for inclusion in the 3rd edition of Photonics Rules of Thumb, an otherwise known and respectable reference work.  About half of them were used in the final version, where space permitted.  The complete bizarre set is accessible by clicking here.

We are reworking and coloring our cartoons from Too Far North, our 1987 Alaskan cartoon odyssey.  Click here to see them, paired with their original 1987 black and white counterparts.   

They are also being published serially on the Country Journal 2020 website [click here to go there] in Gakona Junction, Alaska, by our friends Linda and Jeremy Weld, who published the book 33 years ago.