Buddy's Blog

Sunday morning I’ll be on my private jet on my way to St. Moritz. Yes folks, I bought my Mega Millions lottery ticket. Actually I bought 20 Mega Million lottery tickets. I figure my chance of winning with only one ticket is about one in a couple billion. With 20 tickets the odds come down to about 1 in 100,000,000. But I won’t forget you, the little people. Watch your mail for a postcard.

I ordered a new stylus for my turntable, so the Ink Spots will have to wait for a few days. Meanwhile…

My favorite album of all time:

My first wife’s mother gave it to me because I loved it so much. I’m sure I listened to it a couple hundred times. My old college roommate, Louie Capone, and I used to try to guess which one was the high tenor. We agreed that it was the fat guy in the middle. We were wrong. Bill Kenny is the guy with the guitar. You can see clips of them singing on YouTube. Tomorrow I’m going to dust off my old turntable and see if it works.

I don’t know if I told you or if you are interested, but my I Thought They’d Never Leave book is now available on Amazon. By going to Amazon I was able to get the price down to 9 bucks. The Guess Who Got Lucky book is still on Lulu, but that one is “R” rated to say the least. Be aware that the cartoons in all three books are in black and white, only the covers are colored. I moved some of the good cartoons out of the Guess Who Got Lucky book and put them in this one simply because I didn’t want them in the “R” book (I had to put clothes on the forest nymphs and the jockey’s wife), and I wanted a somewhat complete collection of most of my better cartoons.  I made up for it by adding additional cartoons to the new book. There are 159 cartoons in the new collection. I also revised my What’s New in Science book on Amazon. I hope to find time to move all the other books (Ernie/Piranha Club and Babs and Binky) to Amazon. I can make them cheaper and I think the quality is better. It’s a ton of work and it will take a lot of time because I have to reformat them all, and there are a total of 17 books.

Just now I have been coloring old Sundays for a new collection. I think this will be my last book, and, as I said before, I hope to have it ready by the end of the year. This future collection will be comprised of what I consider to be the best of my Sundays.

Here are the front covers of the new collection and the science book:

Bob A knew that the caterpillars were Io moths. Good for you, Bob. Io was one of Zeus’ mortal girlfriends.  Here’s what the mature moth looks like.

I was hoping too watch the pupae to see them hatch, but they disappeared into the hybiscus. My hibiscus is about 10 feet tall, and I have to prune it, so I didn’t really mind if the caterpillars were lending a hand.

Whoa! Look what I found on my  hybiscus yesterday: 

OK, identify the species. The bottom picture is caterpillar poop. (If you put your nose real, real close and sniff, it’s stinky)

From yesterday – 1989 was my first trip to Sweden, first to Stockholm, then I believe we stopped over night at Jonkoping on our way to Göteborg for the Book Fair. Peter Grannby of Bulls Press was the zoo handler in charge of me and Frau G. At the fair I was a luncheon guest of the Svenska Seriakademins where Sture Hergfors, president of the academy and principal founder of the book fair, presented me with the Adamson Award for best international comic strip.

Of course I was wearing a coat and tie, and at the luncheon I was talking to Lasse Åberg, and the topic of neckties arose. He said how stupid they were. He was wearing stupid little tie. He took it off and gave it to me.

Both Lasse Åberg and Sture Hergefors are marvelously talented and accomplished men, and it has been a privilege to know each of them.

This is from 2008, the Piranha Club election of treasurer with the usual results.

OK, you Swedes, guess what this is and the story behind it. Good luck, but you won’t get it. (Hint: It was given to me during my first trip to Sweden at the Göteborg Book Fair)

And guess who’s in town.

No bananas this time, but he tried to load me up with a couple tons of carambolas. That’s all I need is the runs.

You people who aren’t privileged to live in Florida have probably never seen a palmetto bug, which is just a Godzilla sized flying cockroach. And when you stomp them they really, really stink. You haven’t lived until one has flown into your hair. When I was a kid in Anna Maria Elementary, there were palmetto bugs in the cafeteria kitchen. But Mrs. Miller had a plan to keep the numbers down. The kitchen had a herd of giant monkey spiders.  You’d be eating your creamed spinach and watching a giant monkey spider bring down a giant co0ckroach. There was never a dull moment.

Tom B sent me this in Comments. It’s a hot dog on a hot day.

Hot enuf fer ya? We hit 95 today.