Wally and Osborne

Osborne had a bit of a mean streak in him today. He may one day die a cold and lonely penguin.

This gag comes from life. This is what I always do to my kids when they want to tell me a knock-knock joke. I think my dad did it to me and my sister. It’s a family tradition.

Penguin Cam!

If you haven’t been checking out the live penguin cam this season, you’ve been missing out. Camera 2 is zoomed in on a nest with two gentoo chicks that are starting to get pretty big, looks like they are taking a little nap at the moment. Lately the parent has been turned the right way so you can see them, the other parent is off fattening up and getting their next meal.

Wally… the Polar Nerd.

I bet that smarted. Yeah, I said it.

I’ve worn glasses for years, since I couldn’t see the chalkboard anymore from the back of the classroom in middle-school (Sugg Middle School in Lisbon Falls, Maine to be exact). Glasses are kind of a nuisance, so I switch back and forth now from glasses to contact lenses. Contact lenses seem like they work better as far as vision goes, less distortion since they are right on your eye, and no scratches or eyelash grease, but each has its downfall. When I put glasses on at night it messes with my equilibrium a bit, and takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to focusing with them after being used to the lenses. But then if you put on a pair of glasses that are not your prescription like Wally did, it’s eye-strain city.

And I don’t know what it is about looking smarter with glasses. But it’s true, somehow bad vision equals smarter… :/

Sun Sneeze Follow-up

I wanted to thank Peter and Chris in the comments the other day for mentioning the official name of sun sneezes… photic sneezes, caused by the photic sneeze reflex. The long name is Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst Syndrome, whose backronym is of course… ACHOO (a backronym is an acronym that is formed so that it will purposely be a specific word or group of letters, in this case to be somewhat humorous). Also, apparently the theory of the optic nerve triggering the sneeze nerve when the person is exposed to bright light such as the sun is the accepted theory. So there you go.

I think it’s a definite yes on the tissue. Wally knows he’s not suppose to stare at the sun.

Don’t act like this has never happened to you. An unexpected, explosive sneeze with no tissue in site. The best you can do is shield the blow from innocent objects and bystanders with your bare hands. The next step is figuring out how to deal with the aftermath.

I rarely get a cold and don’t have allergies so sneezing isn’t something I do often. I actually enjoy having a good sneeze, something about it, maybe the rush of it. The sun does get me though, really bright sun will trigger a sneeze for me. I’ve been told that the sinus nerves are all interlaced with eye nerves there in the skull so when the eye nerves freak out it carries over to the… um… sneeze nerves.

No Wally did not kill the penguins yesterday, they pull through. I actually had a couple more comics in the discipline series to do but I got bored and felt like doing this strip instead that I had written out in my little notebook. Some days you just feel like drawing some good old snot.

With talk of the sun, I feel like reposting that one year Antarctica time lapse video filmed at the McMurdo Station and Scott Base. There at the south pole the sun stays up in the sky circling for nearly half the year.

Been a bit long since the last comic, hopefully a double-sized one helps make up for it.

Well, we all knew that Wally’s parenting skills were not really so great. Although, those are adult chinstrap penguins anyway.

Here’s a couple chinstraps having a little skirmish. No bellybopping but some serious beak gnashing, looks like they decided they didn’t really want a piece of each other after all.

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Book Progress

Oh, I also added a book progress bar over in the right-hand column there. This is how many pages are laid out and ready for press. This of course is after reformatting the book, so just one page at the moment in the new format, but I’ll be plugging away at them.