I loved Transformers back when they first came out. You could battle them as robots, or race them around as vehicles. And when you didn’t feel up to that, you could just transform them back and forth and that was pretty fun in itself. I miss them, when I got too old to play with them I sold them all for a bike. Then I realized you never get to old to play with them.

I bet they would fetch quite a bit on EBay these days. Back then they were pretty cool, they were made with die-cast metal with rubber wheels, and looked like quality collector toy cars. And were pretty cool as robots as well, often with many movable parts. They had a little black heat sensor robot head sticker on them that when rubbed with your finger would reveal if it was an Autobot or Decepticon. Then they started making garbage, really cheap plastic with basically no engineering put into the transforming aspect at all. A bad looking car turned into a worse looking robot of horrible bright colors. It seems today they are finally making some more similar to the originals, but they are pretty cheap plastic and still not nearly up to the quality, some of the toys don’t even transform at all, pretty sad. On top of that, they came out with the new movie, which is pretty cool and action packed and all, but definitely not kid appropriate, which isn’t cool after you obsess the kids with Transformers again by filling toy stores with them. And too much was changed or cheesed up (as if that was possible) for the original lovers of the toys.

Anyway, makes me feel pretty old now that I can say they just don’t make things like they use to…

EDIT: Okay, someone got my nephew the new Optimus Prime (the one that actually transforms), and it was pretty complex and a fun little challenge to actually transform it into the truck. So I will give the latest batch of toys some credit on the engineering. He still looks kind of silly with the new makeover paint job and all, they should have kept him old school, especially being that the original voice actor from the old cartoons played him in the new movie, that was pretty cool, that guys voice rocks.

It doesn’t always pay to be right.

There is an age old building plan of snowmen, biggest ball of snow goes on the bottom and they get gradually smaller as you work to the head. Wally has gone against centuries of standardized snowman architecture.

Let It Snow!

I decided to do another snowman comic today because the snow is back, and back with a vengeance, it started snowing this morning, it’s now late afternoon and it hasn’t let up. I got like a foot deep pile on my front step.

In global warming news, a 25 square-mile ice shelf just broke off of the Canadian Arctic. It’s snowing here in the desert, and ice is just melting away at the arctic. Also, polar bears are now a step closer to the US Endangered Species list.

Hope you had a good 2006. I’m leaving you with a chilling clip from 1982′s animated classic, “Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman” (which stays true to that unwritten commercial/cartoon rule, there will be penguins at the north pole).

See you next year!

[ link ]

Now that’s a snow shovel.

Once again Osborne is a source of entertainment while napping. I was noticing I had a few of these strips sketched out in my notebook so I decided to add another category, “Osborne Napping” that you can sort by in the archives.

Let me know if there are any other categories that would be useful for finding strips, any other recurring gags I might have missed.

Bye Snow

Well the snow around here is pretty much melted, along with the snowmen. I did get to go sledding the other day though up to the mountain, it started off pretty nice but by the end of the day the hill was just hay and ice. There was some carnage on the slope, I would have stayed and watched some more but my toes went numb. I woke up the next day with a pretty stiff neck myself. Hope everyone who is having some sort of winter or end-of-year break is enjoying it.

I wonder if you even get a couple rocks or a carrot with that kit. Those crazy kids. I think I’ll market that idea, a build-it-yourself snowman kit. It would be a plastic bag of water with a few rocks in it. The instructions would start off by putting the water in your freezer…

After all the snow we got here, and the talk of snowmen the other day, I added a snowman category and went through the archives tagging all the comics featuring snowmen (mostly Wally’s little homemade friends). So I thought I’d do a snowman strip today. As I was going through the archives I was noticing the little penguin juvie salesmen, so I created a Penguin Juvie Stand category too. That gave me the idea to make today’s comic, which covers both categories (in the archives, sort by Category to view comics in those categories).

And on that note, let’s enjoy a classic piece of animation called The Snow Man. Possibly the creepiest snowman cartoon ever. You’ll notice the penguins in it, because you know, in cartoons and commercials all the arctic creatures live at BOTH poles.

[ link ]

Yes, this comic comes straight out of urban legend.

Carbonation. We love it. I don’t know what it is, but us humans love inserting tiny bubbles into our bellies. Maybe we just love the burps. Nobody likes flat soda, we like it bubbly. And carbonating candy, that’s pretty wacky, that’s what Pop Rocks are if you’ve never had them, apparently they’ve been around since the mid-seventies so if you haven’t you probably don’t get out much… or had better things to do than stick explosive candy in your mouth.

I’m not a big soda drinker but I like it when I’m sick, clear sodas, so calming and easy on the stomach. Not so sure about Pop Rocks though. I use to lick my lips and then put them on it, sometimes you’d get a snapper that would really sting.

Also you will not really explode by combining the two, they are basically the same thing, carbonation. It is scientifically proven that carbonation plus carbonation does not equal exploding people. I remember the urban legend that the “Mikey likes it” kid from the Life cereal commercials died from mixing the two. Those crazy urban legends, we’ll have to cover some more of them sometime.

Wally often makes interesting snowmen and snow creations, but this particular strip especially pays some tribute to the Calvin & Hobbes strips featuring Calvin’s own derranged snowmen offerings.

See you little guy, hardly knew yuh!

My grandpa taught me to play golf, many years ago. It was surprisingly fun, I still get to play every once in an occasion. I kind of have a Happy Gilmore style where I tee off and hit the ball incredibly far and straight, and my game is pretty much done there. I have to hope for the best on chips and puts. Sometimes that’s why I just like to go to the driving range. It�s a great way to relieve stress too. At any rate, this is not the last you will see of golfing in the comic, we’ll pick up on it again. Can you imagine golfing in Antarctica? Finding the ball could prove to be a real pain, probably go for the orange ones over white.

Elephant Seals Dive For Science

I’ve mentioned Elephant Seals in the news posts before (not to mention the comic one was in) in the World Records Antarctica posts I did. The elephant seal took a record for the largest pinniped (seal family) and also for lung endurance. One bull weighed nearly 9,000 lbs and stretched out over 21 feet. They can dive 6000 feet deep and hold their breath for up to two hours. These diving abilities have earned them a job with scientists.

Basically scientists are gluing data recorders to their little heads.

These devices are recording information about the water temperature and salinity at different depths and broadcasting it back to the scientists. This will help them understand more about what�s going on in the waters of the Southern Ocean as well as the global climate. Click here for the full article from BBC.

Heh, Wally has been cracking me up. I guess that’s good for your own character to crack you up, when they’ve developed themselves into something seemingly beyond yourself. If I wake up one day with no friends, I’ll still have Wally, and he’ll make me laugh. Hopefully you guys are entertained as well, or entertained at watching me entertain myself.

Little Osbourne is so not eating himself there. He’s totally pulling a Cookie Monster. That used to kind of frustrate me as a kid, seeing Cookie Monster eat cookies, he would just crumble them up and let them fall out of his mouth, I wanted to see him actually get some of the cookie. It was so unsatisfying. Then I would think they could have designed the puppet better. I would make holes in the back of my puppets mouths so they could swallow items. And stuffed animals I had that weren’t puppets, they got oral surgery and became sort of Frankenpuppets.

Polar Bear Day Coming Up

Speaking of Wally, International Polar Bear Day is coming up next Monday. So be sure to be here for a Polar Bear Day strip and extra Polar Bear news items. If you want to send Wally gifts, just send them to me, he likes all the stuff I do, especially US currency.

“Little” Osbournes have unconditional love. What a beautiful thing.

Apparently animal behavioral sciences have given birth to animal psychiatrists, which are starting to receive some official recognition. Maybe your dog doesn’t need to be punished the next time he chews up your shoes, maybe he just needs someone to talk to.

Stolen Penguin’s Parents Hatch Egg

The penguin parents of Toga, who was stolen, have just hatched their new egg in Amazon World zoo located in southern England. It’s nearly a week old now but no info is available yet on the name and whether it’s male or female. This penguin couple, Kyala and Oscar, have become quite the celebrities with all the press they receive. Hopefully they have better luck with this chick; the zoo has since installed cameras and motion sensors. Full article from Associated Press.

Now there’s a penguin that can molt and melt.

Penguin feathers have two parts to them. At the bottom they are soft and downy and at the top they are stiff. The downy layer is fluffy and provides an airy area to act like insulation which is shielded by the stiff ends. They can lose this a bit in the water since it presses the feathers to them. Out of the water though they have an advantage over seals from the wind chill with their shell of feathers, seals will retreat to the water when the air gets too cold. When a penguin gets too hot it will fluff up the outer feather layer to let air in.

Little Osbourne will return next week so have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday!

The title pretty much says it all.

Poor Harold though. Being seasick is awful. The last time I was seasick was when I was young and went deep sea fishing. It was an overcast day far off the coast of Maine, you could not see the horizon, which I’m told when gazed upon helps stable the inner ear and ease the motion sickness. At first it was great, like a carnival ride, I stood up at the bow of the boat riding up and down what looked like 20 to 30 foot swells that towered far above the little fishing boat. Suddenly it hit me, the nausea, the hanging off the side of the boat an ruthlessly emptying a stomach that had only had hot chocolate that morning. It was horrible. Eventually I was able to fall asleep on a bench in the little cabin of the boat. I woke up feeling fantastic, but unfortunately by then the boat was already heading back to the mainland. Oh well, was never that big on fishing anyway.