Well, not really. My son found an old sketchbook I was using a decade ago.
Within were some cartoons the Petawawa Messenger published in ‘96 . . . cartoons I hadn’t shown on my earlier website.
Subsequently, they’re reprinted here with a brief explanation. Really brief, if I can’t remember the stories behind ‘em.
Pieces in our Time
An announced peace plan in ‘96 took a serious blow when the IRA bombed London in February of that year. Subsequent bombings in Manchester in June and Enniskillen (Northern Ireland) in July depressed even the overly-enthused.
One Trick Pony
I couldn’t possibly explain this cartoon better than by sending you to Betty Bower’s page, wherein Mr Helms’ pronouncements are enshrined for posterity.
Glowing Praise for Milk
It turns out the milk in the ’50s and ’60s was a great way to introduce radioactive iodine-131 into growing children. Such was the nuclear age.
These days, of course, it can contain steroids, hormones, antibiotics, herbicides and insecticides — and possibly prions. None of these, however, make your bones glow.
Step Out of the Sleigh, Sir
Rudolph’s nose, here, is the kicker. One day, I intend to colour these.
A 24-year-old Israeli woman’s breast implants prevented rocket shrapnel from killing her, says a hospital spokesperson. (Reuters via MSNBC)
Do you find your parents and grandparents to be extraordinarily screwed up? Every generation embraces weird in its own way. In mid-century, people dealt with strangeness by eating it.
The Gallery of Regrettable Food, a selection (with intelligent commentary) of unfortunate foods from the 1950s and ’60s. Not just Spam in Jell-o . . . darned frightening things that people actually prepared and ate in those decades long gone.
See if you can find the boxed, frozen rabbit (or the boxed ‘mature’ half-rabbit), the rabbit bits . . . and be certain to click the link when you see it. Brr.
The LILEKS (James) Gallery of Regrettable Food. Buy the book, gnaw on the filtration organs.
One of the big deals this past week was the 25th birthday of IBM’s 5150 PC.
This prompted PC World to come up with a list of 25 Greatest PCs. Of course, everyone who had a personal computer in the late ’70s to early ’80s has their own version of that list . . . one which may contain several models which didn’t make PC World’s cut.
The computer that got me into all this was the lowly Sinclair ZX-81, with a glorious 1K of RAM and . . . aw, nevermind; Google it.
Also important to me in the early ’80s was the Commodore VIC-20, and — while I went the Apple II route — many continued with Commodore’s 64.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m writing about, here, have a gander at a Brazilian site which provides a Commodore 64 emulator written in Flash.
Type a few phrases in BASIC, throw a few ?SYNTAX ERRORs, play some Galaga.
This, I wish to point out, was the cat’s buttocks before the Amiga came out.
Better Google that, too. Amiga, not feline hindquarters. 