A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Travel Alert

By Jimmy Johnson

I am traveling this morning, on cartoon business. I’ll bet you didn’t think such a thing was possible. There won’t be a regular post today, but when I return I will begin showing you some of the old work I have chosen to submit to the Billy Ireland archive of comic art at THE Ohio State University. The old work goes all the way back to 1985 and includes something from every year since. Many we’ve seen here and some not. You probably can deduce, we’ll be talking a lot more about this. I hope your new year is going well so far. By the way, I am in Asheville, NC, today. Tonight, I will be attending a meeting of the southeastern chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. No, that is not the reason for my travels, just serendipity, but I’ll tell them all you said, Hello!

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157 responses to “Travel Alert”

  1. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    No wonder Bill was bitter about marrying Edna. (9CL)

    As to my life, all I can say is !!!!
    (And cold go away!)

  2. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    GR6 wrote: “Back in the day when I rode touring bikes…” My first thought, he had ridden in the Tour de France, I was like wow!

  3. John in Richmond Texas Avatar
    John in Richmond Texas

    @GR6 re:8:09 PM yesterday, yes, I had seen that, where do these people come from? where do they learn this behavior, family, professors? they wouldn’t even understand the Golden Rule and be angry if the tables were turned, Will any of them ever be a least bit embarrassed or ashamed years from now?

  4. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    Negative twenty windchills?! That does it, Blacklight is going to work for me tomorrow.

    On a serious note, aunt is in the hospital for heart issues. Cath in the am. Should go well, spoke to her a bit ago, but any well wishes would be a bonus.

  5. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    !!!
    Before I was so rudely cut off:

    Thank you in advance and stay warm and safe if you aren’t one the lucky ones in a warm locale. Well, the warm weather people stay safe and warm too, but you get the idea. Bedtime.

  6. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Thanks, Lady Mindy. The local mid-teens low temp forecast we were threatened with two days ago has somehow morphed into a forecasted barely-below-freezing low for tonight. As pilots have been known to opine, “Weather forecasts are 90% correct…10% of the time.”

    Or, as I found from experience, about 90% of the time aviation weather was better than predicted…but about 10% of the time it was worse. I supposed being able to know which was which was why they paid us the big bucks. (Ha!)

  7. Charlotte in NH Avatar
    Charlotte in NH

    Dearest Ghost, I wish I could have seen you in that outfit you described (except that I have never gone into bars).

    Where can Jackie be? She may have “crashed” after the effort and the excitement of the funeral service; we all hope that she is okay and taking a very much needed rest.

  8. Bill Avatar

    I’d forgotten about calling the Sunday comics the “funny papers.” Wow! Ours used to be (when I was a wee lad) 36 pages long (in color). Now they are 4 pages long. I guess I should appreciate that they are still in color.

  9. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Just walked into home a short while ago and unfortunately going through some legal document searches with younger daughter. She has to leave in morning for appointment with her obstetrician’s consultant from St. Louis, so important one. Internet service was iffy at motel in small town, well motel was kind of iffy too, but was a national chain. Daughter from Houston kept expecting them to sound flood sirens from rising river it sat on, I don’t think they have flood sirens but I wouldn’t feed her phobias any more than she already had.

    Seriously, last major flooding from that town had put the motel flooded to roof line, so it had been rehabbed considerably fairly recently!

    Several years ago we were checking in to a nice motel up south of Memphis in Mississippi and my aunt looked at name, Patel, and wondered if it was same nice young man who had managed this same motel I just stayed in. I said, no, Patel was a very common name among hotel management and owners. So, at some point he does come out to greet us and my sweet and also now gone Aunt introduced herself and asked if he were not the Patel who had managed the Winnsboro location. He was. Go figure!

    We went through the route home totally out of the way in order to make it to the boutique sawmill in De Kalb, Texas where Mike always bought his specialty boat lumber, including the old growth cypress. We made it there with 5 minutes to spare but they went and pulled two choice boards with a fork lift and cut them to fit in the SUV for her. That is the lumber my SIL will use to build a custom box for Mike’s ashes we will keep. We borrowed the one he had made for my other daughter’s MIL’s ashes and we put a beautiful small silver anchor I had bought alongside.

    Anyway, coming home was hard but I am going back to sleep with the four cats and small dog, who will no doubt lick me all night.

    By the way, Asheville, NC is now quite the center of good food and locavoire eating, so JJ should have fun and get some tasty vittles.

    Love, Jackie

  10. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Ghost, I do hope you kept that outfit for wearing on special occasions. Bike not necessary.

    Love, Jackie

  11. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Welcome back, Jackie. Take care of yourself.

    Love, Ghost

  12. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Even if they are someday holographically projected into thin air, they will still be the “funny papers” to me.

    What happened to the quick and easy link to gocomics at the top of today’s post. And when did I get too lazy to type a URL?

    Anyway, Lady Mindy’s comment about 9CL reminded me I had not caught up on goings on there for about a week, or whenever it was I decided that Bert and Martine were both certifiably psychotic. Now I see that Bill has either joined the crowd, psychologically, or he’s just whipped.

    Speaking of weird stuff, who saw that “Screech” from “Saved By The Bell” shanked a guy in a bar? Screech?? I always thought it would be “Jessie” who would go bat-guano crazy and do something like that. Or appear totally nekkid in a movie. Or something.

    Debbe 😉

  13. Trapper Jean Avatar
    Trapper Jean

    Ghost Sweetie, I’m with Charlotte-I wish I could have seen you in your biker leathers, and I do (or did) go in bars!

    And yes, they will always be “the funny papers”. Read them, and then use them to wrap presents in!

  14. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    I’m getting a visual of it Trapper but not sharing it. Conjure up your own!

    Love, Jackie

  15. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    😀

  16. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    Good morning Villagers…..

    GR 😉 Ooohhh…black leather, you’d definitely would catch my attention in a bar….back then, hey!!! even today…. 🙂

    Emb…here’s the link for your word a day, and yes it is probably somewhere in lolcat land:

    http://wordsmith.org/words/yester.html beautiful cat too.

    Jackie, glad you are home…safely. I pray your daughter’s traveling is safe….it’s going to be brutal out there for the next 24 hours or so.

    Wind chills to go as low as 25 below zero. Felt lumpy on the sole of my work boots….the bottoms were thick with packed mud and hen dust…..so I scrapped it off…only to discover it helped insulate my feet, and the right shoe is cracked on the bottom from bending down. Was too tired from hurrying up supply shopping, picking up husband’s meds, dropping off supplies at both hen houses that I didn’t go boot shopping.

    Still haven’t measured those cages, Old Bear.

    Too busy at work, people are sick (even The Boss is MIA), and SIL still hasn’t shown up for work. Worked mostly by myself yesterday……as Ian went to check on the other lady at the other hen house….he says this is BS. But Jason is going in with us today…too cold to be building houses.

    Jerry….you go, sometimes I have a hard time just standing on my two feet….allergies make me light headed.

    Ya’ll stay warm……………..

  17. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    today’s grin:

    http://cheezburger.com/8419970816

    been there, heard that

  18. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Debbe, that is why it’s good practice to cut those handles if you aren’t going to reuse the bags. Ex and I came home one afternoon to find Bama running around the apartment trying to lose the bag he had got caught in.

  19. Steve from Royal Oak, Mi Avatar

    I think that we all must be disturbed by the events in Paris. But crazy people killing others because they took a satirical view of Mohammad? Satire is something that is well done at A&J and while JJ usually steers away from political satire, it is a little scary to think of the consequences in some cultures.

    Love my first Amendment!

  20. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Debbe 😉 Get some new boots, hon.

    I had recently mentioned concerns that this was going to be a bad year for influenza, something that was reinforced yesterday when I took my Mom to see her primary care physician. The first thing he did was to verify that my Mom had been vaccinated (which she had). Then he told us that this year’s vaccine had missed the mark and that about 70% of confirmed flu cases this season were among people who had been vaccinated. He himself had been out sick between Christmas and New Year after being vaccinated in October, as required by his employer.

    Please use precautions, especially when out in public. I’m being doubly cautious, as my Mom’s primary source of infection would be me. After busting my butt to try to keep her as healthy as possible for the past several months, I certainly don’t want to kill her by giving her the flu.

  21. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Steve, crazy in their beliefs, perhaps, but not in their actions. From what I could see of the videos, that was a very professionally executed hit-and-run attack in Paris.

    This was what we have to look forward to in this country, probably for generations. Meanwhile, we have a government that gives lip service to anti-terrorism and spends, ineffectively, billions of dollars in the name of “security”, while releasing known terrorists back into the wild in the name of preserving their civil rights. So who is crazier?

    Good work, Gubmint.

  22. Galliglo from Ohio Avatar
    Galliglo from Ohio

    Well said, Ghost.

  23. Trapper Jean Avatar
    Trapper Jean

    Jackie, don’t worry. I have a VERY good imagination! 😉

  24. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    One of the hottest models we ever had at any wedding floral show I ever worked on or attended was one of my friends’ boyfriend in his black leathers and not much else. He was actually kind of shy about his looks and I don’t know how he got convinced to do it. That was a bizarre and trendy show for florists, not real brides. I mean, we had a Polynesian dancer who danced, geishas, Native Americans in full regalia, no end of “shock” design work.

    I gave it a standing ovation and yelled a lot of “Bravos” for their courage. I mean, this is still Oklahoma and the Heartland.

    We have lots of bars out on Highway 9 here who advertise to bikers, as Oklahoma is a no helmet state and I am in the eastern mountains, so lots of riders around. When we had the big rally in downtown we had thousands who came through for it.

    I still miss going up to the Dakotas around Sturgis week to see all the bikes coming and going. Never went during actual week, but close around. Have probably said that small boating seems to attract people who still ride or did, as well as pilots. I have discussed that quite a bit with my boating friends and they say the answer is the wind.

    Love you all, Jackie

  25. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    My goodness, but we now have a really hot congresswoman for the Republican party who is only 30 years old! That might liven up Congressional meetings.

    Way to go, girl! Show them women belong everywhere! That and a record 107 women in office in house and Congress is really good political news for me, no matter which party.

    Love, Jackie