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THERMAL CONDOMS

And Other ‘Toons by

Randy Mc

An OmniMedia Electronic Book

© Copyright 1996 by Randall G. McIlwaine

Revision 1.0:  20 March 1996


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Important Notes
To view the cartoons, either click on the button above captioned  ->Cartoons, or from the Table of Contents, click on the item named Thermal Condoms—Alphabetical Listing of Cartoons.  You’ll then enter an alphabetical listing of the cartoon titles.  Clicking on any particular title will cause the associated cartoon to “pop-up” on the screen.  Enjoy!


Table of Contents

 (Click directly on the dark blue text to move to the indicated section.)

Title Page (first, with cover illustration)

Title Page (second)

About This Book and Revision History

Forward by Randy Mc

Thermal Condoms — Alphabetical Listing of Cartoons

Thank You!


About the This Electronic Book
About This Book and Revision History

About This Book

This electronic book signals a new direction for OmniMedia in that it is primarily image-based, rather than text-based as our other current titles are.  We are certain that you will enjoy the 121 cartoon images contained herein, 15 of which are freely viewable without any requirement or obligation to purchase a SoftLock™ password.

Producing this electronic book was also a challenge.  It was important that we put in enough cartoons to make it worthwhile, but we also had to keep the overall size of the distribution file small enough so it would fit, when compressed, onto a 1.44 Mb diskette.  We were also constrained by making sure the images would be of the highest possible quality as well as fully viewable at VGA (640x480) resolution.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, the cartoons were pencil sketches.  We say fortunately in that we were able to use two-color (black on white) bitmaps, allowing us to dramatically compress each image to quite a small size and thereby meet the requirements outlined above.

And we say unfortunately, since pencil sketches are notoriously difficult to convert from high-res scans to low-res images (small enough to be fully viewable at VGA resolution), and yet maintain acceptable image quality.  The difficulty is that if one simply resizes a line sketch to a smaller size, whole lines can literally disappear, or become “wispy.”  To overcome this problem, one must “blur” the hi-res scanned image using a 256 color grey-scale pallette (computationally a time-consuming process), resample to the final size, apply a customized grey-scale pallette to “widen” the black lines, then convert back to the final two-color image.  Many long hours went into this tedious process (fortunately, Randy’s cartoons kept us laughing the whole time!)

To toot our horn a little, we think this electronic book turned out pretty good!  And Randy is pleased, and as any publisher will tell you, if the author or artist is pleased, then the whole world is happy!  That’s all that really matters.

As stated above, 15 of Randy’s cartoons are freely viewable.  These “freebies”, which are representative of the entire collection, will allow you to determine whether or not to purchase a SoftLock™ password to view the remaining 106 (which we believe to be well worth it!)   The procedure to purchase a password is very convenient — just follow the directions given in the password registration window that pops up whenever you attempt to view one of the locked cartoons.  Once the password is purchased and entered, you need not enter it again as it is written into a password file in your Windows’ directory.  The password price is $8.95.

If you decide to purchase a password, we thank you in advance, and we know you will not be disappointed!  If you decide not to purchase a password, we thank you for trying out this e-book, and invite you back to our Web site to browse through our other titles.  And no matter what you decide, please do forward a copy of this e-book to your friends.  Randy’s cartoons are too good to be kept a secret!

We are certain you will enjoy Randy Mc’s Thermal Condoms!

Revision History

Version	Date	Comment
1.0	20 Mar 96	First electronic version


Forward by the Cartoonist
Forward by Randy Mc

Writing your own foreword is a little like writing your own obituary;  only the completely immodest can do it with any degree of success.  (Rush Limbaugh comes to mind.)  Ideally this should be  written by someone who owes me big time — say, a person I’d donated a lung to, who would therefore feel obligated to heap praise upon my work with wanton abandon.  Unfortunately I tend to be rather stingy with my major organs so I’m afraid I must go through with the task of writing the damn thing myself.

Of course I could take this opportunity to expound my theories on the symbiotic relationship between humor and pain, exploring the thread that binds our emotional traumas with uncontrollable giggling, but it has been my experience that boring the life out of your reader is never a good way to begin a book.

Or maybe I should try and answer the two questions people most often ask after viewing my cartoons:  “Where do you get your ideas?”, and, “What the hell is wrong with you anyway?”

The answer to the first question is simple:  I haven’t got a clue, but I suspect it has something to do with the answer to the second question.  As for what the hell is wrong with me, there have been many theories:  perhaps it was a severe childhood trauma (I was, after all, almost born in a toilet.  Hmmmm…), or maybe it’s just that sitting alone in a room, year after year, drawing stupid pictures has warped me beyond all human understanding!…  naw!  It was the toilet for sure!

Anyway, welcome to Thermal Condoms, the direct by-product of my particular psychosis;  but my sick, little mind can’t take all the credit.  Many people invested their time, energy, and expertise into putting this book together, and I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude.  First I would like to give a special thanks to John McFetridge, a good friend, and a talented filmmaker (watch for his writing and directorial debut, The Marriage of Maid ShonDa and G’Narr the Victor, in which I play a small, but significant role);  it would not be an overstatement to say that without him this book would never have been made.  ( I owe you big time, buddy, so if you ever need a lung, I’m your man!)  I would also like to thank Jon Noring of OmniMedia, who went above and beyond his role as a publisher in preparing this book for its release.  And a big thank-you to Laurie Reid, Harrison Cheung, Patrick Taugher, and Michel Basilières (whose novel, Bomb Season, is also available from OmniMedia) for all of their help.  But mostly I would like to thank my wife, Christine, and my daughters, Erica and Sarah.  Without their love, support, and understanding not a single cartoon in this book would exist.  I couldn’t possibly express in words how much they mean to me, so I’ll just say this:  I love you Christine, I love you Erica, I love you Sarah;  you help me find the humor in life, and it’s to the three of you that I dedicate this book.

Randy Mc

E-Mail:  Randy_Mc@babylon.montreal.qc.ca

[Note:  Some of the cartoons in Thermal Condoms first appeared in the following publications:  Amelia, Comic Relief, Funny Stuff, New Blood Magazine, and Stitches.]


Thermal Condoms — Alphabetical Index of Cartoons
Thermal Condoms — Alphabetical Listing of Cartoons

Click on the title to view the cartoon.  Titles in light blue are freely viewable.  Titles in dark blue are view-locked by Softlock™.

Title Cartoon:  Thermal Condoms

A-D-U-L-T-E-R-Y

Air Surveillance in Office Management

Alien Love Story

Amanda Fled in Tears

Annoying Jim

Annoying Harold

Another Marriage Ends in Divorce

Another Weekend Ruined!

Bad Dog!

Bad News for Henderson

Bad Personal Hygiene

Badly Timed Spontaneous Combustion

Barney Flips Out

Barnyard Treachery

Bat Out of Milwaukee

Batman & Bobo

Beelzebub Helps Out

Bike Path Encounter

Blind as a Bat

Blowing in the Wind

Boogers Again?

Brown Kryptonite

BZZITTT!

Captain Hooker

Cats Hold a Barbecue

Chance Encounter With Dick Watson

Cinema Sheep

Clown Safety Tip #103 (introducing Jackson Beaver)

Company Dress Code

Death Gets a Tongue-lashing

Death Strikes!

Dial-a-Muse

Dinner Party Disaster

Discovering the Inner Child

Dog Care Made Easy

Dracula Gets Caught

Edwin of the Accountants!

Elephant Infestation

Elusive Appendix

Evil Brain From Planet Voltar!

Exterminators of the Wild West

Fallen Angel

Fetch the Spatula

Fiendish Trap

Fluffy Got a Gun

“The Fly” Falls on Hard Times

Formal Dress Required

Frankenstein Gets Rooked

Fred & Barney on Ice

From Bad to Worse

Gimme That Ol’ Time Religion

Glen Makes Out His Hit List

God’s Self-Help Books

Grilling a Chicken

Gumby at the Beach

Harry Trims His Toenails

Heavenly Punk

Henderson Lends a Hand

Herd Mentality

Holy Shit!

Honest Bill

Houseflies Get the Drop on Ted

How to Pick Up Chicks

I (Heart) Nuclear War

If Lassie Had Been a Cat

Inflatable Sidekick

Jasper Puts His Foot Down

Kent Farlow Reporting Live!

Life in America!

Lonely Scientist Finds Love

Love Me, Love My Snake

Meow

Mr. & Mrs. God

Mr. Bunny Goes Bad

Monday Morning Blues

Mounted Santa

Nerdman and His Trusty Sidekick, Mom

Night Skiing Encounter

No Loitering

No Nooky for Santa

Oh No, Not Again!

Old Yogi

Pez, Pez, Pez!

Picking Up After God

Playing With Your Food

Please Stand By

Poor Batman

Positive Stinking

Pressure Gets to Spiderman

Price of Absolution

Psycho Santa

Pulling the Plug

Rat Story

Revenge of the Garden Pests

Rhinologist at Large

Rod ‘n’ Reel

Safety Glasses

Santa Tries For Pogey

Serious Trouble

Sidekick Bar & Grill

Smoking in the Workplace

Social Faux Pas

Stupid T-Shirt

Sucker Arrows

Superman in Heaven

Tarzan of the Frogs

Tarzan of the Leeches

Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure

Thermal Condoms

Time to Build a Dog

Tragic Case of Steroid Abuse

Ultimatum

Vacation Gone Wrong

Vulcan Miners of the Yukon

Weapon Wagon

What Aliens Really Want

Wolfman and His Mom

Xmas Surprise

Ya Look Like Hell!

You Dirty Rat!

Young Lawyer in Love


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