Frazz by Jef Mallett for June 21, 2018

Why settle for malaria when you also might or might not get dengue fever, chikungunya, yellow fever, zika virus, west nile virus or any of several versions of enchephalitis?

I am in Kerala, India. We just had an epidemic (thankfully, quickly contained) of Nipah virus. The vectors were supposed to be fruit bats – only, no carriers were ever found among the many specimens captured! So, mosquitoes could also have been to blame.

Yes, like I just said in a previous posting, our home world will be halfway around the Sun and the days will start getting shorter again.

This kid is making summer sound more and more depressing!

That reminds me, I should put another chunk of mosquito dunk in each of my rain barrels.

Yeah, yeah… it’s like my momma used to say… “It’s all fun and games ’til someone gets a tropical disease.”

The countdown until fall! 103 in my town today, no thank you.

Yikes! Earth is always tilted the same amount (about 23 degrees). As Earth travels around the Sun, the tilt’s orientation toward the Sun varies. Today, the tilted northern hemisphere is directly pointed at the Sun, resulting in our longest day. The opposite will be true in December, our shortest day. And of course, in the Southern Hemisphere, all of this is reversed.

Nothing to do with today’s strip, I was just wondering if anyone else thinks the girl in the Frazz ad in the upper left corner looks like she could be Plainwell’s daughter? Are we seeing future Frazz with his offspring?

This reminded me; in Vietnam, we were supposed to take our malaria pills once a week, and they tended to give you diarrhea which lasted for 3 days.

What’s DH98?

I never pass a summer without thinking I have a mild case of West Nile.

First day of Astronomical Summer is also MID-SUMMER. Always freaked me out,. But now I know why! And Meteorological Summer begins June first.