R.K. originally approached me with the concept for this cartoon a couple of weeks ago, and while I thought it was a brilliant idea, I wasn't sure if I could pull it off in just a few panels. For those of you unfamiliar, this is from the classic short story by Edgar Allan Poe called The Cask of Amontillado, where a man is sealed behind a brick wall tomb uttering that last phrase before the final brick is cemented into place. But here we have books instead of bricks. Thanks R.K.!

Whenever I'm riding the bus or in some public place and a person is listening to headphones with the volume kind of high, I usually only hear muffled noises with a few rattling drum beats thrown in, but a couple of days ago there was a patron in the next aisle blasting his headphones so loud I could hear the vocals and picked out which song was being listened to in only a few seconds...sort of like playing Name That Tune. I cringe at the damage being done to this person's hearing, but I guess you don't need your ears to read.

There are at least two other people I work with who have the initials J.C., so I'm not giving credit to myself for the idea behind this cartoon. I'm sure there are a lot of other types of pages that can be found at the library...this is just a sample. Thanks again to J.C. for helping me through my bout with cartoonist's block.

There's a certain patron that visits our library occasionally who we've found doing stretches and light exercises amongst the shelves. I don't think there are any rules against that, it's just kind of awkward to see. I'd like to thank the boxes crew from last week for helping to come up with the idea for this cartoon. And thanks once again to my viewers for all the comments and suggestions.

This is the end result of cartoonist's block. All I could draw was some kind of mix between The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein and Matt Groening's Life In Hell. It's been difficult coming up with new ideas lately, so hopefully we'll return to our regularly scheduled program by next week.

This cartoon reminds me of the trash compactor scene from Star Wars. Sometimes I forget to check if anyone is between shelves before I start them moving to access another section. Luckily there haven't been any mishaps yet...knock on wood.

I was going to say something else here, but instead would like to dedicate this cartoon in memory of Portland blues musician, Paul deLay.

David Elsey is a locally published writer and one of our poets-in-residence at the library. I decided to base this cartoon on one of his poems because I'm a fan of his work and can relate to what he writes. His books are available at our library and also at Powell's Books downtown.

This cartoon is loosely based on that movie The Dead Zone from back in the early 80's. Except I think whenever the main character came into contact with people (or objects?), he would have visions of the future and not the past...I forget. Guess I'll have to check that movie out again and get my facts straight.