You're listening to WALT.

Hooo-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.

Homemade radio.

Ghost family, I do not have any tattoos.

But the only tattoo that I've ever considered getting, and still might, is a tattoo of a penguin.

And this would not be any old penguin.

No, no.

It would be one very specific penguin.

A penguin is Opus the penguin.

And he is arguably the main character of Bloom County, a comic strip that I spent countless

happy hours immersed in when I was a teenager.

I fell in love with Bloom County because I saw a lot of myself in Opus.

He's easily overwhelmed, struggles with his weight, and is terrified of making people

upset.

And spending time with a character whose struggles with all those things is drawn with

such frankness and mirth was a source of unimaginable comfort, even if that character was a talking

penguin.

Opus made me feel like someone out there understood what it was like to feel the way I did.

But there was something else about Opus that was, in retrospect, sort of counterintuitive.

He had no problem making friends.

From the moment he appeared in those Bloom County strips, he found ease and connection

with his fellow residents of the boarding house, where he and the other characters in the

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