Lucky Ducky

What happens when you stumble back to your room after a night out at the pub to find someone sleeping in your bed? He’s an unemployed tour guide. She’s on her dream vacation. What starts as a disaster turns into the adventure of their lifetime, but what happens when the trip is over and they have an ocean between them?

Ducky is unlucky—somehow things just always seem to go wrong. So he decides to look for a four-leaf clover; that will do the trick! But when he goes to the park, there is none to be found. However, what Ducky finds instead is much greater: he meets Piggy, Bunny, and Pup and realizes that having friends makes him the luckiest duck of all! Lucky Ducky is a bright and bubbly new picture book that shows young readers how luck is all about how you perceive it and that anyone has the power to turn his or her luck around.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling's oddball strip, Tom the Dancing Bug, makes waves on a weekly basis. Recognized the past two years by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) as Best Cartoon, Tom the Dancing Bug is consistently funny, pointed without being dogmatic, and takes on subjects that no one else does . . . an oasis of keen intelligence in the comics page, according to the 2003 AAN judges. Here are just a couple headlines from the quirky strip's News of the Times: o?= Computer Loses to Human Candy Land Champion: Despite progress made in developing a computer program that can defeat a human chess champion, computer scientists confess that they have been unable to launch a significant challenge to human supremacy in the game of Candy Land.o?= Scientists Discover Media Has Quantum Effect on Reality: A team of physicists discovers that an electron is in an uncertain state until the media report on it. For example, once an electron was measured and reported upon by Mary Hart on the Celebrity Corner segment of Entertainment Tonight, it instantly assumed its nature as a particle.Tom the Dancing Bug's client list is diverse, representing the breadth of contemporary journalism: alternative newspapers, such as Dallas Observer and the Village Voice; prestigious daily newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times; Salon.com, an acclaimed online magazine; and the New Yorker magazine.

Chances are you have been ripped off at a friendly traveling carnival, set up at your local fair or festival, because you had been left unprotected by police. The intention of this book is not just to tell readers about the games which keep ripping them off, but most importantly to explain the clandestine behind the scenes workings of a not so friendly, well organized, criminal element. From the innocent looking and usually rigged, two to five dollars per play "Duck Pond," to the $10,000 contribution by the itinerant carnival owner to the state or national political action committee or candidate, the author, a retired police officer, specializing in carnival midway game enforcement, has been able to associate a portion of illegally obtained cash proceeds from anonymous transient weekend midway scammers to carnival owners, to public servants, and also to distinguished politicians. This 100-year-old entrenched system of confidence crime and public corruption still operates relatively unrestricted at weekend fairs and festivals in America. Police simply do not arrest carnival thugs or their politician pals. No one cares about duped children or teenagers since many civic leaders ultimately get a cut of the midway loot in some way, shape, or form. Because this traditional chicanery is actually endorsed by wink & nod carnival security (dubbed "carny-cops") and public officials, trusting carnival patrons have a high likelihood of being either swindled, pick-pocketed, or short-changed on American midways by anonymous serial criminals. Unfortunately for unprotected American children, all but a few police agents nation-wide are either untrained, dont care, or are on the take, and refuse to address fraud (theft by deception) and gambling violations on their anything-goes, hit & run, carnival turf. While crooked carnival owners operate these drifting mobile crime syndicates under the radar of federal law enforcement, few citizens know the full extent of the systemic immunity and corruption involved. Thus, victims of this multibillion-dollar racket continue to remain unprotected on 21st century carnival lots. The authors exclusive investigation describes, for the first time, evidence of facilitation of free-wheeling criminal acts combined with the curious contributions/payoffs which enable this annual crime spree. The author also uncovers crafty "payments" from culpable carnival owners and lists renowned U.S. politicians associated with the perpetuation of this ten to forty-billion-dollar per year, largely unregulated, rolling racketeer industry. For more information, please visit www.carnivalcongames.com You may email the author at [email protected]

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Lucky Duck gets stuck in a muddy puddle. Has this duck ran out of luck?