Burn After Reading

Hi-Fidelity Audio

As a life-long pedestrian and long-time automobile passenger, I often notice similarities in the walking and driving experiences. In fact, one of the reasons I am adamant that I’d be 12 kinds of unholy hell behind the wheel is how angry I get at other pedestrians when just walking around. If an old lady gets in front of me and proceeds to shuffle along at .05 mph and it makes me want to beat her head in with a tire iron, how much worse would it be if I were actually driving?

But I digress.

The point of today’s story is this: Ever been at a red light, and seen one of those douchbags pull up that has a monster stereo system set up in his trunk, except that the speakers are blown and every time a bass note hits, the whole car (and your teeth) rattle and buzz?

I had that on the train today, but it was coming from a person. Just a hint: When the bass notes coming from your earbuds buzz like that and everyone around you can hear it, it’s time to get new ones (and I’m not talking about the cheapo ones from the dollar store), because it sounds like you are farting continuously.

– Ben

Reverence, or lack thereof…

There seems to be some kind of taboo about speaking ill of the dead, and it’s amazing to witness the most hardened bastard on the face of the earth suddenly becoming a beloved saint in the eyes of all his loved ones once he’s kicked off.

Well that’s no fun.

Very few people (though not none, at least) seem to want to, so I’ll just go ahead and say it: Steve Jobs was an ass. A smug, self-righteous egomaniac at the center of his own little cult — I say ‘little’, but let’s face it, there are millions of Apple fanatics out there clamoring to get their hands on the latest iDildo, even though it’s already obsolete by the time they get it home. But now he’s dead, so the only thing that anyone’s able to say is “the world has lost a great visionary.” Don’t get me wrong, he was a human being, and I can sympathize with his family. But that doesn’t change the fact that there were occasions where he was an complete jerk of absolutely mind-blowing proportions.

I’m proud to say that I’ve never owned an Apple product, and I’ve never had iTunes installed on my computer (for more than 5 minutes). This is just yet another reason to hate the brand.

Meanwhile, hello Android. Open source, and infinitely configurable. And on a tablet that’s lighter and faster than the iPad 2? I’m sold.

– Ben

Anticipation

God Bless America. I don’t think Rebecca and I have ever in our entire lives wanted to see a movie as much as we want to see this one. Right. Now.

It's like Bobcat Goldthwait made this movie just for us.

– Ben

Hurrah…

SOPA and PIPA have been defeated… for now. And a well-deserved peace settled over the land.

But for how long?

– Ben

Progress, of a sort….

Someone managed to hit the Pause button on SOPA. Congress has shelved the bill, but there’s still PIPA, as well as the possibility that some other nutjob will draft an entirely new bill that does similar things. But at least for now, victory. Yay?

– Ben

Vermin Supreme are all around

Vermin Supreme is running for president this year. Last week he came in 3rd in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary (or 6th if you count the write-in votes for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and John Hunstman) with 831 votes. By comparison, Obama got a measly 48,790.

I wish him good luck, but if you ask me, though, he’s fighting an uphill battle, and a needless one at that. He should just declare himself Emperor and have done with it.

– Ben

It Just Got Real

Alright, those of you who know me know that I don’t usually go in for jumping on political bandwagons. But this is important. If you’re viewing this post on the website, you’ll notice a black banner at the top of the page (those of you viewing this through your RSS reader will not see anything out of the ordinary, hence this explanatory post.

SOPA is a big deal. It’s an insidious piece of legislation which purports to do one thing (namely, stop online piracy), but actually ends up facilitating something else entirely (giving the federal government the right to block just about any damn website it chooses). More eloquent people than myself have commented on this at great length. All I know is that this sort of thing may be a reality in far-off lands like China, or Iran. But not here, dammit.

So the banner points to a website that has information on the details of SOPA and why everyone needs to contact whoever they can in order to keep this thing from going through.

Now, I’ve seen online hysteria before, and I don’t think this quite qualifies. This is actually genuinely scary.

– Ben

Changes

Seeing as how the webcomic has been on hiatus for nearly a year now, I decided to take it off the main page. The ones that I’ve already posted are all still there, accessible via the menu on the right, by storyline and/or character. At some point, I’ll get back to it, I PROMISE. Until then, I’ll be updating here regularly at the very least.

– Ben

Understatement of the Year

Saw the poster for The Rum Diary, the continuing adventures of Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson. Noticed the ratings box claimed that it was rated R (no surprise there), for “Language, Brief Drug Use, and Sexuality.”

Buh? “Brief Drug Use”? Isn’t that kind of like Saw being rated R for “Brief Violence”?

On the plus side, can’t wait to see the movie.

– Ben

Steve Jobs

Everyone seems to be making a big deal about Steve Jobs stepping down as CEO of Apple.

Look, it’s not like he’s going off to live in a hut in the middle of nowhere to live out the rest of his life as a hermit. He’s taking over as chairman of Apple’s board of directors. He’ll still be there, pulling strings like always.

SS,DD.

– Ben

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