anyway, here’s why: ben kenobi: hillbilly meth lab “old wizard” extraordinaire. it all makes sense, doesn’t it? the sand people are obviously speed freak customers, wondering what the FUCK is the holdup already and can i just get my FUCKING SHIT man? ben, all holed up in a cave in the middle of the desert - or, what we like to call “anyplace in california farther than 20 minutes from downtown” - rambling incoherently and dealing in clearly stolen appliances while his place is surrounded by screeching, spastic, hideous, threatening, yet ultimately retarded shitheads… this seems obvious to me. then he lies to the cops about being some kind of fence for illegal electronics, walks into a bar, starts talking to a huge hippie about smuggling stolen goods, and then suddenly freaks out and cuts the arm off the first guy he sees . c’mon.

any. way. i was looking through this drawer, and i found a bunch of old role playing character sheets and maps (hand-drawn, of course) and various other semi-humiliating paraphernalia: crude sketches, incoherent (and illegible) story ideas and character studies, that kind of thing. but it’s where i found that stuff that caught my attention; it was in a folder i’d titled, pompously enough, “idea incubator,” which i certainly stole from someone. the folder itself is a “pee-chee all season portfolio”, one of those yellow-orangy things with the various sporting activities portrayed on the covers that were ubiquitous back when i was in high school, all of 23 years ago. man. anyway, i was struck that even in the mid-80s, it was surprising that every single athelete portrayed in every single sport was white. white in that 50’s white kind of way, too. and then, i remembered the 80’s. the backlash over political correctness, which boiled down to “what do you mean i can’t be a rascist misanthropic asshole out loud anymore?” hell, the entire idea that the only reason someone wouldn’t say degenerate things in public was purely for appearances sake, and not because, you know, saying things like that indicates a probably toxic level of moronicosity, is pretty apalling when you think about it.

so don’t. trust me on this. just pretend it was all thriller and synchronicity, leg warmers and baggy neon pullovers. it’s better for everyone that way.

as opposed to, say, my man over at 8-bit theatre, who has some super bitchin’ robot interlude thing going on at the moment. i don’t know what the hell it is, but he’s got about 10 pages up so far, and i want more. i’m a little jealous - i’ve had a smartass-robot-detective story sitting in the incubator for a while now, which may or may not involve robot lycanthropy, which i’m sure now that i said that in public someone smart will have an awesome robot detective werewolf agency movie out by the end of next month just to make me feel like an ass. anyway, it’s cool.

while we’re at it, overcompensating continues to rule, diesel sweeties seems awfully stale, the new wigu is kind of eh, and goats remains one of the consistently best web comics out there, even if the story line is so bizarre now that trying to follow what’s going on will quite possibly render one’s brain into a quiverying gelatinous mass of randomly firing axons. and the reason penny-arcade sits atop the heap is because it deserves to. those fuckers.

also, this guy is a good writer. just in case anyone, you know… forgot.

from the studs at improbable research, natch. (fun fact: improbable seems to be one of those words that, once you take a second to look at it, will never look like it’s spelled correctly again.)

all i want to say is: violet blue vs xeni or the rest of her pseudo-nerd posse at that site. you know the one, is the highest if high-sterical situations. in a best case scenario all of those people will soon see their self-importance reach critical mass and spontaneously detonate into a lovely cloud of atomized constituent parts: hack “journalism,” crypto-yuppie-nee-hipster brand name obsessiveness, and a debilitating infatuation with one’s own place in the heirarchy of cool.

although when i was on the well way back in the day, cory seemed a nice enough guy. just to be fair.

anyway. hi. lar. i. ous.

that being said… you find me another billionaire who has decided it is his personal responsibilty to use his nigh-mythical wealth and prestige to cure diseases. all of them. starting with the ones that shouldn’t even exist anymore, in the poorest, most hardest-hit places in the world. not getting a check for it. not creating lots of photo-ops or whatever so he can pull a ross-perot on us in a few years. if anything, gates is smart enough to realize how much more efective he can be by NOT being president, which is good, because he’s dead right.

my personal fantasy is gates one day challenges rupert murdoch and roger ailes to a cage death match, although i’m about 95% sure that even decrepit old murdoch would use his satan-given gifts to literally eat gates’ head right off his body, but hey. maybe bill could wear the bear suit or something. i’m pretty sure he could afford a pretty nice one.