The Unsearchable Ones

The HIJINKS ENSUE STORE Is where you can buy stuff that I made! It supports me and my family and keeps this little operation going.

There are two lies in the above comic. 1) Josh would never “Bing” anything, and 2) The Apple Store would never deny Josh anything. They simply pull up his purchase history, count the copious amounts of zeroes, and immediately start peeling grapes for him. I, on the other hand, being the guy that buys a new computer every 4+ years, a new pair of phones every other generation and a new ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE EVER, get the standard “this is out of warranty and even though there was a recall it only applies to everyone in the world BUT you” treatment.

When the Macbook Pros came out in 2007, I made my switch to Mac as did my wife. A little over a year later people were noticing that the power supply cables were coming unsheathed and fraying all over the place and, in some cases, catching fire. Apple started replacing them free of charge to avoid a class action suit (though I believe there was eventually a suit and a settlement). Once day my wife’s power supply cable up and caught on fire while it was plugged into her computer. It burst into flame EXACTLY where her leg would have been, had she been using it at the time. I knew about the issue and brought both of our power supplies in for replacement. The Genius on hand told me he could replace the one that had already combusted, but not the one that was in grave danger of combusting since it was still in it’s pre-combusted state. So I went home, set it on fire with a lighter, brought it back to the Apple store and got a replacement.

COMMENTERS: Give me your best computer repair/ tech support/ massive malfunction story. Was the dumbness on your head or theirs? Every try to return something that you clearly ruined through your own stupidity? A buddy of mine once returned a CF-Card sized micro hard drive that his cat had peed on. Luckily the Best Buy employees aren’t in the habit of sniffing every return.

If you used to get HE in your email inbox through Feedburner (a service I stopped using this year because Google stopped supporting it), this service seems to offer the same functionality for free.

Just plugin the HE RSS feed [http://hijinksensue.com/feed/] and your email address.

The Dopest

If you missed the lastest HijiNKS ENSUE comic “White Light, White Heat, White Guilt,” then… don’t. Don’t have missed it.

CRUISE FUNDRAISER UPDATE: All 100 “Bridge Collapse prints are sold! Woohoo! They arrive at my house this weekend (a week later than I anticipated) and will start shipping Monday the 20th.

I made a new eBook/iBook! It’s called “Sorry I Ruined Your Book Vol. 1”! which is available to anyone for a one time “pay what you like” donation.

I had a reader tell me via twitter he was unaware that I had a store where I sold T-shirts and books and such. WELL I CERTAINLY DO.

I’m pretty sure I’ve accurately described blood doping in the panels above. You take out your blood, put stuff in it, then reput the blood back in your carcass, thus infusing said YOU with the new stuff. I can only assume this method arrose out of an athletes desire for somewhat plausible deniability. “I never took performance enhancing drugs. I just had all my blood removed, went and ran a few errands and when I came back and put my blood back in there was all these drugs in it. What am I supposed to do? Take my blood out AGAIN and run it through a Brita filter? Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the Olympic Committee, I beseech thee… believe this crazy lie so I can keep doing on these drugs because THEY MAKE ME FEEL INVINCIBLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!! [headbutts the witness stand in half, leaps through the ceiling, runs into then across the ocean, is eaten by a whale]

My point is, if Lance Armstrong if guilty of anything it’s being a stone cold sports-Dracula. Like any other highly competitive sports-Dracula, he only eats blood and sometimes you get tired of the same old hemoglobin and you gots to add some taste enhancing seasoning. Also he’s guilty of perjury and all the other regular drugs he took too. What a creep.

COMMENTERS: In a bleak and dismal hypertechno future, the only way we get nourishment is by removing all of our blood, dumping it full of whatever and pumping it back into… let’s say our eyes. You get the idea. What’s your additive of choice? Red Bull? Bourbon? Sriracha? Lik-M-Aid powder?

For Every Action There Is A Redaction

CRUISE FUNDRAISER UPDATE: 98/100 prints are sold! Only 2 prints remain! I am expecting delivery of the prints any day now and they’ll start shipping as soon as they arrive.

I made a new eBook/iBook! It’s called “Sorry I Ruined Your Book Vol. 1” and it has over 180 pages of HE book 1 preorder/artist edition sketches with commentary on every drawing! Donation subscribers get it free and it’s also available to anyone for a one time “pay what you like” donation.

Welcome to my life in a 24 hour geek news cycle. I remember when I was a kid and we weren’t able to know ANYTHING about movies or tv shows until we saw the trailers or commercials. Even then the message was very carefully controlled by the studios and producers. The stars never went on Carson and dished on who they beat out for the role or how many times the show runner got fired. We just took our geek media as it was presented without the burden of behind the scenes knowledge. Often times, shows I liked would get cancelled and I wouldn’t even know until it just never came back the next season. You’d read a one sentence blurb about a new Batman or Superman movie in a Wizard Magazine, and then… nothing. No idea where it went or why it never materialized. Of course, the irony of it all is that NOW you can find the answers to all of those questions online. I know exactly why Nicholas Cage was never Tim Burton’s Man Of Steel. Honestly, I’m just grateful for that one. We, as geeks, dodged a Batman & Robin ’97 sized bullet there.

I say the intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the media I choose to consume is a burden, but I really do enjoy it. I like the anticipation that it builds, and the satisfaction of being “in the know.” The burden part comes in when too much familiarity with the “sausage-making” process of geek pop culture can lead to unrealistic expectations and eventual disappointment, either from getting your hopes up too high based on 100’s of blog posts, interviews and YouTube clips, or from prejudging a project based on any of the aforementioned data distribution methods.

All in all the lowering of the barrier to information is overwhelmingly a good thing. As consumers we now have nearly as much privilege to information as would have been reserved for the people that actually worked on the projects themselves. But there was a (now lost) purity and innocence in finding out about a movie for the first time when you saw the trailer or the poster, and then not knowing anything else about it until you were in the theater 3 months later. I think it was easier to just like things back then without having to be an expert on them.

COMMENTERS: What’s you biggest “OMG IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO COOL IF THAT PERSON HAD DONE THAT THING OR THAT THING HAD EVEN HAPPENED AT ALL” geek movie/tv situation disappointment?

Om Nom Noms

Geeky t-shirts by me and Wil Wheaton at Sharksplode.com! Woohoo!

Don’t miss the new HijiNKS comic I uploaded yesterday all about J.J. Abrams, Star Trek and SEEEEECRAAAAATS.

I have almost seen Lincoln twice. Both times I have realized that it was nearly three hours long and opted to either see something else or stay home and get something from Redbox. I just don’t like being in the theater that long unless I’m nearly guaranteed to love the movie. Daniel Day Lewis is my favorite actor, but that isn’t saying much. Admitting that the person who is the best at a thing in all the world is your favorite person who does that particular thing doesn’t take that much conviction or depth of character. That’s like saying Batman is my favorite vigilante crime fighter or Louis C.K. is my favorite stand up.

85h Annual Academy Awards Nominations, AKA A Salute to Abraham Lincoln

I did, however, see The Master. I have never seen another movie with two such fantastically talented actors delivering two such compelling and nuanced performances that I hated quite so much as I hated The Master. The biggest problem with The Master is I got it. I absolutely understand what the movie was trying to accomplish and how I was supposed to feel while watching it. I know what the intended take away was, what the director was trying to say about the human condition, the way we relate to others, the way we cling to each other while simultaneously driving each other away, loneliness compulsion, dishonesty with one’s self vs. dishonesty with others, the power of the dynamic orator over the weak minded, I TOTALLY GOT ALL OF IT. I just so happened to have abhorred the experience of actually watching it. It’s like a really expensive bad meal at the finest restaurant in town. You know what you’re eating is classy and sophisticated and a lot of thought and effort was put into it, and even though you can detect the subtle complexities of the interplay between the flavors it just tastes like a a shoe full of shit.

The Master’s biggest problem is the story of Hoffman’s L. Ron Hubbardesque author and his burgeoning cult is quite fascinating. So, obviously, the movie basically ignores all of that and uses it as a backdrop to tell the story… no there’s no actual story… to SHOW YOU SOME STUFF FOR A BIT about Phoenix’s listless, alcoholic, sex crazed dimwitted, violent drifter. Even by my description, he sounds pretty fascinating. Trust me. He isn’t. There are no less than three scenes in the film where Hoffman’s character uses Scientol… THE CAUSE to infuriate Phoenix into a state of highly suggestible mental pliability from which he can be brainwashed. Since these scenes (one where Phoenix is forced to walk from one end of a room to the other with his eyes closed at least 40 times) take up roughly 30 minutes of the nearly three hour movie. It is excruciating. Just watching a man get more and more frustrated with his antagonist in real time is not my idea of an enjoyable time at the movies or a good way to spend $18. But they both totally deserve an Oscar. No question. Great performances. Terrible movie.

COMMENTERS: Do you have any Oscar predictions? Have YOU ever seen a film where an actor’s performance was enthralling, captivating and through provoking, but you still hated the movie?

New desktop wallpaper for donors and subscribers!

The Greatest Generation

Hey, as long as you’re on the Internet, go buy some books and shirts from my store!

Alls I’m saying is human beings have never had as easy of a go at it as we (the children of tomorrow which is today) do, and that makes us the best. I mean, sure there are still places on this very planet in the year 2013 where armies of heroine addicted children murder each other with machine guns, but HAVE YOU SEEEEEN all the new shit coming out of CES? I heard that one phone company is going to make another phone! And it’s BLUE! A BLUE PHONE?! Have you ever even? I mean… Do you think this is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Man, I sure hope one day people can obsess over cross platform app compatibility and social media privacy policies, whatever those things might be. Then we’ll really have this humanity thing figured out and we can start working on the hard stuff, like properly attributing funny photos on Tumblr… again, whatever that could possibly be. I have no idea. Oh, crap. Here come the Romans.”

Seriously, though. If I can’t get this Twitter app to sync my read location and mute filters across all my devices I am seriously going to have to think long and hard about… switching, uh… switching Twitter apps.

SOCIETY!

COMMENTERS: What amazing magical wonder technology do you find yourself complaining about the most? Bonus points if it’s something that didn’t even exist a few years ago (meaning you obviously somehow got along without it).