The Plastic (guitar) Ono Band

[reddit-me]9/9/09 may be a a banner day for plastic guitar enthusiasts and Beatles fans alike, but when it comes to sacred gaming days involving a succession of 9’s nothing beats 9/9/99. Pour one out and break a GD-Rom in half for our fallen homey.

Comment-wise: What do you think about The Beatles Rock Band? Is it worth the custom vintage style instruments or would you rather just have the game? Also, what do you think Apple is going to announce today (if you care about such things)? Will they use the dual significance of this date to lauch the Beatles on iTunes? Will you buy “The White Album” for the 7th time?

X-Tweens

The new “Dark Phoenix Saga” is when Jean Grey goes nuts and starts posting naked pictures of herself on Twitter.

This will probably be the last comic this week (ie no comic on Friday) since I only have a few days left before HE Book 1 (pictured below… maybe you should preorder it) has to be finalized and sent to the printer. Thanks for understanding (and for preordering the book… please. go. do it now).

Welcome To The Machine

This comic depicts my adventures with the inversion table I just bought off of The Craig List. I’ve come to refer to it as “The Infernal Machine.” For the uninitiated, the purpose of an inversion table is to hang you upside down by your ankles to relieve tension on your spine. The first time you strap in and invert, you get the sensation that all of your feet blood is fighting a turf war with your head blood for control of your brain. Your eyes feel like they’r being hoovered back into your skull and your ears immediately engorge with hatred. It’s unpleasant to say the least. Once you get used to it, however, it’s not so bad.

After 5-10 minutes in The Infernal Machine, my spine feels quite a bit better. The positive effects only last for a few minutes right now but I’m hoping they will lengthen with repeated use. I should also mention that my left ankle is only attached to my leg by a tangled mess of sinew, muscle and fractured fragments of bone.

With all the book related extra work I’ve had, I’ve neglected to update The Vault. I tried to remedy that today by adding 3 posts showing the making of the art for the book cover, and new desktop featuring the Ewok Stare based on this comic.

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It Hurts When I Do this

And by “this” I mean” everything.

At least they were just Spine Weevils and not Vertibraphids. Those are fatal.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve been having some severe back pain issues for the last few weeks. I’ve had a bad back my whole life, but this is the first time that the pain has kept me from being able to sit, stand or walk. For the last few days I’ve been living on the couch in a reclined position. I really appreciate all the suggestions ou guys have been tweeting and emailing me for back pain relief and I’ve tried many of them.

I went to one chiropractor who was a complete douche-face. He talked to me for 10 minutes then gave me a bill for over $3000. I told him I couldn’t accept this “treatment plan” and he was pretty much done with me. The 2nd chiropractor I went to was much nicer and seemed concerned about actually relieving my pain rather than using me to finance his new boat. He seemed to think I have a bulging disk. Based on the description of the symptoms I would agree, but only an MRI ($$$) could confirm. I picked up an inversion table on Craigslist to stretch out my spine and hopefully allow that disk to move back into it’s natural position. Hanging upside down for by my ankles for 10 minutes at a time isn’t pleasant at all but it seems to be helping little by little.

A lot of you have suggested yoga and stretching which I am trying too. My mobility is very limited right now, so hopefully I’ll be able to do more of this sort of thing soon. I really appreciate all the well wishes and advice and I’ll keep you apprised of my [hopefully] improving condition. I’m glad I was able to do a comic about this. It’s good to laugh at your own misfortune.

The Casualties of Rebranding

“Will I be making Micro RC Cars? I have arthritis and the little tools are hard to hold.”

“Let me put it this way, Gramps. Do the horses “make the glue” at the glue factory?”

NOTE: There will only be 2 comics this week due to my daughter coming down with strep throat, and me having to completely remake the covers for the book because of a stupid miscalculation on my part.

RadioShack changing their name to “The Shack” makes me think of a guy that buffed up over the summer, got a new haircut and asked all his friends to start calling him “Dutch” or “The Wedge” of “Big Geef” or something.

I wonder if they are putting 5000 “Radio” signs on Craigslist. Those would be a good collectors item, or a great gift for fans of that movie where Cuba Gooding Jr. was the black Forrest Gump.

If you find this comic confusing, then perhaps you didn’t spend much or your teenage years trying to build your own distortion pedals and a/v switch boxes. All you need to know is that every RadioShack had 3 types of employees:

The RadioGrandpa (illustrated above) remembers what it was like when everything ran on vacuum tubes and God’s will,

The EE Major just needs the job until he graduates. He brought his own multi-tool (it’s in the holster on his braided belt) and he knows how stupid your question is going to be before you ask it and finally

The Battery Douche. This motherfucker doesn’t know his ass from an ethernet cable, but he knows where the batteries are. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE! Once the rebranding is complete, he will likely be the only one of the triumvirate to survive. The other two will be replaced with corporate cell phone rate plan jockeys and cute girls.

None of this matters since no one in their right mind still shops at RadioTheShack. Every single item they sell from adapters to TV’s can be purchased for roughly 20-90% less online. You really only go there for an adapter or cable emergency anyway. Might I suggest you check out MonoPrice? Just to give you an example: 1 6ft 1/8th inch headphone extension cable is $6 at The Shack. At mono price I got 12 for $4 with shipping and they arrived in 2 days. I also got a 50ft HDMI cable for $25, and as we all know HDMI cables are spun from Faberge Eggs and baby panda intestines (why else would Best Buy charge $14 a foot for them?). I say let The Shack burn, get your adapters online and happy nerding.