So I played Tennis for the first time this weekend. It was fun, but it hurt. This was going to be a more elaborately drawn bendy arm, but that much drawing wasn’t happening. If you want to know why, read the comic again.

I can’t really blame Apple for this service. They’ve got all these people using iTunes, why not have everyone list what they like to all their friends in hopes that those friends will also buy that music? Business wise, it’s a smart move.

For music, it’s a terrible move. I’m certain there will be a way to hide your embarassing music that you don’t want people to know you listen to. People would flip if there wasn’t. So everyone’s going to be culling their tastes to be what they want other people to think they like. I love some Rage Against the Machine, but do I want my boss to know that? I also love The Blind Boys of Alabama, but will people look at me strangely for listing an all-black all-blind gospel group as one of my favorite bands? Dolly Parton rocks to no end, but do I want people to know I think that? Safe choice will be made, and music on the fringe will be lost in the shuffle.

My point is proven right here. Lady GaGa likes three Michael Jackson albums, Queen, Metallica, Iron Maiden and David Bowie. Do we really need to know that she likes Thriller? Does anyone not like Thriller? We’ve all bought it at least twice by now. And everyone’s already heard of Queen, Metallica, Iron Maiden and Bowie and decided to loathe or love them. Off the thumbnails I can’t identify the other three albums, but that’s seven of ten recommendations that are either totally obvious or totally useless. And Lady GaGa is one of the strangest and eclectic people on the planet.

I realize this kind of thing has been going on for a long time. Wal-Mart and Amazon and every major retailer track sales. Apple just seems to be doing it a little too well, too quickly, with too many walls. But enough of my babbling, I’m going to go check out this Sergent Pepper thing everyone keeps talking about.

Read this comic as a circle for four hours and that’s my yesterday.

Why doesn’t this kind of service exist? I’m thinking some kind of Gold Line, 1-800-Cash-4-Corpses kind of thing.

“Trade your Mortal Coil for Metal Coin Today!”

So apparently Bunny and Ravy’s contracts I have to actually include one of them at least once a week.

For those wondering, yes; Ravy’s lawyer is named Lawyerman. Also, I think I just used a semicolon in what might be the correct way. Am I right on this?

As some of you might know, I’m no stranger to drawing George Washington. I wrote a nice long comic book about him for my honors senior thesis at The University of South Carolina. Here it is if anyone wants to read it. The basic idea is that Washington comes back from the dead and starts beating down on the British with Ben Franklin in the leadup to the War of 1812. If that didn’t convince you to download a 13 mb .pdf, Kraken at the crossing of The Delaware. Seriously, download it now.

Anyway, some stuff about this comic…

I hate doing political cartoons. The research makes me frustrated by how dumb people can be.

The Constitution leaves a lot open to interpretation. Still, the very first thing in the very First Amendment is that all religions are equal here. It’s before freedom of speech, freedom to peaceably assemble and freedom of the press. It’s right there. You can build a Mosque anywhere you could build a Church or any other religious building. It doesn’t matter that it offends you.

And as for you crazy anti-Muslim racists, if you think that building a mosque means that the United States is another step toward being overtaken by Extreme Fundamentalist Islamic Sharia Law then you’re an idiot. There are over 1.5 billion Muslims. If they were all militant extremists frothing at the mouth for world domination they could have done it a long time ago. Sure, they have some really bad apples, but those exist in any large group of people. Just look in a mirror sometime to see what I mean.

And you guys thought that because I’d renamed the strip “Bunny and Ravy” that the random political cartoons would go away. Silly readers.

Now, for a healthy dose of Marlowe’s opinion on the matter for those who care.

Rham Emanuel and Laura Schlessinger have the right to say whatever they want. We can’t go throwing people in jail for using words we don’t like. I don’t like what you’re saying, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it, and all that jazz. That’s how America works. At the same time, Obama has the right to fire Emanuel for being inappropriate if he wants, and Schlessinger’s sponsors have the right to pull out of her show if they want. That’s also how America works.

That being said, Emanuel was in a closed meeting when he said “retarded.” As a public figure he should probably watch what he says more closely, but I give him a bit of a pass for saying something in the company of people he trusts and then it gets out to the press later. We all say things in private we wouldn’t say in public.

On the other hand, Schlessinger was a long-time radio host on a microphone broadcasting over public airwaves when she used “the n-word” eleven times. She can say she was trying to argue the value of free speech versus the value of racial sensitivity all she wants, but either she’s a moron or she wanted to make some people angry. Do I think Schlessinger is a racist? Probably not. Do I think she wanted to get a lot of people get mad, get all over the news for a few days, then make a halfway apology and get a new contract on some conservative radio station/news blog/whatever in six months? Definitely.

And as for Sarah Palin, saying that Emanuel and the use of “the n-word” is “unacceptable” and “heartbreaking,” then six months later praising Schlessinger for standing up for the First Amendment for using the very word she directly stated as being “unacceptable”? Well, that’s just plain retarded.

That was wrong, I mis-measured when designing the new website. Because of this, my 800 pixel wide comics were being displayed at 780 pixels wide, making the text really blurry. I’ve now solved the issue by shrinking the .jpg files to be the proper size, making them pretty and wonderful. Maybe someday I’ll take the time to actually make the website wider, but that junk seems like a pain.