Cartoon Commentary of the Day

Word.

I think they hate us because we’re beautiful.

I love GTA 4, and I haven’t even played it yet

Ok, you can call me late to the game. I know it’s nothing new to write about the XBOX 360 and its mind-blowing graphics. And GTA 4: well if you know what that acronym means despite the fact that you’ve never played any of the series, then Grand Theft Auto has done its job and officially entered the public lexicon.

Practically a certified badass. Has being an asshole ever looked so much fun?

Say what you want about video games. The high cost of admission has been prohibitively expensive for me these past few years. That’s how I’ve justified not buying into the console wars and all that hype. I just didn’t have the money. Plus, I had no interest in roaming around through dark halls all alone, no matter at what resolution. The spark of video games had worn off in college, and I thought, incorrectly, it was because I’d outgrown them, because they’d gotten too dark and brutal, because I was too busy reading Camus (well, maybe that one was a bit true). But it wasn’t that the games had deteriorated, it was just that I didn’t have any good friends to play them with anymore.

That was what had made them so much fun. Sure, it was great to see what the games themselves would come up with, but anyone who’s a good old-fashioned Nintendo freak like myself will tell you there was nothing for a very long while more satisfying, or more state-of-the-art than Contra. Mostly, because of the two player action and fun game mechanic.

How can anyone ever forget the Sneer and Look Away Antics of Lance and Bill!

I really don’t know why it was so much fun, nor would I attempt to assert that it was very “productive” in the Marxian sense to whittle away hours blasting away aliens, but in some other way it was also very therapeutic.

These late night sessions of controller swapping and jokes and stupid ribbing about Nazi blood. It didn’t make us into killers, either, by the way. Far from it. We did get a bit geekier though, the ones of us who played. Interestingly enough, we have been the gamblers of our lot, the ones who’ve struck out for gold in California, or to surf the snow capped peaks of Colorado in the winter and climb them in the summer. Though I would hardly call a poll of my old crew scientific.

My good friend Nar Williams, who runs the quite excellent blog Achieve Nerdvana, put it best, and simplest, and had me laying down my money to Dell for a system that (still) hasn’t shipped six days in—-and I’m starting to wonder just what “Order Processing” really means over at Dell. Are they 3D printing these things or what? Where are you XBOX 360?

Nar says to me on the phone: “It’s like a virtual Otting’s basement (where we used to play). Just think about it. We can all call and try and keep in touch individually and all that shit. But we’re not really ever gonna get to talk together. This is different. It’s like we’re all hanging back together and fucking killing some aliens like we were twelve years old. And it works beautifully. Tyler,” he says to me. “You gotta do it.”

So I did it.

Check-Ups While U Wait

New Drive-Thru Clinics opening up in the Bay Area let people take trips to the doctor cheaper and faster than via traditional mainstream health-care. But does it work?

Only in America, one might say, when they first read this story. But lose your health insurance and you may be singing a different tune.

Would you like a wedge of cantelope with that?

It’s easy to poke fun at these things as harbingers of the apocalypse right up there with Danny Bonaduce bodyslamming dudes on national TV and that Kansas woman who got stuck to her toilet and didn’t get up for 2 years.

The first time I saw this story, the only thing I could think was you get your Heart Attack Bowl at one window and right direct at the next window you’ve got your Artery Plunger to suck out all the gunk you’ve just put in.

But the idea is more nuanced than that.

If you’ve never tangled with the fragile web of options available to you outside the traditional health-care system, then you’re probably unfamiliar with just how vulnerable someone in that situation can get, and how quickly it happens too. Those of us in the bigger, coastal cities are luckier. In the Bay Area, the clinics are filled with junkies and recent sex-change cases, and the staff are often trying to lump you into either one of those general categories when looking for how to treat you, but at least there are clinics there, if you need them, in cases of emergency. In most American cities, that just isn’t an option.

Today’s America is a strange place, and getting stranger everyday.

At one San Jose pharmacy called “Quick Health,” people can buy everything from makeup and toilet paper, to cholesterol tests or stitches for a minor cut.

“It’s more simple than a clinic or hospital,” said Ruben Robalino, a patient. “That’s why I come here.” Robalino was waiting to see a family practice physician. He said because the prices were posted on a menu board like at a fast food restaurant, he knows exactly how much he will pay during the visit, unlike a trip to a medical center.

[And] … Just like Starbucks when you order a latte, there are a few specials listed up on a board for everyone to see. Like the “healthy lover special” for only $199. It includes a physical exam and STD and HIV tests.

With the economy as it is, and with people looking for ways to make ends meet this is not as surprising as it sounds. In a way, it’s even kind of recursive.

1. We invent the drive-thru.
2. Fast food makes us unhealthy.
3. Grass-roots doctors serve health-care through the drive-thru.

Whatever its flaws, Quick Health is certainly better than trying to self-diagnose with WebMD. I’m afraid to even look at that site anymore, for fear that I’ll inherit another rare genetic disorder just by typing in “sore hand, cramps from blogging”.

(via NBC)