Kaboom!

Wow.

Goof!

Samey.

Hibachi!

Poo.

Kook!

weird.

What? Where! Wait - can I have one?

Seriously - this so captures the feelings of my geek friends.

Not because I own an iPhone, but because Opus is back in my life.

A big "pfhhht" to all the naysayers. Thanks for carrying this strip!

I'm glad you're happy. Be happy then. Happy happy happy.

But aren't you and the other Berkeley Breathed fans just like Opus in this strip? You gotta have Opus, you gotta have Opus, then you get Opus. Now you got Opus. Are you happy now?

Really, if you told yourselves the truth, it's like cotton candy for your brain. It's too sugary. But it's quickly forgotten.

Maybe someday you'll feel confident enough in your opinions to actually drop the "anonymous" and adopt a screen name.

Until then, I'll call you Sybil.

I LOVE a shout-out to the long-term fans! Thanks, Salon, for running this strip.

Berk presents in this strip a sublimely snarky commentary on the recent Apple fanboy silliness - as exemplified by a certain other columnist on Salon.

Thanks, Salon. Opus rules.

Like an aneurysm or a stroke or something?

Because this wasn't funny. Haha, Apple fanboys and geeks must have the latest toy! Tell me something I don't know Berk.

I was excited Opus was coming back, but I'm seriously let down now.

2.0 is where it is at, says the applefan boy posting from his iPhone.

I can relate to this. Having spent years as the first on my block to have the latest, greatest, coolest phone, I have completed my 12 step program and am now able to ignore the hype, and I can tell you that this disease has nothing to do with Apple since I have never owned anything made by Apple. The turning point for me was seeing $49 Razrs 4 months after spending over $300 on my ultra-cool black Razr.

And Apple is worse than most. The Iphone was shipped crippled, and the smart money says there will be a new and improved version in 6 months - because that's just what Apple does. And everyone is flocking to the store to get one anyway. I'm going to wait until the new version is available in cereal boxes (which should be sometime around Easter) before jumping on the bandwagon this time. Opus, on the other hand, will be camping out at the AT&T store :)

Neo Luddites or paid PR?

The damn thing had better tell dirty jokes and dance.

I'm so glad I learned that lesson before the Razor was introduced. ;-) The other thing technology has taught me is never to buy or install anything in any iteration lower than 1.5.

As for the i-phone, I want one even less than I want an i-pod (if that's possible). As much as possible I avoid crippled and proprietary technology. IF I ever decide that I want a phone that also combs my hair and wipes my bum or whatever it is that the i-phone hype is all about, by that time someone other than apple will have made one that does the same things for 1/10th the price and isn't crippled by proprietary apple technology.

$0.02

Ten years ago I threw my cell phone in the trash and never got another one. What a difference it made in my sense of freedom and privacy.

No more calls from my business partner, ragging in my ear about some crap going on that could have easily waited until I was back in my home office.

It wasn't common knowledge back then, but I read an article that said the cell phone in your pocket pings the nearest cell tower at regular intervals, reporting your coordinates. Not that it mattered, I have nothing to hide. But it made my skin crawl to think that I was carrying around a defacto tracking device.

Today, it's worse than that. Not only is your little iPhone tracking you, it's giving information about your browsing habits, your musical selections, your news choices and any personal information you are stupid enough to share with other people over the unsecured Internet. You are being profiled in every way by marketers and who knows who else.

I love music. I like sports and news. I like movies. I like to keep in touch with friends occasionally by email. But I don't really need any of that on a tiny screen and an ear bud poked in my head while I'm negotiating traffic on the Interstate.

What the fuck is wrong with people? Are they so damned insecure and afraid to be alone with themselves that they have to fill up every single second of their life with some distraction or another?

Of course you've listened to people in public places on their cell phones prattling about nothing, haven't you? Sounds like this:

"Hey."

"Hey back atcha"

"What you doin'"

"Nuthun"

"Me too"

"You goin' somewhere tonight?"

"uh uh."

"Nah, me neither."

"OK gotta go"

"Yeah, me too."

Bleah! What a waste of time. But wait, I'm wrong. There was one half of one conversation I was forced to overhear on a city bus a couple of years ago. It was an overweight teenage girl giving one of her girlfriends a very detailed and graphic "blow by blow" of the sex she had with a boy she just met.

Now that was entertaining! But I guess some of the mothers with kids on the bus were not as amused as I was.

let me tell you how to run your life.

should be the title of today's Opus, and as usual the anti-hype machine shows up in force to make it about Apple. The exception thus proves that Apple rules. There are those of us, admitted elegant-tech fans, who can avoid the hype, just by avoiding the hype. You buy gadgets when you need gadgets and not before. But the drama of press battles are entertaining, so play on!

After reading so many articles in Salon about the demise of independent publishing and book review sections and so on, I'm trying to read more books and spend less time on the Internet.

If an iPhone became a way to read books and put money in the pockets of serious writers, well then I might be persuaded to get one.