This would have been better with WoW, but South Park already covered that base. In fact, they pretty much hit it out of the park. I don't know anyone that is particularly obsessed with Guitar Hero. It's fun to play with your other musically challenged friends at parties though.

tensionbreaker.com/2008/02/move-over-guitar-hero.html

It was a good, cute cartoon. That's all anyone should ask. You guys are freakin mean and for the most part it seems to be for meanness' sake too.

After nearly three years of Guitar Hero being on the retail shelves, I've heard the "why don't you just get a real guitar" argument enough times to make me want to puke blood. Guitar Hero, like all video games, is an opportunity for those of us who will never be able to do a particular thing to live out the fantasy of being able to do it.

I spent about five years (and a lot more money than I've ever spent on GH) trying to learn how to play guitar well enough to perform live. The only thing I learned is that, no matter how many hours I practiced or lessons I signed up for, I was just never going to be able to make my fingers move fast enough. I might as well have been wearing mittens. Maybe playing a "real guitar" is "vastly more fun," but saying that to me is like telling a kid with a club foot how awesome it feels to run a marathon.

We all participate in delusions that help to satisfy otherwise insatiable needs and desires. For some of us, that means getting a bunch of friends together and pretending to be rock gods in somebody's living room. For others, it means getting a bunch of friends together and pretending to talk to their invisible dad at church.

Either way, y'know, judge not.

There was the one where Opus gets a Kindle. He dosen't like it. And Breathed thought it was backlit- showing that he'd never actually seen one.

There was the one where the characters freak out becasue of the number of iphones compared to the number of people who live without plumbing- Breathed got the numbers wrong on that one.

How about when Opus' mother contacts him via "iHologram" leaving him sad and alone? That one seems to vividly try to point out that we are "a whole generation dulling ourselves behind text messages". Opus is actually chided by his holographic mother for being a "middle aged old fogy".

Last week they couldn't even hook up a TV.

And this week it's Gituar Hero.

I think it's become clear that Breathed no longer speaks to my generation. Here he is, with an online comic on Salon of all places and he spends all his time bashing technology. Maybe this sort of thing works in a local paper where the readership is mostly 55+, but on Salon it just looks lame and hopelessly out ot it.

Rosenkavalier asked: 'Does playing Risk make you a great war strategist?'

Our current Pres. seems to think so...

Seriously, how many of these are going to be the same topic in a row? New technology is dehumanizing us, we get it, Berke. How insightful of you to notice and let us know. Good thing too, since no old man has ever disapproved of the amount of time young people played with new ideas and entertainment before and I'm sure it will revolutionize the world. I'll send you a written apology for viewing your comic strip on the harsh glow of a computer screen via either carrier pigeon or telegraph, your choice.

Above my comment I see both a reference to xkcd (a fine webcomic), and some curmudgeonly insistence that time spent playing Guitar Hero would be better spent playing a real guitar (funny how no one says time spent playing Rampage would be better spent climbing the sides of buildings and eating tanks, or that Pac-Man players really ought to run through a maze devouring marshmallows and avoiding ghosts instead of looking at a TV screen). I felt this strip really caught the feeling right.

http://www.xkcd.com/359/

There are still 100 Meyer lemons left on my little backyard tree. I made ice cream. I candied peels. I made marmalade. I made lemonade. I gave to the homeless shelter and the food bank. I stuffed roast chickens up the wazoo. And I still have 100 freaking lemons left on that tree. Arrrgghh.

So, you know, it goes both ways.

Any recommendations from my fellow Salonistas?

Comics are such an individual taste thing. Pearls Before Swine started out good; dunno if it's kept it up or not. www.comics.com/comics/pearls/ And maybe Get Fuzzy www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/

A friend got me hooked on XKCD.com. But you need to be nerdy/techy and/or 20-something for it to work, I think.

I've otherwise near-totally burned out on print comics in a been-there, seen-that sense. Seems to me you could take people's recurring comments here about Breathed phoning it in and apply it to most, maybe all, of the King Features Syndicate comic collection.

C'mon, you guys! I myself am terrified that I will spend too much time on Salon, and never do anything real. So this cartoon, with www commentary by us, is the perfect storm.

1. Get a real guitar. It's cheaper and vastly more fun.

2. Join me for bowling and church and sailing. Do stuff. Do not defend this silly www addiction. Kick it. Smile.

3. "CG," in the cartoon was bad. (= Computer Graphics?) It made the thing hard to get.

He just doesn't seem to be trying this week.

I diagree... I like the graphics used in last frame! I've been an Opus fan for a long time and I think Breathed is using the different effects very effectively... not as a shortcut.

Uh, sensitive? Don't give Opus too much credit. My feelings are not hurt by some cartoonist who thinks Guitar Hero, a game which I do not play, is silly or a waste of time.

Like any rational person, I was merely commenting that poking fun at Guitar Hero is not particularly funny or insightful, at least not in the way Berkeley has done it here. That's my $.02 not only as a gamer but as a person capable of telling the difference between clever humor and tired humor.