“Yarrr! Tell Steve, it be me 15 minute break. Ye’ll be findin’ me in Davey Jones’ Break Room feastin’ on a Hot Pocket and a tankard o’ Mr. Pib.”

[There are a few new additions and updates to The Store. Check it out!]

So, The Pirate Bay was acquired by a “legitimate” company that plans to transform it into a “legitimate company.” I’m sure they’re banking on name recognition from all the media exposure and lawsuits to bring the honest non-eyepatch customers around. Remember how well that worked for Napster? [hint: not well]

YOUR COMMENT CHALLENGE: Assuming The Pirate Bay was a retail store (see the above comic for precident), give me some scenarios that might play in said store. How about bathroom signs that say “Employees must wash hooks before returning to work.” Or maybe OSHA guidelines demand all peglegs be made of spruce or maple.

• The Pirate Bay Raises The White Flag, Goes Legit
• A Glimpse at The Pirate Bay’s Uncertain Future
• Pirate Bay 2.0: Pay Pirates to Become Consumers

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I’ve been listening the Harry Potter Audio Books by Jim Dale while drawing for the past few weeks. I just started book 7 today and I’m already sad that I’m nearly done with the series. I can’t recommend this audio book series more. Jim Dale absolutely brings each and every character to life with an individual voice and distinct personality. I don’t want to gush too much about how thoroughly I’ve enjoyed each book so far, but I do have to say a sincere apology to anyone I mocked over the last decade or so for getting too involved in “a children’s book.” I didn’t know, ok? I didn’t understand.

With this new found infatuation with the source material, I am finding myself increasingly distraught with the movies. This is odd considering the movies were my introduction to the franchise and what got me interested in the books. It’s like REALLY enjoying your cousin’s Zeppelin cover band, then hearing the real thing and realizing cousin Randy probably shouldn’t have been playing a banjo with vacuum cleaner attachment.

I know you can’t properly film a 700 page book for budgetary and attention span reasons, but some of the omissions and alterations in the movies are just lazy. Entire characters are distilled to one or two lines of dialog and often attributed to the wrong character. Most of the frustration I felt with the series was actually due to issues the movies would address but then leave hanging. I’m excited to see the adaptation of “The Half-Blood Prince” on the big screen, but now I realize not to expect it to be too faithful to the books. If it’s a good film, I can enjoy it for what it is but I’m not expecting them to cover everything. I actually do anticipate that I’ll be staring puzzled at the screen for most of the movie when key plot elements are glazed over or left out entirely.

• First 4 Minutes Of Harry Potter Invades Muggle Territory’
• Harry Potter And Dumbledore’s Wet N’ Wild Trip Clip

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Of all the recent celebrity deaths, the only one I’ve really cared about is Billy Mays. As the comic states, I was in sales for 10 years and I did fancy myself an inventor when I was younger. I have notebooks full of “inventions” that I hoped would one day be sold on TV or in stores. Both of these aspects of my past made me instantly respect Billy Mays. From a sales-guy perspective I recognize that he busted his ass traveling with trade shows to make a living for his family and eventually, through perseverance and perfecting his craft, he made it big. I appreciate the “self made man” entrepreneurial spirit that he epitomized. From a wannabe-inventor stand point, I have to praise him for giving average workshop and garage tinkerers like me the opportunity to bring their products to market and make their fortunes.

These sentiments might seem odd coming from me if  you only know me as a webcomic artist, but you can’t do a job for 10 years without learning to love it (or aspects of it) just a bit. That’s a side of me people don’t often see, but it’s there. I guess I feel like Billy and I were kindred spirits in that respect. Plus I tend to “project” when I talk, which he made into an art form.

I’ve really been enjoying his show “Pitchmen” on Discovery. I would assume the show’s future is uncertain at this point, but I encourage you to watch the first season to see what a kind and talented man Billy was.

If you have any warm thoughts to share about Billy Mays, I also encourage you to share them with his son, Billy Mays III on twitter at @youngbillymays. He’s obviously having one of the worst weeks of his life, but he’s been saying that the kind tweets from Billy’s fans are cheering him up.

Godspeed, Billy.

• Tribute to Billy Mays and His Silliest Infomercials
• ‘Infomercial King’ Billy Mays Dead at 50
• RIP Billy Mays Dead at 50 [Via Billy Mays III on Twitter]

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Not content with simply giving the world robot pissing, robot farting and robot dicks (that shoot lasers), Sir Michael Bay (not really a knight) decided “Transformers 2” wouldn’t be complete with robot balls. That’s classy film making right there. Michael Bay doesn’t really have to respect us as an audience, though. He continually shovels shit down our throat holes with a Cybertronian Mecha-Shovel and we thank him with millions and millions of dollars, ensuring even more frequent and violent throat shovelings in the future.

Anyway, Josh live-Twittered “Transformers 2.” Here it is unabridged. !!!POTENTIAL SPOILERS!!!

• Starting transformers2. Liveblog ahoy! Harry potter 6 trailer now. 9:49 PM Jun 24th
• First transform most visually confusing thing I’ve seen in my life. 2 awful one liners. 10:03 PM
• Sound design is bizarre. Like half the sounds are missing. 10:04 PM
• Aaaaaand we have dog humping. 10:05 PM
• I’ve now seen robot dick and robot farting. 10:08 PM
• Camera just spun for almost a full minute. 10:13 PM
• It just dawned on me. I have no idea what is going on. 10:20 PM
• Innappropriate parental drug use. 10:24 PM
• And we have lapdance 10:29 PM
• Holy shit. First actually funny joke. 10:30 PM
• Wait. Why are we on Saturn?!?!? 10:36 PM
• I never thought I would feel sorry for Shia lebeef. I was wrong. 10:40 PM
• Nobody told me there were cylons in this movie. 10:46 PM
• They just drove out the door of a factory in the middle of the city and were instantly in the middle of the forest. What? 10:54 PM
• It was just daytime in Paris and the middle of the pacific at the same time. 11:02 PM
• Holy racist robots batman 11:13 PM
• Wow. Jockstrap shot even *I* didn’t want to see. 11:15 PM
• Standing in mid DC. Walk into a building. Walk out of building into fields surrounded by mountains. WTF 11:19 PM
• THEY ARE GONNA BLOW UP THE SUN! 11:26 PM
• Ladies and gentlemen. We have midget. 11:29 PM
• Like 40 people have survived epic crashes. WTF. 11:58 PM
• BALLS! 12:05 AM
• I’m done. Sam just went to robot heaven. Seriously? 12:10 AM
• That was better than Terminator Salvation. 12:17 AM

I’d like to point out that I in no way endorse TruckNutz[tm]. I link to them only that you may know the enemy and fear it.

• Michael ‘Turd’ Bay Wants ‘Transformers 2′ More Event-Like, Less Lame
• Michaelbayfacts
• If Everyday Life Was Directed by Michael Bay
• The 9 Most Scathing Critical Responses to Transformers 2
• 8 Spoilerific Reasons To Avoid “Transformers 2″

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There was a rumor/news story that was quickly debunked that Michael “Can we make an explosion explode?” Bay was retiring from the action film genre and moving on to other pursuits. Whether there was an ounce of truth to the story or not, doesn’t concern me. Explosions as an art form and story telling medium, on the other hand, do.

What other genre’s should “Splode ‘Em Up” Bay take a crack at? How would the movie’s play out?

• Roger Ebert’s scathing review of Transformers 2 [somewhat related and entirely hilarious]
• Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie [the best Transformers 2 Review according to Josh]
• Nedroid’s Transformers 2 Review [the best according to me]
  

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Who: The HE Podcast Crew, a few other friends and YOU FANCY BASTARDS!

What: Shitty Movie Night to celebrate my 28th Birthday (which was June 3rd). We’re broadcasting the event live over Ustream so you can watch along and make fun of the terrible movies with us in the chat room.

When: Saturday Night, 06/27/09 starting at 8pm Central (barring the usual technical difficulties)

Where: The HE Podcast Ustream area

Why: Because it was so god damn much fun last time. Those of you who were there can testify that we had a blast trashing the shittiest of movies with Fancy Bastards all over the world.

Eli is providing the movies, so you know they will be frighteningly aweful. Hope to see you there!

-Joel

[I have some errands to run, but I'll post my initial thoughts on the iPhone 3GS soon.]

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Today is iPhone 3Gs delivery day. I’ve been refreshing FedEx’s tracking page every 45 seconds for 8 hours.

• Jun 19, 2009 4:18 AM - At dest sort facility - DALLAS, TX
• Jun 19, 2009 6:58 AM - At local FedEx facility - ADDISON, TX
• Jun 19, 2009 8:32 AM - On FedEx vehicle for delivery - ADDISON, TX
• Jun 19, 2009 10:14 AM - Driving around Dallas. Sure is a nice day for a drive
• Jun 19, 2009 11:57 AM - Still not at your house. Maybe the driver stopped for a sandwich
• Jun 19, 2009 1:34 PM - Bet you’re getting anxious now. Calm down, dick hole. It’s just a fucking phone.
• Jun 19, 2009 2:18 PM - Hey! The truck just pulled up to your house!
• Jun 19, 2009 2:19 PM - Psyche! What a dipshit.
• Jun 19, 2009 2:25 PM - No, seriously, it’s there. Go look out the window [quick take a picture of his face when he realizes... OHHH! BURN! THAT SHIT WAS PRICELESS! Send that to Fail Blog!]

And so it goes. To update my previous tale of iPhone 3GS ordering woe, Apple actually cancelled one of my orders arbitrarily. I called AT&T since Apple blamed them for the cancellation and they said both Apple and AT-AT AT&T have been randomly cancelling orders with two phones for no reason and there was nothing they could do to fix it. I placed a new order in-store and they claim it will be here in 10 days. Unfortunately both mine and my wife’s old iPhones are alread on eBay destined for new homes. Oh well. There are much worse problems to have. I hear in some parts of the world people don’t even HAVE access to 3g cellular data networks… and also they’re starving.

[this comic might be a two-parter]

Do you have a tale of waiting in line today?

• iPhone 3G S waiting, hoping, livestreaming
• iPhone 3G S Launch Day: Photos from 5th Avenue
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I hope you guys dug the guest comic that I did for Jeph. Today is his birthday, and everyone deserves a day off once in a while.

If you are new to HijiNKS Ensue here are the basics: It’s a geek comic. There are 3 main characters. Joel has the hair flip, Josh is the gay bald guy and Eli is the Mexican with the hat. Most of the comics make fun at some aspect of geek pop culture. It’s been described (by me) as “Penny Arcade minus video games, plus everything else.”

If you like SciFi, Movies, Geek TV, Joss Whedon, Star Trek, Technology, Apple or any other geeky pursuits you will probably find something to enjoy here.

Thanks for checking out HE!

[you can follow me on Twitter if you are so inclined]

[you can also read about my Experiment to see if I can make a living from my webcomic]

To HE readers: if you are looking for a comic today, please feast your pixel-hungry eyeballs towards today’s Questionable Content. I gave that comic all the extra comic sauce I had and I’m all tapped out until Friday. If you aren’t already reading QC, then you’ve got about 1500 comics to read instead of working today.

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Ephram? Paw? Sweet Apple IIe of Appalachia, it’s The Technobillies!

Ephram and Paw get their satellite service from a special program provider that caters directly to those of a certain cultural status. It’s 400 channels of reality-game shows hosted by Jeff Foxworthy.

This is a friendly reminder to call your grandma and explain why her “tv box got all snowy” and she “can’t watch Maury and The Wheel“.

• FCC says DTV transition going smoothly, few TVs shot up
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• Don’t Forget: Your TV Might Not Work Anymore
• Digital TV transition: 12 hours in, how are things going?

I doubt many of you were negatively afftected by the analog Tv shut-off, so how about we just make up other shows that would be on Ephram and Paw’s satellite service?

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