Today I’m doing something different. Today I am reviewing a Heritage Moment that I don’t remember from my youth. I have to assume that this thing was created after I stopped being indoctrinated by television. How will it hold up without the nostalgia factor?

Okay, so we’re over in World War Two. We get all kinds of fast exposition showing that the Canadian Boys are in trouble. They’re surrounded, they don’t have the equipment they need, and they’re also in a war. Basically, it isn’t a fun time. This one guy who is in charge leaves and tells John Osborn he’s in charge. Osborn issues a few orders, then a grenade is thrown into the building. Osborn sacrifices himself by jumping on the grenade to protect the others. That was nice of him.

So, how does it hold up? Without having seen it repeatedly in my formative years, I don’t see anything greatly quotable in here. Would I be saying “They never sent us any bloody jeeps, nevermind artillery” every time I hear artillery mentioned? It’s a possibility, but I can’t be sure. Maybe I’d yell “Grenade! Grenaaaaaaaaaaaaaade!” now and then, but all in all I can’t give this one much of a recommendation based on quotability.

But what about the rest of the piece? We’ve got Osborn’s sacrifice. That’s pretty noble. The sort of thing you want in these. And there’s the fact I learned that “our troops in Hong Kong were the first Canadians to see combat in the Second World War” so it has a little educational value. But the slow motion, man. Like twenty seconds of this minute-long spot are slowmo. That slow motion ruins it for me. I think I could have bought a moment of it, if it cut out after the explosion, but instead it goes on and on to show us the rain of Os-bits in front of his confused men who are still waiting for that order to go. Had it been just that little bit shorter, I still would have found it cheesy and stupid, but a burst of cheesy and stupid is great. 33% of the Moment being that way, is less great.

Up against my reviewing this thing holds up better than Lawson and Hennessy, but I can’t give this thing more than Three out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. I can never say for certain objectively, but I suspect that even if I had grown up with it, this one would be in the middle-ground at best.

I was unable to come up with anything good, so we’ve just got the Phone Guys this week:

[I’m going to sneak this in while no one is looking. –Marq]

So, I was born premature so my birthday was last month, but August 18th is the day I was due to be born, right? So it is still kind of a notable day for me. The thing is that I now know at least four people born on August 18th? Why is that day so important? Why were parents of people I know now boning so much in November back in the early 1980s? What is the secret of this day? Probably there isn’t one, but I find it to be a neat coincidence anyway.

Haiku!

Bidul waggle sna.
Those are just some syllables.
Meaningless. Like life.

So, what else? I can’t think of anything else to say and I gotta go to work. So shut up and go away!

I mentioned this in passing last week, but I keep forgetting to go into further detail: I have spent my last pre-student paycheck on a new laptop.

This is the first time that I’ve went and got a new computer before my current one had some kind of catastrophic failure. Sure, my old one (Computron Rex) has plenty of issues, and seems to be getting worse all the time, but it is technically still a functional machine. That means, for the first time, I’ve got two computers on the go. And it is pretty effing sweet.

The new computer, an Asus model of some kind, seems really good. It is very fast compared to its predecessor and it is light enough that it probably will be able to function as a portable option in ways that that one never did. This is, of course, important now that school is happening. Most importantly it prevents me from worrying that my computer will die while I am needing it for school and I’ll be too poor to do anything about it.

I also have my weird computer naming policy that nobody cares about but me. I have to call it Computron Something, but I’m not entirely sure what. In chronological order, the computers I’ve owned were Computron, Computron V, Computron X, and Computron Rex. Where do I go from there? What’s better than Rex? My first thought was Computron Dei. Also, there’s the undead-based nickname that I have to apply as well, out of tradition. But I’m pretty sure I’ve used up all the best kinds of undead creatures. frankensteins, zombies, ghosts, and vampires I have used. So what is this guy? Sure there are options like maybe a lich or skeleton or mummy or something, but in a lot of ways those guys are just tricked-out zombies. As I pondered, my brain immediately started making the case that angels can be undead (in religious theory this is obviously not true, but we’ve all seen movies and stuff where dead folk become angels after death, so those guys would surely qualify).

Notice a pattern? My first thoughts for both of the naming conventions I use on my computers seem to be overselling this laptop to religious proportions. For the time I’m going to not officially name my new computer and we’ll see how well it lives up to my apparent subconscious impressions.

Anyway, now you are all up to date on my computer situation.

Check this out, ladies and gentlemen.

Also, there’s some guys talking on some phones.

And finally, it isn’t a comic, but apparently today is Jenny Everywhere Day, which is a day celebrating, as one might expect, Jenny Everywhere. Jenny is a character created someplace on the Internet and who anyone is allowed to use. Basically she is a superhero who exists in all the multiple worlds and can shift between them (making it convenient for anyone who ever wants her to show up in some story). I’ve always liked the concept (a few years ago I did a short strip about her just to say that I had), but this year I decided to make an image for the Jenny Everywhere Day event.

It’s kind of like a cover-style image for a story I have in my head that I’d like to tell someday, but until that time, this is all we’ve got.