Yes, Pepsi-flavored Cheetos.

August is not being August. Feels post-Fair out there. Time to write off the entire summer, I think. June was dank. July tried. August, at least as much as I've experienced since I got back, feels as if it's worried about something.

You know it's going to snow in October, don't you. 2013 is just broken.

COMICS! Let's check in with the comic strip we've been studying this week, and see whether it's still stuck in the 70s. Hmm: no. It's regressed:

Good thing it says "Bedrock Auto Repair," or you would have missed the Flintstone reference entirely. We can ignore the way Fred's legs seem to join at his sternum, and avert our eyes from his expression of mute, disbelieving despair. Let us concentrate on the one thing the artist gets right: the rear axle. I could never figure that out as a kid. The rear axle should have fallen out the moment forward motion was initiated.

Don't remember much else, because it's not a memorable cartoon. Sorry, boomers, but not every example of culture we absorbed in our footie-jammies period is a "Classic" or a cultural touchstone that binds our generation. The only thing that really sticks out, aside from Fred sliding down the dino tail at quitting time, is the big rib thing the waitress brings at the drive-in, which tips over the car. I had no idea what that was. I thought it might be a speaker.

The mechanic is probably named Bob Basalt or Sid Schist or something rock-related. Everyone had last names based on the culture's primary construction material. Makes sense. Just like people today have last names like Drywall and Steelbeam.

POP What's the difference between Zero and Diet Coke? I've no idea. Never could tell. I know that Diet Coke is Coca-Cola Light in Europe, and tastes about the same. But now there's Coca-Cola LIFE, replacing Diet Light Coke with Murder Juice, I guess. Designtaxi says:

Perhaps I'm just slow today, but does that mean "half"? Two times less just doesn't tell me much.

In related news: if you want to sum up the current culture, and how it took a direction no one expected when computers were invented, it's this. Expensive coffee branded with the face of a famously disgrunted cat.

But back to soda: if America is the home of junk food, why do other countries get things like this? Ladies and gentlemen: Pepsi-flavored Cheetos.

Urg. From the same site, something I completely missed:

I'm all for brand extensions, but this is redefining the Oreo into something it was not meant to be. Impulsivebuy has a lot of reviews of peculiar things, although it seems to think that Uncle Ben Basmati rice is new <rolls eyes> I mean really.

Just kidding. No one should be expected to know it's not.

RETRO i09 brings this to our attention today: the Blade Runner 8-bit game.

Wonder how many people who make these things actually played them when they came out, or whether they're recreating a medium that was on the way out when they were zygotes. I played them, but have no nostalgia for them. It's like a movie-lover being nostalgic for those flip-books that show moving images when you fan the pages.

Doesn't mean they're not worth saving, though, and you hope someone has managed to convert as many as possible to play on modern machines, or at least taken screen grabs. It would be a shame if an entire genre of entertainment was inaccessible because all the hardware broke; imagine if every book written in the 18th century had all the pages glued together, and couldn't be read.

Well, that's enough analogies; off to write a column about something. See you around.