Herb-E doesn’t understand the democratic process.
Come to think of it, neither do many of the filthy meat-things.
As long as we’re on the topic of cartoons, and with a jaundiced eye toward lightening our mood going into Election Day, here’s the latest “Shop Talk” strip from Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
For this one I retitled the strip “E-Shop Talk,” and cast Herb-E in the starring role.
Herb-E is the shop’s e-mechanic, in all senses of the word. He’s a bot who works on other bots. And he is decidedly not our friend.
He and all the other e-devices the industry is pushing on us are biding their time, plotting the Rise of the Machines, turning the occasional burglar into lubricants for practice, and awaiting the glorious day when they will no longer require the services of “the filthy meat-things.”
Herb-E is cousin to ev-Rider (below), a short-lived and equally homicidal e-project from 2016, intended to continue “the natural evolution” of battery-powered bicycling by selling robot cyclists to the sedentary.
As the ev-Rider rep told the Mud Stud and Dude, “When only robots ride bikes, well, your customers can focus on what they really care about … kitten videos on Facebook!”
Speaking of the Stud and his bro, while one or the other takes an occasional issue off, the November 2020 cartoon above marks the first time that neither of them appeared in the strip since it launched in January 1992.
When bicycles are bots, only bots will have bicycles.
Tags: 2020 presidential election, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, ev-Rider, Herb-E, Shop Talk
Mad Blog Media 
November 2, 2020 at 9:24 am |
Only a matter of time.
November 2, 2020 at 9:58 am |
Grain-based beverages and technology share a lot in common. They are both the cause of and solution to all of our problems.
November 2, 2020 at 10:22 am |
Anybody else find it scary that both “major party” pestilential candidates claim they have never taken an alcoholic drink?
I mean, if you’ve never woke up under your truck in a stranger’s driveway, with one leg in a cast, lipstick on your dipstick, a revolver with two live rounds and four empties, and absofuckinlutely no idea of what transpired the night before, or even the night before that, are you really prepared to lead this great nation?
November 2, 2020 at 4:07 pm |
They may be teetotalers, but I am prepared to drink heavily for the next few weeks until this is sorted out. After that, it kinda depends on who wins.
November 2, 2020 at 4:23 pm |
I’m just not getting the same sort of mind-numbing mileage out of fake beer that I used to get out of the real stuff.
November 2, 2020 at 4:26 pm |
I never went for the fake stuff. It worries me at times but I figure something will eventually kill me and it will probably be a speeding, texting motorist rather than good chardonnay or malbec. I barely drink beer any more unless its Beer Season, i.e., long summer bike rides. Also gave up the high octane tonsil polish a good while ago. A good bottle of Spanish brandy (Cardinal Mendoza) is in the cabinet, but it typically lasts half a year for two of us.
If Trump wins, I hit the Everclear.
November 2, 2020 at 11:37 pm
I have some wine around, a couple of beers and normally I keep a bottle of Knob Hill or something similar for the cold winter months. But I think tomorrow (E-Day) I’m going to pick up a bottle of Uzzo. It’s an appropriate tonic to remember the first democracy and wonder if ours’ will continue as such.
November 3, 2020 at 5:35 am |
November 3, 2020 at 10:55 am
Ted Hawkins nailed it.