Mike Royko was funny beyond words.

For what will be this blog's penultimate post, I'm going to give in to a long-suppressed urge and share with everyone here what has to be my favorite Mike Royko column.  Seems like the right opportunity just never came about.

If you're too young to remember Royko-understandable given that he passed away in 1997-he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago newspaper columnist who worked for both the Sun-Times and the Tribune, as well as enjoying a sizable national audience in syndication.  This column, from 1995, was his take on all the hype and hubbub accompanying the rollout of-what else?-Windows 95.

Some background:  The "Slats" Royko refers to is Slats Grobnik, a character he created to carry on imaginary conversations with in print-a common writing device that has fallen out of favor since Royko's time, sadly.  Everyone reading Royko knew  Slats didn't really exist; do today's editors and publishers really have that low of an opinion of their readers' intelligence?

As for the Windows 95 launch, yes, it really was that big of a deal.  Stores stayed open late and people lined up outside awaiting the stroke of midnight.  Remember that Internet access was just starting to become ubiquitous in mid '95, and even if you could get online at home it was probably only via dialup.  Downloading anything the size of an operating system would quite literally have taken days.  Buying software was a brick-and-mortar proposition then and for quite a while afterward.

Anyway, I've always liked Royko's take on the whole thing.  It comes back to mind every time the feeding frenzy is repeated, albeit on a much smaller scale, whenever a new iPhone comes out.  Too bad Royko didn't live to see any of those.  Wonder what he'd think?

Oh, yes-the link to the column.  Here it is.

Enjoy.