Can you imagine the person pitching this show to a network? Can you imagine a network picking it up and airing it? Can you imagine anyone sitting there and watching it? Does anything about this synopsis, title of show, or name of the episode scream “comedy” to you?

If if does, we probably shouldn’t be friends.

I spend a lot of time on the internet, and because of that, I see a lot of ridiculous comments made by random people. I’ve tried to train myself to ignore comments, but I’m always drawn back in. I’m going to start sharing the best of the best that I come across.

First up is Nigel, busting out a vicious retort after receiving a totes sick burn. The earlier commenter dissed our buddy Nigel by saying he might be able to afford a low-cost iPhone after it releases– as an upgrade to his Sidekick.

LOLOLOL! Can you imagine if this guy was still using a Sidekick!

ummmm NO I OWN a galaxy nexus, nexus 4 and a nexus one and a samsung epic 4g… ALONG with my Mac Book Pro. and a slew of other devices…. You should google me. i take up 3 pages bro.
Honestly I havent had a sidekick since it was made by sharp and maintained by Danger.
now do me a favor and go ahead and troll some where else.

– Nigel Antonio

1. Way to show off your e-penis by name-dropping devices. Silly me, I thought one phone was enough. I’ve clearly got a lot to learn.
2. You search yourself enough to know how many pages you take up?
3. Bro, I totally Googled you. Now I know that you’re an SEO guy –and part-time, badass DeeJay of awesome disc spinning. You think he brags about how his name is so well-ranked on Google to prospective clients? Bro, seriously, good for you that you’ve got an uncommon name on 15 different social networks. Totally fucking pro.
4. Since he’s currently rocking so many phones, I bet back when Sidekick texting was a thing, he had a pager, a Palm Pilot, some Windows CE PDA, and a carphone too. He’s all about those tech gadgets!
5. Responding to what you perceive as a troll attempt means you’ve lost to the troll.

Other things to note about this? The first Google image result is a mug shot of a different Nigel Antonio. Good thing that Nigel doesn’t have a Facebook because it’d totally fuck up this Nigel’s three pages of results.

I know free services can go by the wayside from time to time, but Google made a very strange decision today. On July, Reader will be shutting down. We’ve got three months to find an alternative that works just as well, and I’m wondering if we’ll just have to settle for a knock-off clone.

The blurb in the spring cleaning post reads:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

What’s great about this, is that one of two things is true: 1) They’ve gravely underestimated the userbase (which is unlikely because it’s fucking Google), or 2) the diminishing userbase is so large that it can simultaneously rape the servers of the main five comparative services so I can’t test drive any of them to see where I’m going to wind up. Yeah, I know it’s the first day the news is out there, and the traffic will subside, it’s just an overall annoying inconvenience to make this change.

I’ve curated a list of feeds that caters to my interests, ranging from local news, to thirteen different baseball-related feeds, to friend’s blogs, to new music releases on Bandcamp. It’s more than just a really streamlined interface through which I can browse and read my aggregated feeds, though. It’s an entire API for syncing that data across five different devices that I use throughout the day, and that’s the crucial part I’ll be missing.

At a first glance, the Reader interface is scarce; it lacks large gradiated buttons and gloss. It’s dependent upon the feed, and if the author includes images of course, but there’s a lot of text in every view. There’s no unnecessary animations as you flip between each article… There’s no blurry images because its trying to stretch thumbnails to make magazine style layouts… It’s focused purely on the full content of each feed’s data, and it’s what I’m trying desperately to find in its replacement.

The question I’m left with is, “Why do I need to find a replacement to begin with?” I’m assuming the service requires little to no maintenance, and it’s a solid data collection utility for Google. Is this part of a shift to centralize social interactions on every level on G+? Good luck with that, bros. There’s no less than three apps on my phone and tablet that will become completely useless without the Reader API, and one desktop app is gone too. Oh well, guess we’ll have to suck it up and move on. Good thing Brazil and Pakistan still have access to Orkut, though!

I’m probably a lightweight in comparison to others, but here’s the basic stats from my Reader:

From your 58 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 3,392 items, clicked 328 items, starred 28 items, and emailed 0 items.

Since October 16, 2008 you have read a total of 49,273items.

CBS took down a clip on YouTube, which isolated a story about a mentally challenged kid getting a chance to play basketball for his high school team. It’s just another example in a long line of aggressive ’copyright protection’ from a major corporation.

The title of the video along with the copyright message is a sobering image, and I wanted to archive the juxtaposition.

…but I understand.

Explains the funny nail, right?

Anyway, that’s not the only thing I learned. I also found out that John Belushi told Carrie Fisher that she had a drug problem.

Fisher said John Belushi – who died of a drug overdose in 1982 – once told her she had a problem. “Slowly I realised I was doing a bit more drugs than other people and losing my choice in the matter,” she said. “If I’d been addicted to booze I’d be dead now, because you just go out and get it.”

John Belushi told Carrie to slow down on drugs. This is akin to David Carradine warning someone about not getting out of hand with sexual fetishes. How bizarre this world can be.

My buddies derryX and The Fat Lantern have their niches –dining and comic books, respectively. Do I need to carve one out for myself too? I’m not sure what that’s going to be. I collect different types of toys (mostly Transformers, LEGO, and Marvel figures), so I could do posts about new things as I get them.

Last week, I picked up the turtles that I said I wanted just under a month ago, and I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with them. I’m really in the mood to take some pictures and talk them up, and I’m probably going to do that this weekend. So there’s one new post, and we’ll see how the figure reviewing pans out. I don’t know if that’s what I really want to delve on, though.

I’m 29 and I’ve listened to Howard Stern since I was ten or eleven, and I’ve always been inspired to be open and honest about things happening in my life. The problem is, I don’t actually open up about things the way I should, and shit tends to fester and get out of control. Then, it gets to a point where I’m entirely over-stressed and miserable, and it all comes out in a fervor of rage and anxious energy. Thanks, Mom, I got this from you!

It’s unhealthy and I need to break out of that habit. Maybe this will become a private journal that I publish publicly for ridicule and mocking. I’ve done it a few times in the past (check out posts I’ve tagged as ‘bio’), and they’ve been the least viewed posts on the site. I’m entertained by the idea of sharing things most people wouldn’t, but the reception hasn’t been as significant as I hoped. I like getting reactions to the things I do, and it seems that the really personal things aren’t what get the attention I want.

It seems to be the stories I tell about the things I encounter that really shine, so I guess I just need to have more interactions with people so I can tell more stories.

I follow Marvelous News (as referenced in other posts around my blog), and I saw that a new 22″ maquette of the “Lou Ferrigno Hulk” was coming out, exclusively distributed through Big Bad Toy Store.

What an absolute disgrace this thing is. I mean, it just looks absolutely absurd, especially when compared to how decent Lou looked. Keep in mind that Lou donned a huge fluffy wig and fake eyebrows for the role. It’s almost like they found a generic picture on a Google Images search, stretched it out to a disproportionate size and used that to start the sculpt. Maybe they just hired a caricature artist, and they sculpted from that drawing. I see this as a shameful mocking of Lou, and they should have done much better.

I’m not a big bust/maquette guy to begin with, but this is just insanely terrible. Poor Lou. What I liked about that show was how Lou looked like a massive human being, but he was still human and had regular proportions. If I wanted a larger-than-life statue to add to my collection in his honor, I’d want it to actually look like him, not like it was a cheap comic-book adaptation of what that Hulk looked like. For shame!

Images stolen from Marvelous News (ML, MU), as you can see from their watermark. I’m a thief, oh well.

I absolutely hate that they gave him that over-sized web-slinging hand from the Freedom-Foundation/Big Time Spider-Man that came out earlier this year. I like it when he’s got an open hand so you have him bitch slap people, but this is a bit silly. I might finally be forced to try my hand –Ha, get it? Hand? Ahhhh?– at some Apoxie sculpting. HRM. HRM I SAY. Hopefully they’ll do a variant in his classic green/yellow threads too, but I can dig the white/gold if necessary.

Look at all the glorious figures in this box-set! Apoc (whom I never saw hit retail in our area, which is fine because the paint work on this release is far better), Mr. Sinister (previously only in a two pack with a Gambit that had terrible QA issues), Angel, Ice Man (who looks really cool), and redecos of Jean/Cyclops (available in a two-pack with more modern colors, of which I’m not into). I’ve got a spot in my room planned for this amazing fight scene already.

Now all I need is a Stryfe in this scale so I can set up an Executioner’s Song section on one of my shelves. I should probably pick up Cable while he’s still around too, so I don’t regret not having one to fight Stryfe if they ever decide to make one.

MMMMMMMM! Cannot wait for this set to drop, seriously.

Next up are some of the two-packs coming out, and I want three of the four announced. The Cap/Magnus one is pretty cool, but that’ll be the one I buy last, if at all. I will not miss out on the Spidey/Rhino and Silver Centurian/Mandarin duos though, even if I have to pay a bit more through Entertainment Earth or BBTS.

Rhino looks incredibly beefy.

Mandarin looks surprisingly good, and I’ll gobble up SC when I see him. My favorite armor will be mine!

This Spidey/Doom pack is really interesting to me. I’m looking forward to reading the issue bundled with them, as I’ve never seen these costumes before. I assume they’re tied into the Freedom Foundation arc, but I haven’t read it yet.

Make sure you check out the diorama Hasbro set up too. It makes me really jealous that I only wound up with one Sentinel, since they gave me some really cool ideas on how to deconstruct and display a few of them at once.