I don't think I've ever seen a corporation prostrate themselves like J.C. Penney does in their new apology commercial

While I was watching Supernatural last night, this J.C. Penney commercial kept airing where the company apologizes to its customers. It was more than just an apology, though, it was begging. Check out the commercial below and see for yourself:


It's almost like they're a woman who cheated on her girlfriend and is trying desperately to get back with her.

Please, baby, I need you to buy our shit.

It's not that far off base, apparently. I did some googling today and as it turns out, the commercial is a mea culpa from the retailer to its customer base. Back in 2011, J.C. Penney hired a guy named Ron Johnson, a former Apple exec who came up with the idea for Apple Stores and Genius Bars, to run their company and well, it turned into a clusterfuck. He managed to alienate and drive off older and longstanding customers by getting rid of discounts and coupons, which had been the bread and butter of the company for decades. He also came up with this idea to put "stores" inside of each outlet. These "stores" were just areas within each J.C. Penney that featured clothes and products by a single company/label. These, at least, were successful, but not enough to save Johnson's job; the company shit-canned him last month and rehired his predecessor.

While Ron Johnson's run in the company was mostly a flop, it was during it that J.C. Penney became more pro-LGBT. First, they hired Ellen DeGeneres as spokeswoman, then quite boldly, ran sales ads featuring same-sex parents. Needless to say, that pissed off the right-wingers, but really, that's just icing on the cake. Truthfully, when I first saw the commercial, I thought that they had backpedaled and were apologizing for their stance. As far I know, they haven't and I hope they won't.

Check out this chart of Iron Man's armor evolution

We're going to need a bigger boat...
(Click to embiggen)

It's a pretty handy chart if you're not wholly familiar with Iron Man's armors. Kate Willaert from HalloweenCostumes.com did a fine job creating it, so a tip of the Nerd-Thing hat to her. The only ones not listed are the one-offs that he wore once or twice, the specialty armors like the stealth, space, and aquatic, and the armors he created as revisions and overhauls of existing armors. Oh, and the armor the teenage Tony Stark wore in the mid-90s, but I think we'd all rather forget that that ever happened. Yeah.

My favorite of the bunch is and always will be the Silver Centurion. It's funny, I've never read an issue from when Tony was wearing the thing (which will be rectified one day soon), but I just totally dig it. The Silver Centurion just looks so different and cool! I was surprised by the five longest running armors; I was sure Extremis had all of them beat. Glad I was wrong.

Now having said all of that, it's unpopular opinion time: I don't like the movie armors, with the exception of the Mark I. I don't know, they just look too much alike with hardly any real variation. I think the only difference between the main armors in the first two Iron Man movies was the shape of the unibeam/arc reactor piece. The newest armor from the upcoming third movie is mostly in the same boat. It looks like all they did there was swap the red-gold palette, and changed the shoulder guards, the boots, and made minor changes to the helmet and torso.

Hat tip to Geekologie for the picture.

I Fight Dragons - The Geeks Will Inherit The Earth.

Which is probably why assholes are trying to destroy it. :|



I regret not knowing about I Fight Dragons sooner.

Watch Community/Mad Men's Alison Brie reenact Grumpy Cat and other internet memes

Her Overly Attached Girlfriend is flawless! It is without flaws!



Via Buzzfeed.

I have no idea who Rae Johnston is, but her owning of a douchebag has catapaulted her to my top fifteen favorite people in the world

This is what assholes deserve when they try to pull that "girls are fake geeks*" bullshit.

Snarky guy in coffee queue eyes off my Bioshock Infinite t-shirt, suggests I "probably haven't even played it". So I told him the ending.
— Rae Johnston (@miss_raej) April 10, 2013

Let's be honest here, the fucker deserved it. This whole culture of denigrating women for "not being real geeks" within the subculture is sickening and embarrassing. A geek is a geek, regardless of their gender or sexual identity. Just because you are male does not mean that you are inherently empowered to declare who is and isn't part of the subculture. Not only did that fucker deserve to have Bioshock spoiled, so does every other asshole who pulls that same discriminatory bullshit.

As for Rae Johnston, The Mary Sue says that she's a writer fora website called TechLife. I don't pay all that much attention to tech blogs, so that explains why I hadn't heard of her before. I might have to start reading her stuff.

So, what do you think? Was Johnston's action appropriate? Any sympathy for the guy? Tell me in the comments.

*Or gamer, nerd, trekkie, potterhead, browncoat, SPNer, sherlockian, whovian, etc.

Adam Orth is a bag of dicks

And possibly a poo head, but the jury is still out on that. So, who is Adam Orth and why is he comparable to a bag of male reproductive organs? Well, until recently, Orth was an employee at Microsoft, working as a creative director at Microsoft Studio. I say "until recently" because he resigned the other day in the aftermath of a rather sizable clusterfuck surrounding his rather cavalier response to concern and opposition to a rumor that the next iteration of the Xbox will have an "always on" feature that would require the console to be connected to the internet 24/7 in order to play any games on it. In other words, if the rumor turns out to be true, Microsoft looked at the clusterfuck created by SimCity's release and its "always on" requirement, and said "shit, that looks like a great idea, let's do that!" The problem with an "always on" feature is that not everybody has the internet or can get a reliable, fast connection without shelling out substantial amounts of cash. People who live in rural areas, for example. In any case, Orth took to Twitter to respond, which you can see below (via The Wertzone).

 Oh, but wait, it gets better. Below, you can see Orth's elitism shine (via Nerd Reactor).

"Why would I live there?" Hurr durr. Not everybody can live in Seattle or Redmond and I imagine that there are a lot of people who live in rural areas who feel the same way about urban living. Where you choose to live does not make you better than others.

The fact of the matter is that according to the 2010 census and (probably) Skynet, rural Americans make up 15% of the U.S.'s population of 315 million, which is about 50.4 million people. Not a number that can be easily disregarded and that is just in the U.S., just imagine what the global rural population is and whether it is any easier for them to have a constant internet connection. I would strongly doubt it.

As already mentioned, Mr. Orth's snobbishness elicited a reaction that he probably was not expecting and in the resulting backlash, he resigned. Then Microsoft distanced themselves from his comments like he had made a really, really racist joke. I guess the lesson here would be to think before you leap or shove your foot in your mouth.

All hail this wicked ass One Piece tattoo

Damn, talk about creative.

I'd love to credit this picture, but it looks like it's been uploaded by twenty different people on imgur.

I like how the guy's hand becomes part of the tattoo, though you'd have to be a mighty big fan of One Piece to commit to something like that. Me? I would have gone with one of the stretchy superheroes like Mr. Fantastic, Plastic Guy, or Elongated Man.

Okay, maybe not Plastic Man.

Via Geekologie.

When it comes to things that should exist, Pokemon "Evolve" decals are near the top of the list

Because you can't tell me that that wouldn't be awesome to have on your car or something.

Credit: Nerd Rage.

Truck balls would be cool too, though they probably would get all banged up or prove annoying in the long run.

Jason watches Mad Men's season six premiere "The Doorway" (spoilers)

Via Wikipedia.

 Although, I almost missed it because I didn't know the show was coming back this month. I don't watch TV much anymore. Fair warning, there are spoilers after the jump.

This OVC strip accurately describes my feelings on Marvel and DC's "mega event" philia.

Credit: Our Valued Customers.

Exactly. I don't mind big crossovers and mega events like Secret Invasion, Blackest Night, and others as long as they're in moderation, which they never are. I mean, yeah, they're big money makers now, but eventually people are going to grow tired of yet another big thing and buy them less and less.

...

Oh, who am I kidding? Most comic book fans would buy a box of horse shit as long as it had Spider-Man, Wolverine, Batman, or a combination thereof on the top. I'm not saying they don't have taste...actually that is what I'm saying. Oh welp.