I just made my first guest post for my main brohamina Kevin over at Review Bunker. Check it out if you want to know how a Gerber multi-tool fares in my mighty, masculine hands. Look at the rest of the site too if you really want to, in case you are curious about such things as how incredible a restaurant hundreds of miles from you is, or if a battery powered rope is worth the asking price.
-Andy
Station Atomica might not be the funniest website on the ole Internet. In fact the sole time someone chuckled at one of my jokes was in mid December of last year, and he was immediately put to death for the offense.
As pathetic as my little garbage mound of obscenities and Star Trek quotes is, at least I can pride myself on the fact that I created it all myself 15 minutes before posting by letting my cat walk on my keyboard. Some people can’t even claim that much. People like the guy who writes Sparks of Sanity. Here’s a screenshot of the website for posterity because I have a feeling it’s about to look a whole lot different soon.
Now you have to realize how much this pains me. Sparks of Sanity is one of the few blogs that has actually linked to me in any way in its blogroll. I have not had any correspondence with writer “John” other than a brief statement from him on the cesspool that is BlogCatalog’s discussion forums. I have no personal beef with him. On the other hand, Sparks of Sanity seems to be nothing but a collection of stolen articles duplicated in near perfection both in text and illustration, so fuck it.
And what does Sparks of Sanity steal from? Why none other than the obscure and little known Maddox. Take a look for yourself:
http://sparksofsanity.com/archives/9
(taken down for SOME reason)
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=fashion
and
http://sparksofsanity.com/archives/95
(again, gone like a puff of magical fairy crap skipping across the clouds)
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=beat
So there you have it, Sparks of Sanity is nothing more than a rip off of a washed up internet comedy writer who barely has the energy to update 3 times a year anymore. I mean if I was to make a short list of people NOT to rip off in a blog Maddox would be up there with the likes of Something Awful and fuckin’ Bill Cosby.
He doesn’t seem to have any ads on his site, so his motives are a big damn mystery to me. I tried emailing John at Sparks of Sanity, but he has not responded as of yet. He can feel free to reply to me whenever he wants, but my advice is to close up shop and try again. I have no personal vendetta against him as said before, so I will offer these words of advice; if you want to write a blog, write about what you know about (apparently not humor,) and if you are going to rip someone off try to choose a less conspicuous target, like Carlos Mencia.
You know what? At this point I’m not even sure this isn’t some gimmick. I mean how can you think this is a good idea? I am half expecting him to post something along the lines of, “HAHA GOTCHA! JOKE’S ON YOU!” but then that just turns it from pathetic to pathetic with backpedaling.
The best part is the tagline: “Because You Can’t Get It Anywhere Else” Oh, Sparks of Sanity, you CARD! 
Also on the page dedicated to his art: “…If you like them, please write and let me know. And try not to use any of them without my permission.” At this point I don’t even know if those images are his or not, but lets be sure to give him the credit he is due. Its only right.
STUPID OLD UPDATE:
Site is back up with new entries, along with a rant about how much of a meanie I am. The best part being this tidbit: “At no point did I ever claim authorship of anything on here even though some of it was, indeed, written by me.” First, I guess its a good thing you got rid of the “Because You Can’t Get It Anywhere Else” tagline then, eh? Second:
click for big
This is from Sparks’s BlogCatalog profile. I am sure “my own shit” means the one or two entries you have that you thought up on your own, as well as your gripping “about” page that was certainly penned by you. I am sure that is also what everyone else thinks reading those entries where the only name attached is your own. All you have to do is give some credit.
I promise to delete this entry and in its place put the text “Sparks of Sanity rocks” if he adds a link back to the original on all the forged articles. In fact I would love to do that.
-Andy
Until a few weeks ago I had never read a blog in my life. At least not regularly, and I for sure had no contact with the pasty denizens of the blog-o-sphere. One of the stranger things I have noticed that people do with their blogs is crowd the layout with an ass-load of icons and widgets and doodads that don’t really need to be there/are ugly as the day is long. The worst offender is usually the massive orange feed icon usually located near the top of a blog like a gigantic pulsating tumor that dwarfs the planet mercury in size.
Maybe I am a retard and am missing something obvious, but if someone wants to subscribe to your feed they are usually the type of person savvy enough to find it even if it isn’t pounding them in the face with a shovel screaming “subscribe, SUBSCRIBE!” If they’re the type of person that has no interest in feeds then it is worthless visual clutter that clashes with your design unless you run a website about pumpkins and hunting safety gear.
Everyone seems to be on a mission to one up each other with a massive over-wrought icon, and I am saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. In the interest of stemming this feed icon arms race I have created one so massive and monolithic that it dwarfs even the largest of existing icons. Take a gander at this mofo (click it for bigness):
In conclusion, everyone can stop creating massive feed icons because now that I have this puppy I can crush your puny feed icons without even trying. I haven’t even souped it up yet, and when I do that look out because I will turn the feed icon world upside down.
-Andy
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