Singer Ron Reyes has left—or been fired from—the reunited Black Flag. Reyes announced his departure from the group via his Facebook page, saying he “felt a great sense of relief” as he jumped off the sinking ship. Reyes says he was fired on stage during a show the band played in Australia. Allegedly, professional skateboarder and Greg Ginn pal Mike Vallely came on the stage during the set, grabbed the mic, and brusquely told Reyes “you’re done, party’s over. Get off, it’s over.” Because that’s something pro skateboarders are allowed to do now.

In his post (which has since been removed), Reyes said the reunion wasn’t at all what he envisioned, saying,

“So many things went wrong from the start. I was into things like having a good drummer, rehearsing and spending time on things like beginnings and endings of songs, being a little less distracted with ...

Bandai’s Tamashii Nations toys look stellar at conventions when Bluefin displays its wares, and that has as much to do with the toys themselves as it does their unique environments. Come April, even the most casual collectors will be able to come closer to achieving the same level of display detail on their own with new stand bases from the Tamashii Stage line.

Designed specifically with Bandai’s own 6″ tall S.H. Figuarts toys in mind (but compatible with any figure, really), new gray and beige “Impact” bases can be positioned to simulate the appearance of massive craters, plus scads of other rubble situations. Basically, if you want to make it look like your action figure is getting kicked through skyscrapers to ultimately crash in a sun-scorched wasteland, these sets can help make that happen.

Billed as “Ideal for enhancing battle scenes with extreme collateral damage caused by being kicked through walls, explosive impact, or massive power build up cratering effects,” the $17.99 sets can accomplish quite a bit on their own with some 7 craggy pieces and clear display stands. The battle zone sky is the limit, though, since the sets are all compatible, allowing fans to expand plastic devastation as far as they wish.

You can see if the stands make an impact on you below.

With S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Agito Burning Form

[Via Tamashii Nations/Tamashii Nations USA]

The hexacopter drone and contraband discovered in the suspects' vehicle.

Calhoun County Sheriff's Department

The Customs and Border Protection agency flies drones, in part, to catch smugglers bringing contraband into the US, so it was just a matter of time before smugglers tried using drones themselves. Unfortunately for smugglers in Georgia, their drone got spotted and they landed in jail instead.

Four people were arrested in Calhoun, Georgia this week for using a six-rotor helicopter drone to deliver tobacco to a state prison. Operating from nearby woods, the group used binoculars to navigate the drone over the prison's fences.

The alleged perpetrators—Marc Lee Circle, Angel Omega Thomas, Aaron Clint Foster, and Donovan Aaron Johnson—were found by sheriff's deputies about an hour after a lieutenant at the Calhoun State Prison spotted the helicopter and ordered a search. WALB News reports that the four suspects were found with the helicopter and about two pounds of tobacco rolled into a package for delivery, along with cell phones that may have been used to contact prisoners to direct them to pick up the contraband.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, the longtime lead systems designer on World of Warcraft, is leaving developer Blizzard Entertainment, he announced today on the game's forums.

The news was first reported by WoW Insider.

"An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard," said Street, who joined the studio in February 2008.

Street had been one of the most prominent public-facing figures on the World of Warcraft development team, fostering a direct line from players to Blizzard developers through regular interactions on the game's forums as well as on his personal Twitter account, which currently has more than 70,000 followers. As lead systems designer, he and his team were responsible for building and changing the fundamentals of the way World of Warcraft plays, including classes, game mechanics, items, trade skills and user interface.

"I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this grand quest," Street continued. "I have said a hundred times that having passionate gamers, including the angry ones, is a far better place to be than having a community that doesn't care. You all care. Like us, you want the game to be the best that it can be. So I ask you to keep on providing your feedback. I promise (and I rarely promise!) that the developers care very much about what you have to say."

Prior to his tenure at Blizzard, Street worked for just under a decade at Ensemble Studios, serving as a designer on numerous Age of Empires titles and as lead designer on Age of Empires 3.

Both Instapaper and Pocket offer an easy way to save articles and other content so you can check it out later, but soon Facebook might be offering up a third option: the social network is currently testing a new feature that lets you save links posted to Facebook for later reading. The feature is showing up for some users in Facebook's mobile app — when you use it, articles show up in a "saved" menu listed alongside your Facebook apps.

Whether or not the read-it-later tool becomes a permanent part of Facebook remains to be seen, as the company is known for experimenting with features that are ultimately abandoned. "We're constantly testing new features, but we have nothing further to share at this time," the company told AllThingsD. As of now the feature doesn't appear to be as feature rich as existing services, both of which have made recent strides to add more functionality — a recent Pocket update helps users discover the content they'd be most interested in, while Instapaper's smart sorting tools help you filter your reading list.

When it comes to the holiday gift-giving season, comic book readers are notoriously difficult to shop for. I mean, most of us are down at the shop buying our favorite stuff every single week, so when the time comes for people who like us to get us something we want, well, a lot of times we already have it. That’s why we’re stepping in with a public service, bringing you comics-related items sure to make the season brighter, whether you’re browsing for a gift or just looking for something to drop hints about so that you don’t get stuck with a random assortment of back issues again.

Even if you’re as big a fan of Achewood as I am, you might not know that the merchandise section recently returned after being absent for almost two years — so finally, you can give someone that Sex Bicycle t-shirt they’ve always wanted. It’s great for grandma!

ITEM: Achewood merchandise.

CLASSIFICATION: T-shirts, posters, mugs

AVAILABILITY: $20 to $30 at Achewood.com

Achewood is one of my all-time favorite comics, web or otherwise — as I’ve written before, The Great Outdoor Fight is my pick for the single best comic of the 21st century so far — but for a long time, there was no real way to express that love by decorating my torso and/or walls. This year, though, just as Achewood returned to a seemingly regular Friday update schedule (fingers crossed), Chris Onstad has also brought back the shop, just in time for the holiday gift giving season. There are prints and posters based on the stories (including one print of a painting Onstad did of Philippe, in case you would like to explain to visitors why you have a painting of a small otter in dress shoes hanging in your living room), but the big draw, of course, is the t-shirts.

The nice thing about the shirts is also the nice thing about the dialogue from Achewood itself: It’s funny enough to work with or without context. People may wonder why there is a robot on the shirt proclaiming you King of the Makeouts, but Sex Bicycle and Ice Cream Headache work pretty well on their own, even if you’re not familiar with the strip.

Plus, if you know any graphic designers or font nerds, the prints section includes the perfect gift for them: A color reproduction of the (in)famous Comic Sans strip:

Also worth noting: The coffee cups available are 15 ounces, not that baby school “11 ounce” nonsense that you get from other sites, and therefore a nice gift for your favorite Internet comics critic. Seriously, we all know “11 ounces” is the biggest lie in merchandising history, right after labeling Halloween costumes as non-flammable.

By John Walker on November 27th, 2013 at 9:00 pm.

I think Barbie Dreamhouse Party might be the most sarcastic, darkly satirical game I’ve ever played. And I’m not even sure if I’m joking at this point. When a game with a name like that pops up on Steam, of course any red-blooded human games journalist is going to take a look, right? I was expecting a garish pink mess of dress-up minigames and saccharine terror, obviously, but Dreamhouse Party seems to take this into a whole other realm of creepy weirdness. This is a game in which a sentient closet-based AI locks four girls in a room (with giant metal barriers) because one of them smudged her make-up, and forces them to repeatedly apply lipstick and eyeliner to freakishly giant doll heads until he is satisfied. That’s not my arch interpretation of events. That’s what actually happens.

Things begin innocently enough. Barbie, controlled in the third person, is prancing around her lavish Dreamhouse entranceway. It’s a clumsy menu screen of sorts, in which options are accessed by going upstairs, and down the corridor on the left. But it also features Barbie’s on-again off-again love interest, Ken, another ladyfriend upstairs, and some dickhole playing a guitar. There’s already access to playing dress-up at this point, but things don’t start to get weird until you speak to someone. Then… then it just seems to get really damned sarcastic. Take a look:

With sugar on top.

Go through the doors downstairs and you’ll enter Barbie’s opulent mansion, built from the tears of the decades of children her organless torso has traumatised. At this point, three screeching idiot friends join her, representing all of humanity: Dangerously thin and brunette, dangerously thin and black, and dangerously thin and a bit rock but not enough to worry anyone. The four of them are pratting about in the living room, playing Barbie’s favourite videogame, when Not-Quite-Rock-Chick gets bored and decides to sabotage the evening. She approach’s Barbie’s massive bleeping, blooping 1960s space station computer that she has, and just starts hitting random buttons to make the stupid game they’re playing stop working. But uh-oh, in doing so she triggers an apparently malevolent AI that Barbie has built into her warehouse-like wardrobe.

I swear I’m not making this up.

The robot, called Closet, and unquestionably inspired by GLaDOS, then brings down massive metal shutters across all the doorways, trapping the doll-things and declaring they will now be forced to complete minigames. These involve trapping the girls in one particular room, and then having them hunt about for four of an object, and place them on pedestals in the “correct” order. At this point the game seems to think it’s intended to be four-player co-op, despite not offering any such thing, as the other three girls start madly hunting around the room too of their own volition. As Barbie you click on whatever’s nearby, and then get told only one of the others can find an MP3 here, through the medium of a circle with their face confusingly appearing. The AI eventually runs over and grabs it. It makes so little sense. That done, you’re then allowed access to challenges that really stretch the “mini” element of “minigame”. For three minutes I was forced to participate in a watered down dance-dance-revolution thing, which saw no variety throughout, beyond almost imperceptibly speeding up. After a minute of this bland nothingness I thought I was doing something wrong, missing the point of how to win, before I realised the clock was counting down, and there was still another two minutes to go. Upon winning, our robot overlord gave us permission to pick another room in the house, and it repeated.

The bathroom’s minigame involved scrubbing horses. Obviously. I didn’t do so well at this one, because I’d been playing with an Xbox controller, since it seemed to prefer that. The other three were merrily washing and blow-drying horses, but I could do nothing at all. I tried hitting the keyboard instead, and still nothing. Checked the options for controls, and there was nothing there. Turned out I was meant to be using the mouse – you know, the mouse that isn’t even implemented to be used with the game’s menus. I was so behind the others for cleaning horses!

The “Make-Up Room”, which is a thing, was where I’d make up for this. Get it? And was where things got properly sinister. I can only share it with you. (I was going to speed the footage up in this, before I realised I didn’t know how, so I recommend skipping after 20 seconds in to about 3 minutes):

I punched the air when I got that last face done before the time ran out.

In Chelsea’s bedroom I was forced to accessorize, matching belts and earrings to the dress Barbie’s wearing. Except it made me put clashing pinks and reds together, which was an affront. In the kitchen I had to throw cupcakes at a table. In the garage I had to drop cogs down a hole.

It’s worth noting that the game’s absolutely fucking terrible. The challenges are facile beyond belief, and it’s fundamentally about the madness of competing against three other AI players who seem about as capable as their plastic real-life equivalents. Even if the enormously sinister themes, and openly sarcastic commentary (the main voice sounds an awful lot like Cookie Masterson from the You Don’t Know Jack games), are all part of an attempt by a development studio to scream out from beneath the horror of the contract they’d acquired, they were still crap at making a game. The entire thing is over in barely a couple of hours, and on this they’ve decided to brave a price of £23!

I’ll give the final word to Creepy Guitar Douche.