I wanna be famous!

"I lived, I loved, I saw boobies... what more can a man ask for?" -Harold

So I've gotten addicted to a show on cartoon network named Total Drama Island. It's just... evil. Itsa cartoon about a reality show...

"Sign these..."

"We already signed the insurance release forms...."

"No, these are organ donor forms... I wanna pitch the producers onna cannibalism challenge, and it would help if I could cut down costs by arranging for props before hand..."

And you sorry bastards owe me for the Melvin thing. AB tokens! Cough em up! These stories aint free!

I haven't seen this linked anywhere... but the people at Sluggy Freelance, who have been playin the game fer a while, are doin a big "A fellowship of my own damn self" wow satire...

My fave joke so far.. the original game race... "rose elves." The expansion race... "nude elves."

So anyway, my friend Andy, the math grad student algebra teacher.

College was pretty damn weird for me. I didn't do it till a little later in life, and hadta work full time while takin courses. This kinda left me out all the typical diversions... and dumped me into the circle of grad students. Who are all a buncha bitter bastards, for the most part.

Since I worked at a store near the cheaper apartments, I got to know a lotta em. Which helped me a lot, since they had tons of extremely useful advice on dealing with school. And they would introduce me to professors.

Now... one thing to keep in mind about college. It never freaking hurts to have the professor and the TA know yuir face.

Anyway... I had just decided to pick up a math minor... and found out that I needed credit for algebra to qualify. So, the summer before I started advanced calculus, I was stuck in an algebra class witha buncha 17 year olds. One problem... LSU had just toughened up their entrance requirements, so people who wouldnt qualify witha 2.5 gpa had to enroll in class the summer before the new reqs went into effect. That's right. All the people who would be technically too incompetent to get into college were gonna be takin the same class at the same time...

The preferred class was algebra. Ima still surprised none of the TA's offed themselves. And Andy.. well, Andy was losin it.

"Is this gonna be on the test?"

"It is now!"

So one fine day I strolled into the cages they laughingly called TA offices, and saw the quiz that Andy and company were puttin together. Now note... all the TA's found my situation hilarious. Cuz if anyone hated these kids more than them.. well, it was me. THEY just had to deal with em in the classroom. *I* had to deal with them after they had been binge drinking. Add to the fact that the garbage they put grads through makes my havin to take a BS entry level course pale into insignificance.

So... Andy was puttin together an algebra quiz on his board. I was lookin at it... and saw the bonus question.

"What was the cause of the trojan war?"

I asked Andy what the hell that had to do witha Algebra test... and I cherish his response as one of the wisest things I've ever heard...

"Well... if they know the math, they don't need the bonus. If they don't know the math... THEY'RE IN COLLEGE! THEY HAVE TO KNOW SOMETHING!"

This time when kindness falls like rain

See! I posted a chest too! I can haz traffic and comments now?

This was the tipping point. (See... itsa post on tipping, and I... uh... oh hell, never mind)

Anyway, I saw that picture and my first thought was... "I'd like to reboot THAT."

My second thought was... jesus, please tell me Megan didn't hear that thought... she's like that you know... too much arena, and you can see into the future and read minds...

And if she takes offense... /shudder.

I'd rather take my chances locked in a room with Jesse Jackson anda pair of scissors than face teh killah. Especially since the British Governement confiscated my "protection."

(Asa note.. I sent that link around the office... my team leader, who used to fence, noted that trying to hurt someone with that would be like trying to beat someone to death with a sheet of aluminum foil. Melvin, OTOH, didn't see the joke. "A dangerous weapon is a dangerous weapon...")

So, Ima sorry it's takin me so long to post this week. Been havin problems with the damn firewall here... I'll have another post tomorrow, onna my friend Andy the algebra teacher...

And now for what you've been waitin on. Yep... I did arena 3's with Melvin and his brother Ron. Sometime in the middle... I heard a voice screaming...

And then I realized it was me.

I haven't played much since. I kinda slammed my mouse hand inna car door... over and over again... just cuz it seemed like a good idea, you know. Itsa feelin better, leaving me with the problem of what to do now...

Highlights...

Apparently, when you POM macro something thats outta LOS, the POM procs, the arcane power starts, the trinket goes off, but the Pyroblast doesnt launch. "See," said Melvin, "thats why that macro is a bad idea!"

Melvin runs behind a pillar after the other side at the start... without checking to see if anyone was following him. He died a horrible death. When told he probably should make sure his brother was with him, he replied... "It's his job to keep up with ME!"

We face a 2 mage, warrior team. Melvin and bro had been gankin warriors all day long... so they go after the warrior, who leads em around while onna mount. The two mages corner me and crush me. Melvin and Bro PASS the two mages TWICE while chasin the warrior... no sheep, no cs, no nuttin. Afterwards... "You need more resilience!"

And last... the final straw. Locks have resist. Melvin and brother have discovered this. They decided that it was pointless to focus fire the lock until last... this lead to a wonderful encounter witha Lock/Druid/Rogue team.

Lock walks up to us... dots each of us... and Melvin and Bro do NOTHING. "Whats the point, he's just gonna resist... just wait for something else to pop..."

What goes around...

You have to admit that the Beta news is keepin interest in WoW to a fever pitch durin what should be a slow period...

They changed Living Bomb recently... it used to be a self buff. The lucky fire mage would do aoe damage fer a period, then expode, doin a mass aoe attack with knockback.

Now, ya cast it onna mob. Like Seed of Corruption. Only since mages can't regen mana like locks... well.. whats the frikkin point?

My suggestion. Make it a castable buff. On any friendly target. Hunter pet? Check! Prot warrior? Check! Feral druid? Check!

Fire mages would soon become a tank's best friend. And this would be useful and unique... the aoe version of a hunter's misdirect... something that would help with pve, and be great fun in pvp... (cast in on the disc priest bein trained... and watch the bodies fly...)

The latest warrior adds... /shudder.

Oh, so Ima still doin prep work with Melvin for arena this weekend. I tried explaining the global cooldown to him. He asked me why this was important.

I really should just date a stripper instead. I'd hate myself less.

OTOH, every so often he takes me to Outback. I'll forgive a lot fera steak dinner. The only problem... it costs too much. Not money, mind you... hes got plenty of that. No, when I ask, he says... "Do you know how much gold I could farm in that time?"

Fun link of the week...

"Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears. "

The plastic face forced to portray

Yep. Itsa Melvin post.

I did a crap load of arena last week. Over 60 games, which for me isa lot. Most of em were with Arms and Fury, but I also pugged Majeure into a rogue/mage 2's.

And I have to say... I was not prepared. I really suck with my mage at 2's. Didn't help that half the teams we played were Pally/Warrior.

Did a few games with Arm's boomkin and mabd. And those went pretty well. Itsa nice combo, plenty of cc, plenty of resistance to cc, and we slaughter mage/rogue teams. Went like 9-2, lost to a lock/druid team due to bad teamwork... (I swear to god there's something wrong with his head... he was usin tranquility more than lifebloom...)

And we lost to a elemental shammy/pom mage team.

Now, I've been tryin to come up with a team from all the various toons hanging around my friends group. I do this rather than drink heavily. I may yet reconsider...

One idea... take Melvin and his brother's uber geared POM mages, add my resto shammy, and see what we can do in threes. The problem... they're both idiots. And by that I mean... they don't even use a POM macro.

"It always hangs up!"

I spent yesterday doin the proposal to Melvin. And I told him... he has to have a POM macro. This is non negotiable. It takes him too damn long to trigger POM, Arcane Power and then hit pyro... My shammy has dueled him and purged both offa him before...

And then there was that time in arena when he POM'ed a water conjure.

And well... he has a tendency to POM/Pyro pets.

Why am I doin this to myself?

Um... postscript. Long postscript. For some weird damn reason, I can't post comments to BRK's blog. This usually isn't a problem, since I don't usually have anything original to contribute :(

However, I had something happen yesterday that reminded me offa BRK thing from sometime ago.

I havea coworker named David. Now, David is interesting. But he is also old.. and lonely. I mentioned too much disposable income asa problem that Melvin has, right? Well... that's a lot of us here. We get paid a lot... and tend to be anti-social. So we have weird hobbies. Mine is hidin from cleavage... and BTW Sony... loved the post title :)

David collects movies. Old movies. OLD OLD movies. And yesterday I was trapped with him while he recounted his latest additions, including some old serial films.

For those too young to know... before TV, people would go to the movies and watch episodes of action "serials." They would be about 15-20 minutes each, and would be shown before the movie proper. If you ever wonder why old time movies tended to be about one and a half hours long or less... its cuz there was usually about 45 minutes of newsreels, cartoons, and serials shown before hand. Which is why longer movies like Citizen Kane tended to do poorly...

K... I know, long long story... anyway... the typical 12 episode serial hadda formula. Episode 10, the good guys find the bad guys' hideout. Episode 11, the big showdown at the end of which the good guy would stand over the defeated bad guy and maka speech about how evil will never triumph. Episode 12, the happy ending and comedy bits. Guy gets girl, monkey gets banana, whatever...

A while back, BRK stumbled over the meaning of the word penultimate. He was usin it as "second best." It actually means "second to last." And here's why penultimate is a word in the english language...

A LOT of western literature follows a certain pattern. Whether poetry or prose... the penultimate, or second to last chapter or verse... or in the case of a movie serial, the penultimate episode... is the part that has the resolution of the plot, or poem. The LAST episode... or verse... tends to be an epilogue... "and they all lived happily ever after."

This has been goin away. We dont usually have happy endings anymore. Shakespeare would end his plays with a wedding (or in case of drama, funeral) scene. We cut these scenes out now. One example was Burgess' A Clockwork Orange in which the final chapter (in which Alex grows up) was excised from the american edition until recently.

So, anyway... that's penultimate for you.

Seven for a secret, never to be told...

I'm reading a pretty good book right now. Basically a redo of Bladerunner, except in a darker universe. I don't exactly agree with the author's politics but... he's a good writer. I'll put up with a lot for quality of prose.

I borrowed it from Kim. I really need to spend more time with her... but I lack motivation. And she's not terribly mobile right now. I think I'll see if she wants to make a night of Anime/Movies around labor day... I should have the monday off to recover. The writer of one of my non-wow blogs commented the other day that he got dumped because he wasn't "emotionally supportive" enough of his GF's dog. Um... dibs? Keep up the good work, buddy! (If I lose Kim, I gotta go back to watching movies with Melvin)

Speaking of books and companionship... among Melvin's many vices... he has way too much disposable income. He lives alone, owns his own condo, has minimal responsibilities... and wouldn't be caught dead at anything approaching a fun place. All he does is play WoW and read really crappy fantasy. Well... its not like he can tell... So, remember, Ima grade A opportunistic asshole? Here's how I've been exploiting the situation. I hava current issue with mail. As in, I can't get packages... I still need to firebomb someone over the USPS's failure to deliver me my BC collector's edition. Never got it... still had to pay for it. So anyway... melvin has quite kindly allowed me to ship stuff to his condo, which has a concierge (someone on premise at all times to receive things like packages...) The problem? Well Melvin bein Melvin, he goes through my packages to see if there's anything he'd be interested in. Since its all books and dvds... I sometimes get them a bit late. HOWEVER... I have begun using this to my advantage...
Melvin: "This was pretty good!"
Noobed:" Well, its the first in a 7 book series, and there are 4 more already out..."
Melvin:"I'll have to rush out and get them!"
Melvin has been quite generous lending me his books, you see...

Melvin is beginning to despair about arena. He still has only topped 1550 in one team... that Arms and I put together. So he sidled up to me the other day...
Melvin:"So that frost build you've been using does well in arena, you say?"
Noobed:"Uh huh... you know, you can go to Gankbang.com and lookup what the top arena mages are usin, spec wise..."
Melvin:"No that's too much trouble... but my brother and I have been talking, and we were thinking we might need to change our spec.. would you come up with one for us?"

Not just Melvin drivin me nuts. My brother has decided to go back to college. At age 37. He has, I think, 9 credit hours already. And my parents will be footing the bill. And, by the way... he has two kids (via a female he never bothered marrying) to support. And he won't be working. A shame his career as a poker player never really worked out... he plays a boomkin in arena, and gets his 8 year old son to grind/farm for him...

The old grind at work is startin to get to me. Ever since the downstairs cafeteria stopped selling bottled frappuccino I've been draggin. One of those anda donut... and something is getting the hell done. Otherwise... bleh. So I managed to get one today... and one of my supervisors asked me what the hell I was doin... the report I had just finished wasn't due for another week! Ima gettin a weird reputation at work... one of my friends told me she was shocked that I hadn't gotten fired for an inappropriate comment yet. I gotta get more supportive friends... Maybe blaming rising commodity prices on the impending rapture wasn't the best of ideas... OTOH, I'm the one that gets the weird damn questions. Cuz I know what I'm doin, and take my time to get it right.

So... a while back, Arms and Fury dared me to tell the 15 second story... so it's like this. I was in town for a wedding, and we'd planned on me crashing at his place for a night to hang out and chat. It was, by the way, an awesome wedding. I really shouldn't have gotten that drunk before the sabre dance tho. Anyway.. I pop up at Arms place, he drops Troy in the DVD player... and then he gets a phone call. See... he'd just started datin the woman who has since become his wife, Sony, who musta just gotten back from Mag's lair, cuz that chest is EPICZ! (Itsa inside joke) And so... a coupla minutes later, Sony shows up, and she and Arms go back into his room and... well...
I've been more uncomfortable in my life, but that mostly involved getting weapons pointed at me. So I watch Troy alone, with the volume turned up. And after it's over, I put in some Cowboy Bebop. And watch a few episodes of that. With the volume turned up. Which was probably a bad idea... considering how patently thin the walls were. Four hours later... he and sony emerge... sony looks happy while arms looks a little sheepish. I glared at both of them and hissed... "Fifteen Seconds!"
Arms looks at me and asks me what the hell I'm talking about.
"It only takes dolphins fifteen seconds, and they spend all their time naked on a beach!"

Give me back my bullets!

Meh.

That's all I gotta say. Meh.

Finally cracked 1550 with Arms and Fury. My shammy has her brutal pants, which are hidden by her damn dress. I think I've compained about that before...

In the run up to Wrath of teh Lolking... Ima trying to think about what character Ima gonna level first. And last.

At this point I like playing the mage least. (poor Majeure). OTOH, the new mage talents excite me the most. Mabd is probably gonna be leveled solo, cuz thats what hunters do. That just leaves the shammy...

I can probably hitchhike with some friends, and stay resto for a bit while we group quest. Since itsa pvp server... well... don't go alone, as the saying goes. Still, the burnout factor is getting to me. I can't bother to run my mage through the daily BG's... a bad sign.

I really gotta stop doin arena on monday nights. I get too keyed up to get back to sleep. Last night, after Arms and I finished, I ran unbound through the BG daily, EotS.

And here's yuir resto shammy tip of the day. If your not worried about mana, or even if you are... healing stream totem is *very* useful. A lotta times, you'll want to use poison cleanse totem... but sometimes, that's not really gonna help.

At my current gearing... healing stream totem gives 240 health per 2 seconds. Pop that and earth shield... and we get what happened last night... where I slaughtered two undergeared rogues who weren't usin wound poison... just me, and my fire elemental, inside the mage tower. Even with both of em beatin on me, my life bar wasnt budging (stoneskin totem had something to do with it...)

So anyway... arena...

We hada breakthrough of sorts last night. Unbound adds her damage (and purges) to Arms against pallies. And the pallies will go down. Unbound will stay up a lot longer than a pally bein focus fired... and bloodlust makes my heals 1.1 seconds... so pop earth shield, drop healing totem, and go to town on bubble boy. A grounding totem will stop the pally stun, and the occasional war stomp, or nature's swiftness emergency heal will keep me up, even witha MS applied.

Mage/Rogue is still a nightmare. Sigh... any advice?

Oh yeah... t.v. recommendation. This show is gettin a lotta buzz.. and since it falls into one of my science geek interests (evolutionary biology).. I thought I'd pass it along.

I've got another confession, my friend...

There are different types of friends.

I've been blessed, I guess... I didn't have many as a child, and I have several now. Including people I consider close friends.

What do I mean by a close friend? Well... if I had a body to get rid of, I would call one of these people to help. And would be confident that they would show up with the garbage bags and shovels.

Arms and Fury is one of these people. Of course, he'd be my last choice... cuz he'd bust my chops the entire time...

"Nother dead hooker, huh noobed?"

Anyway... one of these friends, Bruce, gave me a call tuesday.

Bruce is getting divorced. And since I was best man at his wedding... well, this depresses the hell out of me.

And Bruce is BITTER. He's already calculated how much money he would have saved if, instead of getting married, he had hired a "professional" for $500 a night, three nights a week, over the last 7 years in which he'd been married.

He's 39. His entire life, he's gone to sleep at 8:30, woken up at 4:30, and worked his ass off. And he's just found out, as he told me, that this is not what adults do. Adults enjoy life. Listening to him made me want to cry.

He's gonna come visit me for a coupla weeks in november. I don't know what he's really looking for. He has a tendency to visit me when he gets lost. Besides his sister, I'm the only person he really has any history with (we met in high school). He was so estranged from his family/birthplace that when his mother died, his people had no idea how to get in touch with him. Eventually they told my father, who told me... and I'm the one who had to tell Bruce.

If this visit coincides with the WotLK release, Ima gonna be PISSED.

I like the touch and the smell of all the pretty dresses you wear

Who's up fer some cross dressing?

Well... looks like shammies, doan it?

Smoky and Raynmaker left some terrifying comments on my last post.

Um... shammies agil/crit is gettin changed to match that of hunters cuz shammy agil/ap is ALSO gettin changed to match that of hunters.

/gulp

So my main question... will our hard earned epic gear be converted as well, or will all that +str (which will now give only +1 ap per point) gear be beat senseless by the uncaring blizz nerf bat?

There has been a question raised on many a blog in the last few weeks... why bother with WotLK? Why not ignore it until a few weeks before it pops?

Here's a big answer... cuz its entirely possible all that epic gear you've been gathering will be rendered obsolete... we have at most... 5 months? And all the enhance shammies out there are loadin up on +str pvp mail MIGHT be better served by pickin out hunter gear for the big switch?

Oh god, I so hate hunters now, and I AM ONE. /cry

So... here's the deal.
1. Those offset drops are gonna be kinda important. And they gonna include hunter gear now. Be warned, hunters!
2. Keep in mind that that season 4 pvp gear might not be worth keepin for WotLK... at least fer enhance. So be careful spendin points towards october. You might wanna pick up a coupla diff pieces when WotLK comes out, especially since we've been told that high end gear will last us a lot longer in WotLK than it did in BC.
3. Blizz is promising yet another shammy overhaul... make no plans. Shammies are kinda screwed, much as druids and pallies are, since we have no clue what we're gonna need, gear wise, when we start leveling again. The whole "healz and tank builds will be viable" aint gonna cut it... spec since blizz is ALSO tellin us we're might get two diff builds to switch in and outta at will... which we wouldnt really need if tank/heal builds were viable.

/sigh

Ima go see teh movie this weekend. Even if my movie partner is makin noises about Mamma Mia. Which scares me about as much as the threat of bein locked in a room with Jesse Jackson anda pair of scissors.

P.S. Fer Sony

P.P.S. Fer the rest of you pervos.