I don't need to be forgiven...

My guild asked me to become an officer...

I declined. The position would have been DPS Nazi. And who needs that kinda stress... especially since I'm thinking about jumping my mage to a more active guild to follow a friend.

So... first interview with Melvin... the question..

"Would you please transcribe your recollection of the story following the commentary "Ret pallies are simply too easy." I would love to hear your methodology on this theory."

Melvin... "I click a couple of insta cast buttons, and something (someone) dies. There isn't a lot of thought involved."

The context was him killing a boomkin. Now... I never really ask him if he just goes out ganking or what. I suspect so. Melvin is also very impressed that when playing his ret pally, alliance tends to avoid him. Unlike the 4 other 80's he has, who tend to get murdered with minimal notice. He really hates his mage in this regard.

Anyway... finally saw the Watchmen movie. The ending didn't suck anywhere near as much as I thought it would. A coupla notes on important differences between the movie and the book...

Veidt. In the graphic novel, he comes off much much freaking worse. The scene BigBearButt had problems with, where Veidt tells off the captains of industry for failing humanity completely reverses the meaning of that same scene in the novel. See... Veidt was the sellout. He saw the Keene act coming, and went public well before hand, leveraging his fame into his millions. In the relevant scene, he is discussing ending the line of Minutemen action figures... a fallen hero making money offa children's toys. And instead of evil money grubbing capitalists getting gunned down by the assassin Veidt hired himself, it was his attractive assistant. At the end of the scene... he is supposed to look lost and pathetic. That he isn't, and that we find at the end that it was all an act, is part of his evil. HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK PRINCIPLED GODDAMNIT! His namesake, Ozymandius, built massive monuments to his own vanity at the cost of thousands of lives, and the suffering of slaves. That should be a BIG tip. And when he finds his plan go off... in the novel he cheers. He doesn't give a little speech about how "this hurt me more than all those people I just killed." He doesn't give a damn.

Comedian. The movie really rips on him. For good reason... Moore wrote him to be as obscene as possible. However, one of the strands of the story is the redemption of the comedian. And can we bitch about Gugino in old person makeup? They couldn't find an actress of an appropriate age? WTF? Anyway... one of the signs of Veidt's evil is his misinterpretation of the Comedian's breakdown. Veidt claimed that the comedian was broken by the knowledge that war would be ended forever. This was Veidt's twisted view. What really broke the comedian, as revealed in the scene with Moloch, was the knowledge that the sick joke of a humanity always at its own throat was being taken to its logical extreme. What broke the comedian was, for the first time, a realization of horror. At that point, he stopped being the comedian, and was simply human. And it was a human being that Veidt killed, dying (hint hint) in a bathrobe, not in battle armor.

The comedian is redeemed at the end by sally jupiter. Sally didn't forgive Eddy because he was the father of her daughter. That was complete nonsense. She forgave the brutal almost rape because she loved him. The graphic novel begins with a man being murdered, and ends with a woman weeping over his death.

Last was the corner. The heart of the graphic novel, in a way that the movie didn't capture, is a corner with a news/magazine stand. Where an annoying kid reads comics and doesnt pay for them. Where the stand owner doesn't mind because he likes the company. Where a bull dyke lesbian (sorry for the language, but she is... straight outta central casting) pushes everyone around, while physically abusing her girlfriend. Where everyone shows up... all colors, all types, all ugly, flawed, normal people. All given a panel or two to introduce them to the reader. And at the end, it's where Veidt's "bomb" shows up... killing everyone.

When Rorschach talks about the pile of bodies Veidt's new world is based upon... the reader of the graphic novel knows, because Moore took the trouble to show them.

Now one thing about Moore... sometimes, he really really isn't terribly subtle. One thing completely left out of the Movie... Veidt's ad campaign for the new future featuring beautiful blond people looking into the future... at the end Dan and Laurie more or less sell out to Veidt... and the last scene shows them visiting Sally... in the graphic novel both dyed their hair blond. Like Veidt. Like good little nazis. A beautiful future for beautiful people...

Sorry seems to be the saddest word...

Sorry bout the non-postage.

First, IT is getting worse. Or better, depending on what side of the "waste my time at work" war you on. I would like to formally curse bigbearbutt for naming his blog something that would automatically trip any censor with half a non-brain.

I mean, what? Was Naked Chicks Want to Meet You! taken as a blog name?

That being said, I rather liked his post on Watchmen. I wish I could link to it, but IT...

sigh

And I gotta lotta work on my desk right now. My department decided to begin an experiment... can Noobed make a paper on ferrous scrap price movements funny enough for people to bother reading? Stay tuned!

THREE times this week, I have been kept from commenting on political crap floating around the office by people that care about me.

Then there's WoW. One of the bastards providing competition in the glyph market finally got smart at started copying one of my favorite marketing techniques. Dammit all to hell.

My guild is getting weird. But that happens. Some of em are a little peeved at me for not running with them last night. (Told em in advance... NCAA Basketball is on, you people on yuir own!)

Problem is... they started a new Naxx group, and wanted my mage to anchor the dps. Ran Wednesday... got 2 and change wings done. Mage topped charts by 30%. Melvin was 4th... behind the two tanks. (We got decent tanks this run).

Last night... without the 3.5k dps from my mage...

Well... Melvin was a lot closer to the top of the dps meters.

Anyway... Melvin is being resistant to the idea of a guest post. However... he will answer questions. So, plz leave any questions you have for him...

Red wine!

K. We all have problems. Me, I got more than most.

I gotta tell you guys about Melvin's Naxx 10 run.

Problem is, I can't. I don't know how to. So, I'm trying to get Melvin to do it for me. He is, to put it mildly, reticent.

See... he didn't suck. Much. He was even above two of the other dps in the charts... (on trash, he was only above one of them on bosses...)

His preliminary statement... "Ret pallies are simply too easy."

Oh, and the bottom DPS was a mage posting about 800 dps through the run. Melvin was about 1900 overall, 1300 on bosses like grob, 2k on bosses like patch. He really shined on trash. So look... Ima gonna need you guys to leave a few comments to help me convince him to "guest post" as it were...

In the meantime... me and superheroes...

See, us geeks, otaku, nerds, whatever term of contempt you choose, get a little obsessed. And obsession is nothing without meticulous attention to both detail and classification.

A while back the now defunct Arms N Fury and I had a thing on superman vs batman.

All things considered... well, I'm a lot freaky. I've had several nervous breakdowns, etc etc. At one point in my life, I was writing a 12-20 page research paper every week for three years. That changes you. So, when I get goin on what makes a superhero... don't make the mistake of thinking I'm obessed with superheroes per se... I was listening to The Fame by Lady Gaga... (don't ask) and all I could think about was which paper I would write about it if I had to... "A Loaded Gun: S&M imagery in The Fame" or "What is wrong with this picture? Eurofetish costuming in Lady Gaga's Music Videos."

I'm obsessed with a lot of stuff.

Anyway, Watchmen is out, and Kimmu sempai and I will probably go see it soon. I dread the outcome. The graphic novel is so amazing, and hollywood has a history of misunderstanding the fundamental points of Alan Moore's work. Still, one thing is driving me crazy. Movie critics making the following observation, in one form or another....

"Dr. Manhattan, who is the only one of the Watchmen with real superpowers..."

Now see... there is this thread running through American literature... the self made man. This thread leads directly to superheroes. Normal heroes aren't enough for americans... we need freaks. It is therefore, highly ironic that the greatest superhero writer... Alan Moore, was british. And there is a wonderful explanation of this in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. (which, if you translate into american, well, you get the picture...)

The point of the superhero isn't the superpower. Manhattan is not greater than the rest of the Minutemen. He is simply more powerful. The other characters... one can predict the future, one can build amazing armor and weapons, one is the greatest warrior of the human race, and then there's the silk spectre, who really doesn't belong in the picture. (one of Moore's more subtle points, and one which gets him accused of misogyny from time to time.)

The point of the novel is that none of them are human, and yet, they are forced to cohabit with humans and human foibles. One of the more poignant plotlines was Nite Owl's decision and resultant failure to become, in effect, mortal.

So when critics start talking about superpowers... they reveal not only a misunderstanding of the work, but of the genre as a whole.

Batman is not less than Superman, for all his lack of powers. Superman is boring... not Aquaman boring, but boring none the less. As a friend (who was a big superman fan) put it... every episode, Lex Luthor steals Lois Lane and flies to the moon with her... and Superman has to fly there to get her back.

Batman is no more human or mortal than Superman. Just different. Crazy in a way that human psychology can't cover. (Hence the Rorshach going through therapy plot line.) God are not different from mortals because of power... they are different becuase of perspective. And Batman, eminently mortal in flesh, is the way he is because with his skewed vision, he could chose no other path. (Or as R put it... We do not choose this... we are compelled...)

Of course there are all kinda similarities that we could talk about with the hero archetype, the nietzchean overman, or the asian hidden master.

Maybe later...

Where were you?

It's like this.

I'm gettin burnt out already. So... I started a druid. If I hurry, I can get her to 80 and geared before 3.1 hits.

The gold is still rollin in, and I'm facing a decreasing interest in running the 15min of operations required every night to keep it comin.

Heirloom gear is mad awesome. I mean... except for freaking druids. There is no heirloom feral druid weapon. However, the haste trinket gives me between 4 and 6% increased melee/casting speed...

Was chatting with Melvin about this. He has, among other things, an 80 druid. He hates the nickname I've given the poor brute... "fleabag."

Anyway, I told him what I've done to gear up my loverly new char, including dropping 1k gold on the alt.

Melvin thinks this is a bad idea because of pickpockets.

Seriously.

See, once in band camp... well, orgrimmar... Melvin saw the message...

X pickpockets you for Y gold.

X being a horde rogue, and Y being 3 digits. Or as Melvin put it... "When I saw how much he got, I was furious!"

Since then, Melvin keeps his gold on an out of the way alt. Bank alt, indeed.