You don't care if it is wrong or if it is right...

So... I joined the most prestigious raiding guild on my server... (horde side, might be some argument overall...)

First night in, killed yog, maly 25 and sarth +3.

Killed X2 hard mode last night. And FL +3.


Damn, I need a break already. And I'm in the back of the pack on damage meters...

He said shut up!

Time to change guilds... new one needs a UI screenshot.

Because lies sound so nice

I've been havin problems sleeping again. So, I spent a few hours buyin stuff offa Amazon's digital download center.

I'm at a weird time right now. I'm still havin fun with the game. However, drama intrudes. I rather like the guild I'm with right now, but they ain't goin anywhere past uld 10 anytime soon, no matter how hard they recruit.

And I can accept that. Raids starting at 11:30 my time... more of a pain. However... I've been running a bit with one of the more sucessful raiding guilds on the server. And while their vent chat tends to freak me out a bit, they get crap done. And I play better with em. I finally got my mage over the 5k dps hump. (inna 25 with an ele shammy anda boomkin)

So, I've been considering a move... and then, outta the blue I getta invite to a different raiding guild, also in the top three on my server/faction.

Personally... I prefer the social dynamics of the guild I'm in. But from a l33tist asshole standpoint, I'd really like to do serious endgame crap at least once before I stop playing this game.

So... I learned a new trick with my mage. Which is probably old hat to most of you... but I'm just (finally?) getting my head around the potential of mirror image. I've been pretty good at surviving raid wipes, and avoiding death when I pull aggro, but that was due mostly to inspired use of ice block and invisibility. I really didnt know that mirror image pretty much wiped all your aggro off for 30 secs or so.... so now, when I pull aggro with the mage, I pop mirror image before ice block.

Course, this is mostly trash fights. Boss fights, I don't pull aggro unless the tank goes down. (Which is usually how I find out the tank is down... enemy number one, baby...)

Allright... so lets do some pop culture. Ripper reviewed the new WoW book. And I gotta say rip... let go of star wars. The first three were alright up until the empire got taken down by teddy bears. The second three were so horrific... and well, lets leave that.

There was a movie a while back that pretty much rocked hollywood. The Score, with Robert DeNiro and Ed Norton. And when I say rocked... i didn't mean in a good way. The most significant part of the movie was Ed Norton's character... who pretends to be mentally handicapped to rip off a place.

The reason this was controversial was that hollywood had just given a buncha oscars to people that played handicapped characters. And here was norton, mocking them, by playing a vicious bastard pretending to be handicapped for money. See the joke? After that... not so much interest in 'special' roles...

Anyway, I've been holding off recommending this fantasy series. People spout things about "character development." The First Law series is to epic fantasy what Full Metal Jacket is to John Wayne war movies. After you read it, you will feel violated... and curse every epic fantasy series you've ever read. The point of the series is to destroy every epic fantasy cliche, one at a time, in excruciating detail. "Lost Prince?" Yeah, right. Quest to recover an artifact of ultimate power? Are you insane? Ancient wizard who ISN'T a complete bastard? You probably believe in the easter bunny as well, eh?

The most sympathetic character is a torturer. And I mean that... at the end, I thought that the only character worth a damn as a human being was... well, the torturer.

Character development? Reminds me of the old animaniacs cartoon, that would end with the "Wheel of Morality."

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn
Show us the lesson that we should learn...

My favorite?

"Elvis lives on in our hearts, in his music and in a trailer park outside Milwaukee."

Let me hear you screaming just for me

Its been a rough time in the old Noobed neighborhood. The old guild is kaput. The new guild is havin problems breakin the 25 man raiding roster limit.

And our good friend Ripper is having issues.

Seems he posed for a coupla.. ehm... provocative pictures back in the day, and they've recently been posted to the internets.

Of course only a completely vicious and tasteless bastard would link them or anything...

So anyway... he's been reacting badly, and I know a lotta his friends are planning an intervention. Here's a guide to surviving a trip up there. Well, ordering food up there...

A translation guide to Canadian Pork products

You say......................You get
Bacon ........................Ham
Pork Chops...............Ham
Pickled Pigs Feet......Ham
Sausage......................Ham
Ham............................Celine Dion

Note that this chart is a little unpredictable, as any results may also be influenced bye the time of day, the province, the lack of a french accent, the presence of a french accent, and what just turned green and needs to be sold.

Also... never order eggs poached. There is a superstition in Canada that any unfamiliar word that has two vowels back to back must be french. And um... they have curious ideas about what the french do with their eggs. And where white sauces come from.

Well now, everything dies, baby, thats a fact

Two posts in a week? Maybe three... I'm plotting against ripper. Doan quite know how to keep it vicious yet tasteful...

Um. Well, there's this. I dunno how many of you would be interested in this. Tiananmen was a while ago, and China is changing so fast...

And I'm not even sure how much I sympathize with the protesters. I was in Tiananmen square a few years later (coincidently on the anniversary of the massacre) and I really had a hard time imagining what they could have accomplished even in a best case scenario.

However, the massacre was a horrific reaction. And Zhao Ziyang was one of the victims.

Why am I posting on this? Cuz of two people I respect greatly. Both of whom lived more than 2000 years ago.

Him.

And Him.

The important thing to remember about Socrates... he kinda detested democracy. But he believed in the law. His death in no short measure was the result of his standing up for people against lynch mobs. His death sentence was a hypocricy... it was assumed that he would leave Athens for exile.

He didn't. And, as the cliche goes... spoke truth to power, using his death to give a grim authority to his message. As a defender of Athenian law against those who would abuse it... he could not in his final hour ignore the same law as it came for his life.

Now, most of you probably know that... Sima Qian is less well known in the west. Sima Qian is to chinese (and by extension east asian) history what Socrates was to western philosophy.

Sima Quin was a well connected official in the early Han dynasty who decided to speak out against the unjust trial of a han army officer. For his honesty he was sentenced to... well... castration.

Now... this is china. There are ways around this. The first is a big bribe... but because of the political nature of Quin's "crime," he was unable to raise any money.

Like in socrates's case, this was just window dressing... the "criminal" was intended to kill himself rather than suffer such indignity. The wiki article has Quin's thoughts on the matter...

Anyway... he accepted the mutilation. And he spent the rest of his life writing the first modern chinese histories. Which were hidden until political circumstances changed.

There's a story that he sent his writings into the mountains... and wrote to the emperor that on the day of the emperor's death, the histories would return... and on that day, Quin, and truth, would have revenge.

Just a bit of context. This is the tradition followed by such Ziyang. The revenge of the honest man against the pitiless state.

So the next time Keith Olberman bitches about being repressed... well.

About a god we've never seen

Meh... Alliance on my server reading my blog. Not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, thanks for the kind words Adamantite. OTOH...

If you are a member of Symphony of Blades or Smashbunny, Ima gonna off myself.

SoB (horde translation: Motherf$ck&rs) issa ganking guild. The other night they were camping the ghostfish daily fishing site. And one of their druids pulled an interesting trick.

He flew up to where I was sitting on my flying mount and dismounted me with typhoon.

I am dying to try this with blastwave... but honestly cant make room in my fire raiding build to take the talent.

So... went to see Star Trek with Kimmu-sempai.

And I came outta the movie with two sad realizations. First, that it was an excellent and enjoyable movie even tho the plot made absolutely no sense. At all. And second... I hate trekkies.

I pointed this out to Kimmu and she told me not to call them trekkies... it's rude.

So apparently I hate trekkers instead. Nice to be corrected. Wouldn't want to offend em, or anything. Just hate em.

Now I gotta lotta problems with star trek. Mostly... it makes no goddamn sense. I mean... don't these people have anything better to do? A space going battleship that can be crewed in battle by ONE man? What the hell is the rest of the crew for?

A star goin nova, so they send a bazillion year old vulcan, ALONE, to fix it?

And since when have romulans been this butch? I mean... I'm watchin one dangling Kirk by his neck, and I'm thinking... I know trekkies... sorry, trekkers... dont know crap about human anatomy... but the neck is not the human version of a coffee cup handle.

And second, is there a single race out there that humans can beat in wrestling? I mean... why the hell does everything have to be so much more physically capable than humans?

How exactly did he figure out where/when spock was gonna pop outta the time portal? Did he just hang around waiting for the lightning storm inna fixed region for 25 years and hope not to get noticed?

How does a captain promote someone who isn't even a part of their military at that point to second in command?

Why didn't the romulans just go to romulus and turn that ubership and all that uber tech over to their home planet?

Look. Its like this. Star Trek isn't science fiction. All we can hope for issa good story and some reasonable level of internal consistancy. JJ Abrams pushed the action at a pace that would keep us from noticing how nothing was making sense. So... itsa good movie.

I used to game a bit. And one of my fav gaming buddies had a theory on role playing games... that kinda applies here. If the game is gonna be worth a damn... people can't know what game they're playing. So you start them off thinking they're playing something like D&D, and then turn it into Call of Cthulhu.

See... if they know the rules... they know how to win and how to cheat.

Great movies are a bit like that. Either you can't really see whats coming till the end... or the ending is so obvious and brutal, you can't accept that that's where it's going.

Why the hell give the romulans a back story? I mean really.. what does it add to the movie to know that they're avenging the death of romulus if they're doing it in such an idiotic way? And more importantly...

TIME TRAVEL IS STUPID.

I don't know. It just seems that something that had that much effort put into it shoulda had a plot that an eight year old couldn't punch holes in. Personally, I blame the trekkies. Er... trekkers.

And I'm still not sure how I feel about Vulcans with perpetual 3 o'clock shadow...

Well, they blew up the chicken man in philly last night

The in-game wedding was a lotta fun. Afterwards, we went skydiving from the dal sewers...

I have modest goals for this blog. More or less... post once a week. More if I have to vent or something. It's kinda busy at work right now, so I've been slacking

Majeure has become quite the achievement whore. Goddamn it. I needa new addiction like I need another hole in my privates. (Don't ask.)

So... despite the whole "this issa mage blog" thing, I really need to do a shammy post. Later.

Today... Ripper went to the fountain of stupid and got wet. And I gotta correct him.

Look, Ripper. Itsa freaking Keanu Reeves movie. I mean really. Didn't he get kicked outta the church of scientology for excessive crazy?

It's also a propaganda piece for the environmentalist movement. You know, that whole group of people that want folks to only use one sheet of toilet of paper per visit to the bathroom? Virgin forests? I assure you... those are slut trees and they had it coming.

The great Quentin Tarentino was once criticized that his movies had gratuitous violence. He replied that condemning his movies for excessive violence was like condemning pr0n for excessive sex.

Condemning a Keaun Reeves environmentalist movie for excessive stupidity is pretty much the same thing.

And here's my think about why science fiction these days is slowly turning into freaking garbage.

(WARNING! MAY CONTAIN CRITICISMS ABOUT STAR TREK AND STAR WARS! IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THAT, GO UPSTAIRS AND ASK YOUR MOTHER TO HUG YOU TILL THE SHAKING GOES AWAY)

I still can't write about the clusterf$ck that was Battlestar Galactica. I mean... that ending...

But there has been a trend in Sci Fi over the last few decades in which the Frankenstein's monster argument predominates. New technologies? Evil corporations and governments will use them to screw us all. Aliens? Cuddly hyper moral beings here to correct us.

What, they're shooting at us? That just shows how cuddly and hyper moral they are!

Sci Fi has moved on from the concept of evil. This is why Sci Fi is dying. This is why fantasy is beating the crap outta sci fi. This is why the blockbuster movies are things like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and various super hero movies. Cuz the first story ever told was about a guy who stood up, said "this ain't right," and went off to kick ass.

Sci Fi can't tell that story anymore. These days its all about trying to understand why the tentacle monster has such horrible sexual hang ups. And feeling its pain.

OK... maybe that wouldn't be such a bad movie idea...

But sometimes bug eyed monsters just need to be killed. Sometimes it really is just about US vs THEM. Independence Day anyone? Star trek lost it when... well, when they decided that William Shattner was the greatest martial artist in human history. That's why Matrix was so great, and Matrix 3 was crap.

Matrix... "we've been slaves all this time and didn't know it! TIME TO BREAK SHIT!"

Matrix 3... "actually... this whole slave crap is not so bad, as long as *we* get to live in Zion and crash the matrix fer babes and parties every so often..."

To quote Rorschach.. never compromise.. not even in the face of apocalypse!

BTW, heres an awesome Alan Moore link.

A friend of mine once spent 30 minutes bitching about how terrible the recent war of the worlds remake was. And the upshot of it was all about how much of a coward Tom Cruise was.

The original story was a fable of colonialism. About what would happen if aliens tried to colonize England like England was colonizing other lands. (Hence the part about alien farms "watered" by the blood of the natives... englishmen for once, instead of asians or africans) The response... mindless, ferocious resistance. No matter how superior the aliens' technology was. NO SURRENDER. Read the damn book.

Radical environmentalism is a sick joke. It is a response to the rapid pace of technological change... basically (as the old joke about conservatives goes) standing atop the turning world shouting "STOP!"

The word "terraforming" has been lost. For thousands of years, we've been moving rivers, leveling forests, growing forests, and radically changing local fauna and flora in order to make the world more habitable by ever increasing numbers of humans. As Heinlein one wrote... "every time the human race has been faced with the choice between becoming less promiscuous or more resourceful... they choose the latter."

I mean really... in a coupla hundred years... we'll be able to turn the sahara into green fields. We'll be able to make new island paradises like Hawaii and Bermuda. Replace the Amazon rainforest overnight.

Canada will probably stay frozen and boring tho. I don't expect miracles.

So... what exactly is the point of the modern environmentalist movement? As ripper points out... movies like TDTESS and The Day After Tomorrow are based on such flawed science that even science fiction fans won't buy it.

Yeah, that's Kirk's real hair. Whatever. But I'm not buying this whole "world freezing because of global warming" crap!

Anakin became Darth Vader because he missed his mommy? mmmkay... Dude stops wind up watches because that kind of technology threatens the environment? No way...

Why did we lose faith in progress? Why do we pay attention to nutjobs telling us the world is gonna end in.. oh, say, 50 years without thinking... "well, by that time, I'll be immortal, have a harem filled with sexy cylons, and the human race will have started building its third earth.. a paradise with no Canada."

So, to summarize Ripper... why are you complaining? You really expected the movie to make some kinda sense? Here's a project for you... netflix the original TDTESS and The Thing. Both came out the same year (1951.) Compare and contrast the attitude of each movie towards both the military, and scientists.

Note how in both movies scientists conspire with aliens against the human race, but in TDTESS, this is presented as a noble action, whereas in The Thing, it's seen as treason...

Oh yeah... here's a star trek link...