Silence of the Muttons
Apr. 6th, 2005 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jameydeeWell, I mean, I'm too old to be considered lamb anymore. ;)
I've been very quiet lately. Not to say I haven't got a point of view, that I don't have my usual sense of outrage about the what I view as the Fall of the Western Empire, but, doggonit, I just don't have the energy or the passion to write lately. Since I was sick a week or two ago, I guess I feel what I can only describe as "listless." My stomach has long settled, but still feels vaguely unhappy. At some point I'll drag my sorry *ss to the doc.
I'm still level 45 on WoW, only slightly over half the way to 46. I really should be 50 by now, but even my pleasure in WoW has been blunted by my malady. I still enjoy the game, but I'm not as driven to level up--it requires too much energy. So I happily plink around the lower level quests helping other characters, running the occasional dungeon. Last night was the first night in a week that I actually tackled my own quests in a serious way. I was in the Swamp of Sorrows, the lone Alliance character among groups of Horde characters working on their quests. We can't speak, the Horde and the Alliance, though we can send canned emotes to one another. When I saw some Horde characters in trouble, about to be overwhelmed, I'd jump in and rescue them. A Tauren hunter (something that looks vaguely like a upright bull, complete with ring through his nose) blew me a kiss after I saved his butt for the second time. I thought that was pretty funny.
This weekend I was helping Mike's warrior, Natatat, in the Arathi Highlands when a Horde hunter went PvP for fun. We happily chased him through the fields, over hill and dale (literally). We killed him a few times, he killed us a few times. He tried the "playing dead" trick, but I was wise to that one this time around (after getting picked off by another hunter who pulled that trick a few weeks ago). Full-time PvP would be tiresome, but the occasional skirmish is great fun.
Saturday night, Swansong (my main character) was in an area called Southshore. A full-scale Player versus Player battle was going on; they were recruiting for the Alliance side on the local defense chat channel. It really is an impressive sight when you see a huge number of mounted players, each one you know is at least level 40. They were mustering up on a hillside, about to take the fight to the enemy in the neighboring Horde town of Tauren Mill. I rode over to watch the battle. Oh. My. Gawd. The chaos! Bodies littered the countryside. I tried to take aim and get in on the fun, but I couldn't tell what I was targeting. I picked someone at random and let a fireball fly. I confess...I think I'm the one who hit the Horde Flight Master NPC...which is a baaaaad thing. It tripped off the guards...which causes a great multiplication of Horde NPC guards to spawn! ("Guard zherg" is what it's called among the Warcraft fans.) The carnage! The carnage! Next time I'll have to formally join the raid instead of acting as an independent operator. That way I can find out what the battle plan is.
Anyway, it appeared to be a game of King of the Hill. Each team seemed to be trying to hold this minor hill, barely a bump in the field, where the Flight Master was.
The funny thing is that Sunday afternoon, the battling was still going on. This time the war was at Southshore, the Alliance town. Dave had watched the battling for quite a bit last night. He said that the Horde was well-organized, and with their superior tactics, they were putting a major hurting on the Alliance. The Horde (outnumbered 4 to 1 on our server) would use a sacrificial pawn to draw off 5 to 10 Alliance players off to one side where a trap of high level Horde players were waiting. The Horde had several of these traps set up in the area. Guerilla tactics! :) One of the Horde leaders must be a wargamer. :) Later on, Dave said, the Alliance was better organized. Warriors/melee fighters were up front providing a wall. Back on a small rise behind the melee fighters were the spellcasters and priests providing long range healing and damage. Classic.
In real life, the torrential rains revealed a weak point in our roofing job. Mike had known he needed to go back over the seal around the chimney and hadn't gotten around to it before the heavens fell. Yesterday afternoon, he climbed up on the roof and wriggled into the attic to finish the job. We're expecting another deluge this afternoon (well, any moment now), so we'll have another test.
I did give in and buy a Sony PSP. Shut up! :) I pulled down PSP Video 9, a nice (and FREE) video conversion program to translate the most common video formats to the MP4 format used by the PSP--which is fortuitously the same format used by my Archos video player. I also bought a 512 Memory Stick Duo. It's kinda cool that when you attach the PSP to your USB port, it acts like a USB drive. The video display on the PSP is amazing; it looks like they are using the same XBrite technology from their laptops. It also has the same annoying high gloss finish as their laptop displays, i.e., it shows every fingerprint. I got a flip-up cover for the front that protects the screen and the buttons.
I saw "Sin City" Monday. What an amazing adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels! Rodriquez truly captured the look and feel. I loved it! The evocative black and white, the spot color. Mickey Roarke (sic?) was amazing as Marv; particularly buried under all those prosthetics. I wouldn't have imagined Bruce Willis as Hartigan, but he made it work. (Hyperviolent, nudity, definitely not a movie to bring the kids to.) And I never truly realized the amazing screen presence that is Clive Owen. Whew! That man is HaWT! ;)
During the previews, I saw that someone had remade "Amityville Horror." Oh, why, o, why does this man keep remaking movies that didn't need/shouldn't be remade? Bad enough to remake "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," but "Amityville Horror"? The first version was a heaping pile of suck; even the book was bad. On the other hand, the preview of "Unleashed" with the unlikely combo of Jet Li, Bob Hoskins, and Morgan Freeman, actually looks intriguing.
--
The whole papal death thing... For an long lapsed Catholic like me, I'm left cold. Call me a Sunday Catholic--Sundays, Easter and Christmas--I go to meet my parents and do the family thing. I figure I can give them that hour a week. As time goes by, I find I drift farther from any kind of organized belief system and I find it harder and harder to sit through sermons and not want to jump up and shout, ala South Park, "Shenanigans!" When I hear the new padre at our parish pray for the soldiers and unborn babies, and Terry Shiavo, I want to scream, "And the hundred thousand Iraqi civilian casualties! And the Rwandans! And the frickin' impoverished faithful who don't use birth control and are caught in a trap of poverty!" John Paul II failed to condemn the child molesters in his midsts and he codified into Church dogma the exclusion of women from the priesthood for all time. He gave the ultra-conservative Opus Dei a firm foothold into the church, recognized it as a personal prelate. Pope John XXIII and Vatican II gave hope for a Catholic Church that was a dynamic institution, but JPII closed the door. I wonder if the next pope will seal the door. My outrage also goes to priest/bishops/cardinals who abused their positions of power to push the meme that a vote for a pro-choice candidate was a mortal sin. Actually, the doctrine states that as long as you do not vote for a candidate because of his pro-choice leanings, you can vote your conscience.
Oh, boy, they are talking about a "liberal" leave policy for tomorrow--the storm we've got has already destroyed 17 homes in Mississippi, and we're expecting hail, severe thunderstorms, and possible tornadoes, not to mention flooding.
I've been very quiet lately. Not to say I haven't got a point of view, that I don't have my usual sense of outrage about the what I view as the Fall of the Western Empire, but, doggonit, I just don't have the energy or the passion to write lately. Since I was sick a week or two ago, I guess I feel what I can only describe as "listless." My stomach has long settled, but still feels vaguely unhappy. At some point I'll drag my sorry *ss to the doc.
I'm still level 45 on WoW, only slightly over half the way to 46. I really should be 50 by now, but even my pleasure in WoW has been blunted by my malady. I still enjoy the game, but I'm not as driven to level up--it requires too much energy. So I happily plink around the lower level quests helping other characters, running the occasional dungeon. Last night was the first night in a week that I actually tackled my own quests in a serious way. I was in the Swamp of Sorrows, the lone Alliance character among groups of Horde characters working on their quests. We can't speak, the Horde and the Alliance, though we can send canned emotes to one another. When I saw some Horde characters in trouble, about to be overwhelmed, I'd jump in and rescue them. A Tauren hunter (something that looks vaguely like a upright bull, complete with ring through his nose) blew me a kiss after I saved his butt for the second time. I thought that was pretty funny.
This weekend I was helping Mike's warrior, Natatat, in the Arathi Highlands when a Horde hunter went PvP for fun. We happily chased him through the fields, over hill and dale (literally). We killed him a few times, he killed us a few times. He tried the "playing dead" trick, but I was wise to that one this time around (after getting picked off by another hunter who pulled that trick a few weeks ago). Full-time PvP would be tiresome, but the occasional skirmish is great fun.
Saturday night, Swansong (my main character) was in an area called Southshore. A full-scale Player versus Player battle was going on; they were recruiting for the Alliance side on the local defense chat channel. It really is an impressive sight when you see a huge number of mounted players, each one you know is at least level 40. They were mustering up on a hillside, about to take the fight to the enemy in the neighboring Horde town of Tauren Mill. I rode over to watch the battle. Oh. My. Gawd. The chaos! Bodies littered the countryside. I tried to take aim and get in on the fun, but I couldn't tell what I was targeting. I picked someone at random and let a fireball fly. I confess...I think I'm the one who hit the Horde Flight Master NPC...which is a baaaaad thing. It tripped off the guards...which causes a great multiplication of Horde NPC guards to spawn! ("Guard zherg" is what it's called among the Warcraft fans.) The carnage! The carnage! Next time I'll have to formally join the raid instead of acting as an independent operator. That way I can find out what the battle plan is.
Anyway, it appeared to be a game of King of the Hill. Each team seemed to be trying to hold this minor hill, barely a bump in the field, where the Flight Master was.
The funny thing is that Sunday afternoon, the battling was still going on. This time the war was at Southshore, the Alliance town. Dave had watched the battling for quite a bit last night. He said that the Horde was well-organized, and with their superior tactics, they were putting a major hurting on the Alliance. The Horde (outnumbered 4 to 1 on our server) would use a sacrificial pawn to draw off 5 to 10 Alliance players off to one side where a trap of high level Horde players were waiting. The Horde had several of these traps set up in the area. Guerilla tactics! :) One of the Horde leaders must be a wargamer. :) Later on, Dave said, the Alliance was better organized. Warriors/melee fighters were up front providing a wall. Back on a small rise behind the melee fighters were the spellcasters and priests providing long range healing and damage. Classic.
In real life, the torrential rains revealed a weak point in our roofing job. Mike had known he needed to go back over the seal around the chimney and hadn't gotten around to it before the heavens fell. Yesterday afternoon, he climbed up on the roof and wriggled into the attic to finish the job. We're expecting another deluge this afternoon (well, any moment now), so we'll have another test.
I did give in and buy a Sony PSP. Shut up! :) I pulled down PSP Video 9, a nice (and FREE) video conversion program to translate the most common video formats to the MP4 format used by the PSP--which is fortuitously the same format used by my Archos video player. I also bought a 512 Memory Stick Duo. It's kinda cool that when you attach the PSP to your USB port, it acts like a USB drive. The video display on the PSP is amazing; it looks like they are using the same XBrite technology from their laptops. It also has the same annoying high gloss finish as their laptop displays, i.e., it shows every fingerprint. I got a flip-up cover for the front that protects the screen and the buttons.
I saw "Sin City" Monday. What an amazing adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels! Rodriquez truly captured the look and feel. I loved it! The evocative black and white, the spot color. Mickey Roarke (sic?) was amazing as Marv; particularly buried under all those prosthetics. I wouldn't have imagined Bruce Willis as Hartigan, but he made it work. (Hyperviolent, nudity, definitely not a movie to bring the kids to.) And I never truly realized the amazing screen presence that is Clive Owen. Whew! That man is HaWT! ;)
During the previews, I saw that someone had remade "Amityville Horror." Oh, why, o, why does this man keep remaking movies that didn't need/shouldn't be remade? Bad enough to remake "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," but "Amityville Horror"? The first version was a heaping pile of suck; even the book was bad. On the other hand, the preview of "Unleashed" with the unlikely combo of Jet Li, Bob Hoskins, and Morgan Freeman, actually looks intriguing.
--
The whole papal death thing... For an long lapsed Catholic like me, I'm left cold. Call me a Sunday Catholic--Sundays, Easter and Christmas--I go to meet my parents and do the family thing. I figure I can give them that hour a week. As time goes by, I find I drift farther from any kind of organized belief system and I find it harder and harder to sit through sermons and not want to jump up and shout, ala South Park, "Shenanigans!" When I hear the new padre at our parish pray for the soldiers and unborn babies, and Terry Shiavo, I want to scream, "And the hundred thousand Iraqi civilian casualties! And the Rwandans! And the frickin' impoverished faithful who don't use birth control and are caught in a trap of poverty!" John Paul II failed to condemn the child molesters in his midsts and he codified into Church dogma the exclusion of women from the priesthood for all time. He gave the ultra-conservative Opus Dei a firm foothold into the church, recognized it as a personal prelate. Pope John XXIII and Vatican II gave hope for a Catholic Church that was a dynamic institution, but JPII closed the door. I wonder if the next pope will seal the door. My outrage also goes to priest/bishops/cardinals who abused their positions of power to push the meme that a vote for a pro-choice candidate was a mortal sin. Actually, the doctrine states that as long as you do not vote for a candidate because of his pro-choice leanings, you can vote your conscience.
Oh, boy, they are talking about a "liberal" leave policy for tomorrow--the storm we've got has already destroyed 17 homes in Mississippi, and we're expecting hail, severe thunderstorms, and possible tornadoes, not to mention flooding.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-06 07:52 pm (UTC)I now have 3 RL friends on Warcrack.
They talk like you.
They offer the free 2 week trial.
Resist, resist, resist!!!
Catholic sanctioned child-rape
Date: 2005-04-10 01:35 am (UTC)