Sorry to anyone who read my previous post, all that emotional PMS bullcrap about World of Warcraft and my life being a 'failure' but alas I am a girl and I had no other place to scream about it. And I'm quite past feeling that way, at least until the next time my hormones take it upon themselves to consume me.

I like having especially good days, and its great when they are consecutive. Even now when Blizzard totally messed up the game by adding a buggy patch and my world server is going up in flames, I am completing things and enjoying myself, and thats the point.

Other then that I'm looking forward to sending my mom off to New York and having the house to myself for a week. Plus I've brought work home with me, so no commuting to Thousand Oaks. It should be rather relaxing, assuming I don't procrastinate.

Movies:
I finally watched Princess Mononoke. I was very pleased! The art wasn't as spectacular as Howl's Moving Castle but I think that is due to it being a bit older. Even though the story kind of dragged on at certain parts, I was enthralled. It was very Japanese, for lack of a better description. But I was quite fond of the themes and design, especially that of the Forest Spirit. A baboons face, bird feet, and multiple antlers sounds pretty ugly, but it rather looked cuddly, and friendly, and just peaceful.

I also sat down to watch Equilibrium, which I had not seen in a couple of years. It stars Christian Bale, so how can you go wrong? It's a mix between the book '1984', Logan's Run (which I have yet to see), the book 'The Giver' and reminiscent of The Matrix when it comes to fight scenes. It's sort of an underground cult classic, as many of Bale's movies are. Not many people know about it because it came out the same year as The Matrix and was rather overshadowed. I believe in europe it is called Cubism, or some such. Although there are a lot of contradictions and parts of the story dont follow, as in: 'wait how did he get that blood there all of a sudden?', and 'if they aren't supposed to feel then why is that guy smiling?'. I think maybe they were rushing to release it, and didn't want to, or have the time to really refine parts of the story, add and cut dialouge etc. But the good parts of the movie (of which there are many) really out way those issues.

Spoiler Alert! Do not read the next sentence if you plan on watching the movie. I really think the story was strengthened during the dog and puppy scene. When he rescues the puppy from extermination, risking his own life, twice, you not only fall in love with Bale and his character more, but the idea of what he is going through is increased 100 fold. Here is this guy who for most of his life has destroyed anything that could potentially create a human reaction, feeling, or emotion. And when he stops taking his 'intervals' he is discovering feeling for the first time. He looks out the window at a sunrise, and is so shaken by it, he listens to music for the first time and cries. Now this may sound like he is all emoitional and whimpy, but could you imagine listening to music for the first time with a more developed mind?! Anyways during the puppy scenes, and any animal scene in a movie, your gripping your seat hoping he saves it cuteness! Which of course he does. If for instance they decided to use a child, instead of a dog, it would be so predictable and would definitely not have the same effect. Here is this helpless animal, ready to show anyone affection, always forgiving, always ready, and it just carries that message so much better then a child.

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So...in anticipation...and probably judgement clouded by excitement and ignorance...I down loaded the pre-expansion World of Warcraft patch. Basically this patch serves as a stepping stone before the expansion, often times Blizzard will release one pre-major game changes.

Anyways...it ended up just hurting me. Now what I mean by that is, I am constantly forgetting how stupid I am. How I am the worst WoW player on earth...there are 15 year olds better then me. It started when I checked out the new Acheivement feature and just grew angry about it not counting "achievements" I had completed many times years ago. Then I examined my talent tree, knowing I had new points to spend, but had no idea what I was doing. I stood around knowing that in no way ever was I going to be good at this game. I would just sit around doing nothing...again. In the end realized what the point of this post is about:

I suck.

Maybe WoW was never my type of game. Maybe I'm overreacting about something incredibly dumb. Think what you will. Its disheartening and embarassing to know that I suck at it. In fact I can't think of one thing I'm actually good at doing. There isn't anything I'm not more then mediocre at. Can you think of one? I can't. Anything I might have come close to being good at, I stopped or disappeared from my life. Even the intangible.

Either way, I feel sick. Its strange. I know its probably PMS...hormones raging, but I literally feel sick and sad and depressed and like I'm going to fucking cry. Like really this is what I'm doing with my life. Fuck. Its not evend that I'm not doing something spectacular, its that all the vernacular is being done shitty because I suck. Maybe what makes it worse is that, there is no more support for this sort of thing, its always me on my own. Me learning. I want someone to take care of me for a change today. I'm sick of being independent. I'm sick of feeling fucking alone, holding on to the stone at the bottom of the sea. I want it to hold me to it.

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Yesterday I attended the first day of Blizzcon in Anaheim.
Again why would I place myself in a location where my addiction to World of Warcraft is tempted! Mostly I like to think I was a victim of others addictions to it. But really when I first played its likely I was addicted, but that was so many years ago, and I did quit cold turkey for a few months. The second time I came back, I used it as a means to spend time with Jordan when I couldn't actually spend time with him due to being so far away. I also know for certain that the way I approached playing was totally different, first off not being a 'raider' helped. But I was definitely casual and WoW came second to "RL" (real life). This sounds so "serious business", as WoWers might say, and I'm sure I'm boring any crowd who has no idea about the nuances of the World of Warcraft lifestyle. If you don't want to know anymore I suggest you stop reading haha.

More about Blizzcon:
Comiccon which I attended earlier this summer in San Diego was sooo much better. But I mean Blizzard can only supply their own products, since it is a Blizzard Entertainment convention. Comiccon which is ginormous and the home to such diverse content can only appeal on so many levels. Anyways the major purpose of this convention was to get players revved up for the release of World of Warcrafts third expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King (Due this Nov), Diablo III (very popular game long time coming MMORPG) and Starcraft II (another popular real time strategy game). I could get really detailed about these three games differences, but again in order to not bore the general crowd, if I even have one, I would rather talk about what the people were like who attended this.

First of all World of Warcraft has between 5-9million players world wide, each longging onto their specfic realms to play characters. (So that means I've played with people from Singapore, Australia, France, England, Hawaii etc.) That in itself is a pretty unique opportunity. Not only do I have to hold conversations with people, I have to learn to work with them together to accomplish a goal in the game, a very important lesson these days!

At the convention there were approximately 15,000 of these millions of players, some from faraway, most from Southern California. Examining the composition of the people who play WoW in real life is very interesting. There were fat, tall, skinny, ugly, pretty, hot, sexy, funny, creepy, nerdy, cool, emo, skater, scensters, old, young, gay, any faction of life you could imagine represented. Although most were white. In fact the average WoW player is between the ages of 15-35 male and white. And since coming to Anaheim for a $100 ticket, from across the world isn't really an option most of the "minority" (if you have to call them that) players didn't attended. We got to listen to panels about game designers, and how they even create a mmorpg in the first place, which made me really appreciate the work they put in to making these universes. We walked around vendor booths for WoW products, took pictures, and did normal convention things.

My favorite things from the convention included:
The costume contest, the top prize being a women from Washington D.C. dressed as a Draeni in Tier 6 riding a top a mechanical turtle she had built.
The ability to play beta copies of all three games to be released before the general public, this means I got to play WoWs expansion for 15 minutes.
Watching the worlds highest ranking PvP teams (player vs player) who happen to be European, competeing live against each other. Lets just say they are really fucking good.


After having gone, and played the damn expansion for those 15 minutes, I am considering going back to playing. But I have to examine the risks involved. Its been such a bane of my relationships. Jordans opinion is that I should just level to 80, and then decide, at least that way I will play all the new content without any actual goals of carrying on afterwards. We shall see. Maybe the excitement will wear off over time, I have till November when they officially release it to get over it.

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So today I went to the MCAS Miramar Air Show.

Yes you might be thinking, what in the name of all that is hippie, did I go for? Well see it's occurred to me that I'm very open minded to experiencing things I wouldn't normally be found doing. Mostly it is because I believe passing judgement about things one doesn't really know about first hand, is wrong. My boys brother's father in law is a radio personality on am600 in San Diego, so we got free passes to watch from the corporate chalets right on the runway. Free food, beer and shade all day, and an amazing view of the Blue Angels planes parked neatly right in front of us.

As I watched jets and copters soaring overhead, always in the back of my mind I thought about how the cost of making one of these engineering masterpieces could put so many people through university, restore wetlands, and pay for a collection of families health care for their whole lives.

Mostly what bothers me the most about the military, is the mentality. In some ways how they operate is marvelous and in some ways completely inhuman. But also just walking around the base looking inside planes and at bombs and things meant to kill and destroy, just doesn't sit well with me. I knew I was probably one of a small few people there who thought so. Who fell on the liberal side of the spectrum. I did however attend with two of Jordan's older brothers one very liberal, smart, well read and there for the same reason I was, and his other brother an NRA member, wears army boots, and probably would shit his pants if he went to Iraq. Was an interesting experience to see two people completely the opposite of each other getting along, laughing and enjoying the show together without bringing it to the liberal vs conservative depths of hell. I was happy of that, hopeful even.

Also over the loud speakers, it was often said "salute our soldiers who are defending freedom across the world", I'm not sure how invading other countries and forcing our views upon them is "defending", but what the average military person has to sacrifice at the hands of a stupid government is really the thing we should be saluting. But what about the engineers designers? There was scarce mention of them.

And there are things that I do believe could not be solved without military action. Which brings me to my rather libertarian and draconian views that life generally sucks, and we all suffer, and humans are a lot less angelic then we think we are. We murder, chimps do it too, we're just organized animals.

On the other hand, the things that these machines and pilots can do, and put themselves through in regards to G-force and precision and efficiency (even if one of the planes could fuel a car for 300 fill ups) is unbelievable. It was amazing to see a plane rush by and then a second or two later tremendous roaring and burning sounds rush over you. Welcome to going faster then the speed of sound, but these guys weren't even breaking the sound barrier, and it was enough to make me put ear plugs in.

Summary of things I saw, and remember, which I'm proud of myself for remembering:
We saw F 18 Falcons, which are smaller and surprisingly less manoeuvrable then the bigger and more stealthy looking F 22 (which registers like a bumble bee on radar). Both were quite intimidating.
We saw p-51 mustang, which was shiny and small and made a lovely ripple noise, old school.
We saw an AV-8B Harrier take off vertically and spin midair, and land, very hard to do, needs lots of air and fuel.
Golden Knights Parachute team, some of these guys had done over 3500 drops.
Sean Tucker doing psycho flips and spins in the Oracle, a bi-plane.
Since its a marine base we got to watch a Marine Air-Ground Task Force Demo, (saw how they blow people up and invade in other countries, like Iraq and Afghanistan) which included a wall of fire, close enough to make my face burn.
And finally the US Navy Blue Angels do crazy ass formations only 18inches from each other.

In the end, I felt out of my element, but impressed. However in no way did it make me gun-ho army. I would rather see diplomacy before war. I would rather see my tax dollars going to education, so that people are more educated to vote, to design and build ways of getting around actually killing people, unmaned weapons if it has to come to that, and able to create foreign relations with a better more global intent. The army works the way it does because of the way it is run, even if I hate the dehumanization of it all, I'm not sure how else it could exist.

I feel more educated, more knowledgeable about what goes on in the military, I feel sunburned, and supportive of these troops who are needlessly being forced into situations that they are in for all the wrong selfish reasons and with terrible planning. Lets bring them home.

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I like this video.

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Thank you boyfriend for working on my html...but i fear i will forever mess around with color schemes now...and i hope one day to make the title sidebar a photograph...but thank you boyfriend, freak of freaks when it comes to technical things and codes and engineering and building and problem solving and puzzles and other freakish things that my brain can never function on.

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I've spent sometime flipping through blogger blogs, and looking online for templates to download. I think I'm getting obsessive. Blogger has always suited my simple blogging needs. I don't need anything fancy...just two sidebars darnit! Maybe I'm just way too web illiterate to take this to another level. All the templates I've found are ugly, or/and don't line up right, meaning the "layout easy edit options" blogger already has in place don't work. I would have to learn HTML go into the HTML and change it maunally, adding a sidebar. Great.
Maybe I'm just way too web illiterate to take this to another level. Anyways I'm not giving up...yet. We'll see how it goes.

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