[what]

Wow, it's been well over a year since I've posted in this thing. Uhm.

I'm 18 now, I'm in the process of trying to get a damn job and I'm feeling awfully losery. Go me!

Not having WoW to play(account prepaid time ran out) led to my quick discovery of how bad 90% of all other videogames available to me suck in comparison. Guild Wars, you were FUN before I found out how much better WoW is than you! :(

Without WoW to play, I'd been waiting impatiently the past week and a half, begging my damn mother to cut my hair(because I'd rather not pay to have some barber do a worse job) to a socially acceptable length so that I could go out and look for a job.
To occupy time, I've been participating in a mind-numbing activity known only as "bullshitting." I think we all know what I'm talking about. You know you're in a bad way when you actually sit down to watch something on TV, or maybe that's just me. (There's nothing on television I can't watch on the internet, and usually there's just nothing interesting on it anyway)

But, now, the raid boss "Aaron's Shaggy Mane" has been thwarted. He dropped triple Conquerer and that fucking paladin belt, as usual. Now, hopefully, I look respectable enough to apply for a job somewhere. fofofo

On a side note, you don't realize how much you like to do something you do regularly until you can't do it anymore(even if you complain about whatever that thing is when you do it). Goddamnit I miss that game.

With seven minutes left of Christmas 2k6, I'd just like to say that I'm a huge dumbass and everyone knows it.

That will be all. :D

edit: three minutes left--

i'd also like to say, what i got for christmas this year was a quite decent computer, or so it would appear. 2.7ghz processor, 512mb RAM, 64mb Intel video card that can easily be replaced with my 256mb GeForce. right? wrong. the computer has on-board video and no slot for video cards. happy day. but it's the thought that counts.

I'm the type of guy who is interested in what other people think; I like to read peoples' opinions on a game before I try it out. When something new and hyped is about to release, there's always a big wave of thoughts, opinions, comments, n00b jargon(xbox 360 is teh pwnz0r), praise and flaming.

Guild Wars is a very popular game now, for it's ease of pick-up-and-play, or at least that's the popular opinion. (In my experience GW is actually much less laid back than people claim it is if you do anything more than make PvP -only characters, and even then you might want to up your Rank, but this is another story) You can easily get in, spend 10-30 minutes playing, and get back out into your busy life. That's what people like in a game-- a short, quick spurt of action while they wait for the school bus or their turn at the shower or before that prime time special is on TV. This is what people consider a healthy gaming experience, and playing for longer is, according to popular opinion, less and less healthy the longer you play.

Which brings me to my point.

World of Warcraft. Seven and a half million subscribers. One of the most popular games in existence. That sounds like it must be a pretty good game, right?
So I read through the opinions of this thing on gaming websites.. forums.. blogs.. what have you. Lots of praise, of course. Many people seem to like this game. Hmm, what is this?

"This game is pathetic. It takes way too long to get to your maximum level, so you can compete with other people online. Starwars Galaxies beta took only a week to get to level 80. In WOW it takes almost a month or two, if you have a life. If you dont have a life though, then this is probably the game you should play." (from here)

A month or two to get to the maximum level? That sounds rough. So you mean you have to do nothing but grind all the way to max level to be on a level playing field with other players? That doesn't sound fair at all!

"Heres a warning to everyone... the game has its fun points ie PVP...but to obtain good gear in the game u have to do 1 of 2 things, Either participate in PVP, or Instances (Dungeon Raiding) With PVP To obtain the a decent rank u have to pvp for 5-10 hrs a day at least 5-7 days a week, say goodbye to social life job etc, its honestly sit in front of computer and point and click for endless hours.Dungeons = 2-10 hrs straight Playing, ie... to get good gear, get ready for endless mindnumbing repeat instances. Dont get me wrong pvp is fun,very time consuming.PVE (DUNGEONS)Is time consuming and cannot by yourself, or even with 10+people, u need 30-40people for the epic (Purple Gear)... If you enjoy having a life then WOW is not recommended...Otherwise if u like repeating things thousands of times over and over and becoming a hermit in your own room, enjoy wow,and their unimaginative GRINDING GAME..."

The gameplay consists of nothing but pointing and clicking? Why, that sounds mindnumbingly boring! Repeating the same thing over and over to get good gear? Wow, it must be terrible doing nothing but the same tedious process over and over, and it's not even exciting or challenging in the least, it sounds like. How could so many people possibly like this game?

"The only way to get your character good equipment in WoW game is to play non-stop. So if you have NOTHING better to do for stretches as long as 10 hours at a time (the amount of time it takes to finish the high level instances) then by all means get this game. The Burning Crusade is just a minor addition to the life-ruining formula that Blizzard already created. So if you value your health, social life, family, job, school, etc, then stick with something less time consuming."

LIFE-RUINING?! Oh no! I think I'd better stay away from this game, then. According to this person, playing this game negates a healthy life, and I guess you'd better do something less time consuming unless you want to be unhappy and unsatisfied with your life.

Which is, like I was saying, what people like in games. Things that do not take much time to do. I respond to these comments in sarcasm because of just how ridiculous they are; Upon playing the game I found a colorful, immersive world that always has a new trick up its' sleeve, always has something new for you to do and to entertain yourself with. If you try to take in everything it has to offer, yes, you will find yourself playing for a good long time, but the game caters enough to more casual players that you can play for a small amount of time and still enjoy yourself.

I look at comments like this and think to myself: "Is this the first MMORPG these people have ever played? Don't they know how fucking EASY this game is?" Two months to get to the max level is ridiculously easy compared to some games I have played, and the way WoW executes it, being entertaining the entire way there makes for a very casual player-friendly environment.
Not to mention... Level 60, the current level cap, is not even a requirement to compete in the instanced PvP experience the game offers. Once you hit level 20, there are five rosters, if you will, of PvP instances. One for 20-29, for 30-39 and so on up to the 60 instance. On the other hand, world-based PvP DOES require you to be high level.. But to participate in such is a choice you make through the game's "PvP Flag" system; you cannot be "ganked" unless you choose to go into PvP mode and allow for such a thing(except in PvP-based servers where this happens automatically).

The game is not "life-destroying" in any sense of the term for people who are sane. I suppose there are those with hormonal imbalances that may believe their english teacher is truly Thrall in disguise and is sending him orders to defeat the Night Elves in Warsong Gulch in service to the Horde.
I hear lots of stories of couples falling apart because of this game. Kids getting bad grades, failing out of school. Husbands neglecting their families, people taking days off from work to play. People getting fatter and more at risk for carpel tunnel. And I will continue hearing these types of stories until I mentally block them out, sort of like a mental /ignore.
Listen up and listen well, because I think I may be about to blow your shit away.

This is nothing new, and people will be participating in this type of hardcore indulgence in things until the end of fucking time.

I doubt those couples falling apart are very serious or committed ones, if the two are so bored of each other that a video game causes them to grow apart. Those kids failing out of high school most likely would be anyway, let's just be glad they're not on drugs(though they probably are as well). People skipping work to play don't have harsh enough bosses. A harsh boss creates a productive working environment, I always say.

Newsflash, people are irresponsible! It's just a part of fucking human nature! There are plenty of people that just plain don't GIVE A SHIT enough about their real lives that are easily swayed by things that can be deeply indulged in. If WoW, or any other activity/substance causes you to lose sight of what's truly important in life to you, it is on YOU. It is YOUR fault and no one else's. World of Warcraft is a great game, and it just plain doesn't deserve to be labeled as a threat to someone's healthy lifestyle, especially when there are so many games that present the same type of time-consuming experience.

Look at other games in this genre. Take Lineage 2 for instance. To progress through this game at all, it has to become your life, you have to let it become you. I've played it, and unlike WoW, it IS a tedious, unending grindfest that so many people wouldn't tolerate, and yet there are many, many people who have put forth the countless hours needed to be successful in it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more MMOs out there, most not nearly as popular as WoW but still have a very large player base. A few that come to mind immediately;

-Ragnarok Online
-Everquest
-Maple Story
-Flyff
-ROSE
-Anarchy Online
-Final Fantasy XI

All of these require twice the commitment World of Warcraft does to be successful. Reaching the maximum level on these games is not a two-month process. It is a one to two year process. It is something casual players can only DREAM about. Ten hours a day on these games is not NEARLY enough needed to be truly successful.

World of Warcraft is, and I don't think this is an exaggeration in any sense, the "kiddie pool" of MMOs. It is the easiest, most laid back game on the block compared to others such as I have listed, and the game's plethora of convenient features is spoiling compared to other games.

I'm in a school play.
I signed up for theater class last year because I haven't had much for electives yet and the world of acting has always interested me(I do a lot of acting in my daily life as it is already-- like when I have to be polite to my english teacher).
The first day I went was pretty awkward with all the older kiddies I didn't know, but I was delighted to find that three people I did know(my would-be boyfriend Miles and a couple of girls I cooked with in Home Ec my freshman year) were also in the class. The teacher asks us to describe ourselves in front of the class in a few random statements; one of mine of course is about how I was raped by my cat earlier in my life.
The first week or so is explaining theater terms and doing improv, but only a week or two(can't remember) later, the teacher announces we're to be in a production. Now, we were a small class of fourteen to begin with, but upon hearing this the two girls I knew transferred out of the class. Now that we have at least five less people to fill roles as there are roles to be filled, the teacher decides to proceed with the production anyway. The show must go on!

The little diddy is entitled Ax of Murder. It's about murder, a theater staff attempting to put forth a production, murder, a haunted script, an incredibly handsome theater tech guy, and murder. I play Phil, the theater tech guy. It's a comedy/murder mystery and a pretty entertaining one at that; I'm satisfied with it.
In early auditions, Miles wanted to be Phil and I wanted to be Mike, the male lead, a spazztastic police sarge. The teacher assigned our roles, however, and I received Phil, while Miles became Mike. Coincidence? No, of course not. The teacher has it out for us and she will pay.

We do our first show-in-front-of-an-audience three weeks from now and we're not in a great spot; most of us don't have all our lines memorized(myself included), the stage isn't completely built, and we're pretty short when it comes to available props. We'll figure things out, though, I'm sure, and put on at least a quazi-entertaining production.

Here's how the show's two acts, from my perspective, play out:
Act one: I'm onstage for a couple minutes, add a comical flair, then return to my tech-slave-bitch duties. I come back a little bit later and the tech assistant is dead, I make a big deal of it, cover her with a sheet, stand onstage doing not much for a couple minutes, then depart. I return again, am chased around by the actors because I did something they didn't like, then stand on stage for a while longer, then depart.

Act two: I have eight lines in act two, and say them over the course of 20 pages. At first, I'm sitting around just reacting to things like the rest of the actors, and I get to say something every 5-10 minutes. I depart at one point for tech-slave-bitch duties but quickly return to stand around doing nothing until the play ends.

Act one is quite obviously more fun than act two.

As for the people doing the play besides myself and Miles, most of them are fairly eccentric like myself and Miles, but most also fit into at least a few stereotypical traits.
I'll list them coupled with short descriptions.

-Jill: Most acting experience in the class. She seems pretty selfless and I don't think she's capable of being any sort of mean, but she's obviously an over-achiever.
-Kahlista(that's the way she spells it): Terrible flirt, seems to flirt with everyone but me at least on occasion. She dresses in a punk-rawkish manner and has constantly purple hair.
-Lacey: I don't rightly recall a time this girl has spoken to me about anything other than the class/play. She's rather preppish and is practically glued to Sam.
-Sam: Submissive male counterpart of Lacey and often Kahlista. I don't really know much about this guy, he's kind of quiet, but he plays Brady(kind of stuck up, mouthy comic relief) fairly well and I tend to call him Brady more than I call him Sam.
-Nicole: She doesn't talk to me much either so I don't know what to say about her; when I think of her the words "Stop flipping out and leaving class early" come to mind.
-Carey: Timid, sort of quiet girl. Nicer to me than most the other girls but she doesn't seem to have anything but politeness in her.
-Jesse: 80s punk rock fan. Transferred into the class halfway through the term to fill a role, and Kahlista takes to him when Lacey is hogging Sam.
-Donnovan(is that how you spell his name?): I'm not sure what disorder this kid has, and not to be mean, but he's slow. He's the real tech guy, because he can't fill a role(though the teacher is making him fill a very small one anyway).

There are a couple other girls, but I can't remember their names, so I won't list them. I'm terrible with names. And if I'm forgetting anyone else, I'm sorry, I suck.

Recently we've been doing after-school rehearsals, from 3pm to 5:30pm. Oh goody. Yet another school-supplied inconvenience. Not that I don't enjoy it, but I'd rather be home.

In other news...

I came home today, to see my little brother browsing MySpace. I've heard this site is known to be spyware ridden, but I didn't think it could actually cause any harm to my computer. After I kick Kristopher off I jump on, and play WoW for about five minutes. Suddenly my screen starts getting static-y and eventually disappears, and I spend the next three hours getting the thing to work, which at one point caused me to accidently set my RAM on fire for just a moment before I hastily removed it from it's incorrectly-jammed-in spot. Luckily it still works.
Okay, so I don't actually know whether it was MySpace that caused my computer to go whacko or something my careless father did, but Kristopher was on it last and I told him that due to this event, I don't want him using my computer anymore. He says nothing but "FUCK YOU" and storms into a different room. Yes, I'm trying to protect my shit from someone who could very well be damaging it, so I can fuck off.
I was able to say about three sentences to Sully before my computer died; when I came back my good friend Ron who plays WoW with me informed me that she had gone to bed, probably to sleep off her sadness and loneliness, as the internet is our only method of communication and if I crash and don't come back for a long time she's likely gathered something has happened.

A couple nights ago, "Love is a Battlefield" - Pat Benatar was sang on South Park and I can't stop annoying my friends with it, singing it semi-out loud.

Title says it all.
I haven't used this thing in forever and I'm not sure I'm all that worried about it, and I feel rant time is now, because recent WoW times have been recent not-so-sane times.

Night Elf druid(I'm playing the least common class on the most common race, irony). I play in a server overloaded with hunters, it drives me nuts, but that is not why I am writing tonight.

Sully is going for exalted on her rogue, and she is going batshit insane doing it. She's already cranked out what, 7k rep into revered in three days? It can't be healthy... But today I think her insanity is starting to rub off on me.

So I'm doing a batch of quests towards getting Tribal Leatherworking(a high-end specialization in my leatherworking profession). Many of these require me to grind away on turtle monsters for a certain item needed for the quest. I've been doing such grinding since yesterday and I've gained 1.5 levels doing it. I think I'm starting to see things.
Along the coast in Tanaris, weird things are popping up. There has been a level 20 troll rogue fishing here for at least five hours now, and this is a level 40+ area. When I'm nearby, she doesn't budge, just fishes and fishes, but everytime I return to where she is she's in a different spot.
Not long before the time of writing this I found another doing the same in a different spot on the coast. Coincidence?

There also appears to be a botter here farming the turtles, a 50 warlock. In a robotic, laggy fashion she moves across a section of the beach, killing turtles in her path but never going out of her way to kill any in the water or higher land than where she is.

What will I see next? The turtles giving birth to Murlocs? Perhaps the goblins giving up their materialism? Troll porn?

I notice almost no one on my LJ friend list actually writes in their LJ anymore, with the exception of Dan who only recently started doing regular entries.

My internet is down once again. This time I have more hope it will come back up because my dad actually has money, but no promises. If all else fails I'll just have to get a job and pay for it myself; I'm past due for a job anyway.
Last night when it suddenly went out, I dressed myself and went down town(at 3 in the morning) to call Kain and tell him what had happened. I didn't have the number written down or anything, so I dialed 0 on the phone to talk to the operator.

Operator: 'lo, operator, how may I halp u
Aaron: Could you connect me to Sonya Griffis in Orange Park, Florida?
Operator: ... *hangs up*

What the fuck? I tried again but after a few minutes of ringing I decided no one was going to pick up and I gave up.
The tone a phone makes when someone hangs up on you at three in the morning at a pay phone in the middle of a sleeping town is really creepy, by the way.

Sooo, yeah. Hope to be back soon. Here's to wishful thinking. It may be back by the time I get home today, my dad may have actually paid it, who knows.

Okay, so, I come home, and see Kristpoher, my younger brother, clicking away at my computer doing god knows what. I give him a moment to do whatever as I take off my jacket and such, and then I look over at what he's doing. Searching for "motorcylce prices" on Google, he clicks a link and suddenly, a small "downloading" window opens, downloading a file about 5kb large. With my cable internet connection and my brother's hand on the mouse there's nothing I could have done to stop it. The SECOND the window closes, my desktop is bombarded with pop-ups. Oh man, there's just nothing I love more than good old fashioned spyware :)

Due to some quick thinking and Aaron ingenuity I managed to get rid of the programs spawning the pop-ups quickly, but I still have(and can't seem to get rid of) this annoying little infobox that keeps popping up in my system tray, insisting my computer is infected with a nasty virus and I need to buy Spyware Quake to remedy the situation. :/

Soooo many people use the library's computers just to waste time. Play stupid little browser-based video games. Are peoples' lives really that dry and dull? Even so, couldn't they just get their own damn computer and do it at home? I've been sitting here reading the library's outdated supply of Computer Gaming Monthly for the past couple hours waiting for people to finish playing Bejeweled and poorly made Flash adaptions of Frogger. And of course, then there was the time when I saw this guy looking at scat porn and no one said a damn word to him, despite the taped up signs consisting of "LOOKING AT PORNOGRAPHY IS AGAINST LIBRARY POLICY" plastered all over the walls. Besides, how shameless must you really be to look at porn in public, not to mention porn focused around bodily wastes? Dear God.

I woke up this morning late for school(for the fourth time this week) and begin readying myself to go. Try to shower but the hot water supplier tank thing isn't working very well and I get nothing but icy cold you-should-have-checked-the-water-before-you-took-your-clothes-off goodness.
So I'm all ready to go, and I hop on my computer to leave hopelessly romantic messages for Sully to see when she wakes up. Sean wakes up, bitches me up and down about being late so often, and forces me to turn the computer off and leave.
What business is my lateness of his? Why should I have to answer to him for ANYTHING I do? God knows no one yelled at HIM every time he was late(and every time he was late, he refused to go to school at all). He's such a hypocrite... What would make anyone who dropped out of high school TWICE(they gave him a second chance) think they can tell anyone how to live their life?

On a sort of lighter note(but not really), I have about thirty dollars saved up to go see Silent Hill. It's been hell hiding all that money away from my family who would like nothing better to use it to sate their pot addictions. I've been so excited all this time, waiting eagerly for the movie to come to my town so I can go see it at least three times... But then, a fellow student in one of my classes, who's father works at this town's movie theatre, informs me that they aren't going to be taking Silent Hill, as they don't take R rated movies.
I wasn't upset at first. I had figured the idea of Silent Hill coming to my town was too good to be true, and this was just confirmation of that. Later on that day when I realized I probably won't see it unless I freaking download it, I died just a little inside. Oh the shame. On a side note, Sean recently broke my PS2 and I was only about an hour into Silent Hill 4, and now I may never get to finish it.

Sully and I took a little break from the painful grinding difficulty of iRO and have been playing around on a stupidly easy private server just for fun, which brings me to my next rant.

Griefers.
They're in every online mutliplayer game. If you're not sure what the term means, a griefer is exactly what it sounds like, someone who plays to make other players' gaming experience less enjoyable or in some cases just plain miserable. In this private server, I play as a priest, which are normally used as a support class. Because the private server boosts the abilities of characters far beyond that of a normal server, I could kill someone with my priest but it's much harder for me to kill someone as it is for them to kill me.
Keeping this in mind, the main place I level my character is in a dungeon that allows open PvP, becuase it's really the only place that works for my character, I can only damage one type of monster efficiently and that dungeon is full of them. In that dungeon, however, people have repeatedly killed me for no reason. Just walked up to me and slaughtered me, probably thinking nothing of it. One person in particular killed me over and over, making sure to taunt me when I died. He acted as if i was another monster and when I asked him what the hell his problem was he kept casting the spell he used to kill me on my corpse, as if to say that I deserved to die a few more times.

Now this is in a private server, filled with lots of foreigners and in my personal experience the most griefers are Brazilian. Brazilian players seem to flock to private servers. In this private server, you don't lose much(if anything) when you die, and it would seemingly be all in good fun if people weren't such dicks about it.
However, the more extreme griefers reside in official servers of games that cost money to play, and in my opinion that's where it hurts the most.
Lineage II. Possibly the most hardcore grinding MMORPG ever. Let's put things in perspective here: At a low level in Lineage II(like say levels 10-20) it can take you up to 20 minutes earning 10% of the experience needed to gain a level. For some stupid reason, the game has open PvP; you can kill anyone absolutely anywhere, and when you die in Lineage II, you lose an entire 10% of your experience earned on that particular level. This, doubled with the fact that you can actually level down if your experience drops below 0%, makes dying excrutiatingly painful, and that's what griefers prey on. Think about it; a high level griefer walks up to you and hits your low level character a few times. You die fairly easily, and lose 10%. How long did that 10% take you to make? 20 minutes? A half an hour? That's a half an hour of your life wasted, stolen that you are not getting back, because some idiot on the internet decided he'd fuck you over for fun.

It took me a whole hour to write all this. And I'm not a slow typer.

My mom once told me that there are two types of people living in this town: The very wealthy, and those who have nothing. There is no middle class.
She had also once tricked herself into believing we had more than nothing, but lately she has come to terms with our lack of.. anything normal people have, and realized how bad things are for us.

My dad shows up at home less and less lately. Often, when he shows up, it's at two or three in the morning. He doesn't say a word to anyone, goes straight to bed, and three hours later he gets up and leaves again.
The guy makes about $1,500 a month, give or take a hundred or so. So, why do we have no food? Why are all our bills constantly past due and approaching the point where the service is shut off? Why are there no cleaning agents whatsoever so shower with? Why haven't I seen a doctor for my plague of a skin condition like I should have YEARS ago?

Mom asks him for money on pay day. Begs. Pleads. He's always saying "I don't have any."
What the fuck?! Of course you do! You JUST MADE $1,500!
Mom demands he tell him how much money he has on him/is in the bank.
He says "About $200." As if that's the amount of money he usually has on pay day. So what the hell happened to the other $1,300 of his pay check? "We owe people." or "I dunno."
The second answer is used more often, but the first answer, while not being very explanitory, is the answer. He's already spent his entire paycheck before he even gets it. On what, you say?
Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what all of it is. However, he never shows up at home without a glass pipe, and there are people constantly calling him on his cell phone, to which he says things like "Yeah, I'll buy some," into the phone. There's also this really trashy looking woman he hangs around, and he tells my mother that nothing is going on, yet recently she was stranded at the airport about 50 miles away at midnight. She called my dad and asked him if he would come and help her out. He didn't even hesitate, and dragged my mom with him to "proove nothing was going on." Yet when they found her, dad was sure to ask if his breath was okay and if he looked presentable before letting her in.

I'll leave it up to your imagination, but let's just say my father is a very obsessive person, controlled by what he thinks feels good and shuns all else.

I don't know what's going to happen to my family, my life, but I'm tired of living under the roof of someone who cares very little about whether I have something to eat or not.

Lately I've been living my life through Ragnarok Online, using it as my one escapist method away from all of that. This is why I don't write in my journal much anymore. I have nothing to talk about but my complaints, there really isn't much else to my homelife.

Well.. that and.. who reads this? There are only a select few people that actually see it, and do they even care? Doesn't my whining get old?

I wish school started later in the day, like in the afternoon, so I could stay up all night on school days like I do on the weekends... I hardly ever sleep at night anymore.

sean's drunk friends are currently singing and dancing along to 'YMCA'


(ten minutes prior i threw one of them on the ground for trying to rip me away from the computer when I was busy)