Friday, August 19, 2005

So I've been listening to Air America Radio this week, and I'm politically charged up, like someone walking across the carpet gathering static electricity. Time to deliver the shock and release all my feelings about current political issues. You, my readers, are the unsuspecting person about to be shocked in the back of the neck (in most other cases, usually my friend Adrien).

Now I will be drifting from subject to subject, meandering, digressing, and going off on tangents, so bear with me.

To start things off, there's the issue of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Bush has taken a five-week vacation (in the middle of a war, even!) to good-ole Crawford, Texas, and Cindy and a group of other mothers who have lost sons or daughters in Iraq are now camping as close as they can to Bush's property. (A neighbor of Bush let them camp on his property, right next door.)

Why are they camping there? To ask our Fearless Leader a simple question: "For what noble cause are we sending our sons and daughters to die in Iraq?"

Why does Bush not answer? He can't. There is no noble cause. First, they said Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Later, we found out that that was false. Next, they said we were deposing Saddam because he was a truly vile dictator, in collaboration with Al-Qaeda. Looking at the turmoil currently going on in Iraq, what with the possibility that it may not become the secular democracy we had hoped, but rather an Islamic republic, it appears the Iraqis were better off WITH Saddam. And, if Hussein actually does have ties to Al-Qaeda, we haven't found them yet, even though we've kept him detained for over a year now.

Then, they said we were trying to install a democracy. Why Iraq? There are plenty of countries in this world that are not democracies.

China is not a democracy. Why didn't we invade them? We can't do it. We can't bring democracy to them. We may have a technologically superior military, but they have the advantage of numbers. To use a computer gaming term, they can Zerg us.

If you armed the entire population of China, and we armed our entire population, and sent our population to invade, they outnumber us 4 to 1. Every soldier of ours would have to gun down 4 chinese before being shot himself (or herself). If we decide to pull out the Nukes we've been keeping around for just that very occasion, not only will the image of Americans as greedy imperialist pigs be forever cemented in the mind of the world, the Chinese will then use THEIR NUKES AGAINST US. War on Terror, meet World War III.

What amazes me more is that the Chinese can do that without insane military spending. CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2067rank.html) states that as of 2003, United States military expenditures were about $370 billion. As of 2004, China's military expenditures were about $60.7 billion. We spend 6 times more money than the next guy in line, and yet we're at a disadvantage.

Which begs the question: What are we spending all that money on? We're certainly not spending it on BODY ARMOR FOR OUR TROOPS which we still need.

(By the way, watch the TrueMajority intro video at http://www.truemajority.com/oreos to see ice cream tycoon Ben Cohen explain his idea for how we could be spending our money more judiciously.)

But getting back to Cindy Sheehan, Apparently Bush is running away from here; plans for a vacation from the vacation are in order. Where is Bush going? Idaho, the state that has the highest level of support for him. Both Jerry Springer and Randi Rhodes, who have shows on Air America Radio, have come to the easily-supported conclusion that Bush doesn't want to listen to anyone who doesn't agree. That can't be done in a democracy; both sides have to be heard. No Dialogue, No Democracy. That's how it works. Remember when Bush said:

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
(Quoted from CNN.com 12/18/2000).

And on that note, It seems I have run out of steam. Join us next time, when our political target will be Rush Limbaugh. Thank you and good night.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

WORLD OF WARCRAFT POST #1

Some people have no imagination. I can tell this by the kind of names you see on people's characters in World of Warcraft. Just a brief list of the most overused:

Characters whose names contain the words "Dark,""Fallen," or "Shadow." Apparently people think that being obscure and shrouded mystery is cool. Not when everyone is mysterious; then it's just bandwagon-style idiocy.

Characters whose names contain the word "Killer." You're a killer? No shit, you're a killer. Everyone is a killer. You can't get far in WoW without killing something. I tried to level a priest without killing anything (bad choice of character class, I know). I got to level 2 on XP from discovering new places before it all became too dangerous to traverse. Maybe I should try a rogue instead. The point is, it's impossible to be a pacifist in this game. To advance a trade skill beyond 75 points, you need to be level 10...I don't think you can get enough from exploring, so creating a character specifically for crafting can't be done without a little bloodshed.

Rogues whose name contains the word "Rogue" in it. As if the yellow Energy bar beneath your health bar didn't tip me off.

Guilds whose names contain the word "Knights" or "Legion." Dark Knights, Blood Moon Knights, and the guild I'm currently in, The Iron Knights. We're currently debating whether the name for the guild for all our Horde alts on Arthas should be Dark Knights, Dark Legion, or, my suggestion, Zeroth Order, modified to Zeroth Order Knights. (Which is currently last place in the poll. I can't win.)

Zeroth Order is a great name. Zeroth actually refers not to some mythical dark god or something, but an actual english word:

ze·roth Audio pronunciation of "zeroth" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (zîrth, zrth)
adj.
The ordinal number matching the number 0 in a series: the zeroth power of 10.
The guild had the majority of my real-life friends in it, and we're all Computer Science students. And computers begin counting from zero, not one. Zeroth. Get it? (You'd better get it, since I just explained it to you.)

And another thing: too many one-word guild names. Immortality, Transcendence, Exodia, Vindictive, Tainted. All of these are Alliance guilds on Skullcrusher.

I'm not saying that any of these names are bad, per se, but they're uninteresting.

Some good guild names I have found:

"OMGLAZERGUNSPEWPEW" -- Just making fun of l33tspeak.

"Cannabis Vendor" -- Takes advantage of the fact that both the guild names of players and the functions of NPCs are contained in angled brackets (<>) beneath a player's name.

"is in a guild" -- "This guy is in a guild." This spawned several knockoffs, including "Needs a Drink," and "Does not want a Guild."

Well, I hope my guild name wins, despite having only one vote (mine).

And for all those looking to start a guild...Think first.