19 days 14 hours 3 minutes and ~4 seconds

kaziganthi is now level 60. what is left for him?

i brought banger, my level 35, now 36, undead rogue to stranglethorn vale. anyone who's played the game, across all servers i think, but possibly just ours, knows how shithouse that zone is. as a warrior, i experienced endless frustration, even grouped with 2 other people, usually because we didn't have a healer and our fights were usually along the lines of 8 vs 3. kaziganthi met his end many a time in that accursed vale.

the tally: me 14, alliance 0. give or take 3 kills for me. conclusion: rogues are gods.

it first started when i was fighting a basilisk and minding my own business. a gnome - of course - mage, Erick (he has my name, spelled crappily, but still), pyroblasts me in the middle of my fight! i wait for the DOT to wear off, then vanish. i jump in the water, and laugh as he runs in circles up and down the coast, even casting frost nova in a vain attempt to reveal me.

i stalk him for 5 minutes or so. unfortunately (and this shows that things have NOT changed since i leveled kaziganthi out of that zone), there are FOUR other alliance hunting nearby. while erick is running around like a chicken missing its head, he comes close to me and hears the noise that means i am nearby. he novas and reveals me. instantly 5 alliance come after me. i sprint away and stealth. i laugh as i wait in the water, while they futilely search for me.

i come across a 32 hunter fighting. i sap him, kill him pet, and then i slaughter him.

on my way up north, who do i see, but our gnome mage, fighting without any alliance nearby? i cheap shot him while he's fighting a basilisk, kidney shot him when he's low, and he's dead before he manages to cast one spell. i /laugh at him and /spit on his corpse.

up north at the troll camp, i see a 37 paladin. i watch as she fights a mob and then an add. i could have cheap shotted her when she was almost dead and killed her easily, but i give her the benefit of the doubt. i sap her after she is done fighting, to show that i could have ganked her but did not. i /wave. when sap breaks, she comes after me! i sprint away and then stealth.

i stalk her for a while. she is afraid to pull because she knows i am waiting. but eventually her impatience gets the better of her and she pulls a mob. i cheap shot her, kidney shot her, she dies. i /laugh at her and move on. i'm sure she was a he, but since the avatar was female. i'll refer to the person behind her as such.

i see a warrior and a druid. i wait until they finish fighting, so they'll get the xp. i sap the druid and start in on the warrior (usually you kill the caster first, especially if he is a healer, but druids are another story). druid breaks out of sap before i finish the warrior, but he sucks and doesn't heal his friend. warrior dies. druid roots me and starts to run. i vanish to break root, and then i sprint and chase him down in cheetah form! it was glorious, as amanda likes to say.

i kill the same 44 mage twice. i wait until he pulls, waits until he is almost done casting his 6 second pyroblast, and then i cheap shot and kidney shot him before he can do anything. one time he turned around and tried to run when he had crippling poison on him! not very smart. he did get a head start with frost nova and blink, but i sprinted and cut him down.

i wait until a 36 gnome rogue finished fighting, and then i cheap shotted him. he gouges me and vanishes! i think that's cool, so i /clap. he cheap shots me. i gouge and vanish! great stuff. then i cheap shot and destroy him.

i see a 32 hunter nearby, and i sap him and kill his pet and then him. not much honor. right after this, the 36 rogue comes back. we do the same thing, only this time he manages to pull 5 mobs, and while running away, pulls a couple more. the poor bastard. i run him down while stealthed and finish him off.

there are some more kills i think i didn't mention, but they aren't memorable, since i don't remember them.

rogues >> alliance

it's been a while

it's all about inertia. i've been so long in posting that every day more seems less and less important. why start up again when i've left it for so long?

because i can't log into world of warcraft.

i have not been part of the real world since november 23, 2004. since then, i have devoted whole days of time to playing this game. i would alt-tab back and forth and tell you just how much time, but i can not log in.

that's inconsequential. i'm not posting about not being able to log into world of warcraft, even though i'm posting because i am not able to log into world of warcraft.

in the world around me:

that's some cold shit, what happened in sri lanka and its surroundings. ouch. i do not know anyone affected by it. i do not know anyone who knows anyone who was affected by it. same as the events of september 11th (i hate the way politicians or newspeople or whoever else say "nine-eleven," distilling a world-changing event into two hyphenated numbers), disaster seems to be this abstract concept that never actually affects me. i see it on tv, i read it online, that's about it. it might as well be fiction for all i know. i suppose it's better though, because it's natural and not human. or worse. one or the other, i'm sure.

blogs. everywhere. bill has moved to boston? he has a new job? he's deleted all his old posts, and he has a new screen name. i think it's wtstc? thank goodness; i really could not help thinking "what-the-fuck-the-conqueror" every time i saw the previous incarnation.

i was opening a bunch of blogs in new tabs and i got to mike's, and it was called chillable red, and my first thought was that some sort of evil mike from an alternate dimension/universe, most likely with a goatee, had started up a blog. no, it's mike salt, not mike liu.

amanda's been posting up a storm. she's in egypt now, or so i hear. that's cool. much cooler than college in new york. college in new york has to be one of the most plain and run-of-the-mill four years of life out of possible four years of life.

gabi has one? damn, she's got all these "thoughts." the girl plays the cute vapid girl really well. it's cool that she's got stuff going on under the hood. is that the right turn of phrase? is turn of phrase the right turn of phrase? what's the phrase i'm looking for? this is like some sort of box within a box. does stuff under the hood allude to body parts, like junk in the trunk? what's with all these car metaphors?

me: i am poor. college loans and the sudden loss of income from having no students renders me poor. it sucks. i have wasted no money in quite some time. i could get into it, but i just have to hang on a little longer, because

i have a job. i am a salaried teacher on preliminary licensure for the springfield public school system. i will be the new geometry teacher at springfield scitech, as soon as i finish with this one _single_ LSAT student back in virginia. so the beginning of february.

log in is back up! screw you guys. i'm out.

edit: i can tell you how much time i have invested in this game now:

kaziganthi, my pride and joy, my lvl 58 tauren warrior, 18 days 15 hours.

banger, my lvl 32 undead rogue, 2 days 16 hours.

kakarot, my mule turned lvl 11 orc shaman, 21.5 hours. i'd say at least 4/5 of this time was spent just on inventory management, and watching the auction house.

santaria, my mule (a character created solely for inventory space), 2 hours.

naota, my lvl 5 tauren druid that i decided to use as a mule later, 1.5 hours.

that brings the total up to 22 days and 8 hours. the game has been out... we'll say 49 days, because i hate how months have different numbers of days in them and they should all have 30.
almost half my time has been spent in this world. and i wouldn't have it any other way.

oh, and because i probably won't blog again for a while. while i was at home, i reread the prydain chronicles, by lloyd alexander (alexandar?). they're great. really great.

i also reread franny and zooey, and most of nine stories. i didn't bring rhtrbc, and seymour: an introduction, back with me to virgina, but now i wish i had, damn it. someone please explain to me what these mean. please. i feel like i'm on the edge of something after i read these books, but i have no idea what that/it is. or if my tenses are all screwed up.

i also reread the golden compass, because i have that crappy copy i bought on the sidewalk in new york (the _one_ good thing about that city, i swear!), and i can read those without being careful of the bindings. it's great to have a book in trash condition so one does not have to maintain its pristineness. yeah. ok too much time already spent blogging when i could be playing wow.