SERIOUS EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCES

So, today, I’m not going to bother with pictures, because today’s rant is going to rant about… my rants.

Okay, so it’s really more about the people who read and comment on my rants, but still:

It seems like there’s a lot of people who are reading my rants, stopping a couple lines in, or just glossing over the whole thing, then just trying to rip me a new asshole over something that was usually the complete opposite of what I was saying.

Please, for the love of kittens and unicorns, stop doing that. It gets really fucking irritating.

If on the other hand, you believe that you did understand what I was saying, and you did read the whole thing, and after reading this, went back to the rant you tried to rip me a new one on, re-read it, and still don’t get it: Go back to elementary school, and take a reading comprehension class. Seriously. “They” and “I” do not actually mean the same thing.

Of course, I wholeheartedly recognize the visitors we have from Bizarro World, and I wish to offer a reminder to these poor souls: This world is backwards from Bizarro World, and as such, when I say I really hate something, I really do mean I hate it, and I’m not secretly trying to say I love it.

But yeah, it’s gotten to the point now where everytime I write a rant or opinion I’m expecting there to be at least two or three people who just didn’t get it, and want to start a world war with me.

Like, if I were to write a rant about, say, America selling guns to third world countries and how stupid it is, I would expect a few people to shoot back with page-long dissertations about how I’m stupid for supporting America’s support of foreign dictatorships. Even though, you know, the entire rant was about how I’m against it.

Either that, or they’ll call me stupid for being Republican white trash that hangs out in bars on tuesdays… Even though I’m not a republican, technically not white, and don’t drink or go to bars, much less on tuesdays, and not a single bit of it was even in the article, or even implied.

It makes me wonder if there’s some other blog or site out there that is putting up articles and their comment page redirects to my site, because honestly, I really can’t see where a lot of people are getting their stuff from. Quite a while back, I had this big rant up about Tobacco Law and smoking in general. My stance on it was pretty obvious, I even blatantly pointed out my stance in the first paragraph of the rant: I am a smoker, and I recognize that smoking can cause damage to the human body, but I also know that the tests to prove it were biased, and paid for by people who wanted tobacco to be taxed, so I promote levity and fairness rather than blind fear-mongering.

For the next couple weeks I got harassed by somebody who was royally pissed that I was “out to end smoker’s rights”. My article goes on about how the taxes for cigarettes are unfair, and I have people yelling at my that I’m a tool of government oppression.

So, a bit later, there’s some little comment war going on at the bottom of my rant, where people had started talking about weed, and there are a few very vocal proponents of The Marijuana. I tell them that I don’t want people promoting drug usage on my site because I personally detest drugs and stoners. I’ll tolerate an academic discussion, but I don’t want people saying “Oh yeah man, you should try ______ and _______. I had a couple bowls of that last weekend and DAMN!!” I’ll try to be fair and all that, but there are certain things that I don’t want on my site, because the minute it starts creeping in, it will take over like a plague.

So what happens? I get a couple emails from some lady about how she loved my comic until I told everybody I was a pothead, and then she couldn’t read it anymore and I’m a horrible person for suckering kids into my webcomic and seducing them into a druggie lifestyle.

…From me talking about how I disliked potheads and don’t want it on my site, she construed that I must therefore love pot and have a sinister plan to sell drugs to kids.

I’m sure you guy can see at this point what I’m talking about. I say something, and people… just don’t read it, I guess.

I’ve had this problem with pretty much every long rant I’ve ever put up on the SEDiverse, and I would like to see it stopped. I’m not going to delete comments to “clean things up” or get rid of the ridiculous things I’m irritated about, because that’s kinda against the whole thing of SED. (Only things I police for in comments is obscenity or encouragement of unsavory things.) What I am going to ask though, is that before you post a comment, you read the damned article.

Okay, so, just a bit of site news first: I finally got the keyboard navigation working on the site. Wasn’t that hard, I just kept forgetting to do it. So, now you can navigate the comic with the left and right arrows on your keyboard, as well as shift clicking left or right to get to the first comic or the last comic, respectively.

Next up, there was this study done about slowing down the obesity epidemic in America. What was their solution? Subsidize starvation. I shit you not.

…Okay,… so what they were really saying is that by making junk food more expensive, less people will buy it, so therefore, it must be helping them to make healthy food choices!! Yay!! Well, no. The entire study was this giant, epic fail, a full hellameter across. First off, their sampling was women only. Yes, women only. So, even if their findings weren’t bubkis, it would only apply to women. Sorry guys, but having a test group of only one distinction is FAIL. Second, there wasn’t a control group. Third, everybody was given about 20.00 to feed each member of their family for a week. When junk food prices went up, the number of calories in their selections went down… but, would they have been able to feed the family for the week?

Basically, it comes down to this: Make the food more expensive, and yes, people will consume less. Duh. The problem isn’t how much people are consuming, it’s what, and honestly here’s the shitty truth:
1. Until carrots start tasting like doritos, people are going to buy the doritos.
2. A large part of the incentive of junk food is that it’s cheaper than “real food”.
3. Making junk food more expensive just means people will have less ways to actually stretch their money.
4. That means you’re encouraging poor people to starve, unless you find a way to make the healthy food as cheap as the junk food used to be. You can’t remove the cheap options without basically giving 70% of the country the finger.
5. The other big part of junk food’s hold on the country is time. It’s convenient and quick.
6. I dunno about you, but I really don’t have an extra 4-5 hours a day to dedicate to cleaning, preparing, and cooking food, and then cleaning dishes.
7. The time argument can be fixed though, as long as we can get a bill passed that says that all women must be housewives, like it was in the 30’s before all the junk food.
8. Oh wait, that’s right. That’s WHY junk food was made. Go figure.

University at Buffalo, I am disappointed in you.

Okay, well, not really. Didn’t really have many high expectations anyways…

And last, in this giant spew off the top of my head: Adelaide huh…? Hey Berga, by any chance, you figure you’re related…?

It’s my birthday, so I’m just going to write about whatever I feel like. And since I’ve pretty much just been goofing off all day, it’s going to be World of Warcraft. Keep in mind though, that as usual, I’m just ranting and raving. It’s not so bad that I’m quitting the game again, but still, here’s the top ten thing’s I’m sick of seeing in World of Warcraft:

10. Shadow specced Priests setting themselves as “Healer” on the Dungeon Finder.
Yeah. We get it. It’s really hard getting a group when you’re set as damage dealer. …But uh… if you get into a group set as a healer… Uh… I don’t think you’ve realized this yet… but you’re uh… actually going to have to heal. This also extends to Feral Druids and ChainMachineGun Shamans.

9. People acting like tough shit just because they survived.
“Oh hey, look! I did something stupid and almost got the party wiped, but it’s okay because the druid survived and then rezzed everyone! So it’s okay, it doesn’t matter, it’s cool!” No, it’s not, numbnuts. No, you’re not a badass because you did 3500 DPS before you died. Fact is, you’re a moron, because it shouldn’t have been an issue to begin with. The goal of the dungeon or quest isn’t to play “who can do more damage,” it’s to get to the end of it without getting the party wiped 15 times on the same mob.

8. Me First, Me First!
It used to be good form in MMO’s that whenever you found something that it was likely that everyone needed, you would ask or roll for it. I’m not saying that this was a “normal” or “majority” thing, I just mean it was considered polite, and a fair bit of the population would adhere to these ideas of “niceness.” (Probably about a third.) Now, in WoW… it’s completely gone. Since I got back in the game, there has not been a single person that has been even remotely polite to the group. So okay, everybody is a bunch of dicks, right? Well, it burns me because it’s a little more complicated. When I called somebody on it, the response was staggering: We were in a dungeon, and there was a node of minerals. Fairly standard. I normally ask if anyone else is a miner, and thus if they would like to roll for the rights to the node. This worked well up until this point. I asked, but then a mob rolls up, we get into a fight, and during the fight, somebody else mines the node. Jumping claims, okay… So I’m like “ooookay then. Or… you could just… you know… take it.” Their response? “I didn’t see you ask! And besides, you should just take it, I mean, you can’t really be expected to just know when somebody else is a miner.” Yeah. And that’s why you’re supposed to ask. Okay, one person who tried to justify being a dick, right? Well, no. The rest of the entire group backed them up, and the next group I was in said the same thing… And then when I asked about it on the chat channel, everybody there said the same thing. So… the overall mentality is just: “So long as it benefits me, it’s okay.” …”Oh, jumping your claim? Does it benefit me? Okay then!” …”Oh stealing your kill? Does it benefit me? Okay then!” …etc …etc. …etc. And the response is: “Well, duh!” …And so, congratulations, you people are morons, because it doesn’t have to be like that. Getting into this me first, me first bullshit just guarantees that sooner or later, somebody’s going to fuck you over, and there’s not going to be anything you can do about it, but you’re going to get all pissed, but face it man, they’re your own damned words. As for stealing kills: How about this, instead of just trying to kill all the enemies so you can get credit and I have to stand around waiting for a respawn, how about just grouping together, killing the things, then moving on with our lives? If two or three people were standing around waiting for a boss for a quest, it used to be common courtesy for everybody to go “Hey, want to group for the boss? Yeah. Sure. Okay. Cool.” Now it’s ME FIRST ME FIRST!!

7. Death Knight Discrimination
Yeah, I get it. You’re pissed off that one day Death Knights were suddenly in the game, and they all did twice as much damage you did, even though you had epic gear. But then, when everybody complained about the DKs being too powerful, Blizzard toned them down a bit. Now, everybody talks about how Death Knights are friggin useless in a group. It seems to me that no matter how powerful the Death Knights, everybody is just going to complain about some imaginary BS. …I figure it’s a conspiracy thought up by the hunters. They realized that they’re doing 4 times the damage of everybody else, and so there response was “>.> oh… uh… <.< Look, a death knight!! they do too much damage! damn! >.>” I still can’t believe that everyone had a huge problem with the death knight damage… at level 60 death knight were doing about 200 more dps than mages. Oh but mages were supposed to be the best DPS in the game! RAWRRWAWRRAWR!! …Yeah… but even at 200 dps more than mages, DKs were 100 DPS under the hunters. So uh… what… you just didn’t notice that the hunters did twice what you did? Did it just slip your mind?

6. Paladins (and Warriors) trying to tank with a 2 handed weapon.
It usually ends badly, unless the guy is… you know, jesus on steriods. …The entire thing can only be described as completely asinine. Oh but 2 handed weapons do more damage so that’s good tanking, because you’re getting more agro!! …No, 2 handed weapons do not help you get agro as a paladin. Holy damage is what gets you agro as a paladin. Second, Shields are like equipping an extra 3 pieces of armor, plus a block rating. That helps you stay alive, because the less damage you take, the more the healer can heal you. Put it this way: Healer only has so much mana, but the amount healed stays the same. So, the less they have to heal you, the more mana they have, and the more mana they have, the more they can heal you.

5.  Invisible Rogues
What, like… you’re mad that they can go invisible? No. I’m talking about the fact that they’ve all disappeared. Since I got back into WoW, I’ve grouped with one rogue. ONE!! Where the flying fuck did they all go?!? They used to be dripping off the damned ceiling when the battlegrounds first came out! So far, the classes I’ve seen, in order from greatest frequency to least are: Paladin, Death Knight, Mage, Priest, Hunter, Shaman, Warlock, Druid, Warrior, Rogue. So where the hell did they all go??

4. Retarded Pissing Contests (RPCs)
This most often happens when you’re in a group, and somebody in the group is the same class as you, and thus has to prove that they’re better at the class then you are, without any sort of provocation. It usually ends up with them rushing off to fight the next enemy just to prove how big their characters polygonal gonads are, despite the healer going “Waaaiiiitttt!! I need maaannnnaaaa!!” It’s like walking into a coffee shop wearing a modest mouse T-shirt. Within seconds, somebody is going to waltz up to you and start spouting crap about what sort of toothbrush the singer used from 2002-2004 just to prove their chops are tougher.

3. Uneven Bias in Warrior Talents and the Battle Shout
Everybody complains about their classes, and how their class is unfairly screwed because they don’t have laser eyes and a “kill all bosses with /stare” power. But seriously, this is getting pretty irritating. With the 3 warrior stances, there used to be some sort of a balance, where arms was a middle ground, defensive stance reduced your ability to do damage but increased your armor, and berserker stance increased damage/critical rating and increased how much damage you took. Makes sense, right? Well now it’s like… All the core berserker skills have gone down in power, but the detriment has stayed the same, while with the defensive stance stuff the detriments have been reduced (I presume to encourage people to become tanks.) But it’s rather out of hand at this point, because all the detriments pile up, and make it hard to actually get anything done, or even justify being in berserker stance. It’s like, well, I need the stance for the increase in criticals, and the moves that I need to be in the stance for! …Well, problem there is that the critical chance increase is pretty piddly at this point, and as for the skills you need to be in berserker stance for… there’s only one: whirlwind. All the rest of your berserker skills are available in battle stance. So… Battle Stance (with 10% increased armor penetration, and no debuff!) or Berserker (While taking 5-35% more damage and… 3% criticals) or Protection (With increased armor and 5% decreased damage). It would be a bit more fair if either there was equal detriments to everything, or reducing the detriment to berserker a bit, because in the end, this isn’t really nudging people towards a certain way of playing, this is pretty much slapping them in the face and screaming “BAD DOG! BAD. DOG.”

This is me from almost a month ago.

—-Also of note: I guess when there were balancing the classes, they tried to make sure that a DPS warrior was on par with everyone else doing DPS, but… they kinda failed. See, I can do the same amount (little less) of DPS with battle shout on as other people do without battle shout. So, by this, I’m equal to other people, as long as I’m not in a group. Once I am in a group though, I kick on the battle shout, now I’m up to their power when they were unbuffed, but since I just buffed them, now they’re way ahead again. For a little numbers thing for that at level 72:
Me (with Battle Shout): 810 dps
Them (without Battle Shout): 860 dps
Them (with Battle Shout): 1100 dps
And then to top it off, our tank, a paladin, is sitting there roasting enemies with laser vision and spiraling holy tendrils of Death, topping out at about 1300 dps. Why Blizzard, did you up the damage of the paladins so much? Now they have superDPS, superArmor, and they can heal themselves, and rez everyone. Seriously, just give them a pet, and the rest of us can drop our current classes because we would never need any other classes.

2. People who leave the Dungeon group.
Specifically, the ones who leave in a huff because the run is taking too long. “Ugh! The last time I did this dungeon it only took us 15 minutes! But this one has taken 20 and we’re not to the boss, so I’m leaving!” …Yeah, go right ahead there buddy. We’ll be done in 10 minutes. You on the other hand, will be waiting for a group for the next half hour, then you still have to run the dungeon, which probably is going to take just as long as we did. Congratulations, you’re friggin moron.

1. High level players asking stupid questions.
Out of everything, this is probably most irritating thing out of everything, by a long shot. I’m seriously pissed that I keep seeing these people that are like level 70-80 asking such gems as “How do I get to Ironforge?” or “Where do I train in <insert skill that’s not even for their class>?” Earlier today, there was a guy on the Trade Channel asking “Hey, which is better for tanking, 2 handed weapons or a shield?” After which, of course, there was this big argument between people; “Shields, duh.” “Nuh uh! 2 handed weapons help you do damage which means more agro, which means youre a better tank!!” …Come on man. You’re just blatantly showing everyone that you got your account from somebody else. It would be easier for all parties involved if you would just admit it. That way we could just explain how it works, instead of you puffing your feathers and pretending you know all about it and getting us wiped 20 times over.

I'm pretty sure that Ctrl+Alt+Del's Faildruid is based on this guy.

To add onto that: Nubpuppies. Sick of em. What’s a Nubpuppy you ask? Well, those are the people who join a game, then pretend that they’ve been on it the entire time, for some sort of “credibility.”

First off, dude, it’s World of Warcraft. You have no credibility anyways.

Second,… grr. I was in a group a while back doing a dungeon that the group screwed up involving a giant pyramid and bunch of people in cages. Any old hand of WoW will be snickering at this point. So, somebody suggests killing this big hydra named Gahz’rilla. I immediately agree, because hey, I had a few scores to settle with that thing from back in the day before he was knocked down a few notches. We get over there, we clear the area to prepare for the fight, and I stand next to the gong to summon the lizard and ask…

“Okay, so anyone have the mallet?”

And two members of the party go “Whut?” (The other two don’t really talk much, except for one of em talking about cheap gold and whatnot.)

And thus begins this large… drawn out, exasperating argument. Of course, you don’t need the mallet to ring the gong now, but that wasn’t their argument. Their argument was that you never needed a mallet. And they know, because they’ve been playing the game since it was it was released. In fact, they’ve been playing since before then, because they know a guy who best friends with one of the developers so they got their copy two months before everyone else and they hit 80 before I even started playing!! And what are you talking about, no way? My main is a draenei mage, so I can prove that I’ve been on that long! But he’s on another server!… right… …right? (Anyone who has been playing WoW for as long as I have is probably either snickering uncontrollably or had an aneurysm.)

As a final comment on this: I was doing coilfang resevoir a while back, and we had a death knight tanking. He mentions that it’s his first tanking character, and everyone is proud of him because he’s the best tank they’ve ever seen (except me, because honestly, he sucked, and couldn’t tank properly if his life depended on it.) Okay? Right? So what is the praise from our level 66 druid healer?

“Damn man! I haven’t seen a death knight tank like that in like, four years!”

D’oh!