Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Come on, man.

This really is a full service blog.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Tick tock motherfuckers!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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Reader Interactions

118Comments

  1. 1.

    DarkSyde

    If you haven’t yet, you should check out some of the newer Cata dungeons. /blizz

  2. 2.

    mike the dealer

    Shade of Aran had some of the best voice acting ever in that game. He was one of my favorite bosses, Curator was annoying as hell, took us like 3 weeks to get past him.

  4. 4.

    Paul in KY

    I used to be really good on the arcade versions of Pac Man & Centipede. 260,000 on Pac Man & 500,000 on Centipede.

    Knew a guy who got 1,400,000 on Centipede. Knew his trick, but I could never duplicate it.

    Yes, I’m old :-)

  6. 6.

    Loneoak

    So, can we have another flame war in this thread?

    GREENWALD RULEZ! Tunch isn’t fit to even shed on his holiness’ couch.

  9. 9.

    Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac

    Worst emote in Cata – “Break yourselves on my bo-dy… Feel the strength of the eaaarrrrth.”

    Best voice acting comes from the boss at the end of the same dungeon “The world will be reborn in flames!” I don’t know who they got to yell that, but man, what a great voice for it.

  12. 12.

    piratedan

    @Paul in KY: well as fun as Centipede was, Defender was a right bitch to clear and Tempest was simply a huge pain in the ass, damn near drove me back to pinball, so it did.

    Thank the creator for Sid Meier and Civ tho

  19. 19.

    Paul in KY

    @piratedan: I was never worth a shit on Defender. Too much stuff going on & the graphics weren’t very good, so I had trouble identifying things at times. Plus, I was working on my Pac Man/Centipede skills & had no desire to branch out.

    Tempest, I can’t quite remember.

    Edit: I’m in moderation & I can’t figure it out. Doesn’t seem to be any boner pill words.

  21. 21.

    ChrisS

    I’m in the need for some optimism and Osama’s death doesn’t fill the void. In a world with a crumbling infrastructure and job loss and new recession seems to be right around the corner as gasoline peeks up over $4/GLN. Throw in the fact that a populous island nation just had their coast line poisoned for decades-centuries.

    Tell me that solar power will cushion our impact from a half century of oil gluttony as fusion power comes online while the standard of living rises to the point that third world nations ease up on the baby making and we slide into a nice comfortable existence through the end of the century.

    Crap, I can’t get out of this funk.

    (BTW – my new druid is about to hit exalted with Hellscream’s and my gear rating is a mere day away from being high enough to enter the ZG dungeons.)

  24. 24.

    Rorgg

    Being a fan on Jonathan Coulton, I figured when I took the ladyfriend to see him last week that he’d do one or both Portal songs, so I looked up the game to get all the references to pass them on and ended up going “wow, this game looks fun, I’ll totally lay down 10 bucks for this”

    Which I did, and now I’m done and jonesing to get Portal 2.

  27. 27.

    Mark S.

    Steve Benen asks:

    And third, is Bush really this immature?

    Oh definitely.

    I was going to say this sounds like third-hand beltway gossip, but Benen says this particular reporter is pretty solid.

  28. 28.

    Steeplejack

    @piratedan:

    I loved Tempest! That was the one with the spinner control and the geometric shapes, right?

    It was the only arcade game I ever seriously thought about getting one for home (for about 10 seconds).

  29. 29.

    jeffreyw

    Bah, hasn’t been a proper game since Missile Command.
    and I still mourn Asteroids. Fuckin gravity…how does it work?

  30. 30.

    kdaug

    @ChrisS:

    I’m in the need for some optimism

    Optimism’s down the hall. This is Cynical Vitriol.

    Straight down the hall, take a left, third door on your left. Can’t miss it.

  31. 31.

    Paul in KY

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I loved pinball too. Was the 1979 UK Pinball Champion (the Student Center had a tournament. Got a nice trophy I still have).

    One of my favorites (as far as whipping the Hell out of it) was ‘Toledo’. I could get 50 games on that one. I generally like the Gottlieb & Bally machines. Williams machines are all garbage, IMO.

  32. 32.

    SFOtter

    Finally downed Cho’gall on 10 man regular last night. I am inordinately proud of this.

  33. 33.

    RobertB

    Sindragosa is/was my all-time favorite WoW voice-acting.

    “You are FOOLS to have come to this place! The icy winds of Northrend will consume your soul!” That bitch be crazy!

    Share of Aran was pretty good though. IMO Kara was their best 10-man, if done at level and in the gear you’d be likely to have when you went in.

    And if you did C’Thun at level, that’s pretty hardcore. He can put paid to your ass as a well-geared lvl 80.

  34. 34.

    Paul in KY

    @jeffreyw: Used to love playing Asteroids. friend of mine had one in his apartment. We’d all get stoned & then have a tournament. I never won as I wasn’t good at the key to getting a big score (shoot all rocks till one small one remains & then repeatedly kill the little ship woth 1,000 points).

    Missile Command was fun too. Another one I never spent enough time with to really get good. Space Invaders I could get 12,000 (there’s a trick to that game).

    I could kick ass on Galaga (170,000 or more).

  35. 35.

    Bowser's Clown Copter

    @Cat: Only on the Shade of Aran fight. (And a lot of other occasions pre-4.0, though that was more running through fire with AMS up so I could get some free runic power.)

    It’s even worse for ranged, apparently, because of the spell reflect/paralysis combination going on. Hope you only like DPSing the boss 10% of the time!

  38. 38.

    TimE

    John, have you looked at Rift? My wife and I are really enjoying it since we finally left WoW after 5 years. Similar mechanics and everything, just a nice change of scenery. There really are only so many alts you can level. Anyway, you should give it a shot.

  39. 39.

    freelancer

    @Paul in KY:

    Edit: I’m in moderation & I can’t figure it out. Doesn’t seem to be any boner pill words.

    Ain’t just you. I got modded 4 times in a row. Something hinky’s going on. Either that, or I’ve been arbitrarily banned, and I didn’t even have to fail to blockquote the word “Obongo”. Weird.

  40. 40.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Steeplejack: There was a PC version of Tempest a few years ago, as part of some package of Atari games. But it wasn’t the same without that palm-sized trackball.

  42. 42.

    Paul in KY

    @MikeJ: God bless you for having played one that worked. All the ones I played the flippers wouldn’t work 1/2 the time. I also never liked their graphics, looked cheap (IMO).

  43. 43.

    Mark S.

    How’s Portal 2? From what I’ve read, I’m going to wait for it to come down in price. I think it sucks that half the game is co-op.

  44. 44.

    Marmot

    @Kevin: By the way, do the new Civs cheat like the first one did? I’ve got Revolution, and it seems OK. ‘Cept when it wins, of course.

  46. 46.

    RobertB

    @Bowser – Ozruk is even more fun as a hunter, since nothing a hunter does is counted as spell damage. You can either melee him so that the reflected damage dot knocks the paralysis off, or drink a Sulfuron Slammer to put a dot on yourself and let that knock the paralysis off.

  48. 48.

    Suffern ACE

    @Valdivia: Yep. So which editor decided “you know, with all the persepctives on events out there today and all that’s going on, I’d like you to call that sword guy and get his opinion.” Magnified equally equally by the person at Yahoo! News who thought, “Wow. That’s the number 3 news item that should go on Suffern ACE’s computer.”

  50. 50.

    themann1086

    /ra So wait, I move during Flame Wreath right?

    Yeah, I’m the smartass at the end of the 15 minutes of instructions from the raid leader who intentionally hears the opposite directions. I would also go up to Jaina in CoT: Mt. Hyjal and /ra ooo, I wanna talk to the big lady!!!

  51. 51.

    Jay in Oregon

    @Mark S.:
    So Obama has invited Bush 43 to the party/memorial service at Ground Zero and he said no. Fine by me!

    If Bush wants to be a whiny punk, he can go sulk in his room. Frankly, I might actually watch the coverage if I know I don’t have to see his usually-smug mug.

  52. 52.

    jayjaybear

    @Marmot: All your games are belong to us! There’s actually a place in World of Warcraft where you more or less recreate Joust, right down to flight mechanics (which is vastly different from flying in the rest of the games).

  54. 54.

    ChrisS

    Is Balloon-Juice guild somewhere? Probably on a carebear server …

    Aw, hell, I play on steamwheadle, a RP server … there’s a bit of the thous and thees, but mostly it’s free of a lot of the 14 year olds pwn-ing everything.

    Hard to believe that WoW is nearly 7(?) years old. I started in Jan 2005 and played hardcore until BC came out and then quit until three months ago. This gravy train of a job is ending soon, so I suppose my WoW time will as well.

  56. 56.

    jh

    @John,

    That link is hilarious. I started playing in BC but never saw that before.

    Not that it matters to anyone but my guild just downed Cho’gall for the first time Sunday.

    Yay us.

  57. 57.

    NonyNony

    @Jay in Oregon:

    If Bush wants to be a whiny punk, he can go sulk in his room.

    Frankly when I heard that Bush was staying back and telling Obama “No” about being at the ceremony, I thought it was one of the first decent things the man had done. The whole “we only have one President at a time” thing and all that.

    His supporters who leaked that bit to the NY Daily News reporter didn’t do the man any favors. I honestly had a slightly better impression of Bush for a few hours there before that broke – now the caption is back to “Christ What An Asshole” whenever I see his mug.

  58. 58.

    Marmot

    @jayjaybear: That’s kind of awesome. I’ve been avoiding WoW because I knew people who never completely returned, bwa-hahaaaaaa. I’m sure I’d end up the same.

  59. 59.

    singfoom

    Just tried out one of the new Zal dungeons with the guild. Had to walk there because several peeps had item level under 346. Zul’Aman is damn hard. Ended up only beating 4 of the 6 bosses.

    To be expected with brand new dungeons and under geared peeps though.

  60. 60.

    Sentient Puddle

    Me…I think I’ma just go with not liking any of the voice acting for the bosses. They more or less all seem too overwrought and not cheesy enough to me.

    @jayjaybear: I think they need to make Joust a daily quest. Although strangely enough, just about everyone I know utterly hated that section. I don’t know if they didn’t know basic physics or what, but they all say that it was damn near impossible for them to control the bird.

  61. 61.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Kevin:

    I’ll reserve judgment until I play V. I recall the same sort of initial gripes after III and IV were released, and I thought they were both big improvements over their predecessors- after I’d gotten the changes figured out.

    I’ve got to think that the stacking limits on V are hard to get used to, and, honestly, I think stacking is nothing better than a necessary evil.

    @Paul in KY:

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Toledo machine before. Had to google it- pretty plain jane table there. Here’s the first machine to really hook me. Very colorful.

  62. 62.

    Paul in KY

    @Marmot: No problem. I’m surprised Williams made that game. Liked the graphics & it worked! Blind squirrel, nut, etc. etc.

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    And third, is Bush really this immature?

    Um, what do you expect from a petulant deserting shitstain?

    “I want my comfortable pillow!”

    Sound familiar?

  65. 65.

    Juicetard (FKA Liberty60)

    Just got done talking with some buddies/
    I’ve known since vanilla/
    and we talked about all the hell we went through/
    raiding/
    with MC’s living bomb/
    who went into C’Thun’s room, etc.,/
    and I remembered this from BC/
    which makes me laugh every/
    time I load it.

    Just lacking William Shatner and a set of bongos.

  67. 67.

    mike the dealer

    I love Corla, Herald of Twilight’s kill line “There is only one true path of enlightenment. DEATH!” the way she says it is perfect. I like Cho’Gall’s two heads talking to.

  69. 69.

    Jody

    lol…we used to make the raid sing that when tempers started flaring.

    Didn’t always work, but it usually did.

  70. 70.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Mark S.: Burning Crusade
    or Before Christ. Take your pick.
    ;)
    @DarkSyde: are you the Real Darksyde?
    The Science Lord of the Great Orange Satan?

    I never got to play vanilla, im so jealous…i started midway thru BC.
    Algalon was my favorite.

    I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers’ flames. Their denizens fading without so much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and raised in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart, devoid of emotion… of empathy. I… have… felt… NOTHING! A million, million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?
    Perhaps it is your imperfection that which grants you free will. That allows you to persevere against cosmically calculated odds. You prevailed where the Titans’ own perfect creations have failed.

    The vindication of quantum uncertainty.
    ;)

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @piratedan: For me it was Spy Hunter. At some point I got good enough that I’d drop my quarter, play for an hour and then walk away.

    There was some motorcycle racing game, name escapes me, that I could do as well.

    My mom has a Ms Pacman machine at home. It took her 4 years of owning that, able to play on a whim before she could beat my high score, not having played it in 20 years. Every time she’d call I’d ask is she beat the score, and she’d grumble at me a bit and curse having brought me into this world.

  74. 74.

    ChrisS

    I never got to play vanilla, im so jealous…i started midway thru BC.

    WoW vanilla was my first MMORPG (well second to Trade Wars over the bbs), and I still remember impressed by everything I encountered from level to level and being awestruck by level 45 troll hunter wrecking Thundermar when I was only a 9th level pally. 45! How would I ever hit 45?

    I sold my first account before BC came out for $500. I kind of wish I had those toons back.

  78. 78.

    Martin

    Oh, and no love for Gauntlet? Fuck I loved that game when it came out. Could play it forever until they started dicking with the ROMs and made it impossible, then I mostly refused to give them my quarters because you could never tell if a machine was set to an acceptable difficulty or one where you couldn’t get past level 6 no matter what.

  79. 79.

    meh

    as I don’t have time to raid, i’ve turned to auction house PVP for my entertainment ingame. To toot my own horn, I am gold capped on my first toon last week! :)

  80. 80.

    Mark S.

    Geez:

    That’s why an increasing number of young adults are living with their parents — including “boomerang kids” who return after college. The percentage of young adults ages 19 to 29 who are living with their parents rose from 25% in 1980 to 34% in the late 2000s, Qian’s research shows.

    I would not have guessed it was that high.

  83. 83.

    Catsy

    @Rorgg: I was a huge Portal fan when the Orange Box first came out, so I’ve been jonesing for P2 myself. I have now been through it twice (and am working on the co-op with my kid) and do not regret a penny I spent on it. Highly recommended, especially if you played and enjoyed the first game. Do yourself a favor and watch all of the little Portal 2 teaser videos that Valve released; they enrich the background of Aperture a bit, don’t spoil any of the story, and are funny as all hell.

    Our whole family has been running around quoting it and singing the ending song.

  88. 88.

    goblue72

    @Martin: I totally forgot about Spy Hunter. Between that, Pole Position and Star Wars, I think that’s where most of my arcade quarters went as a kid. At least until Guantlet came out – its crazy how far dungeon delves games have come since then.

  89. 89.

    ruemara

    This kills me and I was just BC. Now we blow through this as a 2 man or run lowbies for gear. Try the new H Cata dungeons, it’s as irritating as vanilla, now with extra jerks & bigger stats.

  90. 90.

    Gravenstone

    @jayjaybear:

    All your games are belong to us! There’s actually a place in World of Warcraft where you more or less recreate Joust, right down to flight mechanics (which is vastly different from flying in the rest of the games).

    HATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATE that instance! Never played Joust, so had no idea what the fuck was going on. Ran into it for the first time in beta and was left literally screaming at my screen in frustration. Forced my was through it with my mage when Cata went live, but no other character has bothered. They accept the quest to go talk to the guy, talk to him for the exp/gold, then turn around and leave.

  91. 91.

    Southern Beale

    @Mark S. & @Geez:

    I was a “boomerang kid” during the Reagan Recession of 1984/85. Couldn’t find a job to save my life. I did “internships” at places hoping to get my foot in the door, which involved living three months in Pennsylvania, 6 months in Kentucky, etc. But I had to move home and live with my parents for a year and a half while I did secretarial work for money. Sucked big time. I decided to change careers and move to something more recession-proof, that’s how I ended up in Nashville.

    I think you see this during every recession.

  92. 92.

    Martin

    @Mark S.: There’s 5 other houses on my cul-de-sac. 4 have adult children living with parents. 3 of those have grandchildren as well. They’re setting a terrible example for my kids who are no older than middle school.

    Some of this is simply economic. A starter home here still costs half a million, and 20% down is now pretty much required once again. Rent for a 2BR place is ~$2K per month. 1BR is $1400. A couple starting out really needs two incomes to have any hope of putting any savings away, and getting started on a house, even without rent, will take at least 3-4 years.

    They’re deciding between living in some 1BR hole in a not-so-great neighborhood in order to save up, or bunking with mom and dad in a pretty nice neighborhood.

    Two of the neighbors took an interesting path. They used income from the kids to expand the home, add BRs and bath, etc. Maybe $75K or so worth of work – less than a down payment on a new home. The kids move in and they now have a decent amount of space and pay off the remodel loan. Grandkids show up, still have a decent amount of space but a little tight. The kids, rather than saving up for a new house, are saving up to buy out their parents. They’ll take over the big house, which they can use, and is now paid for and mom and dad will move to a new, smaller house since they no longer need the space for a whole family and the kids will pay the mortgage. Closing costs on a house here are north of $30K, so just eliminating transactions can save a bundle of money.

  93. 93.

    ruemara

    @Sentient Puddle: I loved that quest. it’s awesome new mechanics. That and bowling for gnomes while on fire.

    @jh:

    Damn. Jay louse. We can’t get past Malariak whatevs. Some weekends, we can’t get past Magmaw. :(

  94. 94.

    Martin

    @Catsy: Oh dear. My son makes Lego animations and loves Portal. He’s going to drive me insane placing Bricklink orders after seeing your stuff. It’s really fantastic work.

  95. 95.

    Tzal

    My fondest memory of Kara: My raid killed Illhoof and the Lightning Capacitor finally dropped. We had been farming that place for months without seeing that thing. I played a mage and lost it to a paladin who wanted it for PvP. /nerdrage.

  96. 96.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OK, all you WoW kiddies missed out on a very good game, with a lot of flaws: Star Wars Galaxies classic. My first MMO, and the best.

    What Blizz did was make an MMO that was pretty polished from the getgo, and that’s the thing that no other MMO outfit wants to do, because it takes time and effort…they’d rather just put something half-assed out and get immediate ROI.

  97. 97.

    Martin

    @goblue72: I started out with rogue-like games. Still like them. I haven’t gotten into the WOW stuff, mainly because I hang out with a lot of the Blizzard guys and I really don’t need the temptation of what they offer to hook me up with.

  101. 101.

    Ken

    Non geeks will not understand this, so you have been warned.

    Where is Barbara Billingsley to step forward and say, “Stewardess, I speak geek?”

  103. 103.

    piratedan

    @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): and the cheesy opening…. Eight Ball….deluxe! rack ’em up!

    always had to watch your six with Defender, damn game would launch right on your ass!

    @Steeplejack: yeah, that was it, I would always spin the dial once you got done killing off all those red scrunchies that looked like a special effect straight from the Outer Limits!

    loved that game!

    and loved playing the silver ball, spent many a day drinking cheap beer and playing pinball to decompress from school.

    sorry to hear that Civ 5 is a downer, I finally got past Civ iV on the Huge map at the Prince setting. Figured I needed a new hobby after that.

  104. 104.

    Martin

    @Catsy: Yeah, tell me about it. He’s got to have his room clean, including legos picked up and at least roughly sorted before an order can go through. That’s slowed things waaaaay down. We need a better storage/sorting arrangement for him, but he doesn’t exactly have tons of space.

  108. 108.

    Sloegin

    Been in since vanilla and I think I’m finally hitting my hard cap on tolerance of the game; just a case of too much stuff being phoned in by the devs the last couple years.

  110. 110.

    mattH

    Worst emote in Cata – “Break yourselves on my bo-dy… Feel the strength of the eaaarrrrth.”

    Been beat to it, but “Witness the power bestowed upon me by Deathwing! Feel the fury of earth!” is absolutely the worst voice acting in the expansion, with a close second the guy as you fly into Hyjal for the first time. Phoned in is right.

  111. 111.

    Suffern ACE

    @freelancer: Freelancer, dear. I’d like you to save that link as you posted and own it. I would like you to cut and paste that link on every open thread, as often as possible, until the 2012 election.

  114. 114.

    Internet Dragons

    That Shade of Aran chant still cracks me up =P

    Hope it’s OK to post this, but this youtube of my guild and the “frogger boss” still makes me giggle, too. The Druid doing all the rezzing is one of our raid leaders, who is (almost) always really good at avoiding deaths like that.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbqKJnVCuEw

  115. 115.

    Paul in KY

    @Linnaeus: Pretty sure, although this guy was younger than me by about 3 or 4 years (I was 23 at time, he was a teenager). Wonder if this Billy Mitchell guy ever lived in Biloxi?

    The trick this guy used would be to use the mushrooms being dropped all the time to build a ‘bridge’ (that’s what he called it) that would funnel the centipede to one location on screen & then you would blast it as it funneled down thru the only opening. The hard part was building the bridge & getting the opening just right so the centipede would come right stright down & be blasted (all while dodging the various stuff).

  116. 116.

    Paul in KY

    @kdaug: That was the game that broke me from playing coin operated video games. I was unemployed & I dropped $20.00 in quarters on it one day (circa 1985) & I just thought ‘what in the Hell are you doing’. Stopped playing them at that point.

    Would love to have my own home version of that game, though.

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