If you listen very closely, you can hear my IQ slipping away one point at a time.

There are some people that are stupid but they hide it well. Its actually pretty easy to do. It doesn't take much to figure how to do something by Rote memorization, avoiding past failures, trying not to repeat them. But there are some that are proud of their stupidity. They treat it like a pet of some kind. Grooming it, feeding it, nuturing it. And it grows and flourishes, spreading the stupidity to those around it like some kind of mental ebola. These people need to be registered with the CDC or some such organization, for they are the vectors of this plight. Patient zero of the disease we call stupidity.

/sigh. I needed one of those biohazard suits last night.

I have noticed that this stupidity spreads everywhere and to every facet of life, even the games we play. In this case, it is the cliquish nature of people. Some treat FFXI as if it were some kind of virtual high school, with our own jocks, nerds and fuck all stupid little groups. But since the lesser of us are unable to differentiate on physcial appearance or class rank in a digital world, they classify on gear and job selection. This is the correlary to the conversation I had with Draconum. A fine juxtapositioning of the best and brightest reasons to play, and the most base and low-brow. I am not naive, I understand that certain aspects of this game require some jobs, healers, tanks, support, melee. But I am also not naive to the fact that some beleive that only certain jobs can fill those roles. And some of those people still live in 2004, as if SE had just fixed the problem of multi-hit weaponskills.

It is so very small minded to assign value to a player based upon their current job, as this game was instilled with the essence of job fluidity. The "loldrg" you are mocking today could also be the BLM you need for your end-game LS. The "zomg gimp you dont have HQz" RNG you are mocking today could also be the Adaberk WAR you will need for your burn party next week. Using gear and job selection as a means to feed your digital ego, your e-peen, is just a pathetic as it was in high school. Sadly, there is no graduatation to a wider existance that rebalances the world of Vana'diel. There is only dissatisfaction with end-game, a lack of self-realization of how to have fun, regret at time invested, followed by resentment for that time now considered lost, finished ultimately by eBay where the small minded go when the believe that they are "owed" by the forces of the universe (ie. SE) to be reimbursed for that time. Here is a little shocker for the small-minded. There is no eBay at the end of your life, a shallow existance will still be unfulfilled. There is no receipt that which you can deliver to the great HR department in the sky.

I enjoyed that rant more than any other so far. Would you like to see what spurred it on? I know you would. Thats right, you only have opinions, and your opinions suck. The funny thing about people these days is that they believe that the ability to form an opinion some how leads credence to that opinion. That idea provides me so much entertainment.

On to life in Vana'diel. We started out with Borin, Azy, Omoi and I running around in Altepa hold the AF NM for some RMT NIN's. It was a lot of fun, we ran it around the whole zone, and in general annoyed the RMT's. I love it when RMT's pretend to be normal players until you call them RMT. Then they call you "pig" or some other insult, when any normal players would have denied being an RMT. The RMT are getting a little better at hiding it, but are still pretty damn obvious. And I still completely hate them.

After our fun with the RMT, we headed out to camp Ungur, and he popped after the first set of placeholders (and a whole lot of Omoi induced death). I didn't get a screenshot of Ungur. Yeah, I completely boned that one. But I did get a shot of Azeryus with her new Ungurang. Yeah for Azy! \(^.^)/ We also tried to get Amikiri to pop but no luck there. Besides, I was getting tired and I really wanted to get started on my RNG.

So I geared up my ranger as best I could, as there isn't really much available at level 24 besides Lizard gear. I was going to solo worms on Qufim Island with Omoi, but as we were killing a Weapon (which did not drop a Kaiser Sword -.-;) I got an invite in Kazham, so we headed down there. I got a decent amount of xp from that, but I was so tired that I could only stay for a little while, not to mention it was impossible to pull considering the fact that there were something like 3 parties of RMT bastards botting away and stealing all of the mobs.
I did stay long enough to get to 25 on my RNG. I wish I could have stayed longer but I was about to pass out and it was already really late. Well, getting a level is always an accomplishment so it was nice to have that done.
As a complete sidenote, I wanted to mention that I think Borin is one of the funniest people I have met in the game, he says some of the most hilarious stuff, and the banter that he has with Omoi is comedy club quality. And then sometimes, he just says things that makes me laugh so hard that I am crying. Like this: You can pair this with an Omoi comment from last night, that I am still trying to figure out. It reminds me of a Lewis Black joke where he overheard someone say "If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." Yeah, don't think about that too long, you might die. The universe operates on simple knowledges and truths. Trying to figure out why you might need an onion to make a hotdog may rend a gaping hole in that simple universe, unleashing demonic entities from the void.