75 posts tagged “bitchbitchcomplaincomplain”
Depending on who you ask and what you consider "living", I've been in San Francisco for about 14 years now. Throughout all those years, I have never "experienced" Bay to Breakers until moving to Fell Street. Essentially for those of you who don't live in the Northern Death nor participate in debauchery, Wikipedia describes it as so:
The Bay to Breakers is an annual footrace which takes place in San Francisco, California. The name reflects the fact that the race starts at the northeast end of the downtown area a few blocks from The Embarcadero (adjacent to the bay) and runs west through the city to finish at the Great Highway (adjacent to the Pacific coast, where breakers crash onto Ocean Beach). The race is 7.46 miles (12 kilometers) long, and is run on the third Sunday in May.
Sounds fun right? I mean, foot races happen all the time in all sorts of cities. Kinda boring to watch but nothing spectacular happens. Well, that would be all good and fun if Bay to Breakers (B2B) was actually a foot race.
"But Grace, that makes no sense!" you might say. Sense cannot be made, it must be sensed. And so my story begins.
Completely unrelated, the night before (Saturday) I had tried to get some sleep early knowing at the warnings of my boyfriend that B2B was going to start at 6AM. Unfortunately my efforts were circumvented by my shitty new next door neighbours who must have missed the memo, by throwing a party the night before. Seemingly a dozen and a half people bled out of their apartment between 1:30AM and 3:30AM, out onto the street below my window, being loud and drunk. Needless to say, I got probably three hours of sleep before I was awakened in the early morning by periodic..
WOOOOO!!
By 10AM, my block is filled to the brim with the variety of frat kids and naked old men. I'm being completely serious. There were tons of naked old men. You don't seem to understand so let me try and make you understand: NAKED, OLD MEN WITH PENISES DANGLING FOR ALL TO SEE, WALKING SLOWLY AS TO BLIND YOU AS WELL AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. DO NOT LOOK AWAY MY YOUNG FRIEND, FOR STARING AT IT WILL IMBUE YOU WITH MAGICAL POWERS OF VOMITING ON COMMAND. The naked old men had nothing on the frat kids though, believe it or not, who felt compelled to leave a wave of trash and destruction in their wake. Though I couldn't help but wonder how the naked men were going to get home, even going so far as to call my father and ask if they let naked people on the bus. His reply, "well, they probably have to get a newspaper or something to sit on, but I think they're let on." My dad is awesome.
I had a front row view from my third floor apartment window. Perhaps the worst fact of all is that when I took a shower at 9AM, that was the only silence I heard for the rest of the day. I was so tired, I swear I fell asleep a couple of times in there.
After experiencing the pain of hideous, poorly dressed and/or naked people drinking, getting drunk, puking, falling off their man-made faux floats, I decided to go into the eye of the storm. At this point, I had started drinking myself as to calm my insatiable anger. I'm a small girl with no health insurance or attorney, so I cannot afford to go beating people up. When I entered Hell's mouth (read: I went downstairs), I found that my apartment building's door was WIDE FREAKING OPEN, as apparently one of my neighbours throws a party or something during B2B.
Call me paranoid, but back when I lived in a different neighbourhood, not even a stone's throw away, we never left our doors open. Simply because people would come in and steal stuff. That's just the way San Francisco is. So standing outside my own front door, every single person who went in made me slightly more anxious. But the good news is, from the street, you can't see that many people flooding my block, so maybe I was spared seeing a few more naked old men.
Words cannot describe how many people were on my block in either direction. There was literally almost no room to move even on the side walk. I had to often times carry my dog because people were drunk and liable to trample him. If the people didn't crush him, the leagues of broken glass on the ground would have hurt him. In short, people were rude, drunk, and littered EVERYWHERE. I live across the street from a park, and the entirety of the park was covered in plastic cups and other alcoholic paraphernalia.
My boyfriend assured me that the chaos would end and I could sleep at noon. But noon came and went. No police came to shut down the party. And people just kept on getting more and more drunk. There were people passed out on the grass in the park across the street. Girls crying (sad drunks, lols) and more naked people. My father had left early in the morning to go to the finish line to take pictures, by 10AM he had returned home already. I called him up and asked him if he wanted to see the horrors that were occurring in front of my apartment. He sounded unenthusiastic and I don't blame him.
More time passed as the foot race turned block party got out of hand. And eventually, before 2PM, the cops tried shuffling people out of the streets so "clean up" could occur. But even after the city cleaners drenched my street in washing liquid, and other cleaners pressurized water hoses got my side walk, there was still the mess in the park and tons of drunk people sifting up and down my side walk looking for a party or just plain hammered.
After the atrocity of human existence was over, reading more peoples' complaints, I've come to realise that I was lucky. Sure, I was woken up early and had to deal with what could be construed as the seventh ring of Hell, I had the severe luck of living down the block from a plethora of porta-potties. Numerous people complained after the "race", that the college kids and general failures at life were peeing and pooping on their stoops, on their front doors, on their garage doors, in their flowers, or even stepping in the stuff and tracking it into their home.
For all the years I've been here, I have been blessed to have avoided this horribleness by living elsewhere. Now that I have experienced Bay to Breakers, my intense hatred for this city and the general area has intensified to a point where I have to not think about it, lest my brain explode.
The best/worst part? The drunk girl passed out in front of my apartment door. I was going to call an ambulance for her, just to be a dick because ambulance bills are expensive and people need to learn how much they can drink, but I got lazy and didn't want to touch her if the 911 operator asked me if she had a pulse. Basically I hate my new next door neighbours.
Arcane Surge is the Scryer rep proc effect from the Shattered Sun Offensive's healing necklace. It's an increasingly underwhelming effect that applies additional heals on your target. So if you heal so-and-so for X amount, it has a chance to proc and heal your target for an additional 600-700. This amount is not effected by +heal, if your heal critical'd (though the amount of heal will be higher you've spec'd into crit), or anything else of the nature. It simply has a chance to proc an additional heal between those numbers.
When I got the necklace, I wasn't sure it was working because unlike the Aldor reputation effect, it has no graphic display. Then eventually I started thinking: how does this work with chain heal?
I figured it either proc'd and divided the heal across the three people, or it simply proc'd and healed the first person in the chain. Little did I know, I was horribly wrong and it was even more useless than I thought.
I gathered a warlock in IF and cast chain heal across me, them, and their pet until the neck proc'd. Eventually I realised after three procs that Arcane Surge only effects one person in the chain, and the person it effects in the chain is completely and totally random. And now I am sad and disappointed and wish I had chosen Aldor instead.
At least I have a hott tabard that isn't purple.
Eh, not as comforting as I thought.
I always find myself wanting to start every Vox entry with the line, "I wasn't going to post this but.." because frankly the only time I write here is when I'm distraught, bored, or distraught. And a Twitter entry cannot fully capture how angry I am right now.
Boyfriend wanted to rent Hostel, which I've already seen but he hasn't, so I figured we might as well rent Saw because I hadn't seen it and never watched the sequels because I'm OCD about watching sequels without having watched the first one. We decided to watch Saw first which was a horrible but awesome idea.
Can I just tell you that I in no way, shape, or form understand why anyone in this world likes Saw, or why it bothered spinning off (contracts have been signed) FIVE movies? The first movie is one big cock tease with less structure than the original Ju-on movies (Grudge movies). Let's write a whole bunch of flashbacks with maybe only one or two killing scenes that are edited in spinning camera, fast motion that gives Grace a headache/nausea. Then let's string together a whole bunch of useless shit and long dialogue. Maybe I'm angry because I was expecting more foot-cutting-off'ing, or more gorey traps, or more length spent covering those gorey traps. Maybe you'll tell me, "Grace, you're such a plebeian because it's all about the idea of what you would do if you were in that situation." If I wanted that sort of rubbish, I would watch Fear Factor or some other crap, because when I watch a movie, I want satisfaction. And when I watch a horror movie, I want a body count, I want gore, I want to feel uncomfortable but mostly I want to laugh.
The minute I turned on the DVD, I started fast-forwarding through the lengths and lengths of monologues. The minute I saw Danny Glover, maybe I should have realised that the movie was going to be horrible and not what I wanted. Maybe when I realised that the guy from Princess Bride lost his chin cleft and got deliciously fat, I should have stopped watching. And maybe after the rubbish part about the drug addict girl fixing her life because she had to kill a man to get a key should have been the time I just threw my arms up and switched to Hostel.
Either way, I lost forty-five minutes (thanks fast-forward button) of my life to that rubbish. Yes, Princess Bride guy cuts his foot off, but it's like, five minutes til the end and it's not even that interesting. And the effects are so lousy, you can tell he still has his foot under his long, fake blood saturated trouser leg. I hated the two characters trapped in the room, and I don't want to hate the guy from Princess Bride. Thanks for ruining that for me you stupid Australians. The idiotic Adam character doesn't even die on screen. He gets locked in a room to rot, how boring. I was not scared or thrilled or intrigued. I don't even care who Jig-saw is, because he has colon cancer and a brain tumor, that's not even the most interesting cancer you can have.
I can't even compare Hostel to Saw, because it's like really delicious oranges compared to rotten apples, but no maggots coming out because that would be too satisfying. The first time I saw Hostel in the theater, my face hurt from laughing so much. It's such a good time. And upon further viewings, it's still good and hilarious. If anything, you appreciate it more because some movies just lose their enjoyment after you know what's going to happen. I know that guy is going to get his tendons cut, but it's still funny when he gets up to try and leave and his ankle rips open. I know that other guy is going to get his fingers cut off, but I still think it's funny when he goes back to get them. And while I hate Takashi Miike's movies (rofl Great Yokai War), I think his cameo is so horrible and cute. "Be careful. You could spend all your money... in there."
Anyway, my rage has subsided and I'm distracted so whatever. Go watch Hostel and laugh your head off. Sure, Danny Glover doesn't get shot and that Asian guy from LOST who can talk to ghosts doesn't get his head blown off by a rifle (which you're not shown in the movie, which angered me deeply), but a British Chinese girl playing a Japanese girl loses an eye and there are tons of fake boobs and the ending will please you.
I stayed up for an error message? Immediately after I saw that, I just went back to sleep. Slept four hours and here I am, awake enough to try and figure this out.
And I had no success with the uninstalling and reinstalling of Flash 9. Boyfriend who works with Flash at work says the guy who made the website is either fucking with us or really, sincerely doesn't know anything about Flash and fucked up. We did a sexy Flash version check, even. There has to be a reason, however, that some people can view the page while others cannot, so I'm sending the URL to my best friend out in DC and my ex in LA to see if they can view it. You can never be too sure. I've tried grabbing this website on a PC and on a Powerbook and still no dice.
Boyfriend just suggested I delete cookies (or just find the specific one) to see if that makes any difference. I deleted specifically all cookies relating to maiasturn.com, emergencysubnet.com, and a few other random ones. Didn't make a difference. I have my best scientists working on this. I'm going to go carve a mountain out of mashed potatoes.
As of 1020AM PST, they did not foresee my ability to press refresh over and over again! Boyfriend pinged the server so it's still up. Also semi-worth noting, maiasturn.com and emergencysubnet.com's servers are both located in the UK.
I've melted my brain watching tacky Vashj videos this morning, fearing imminent spyware/virus attacks while watching them. All I've learned from these videos, as a shaman healer, is that I'll be doing what I've been doing this whole time: spamming chain heal. If I get lucky, I'll get to stand next to a shield generator, then I'll really be doing what I do most fights: standing stationary AND spamming chain heal. I understand in phase 3, the ground will be covered in hurty green slime and that moving will be utterly important, but I don't think we'll get past phase 2 on our first day of attempts. We'll spend too much time complaining about wiping, people AFK'ing without saying anything, and repeated requests for certain buffs going unheeded.
The reason why I hate watching WoW videos is because 1: the video is normally edited in a manner that gives me a headache, as I can't tolerate too much screen shaking, tilting or motion blurring (I had a dreadful headache after Blair Witch Project), 2: the music used in these videos is absolutely horrible, usually trance or some Urban Outfitters crap, and 3: I have to see peoples' UI set-ups. I never understand how they can see past all the stuff on their screen when they only have a small window in which to see things. I personally can't stand my UI, and if I could, I'd just use two buttons or something.
A week and almost a half ago, I was recruited into a progression raiding guild. I was so happy to at last be raiding every night of the week (sans Friday and Saturday) and to have a schedule that actually occurred.. to be in a guild that had people who seemed just as motivated to raid, or could at least show up on time. Anxious about the future, I gave up any plan I had to transfer servers.
Last night, my guild's Ventrilo went down. I thought nothing of it. When I woke up this morning, it was still down. I still thought nothing of it. I went out, had some coffee, got my fifteen minutes of sun then semi-rushed home for my scheduled raid at 4PM, excited about rounding off my Tier 4 set with Gruul's tokens. While waiting for WoW to load, I check the server forums only to find a thread posted that my GM/raid leader has packed his bags and left the server for greener pastures.. abandoning everyone in the guild and giving no notice whatsoever.
The minute I log in, I get flooded with whispers that pretty much all say the same thing: "omgomgomgomgomgomg."
Two dozen of us sitting in guild channel, pure textual anarchy. People pointing fingers, people QQ'ing, people trying to pull things together and plan for the future. Like after a family member's death, we all progressed through the 12 steps of coping differently.
Naturally me and a few others had our spirits broken. Lost and confused, it was hard to pull myself through even the most rudimentary tasks of healing. A lot of the time I wanted to blame other people for things that were so obviously my fault. And while others are hopeful about my guild's future, I can't help but sit and wonder if any other server will take me into their progression guild.
My heart is broken and there's nothing left on this server for me.. but I haven't enough cards on the table to transfer somewhere where I can be of more use. Things are tough right now because the lynch pin of the guild is gone and my only excuse for tolerating the other people that surround me has gone up and left us all. And while I know for a fact that he didn't leave because of me (due to unmentionable confirmation), I can't help but feel like it's my fault anyway.
I'm hoping tomorrow I'll feel better but I know tomorrow when I wake up, I won't be raiding at 4PM. I'll be too morose to PVP. And I'll probably just sit in a capital city sulking.
Dear priests,
I know you could never tell but I use to play a priest too. I understand how it is. You sacrifice healing for survival or vice versa. Healing people is a thankless job.. but you know why? Because it's a job. That's your class. You heal stuff. No one is going to expect you to rock out the DPS or tank a boss. You might feel you're entitled to a parade because you keep everyone in your group alive, but quite frankly, your group keeps you alive. It is with this symbiotic relationship that any of us are able to survive.
You might feel sometimes that you're being robbed of good gear. I don't think so. In any game, there's usually no other cloth wearer who can benefit from healing gear. If you feel your guild or group is short-changing you, speak up but remember, throwing fits gets no one anywhere.
Oh, and I understand how frustrating it is to politely ask persons to do something contrary to what they're doing currently as so you can heal them properly. Your anger might even cement itself in meaningful threats. It's always important to make a good impression, no matter how well you know people, so it's probably not good to purposely let everyone in your group die simply out of frustration. Put in the good effort even if these people are making your life hard, so long as you speak up. Some people are slower to learn than others.. and well, some people never learn at all. In which case, you should learn not to group with said person.
Be the master of your own destiny and please stop being douchebags. Stand up for yourself without being overly dramatic or crude. Be patient and understand that healing is indeed your job. Your role couldn't very well be adequately replaced by any other class, but on the other hand, you couldn't very well solo the tasks at hand.
It is unfortunate that I haven't met a good, mild tempered, non-jerk priest in years.
- gm
