Jar Of Eyeballs

Here’s something that’s been bugging me for a while, and so far nobody has provided a satisfying answer. It concerns Lord Of The Rings, more specifically Return Of The King. First of all, I love these movies. Truly epic masterpieces. I have attempted to read the books several times, but every time I stopped reading for some reason and by the time I picked it up again, I lost track of the story. I hope to finish all books one day, because there’s a lot of stuff in there that didn’t make it into the movies.

But here’s what’s been bugging me. They have to take the ring into Mordor and throw it into the lava in Mount Doom. The problem is, Mordor is surrounded by mountains and swarming with orcs. Good thing, because without all that it would have been a pretty boring journey (probably consisting of Sam asking Frodo “Are we there yet?” every five minutes). Whe  they finally make it and manage to destroy the ring, Mount Doom erupts and they are trapped on a rock, surrounded by lava. Luckily, they are rescued by Gandalf who comes to their aid on a huge bird.

So that’s where the plothole comes into play. Gandalf can apparently get help from giant birds; he used them once to escape from Saruman’s tower. But why the hell didn’t they just use these freaking birds to get to Mordor? Just hop on one of them, fly to Mordor, drop the ring into the crater and voila, bye bye evil lurking presence of the Dark Lord. Since I haven’t read the books yet it might end differently there (if it does, don’t tell me!), but at least in the movies, it’s a gigantic, unforgivable mistake. Peter Jackson could at least have thought of a different escape route or explained why they didn’t take the birds in the first place.

Can someone answer this for me? Why didn’t they take the birds to get the ring into Mordor? Was the “Eye of Sauron” on his tower equipped with some sort of laser beam to shoot down the birds? Did the orcs have surface-to-air missiles (and don’t tell me they would have shot down the birds with bows and arrows, birds of that size could easily fly high enough to be out of range; besides, Gandalf didn’t seem to have any trouble escaping Saruman’s tower, even though it was surrouded by Orcs)?

I just realized I never talked about World of Warcraft here, while I’ve been playing it for quite a while now. I started playing a few months after Wrath of the Lich King was released, and the first character I made was a night elf hunter. Pretty classic choice, huh? Since this was my first character I had a hard time getting enough gold at first. Back then you had to be level 35 to get a mount but it wasn’t until I was almost level 40 that I got it. Yeah, it sucked! Now if only I got started on the same realm as my brother, then he could have given me some cash. Anyway, when I finally got it things sped up considerably. A while ago this hunter, named Chabuzal, reached level 80, making it my first level 80 character.

A bit of advice for new players: for your first character, pick mining and skinning for making money. Don’t combine mining and herbalism, because you’ll be switching tracking skills all the time. Oh, and a little thing you should know: at level 80, skinning becomes practically useless for making money. Mining is more profitable and you’ll be making tons of cash from daily quests. I already considered dumping it for a crafting profession.

Besides this hunter I have a few other characters. One of them is a rogue, but I only played it until level 11. Some day I’ll probably continue this character. I also have a warlock, wich is level 28 now. Haven’t played with that one in quite a while either. My main focus now is my draenei shaman. He’s level 19 now. The reason I started this character is basically that I suck big time when it comes to instances and raids, and I got a bit bored with my hunter. Oh, and I also have a death knight, but I barely played it beyond the starting area.

For the shaman, I picked herbalism and inscription. The draenei starting area is really excellent for kick-starting herbalism, I got it to about 140 before I even left the area! I’m also a bit surprised about the money making possibilities of inscription. At level 10, I was able to craft armor vellum I could sell for a very nice amount of gold!

This is just too crazy for words. Anti-gaming douchebag Jack Thompson has returned and is sueing Facebook for 120 million. The reason? Facebook hasn’t removed content mocking him. If you don’t know who this retard is, Jack Thompson is a former lawyer (more on the “former” part later) who blames everything that goes wrong in society on video games. All youth crime and violence is to blame on games, even if the criminal never played video games.

The guy is also a flaming retard. He sued Take 2, the developer of Grand Theft Auto, for a fucking ping pong game! And he’s a popular target of ridicule in several gaming-related webcomics, such as the magnificent Penny Arcade. He even ran into trouble with the creators of Penny Arcade after they humiliated him bigtime. A few years ago, Jack Thompson promised to give $10000 to a charity if someone made a game about someone taking revenge on the gaming industry. Such a game was made, but Thompson refused to cough up the money, claiming his offer was satirical. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the creators of Penny Arcade, then donated the money instead, with the comment “For Jack Thompson, because Jack Thompson won’t”. This resulted in a lawsuit (again), with Thompson claiming Holkins and Krahulik were harassing him.

In 2007, he was disbarred for acting like a jackass. The court even wanted his mental health examined, though you don’t really need a psychiatrist to tell he’s nuts, of course. Being the idiot he is, he plans to continue his job as if he never was disbarred, though. And now he’s sueing Facebook. There are quite a lot of groups on Facebook ridiculing and mocking him. There’s even a few that threaten him, but those usually get removed. Thompson, however, wants everything criticizing him removed. He sent several faxes to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding the content to be removed. That’s like sending a fax to the president to complain about an annoying neighbour!

So apparently, Jack Thompson doesn’t like freedom of speech. Okay, you shouldn’t say stuff like “Kill Jack Thompson”. Encouraging violence isn’t free speech. But saying he’s a douchebag, retard, moron, jackass, imbecile or motherfucker is. So go ahead, Jack Thompson, sue me! Oh, wait, you can’t, because I’m in Belgium and you’re in the USA. And guess what, you’re as unpopular here as you are there!

If there’s only one sitcom every self-respecting geek has to watch it’s The IT Crowd. As you can guess by the name, it’s about a group of IT people. They spend most of the day in the basement of their office building, in their incredibly messy office (wich, when watched closely, contains all sorts of references to geek and pop culture). So far, three seasons have been made. The third season was a bit of a disappointment. During season 2, the CEO of Reynholm Industries, the employer of the IT guys, commits suicide when asked about irregularities in the pension fund. During the funeral, his long-lost son turns up and inherits everything, making him a main character on the show. Unfortunately, his character is annoying and embarrasing rather than funny.

The best episode ever in the third season was episode four. Jen, the boss of the IT guys (who knows nothing about computers and got the job by lying), has to give a speech to the shareholders. Afraid to make a fool of herself, she asks the guys to write a good speech for her. They come up with the idea of giving her a box wich they claim contains the entire internet, and will cause the end of the world when dropped. Unfortunately, the shareholders are as dumb as Jen and believe the story. When the box is accidentially dropped and destroyed, panic breaks out (Oh my god, we’re all gonna diiieeeeee!) and the geeks get the chaos they wanted after all.

Rumours about a fourth season already emerged a while ago, and now it has been confirmed. It will air somewhere next year, but a Christmas special might also be on the way. I hope they will bring Richmond back. A character from the first two seasons, Richmond was a goth who was locked in the basement because of his annoying behaviour. He wasn’t in season three because Noel Fielding, the actor playing Richmond, had other things scheduled. Let’s hope we’ll see him back!