Tom Delonge told Rolling Stone in a recent interview about his new band “Angels and Airwaves.” He said he listened to The Police and U2 among other stadium-filling bands for inspiration in creating his new band’s debut album. He also said he didn’t listen to Radiohead or any other “artsy” bands, because they don’t fill stadiums.

I care about Tom Delonge and Blink 182 because of my adolecent attachment to the band, but like I said, he’s out of his stupid mind. After reading this, I searched Mark Hoppus in google news, hoping for a response, hoping he doesn’t disregard his old band’s music as lesser and juvenile the way Tom does. Maybe he had insider info on his old friend- a comforting explanation. Maybe Tom got mauled by a couger.

I didn’t find anything.

Actually, now that I think of it, Mark doesn’t care about anything in the world. I can recall seeing Mark on TV twice since the band broke up. The former punk rocker was on HGTV or some other gardening channel giving the home audience a tour of his back yard. The second sighting was when Mark accompanied Cameron Diaz and a few of her close buddies as they rode elephants and slept in tents and said bad words when they saw big spiders. “Dude, I’m not going one step closer to that nasty motherf*cker.” *Lots of laughter*

I can understand Tom’s annoyance with “artsy” bands, because when “artsy” bands are talent-less, they are very annoying.

But worse than the pursuit of “artsy” is the pursuit of filling stadiums and listening to U2 (especially from Joshua Tree on) for inspiration. Oh, and having a former Offspring member in your new band as Tom does is pretty bad too.

Around the turn of the Millenium in Poway, CA, where I spent much of my time, a huge topic of debate was whethor or not Blink “sold out.” Yeah, that question pops up when any band gets big or bigger, but this was especially the case for Blink who cleaned up their sound considerably for a punk band. The topic has sinced died because people really don’t care these days, though a general consensus was never really reached.

But I think everyone in Poway will agree that there is absolutley no debate over whethor or not Tom is selling out with “Angels & airwaves” (that name is stupid). Absolutely yes he is. He is an admitted overwhelming sell-out. One who leaves his band for something more “epic,” something “better,” that will fill stadiums (Blink 182 didn’t sell enough? What?) when your kids kids don’t need to worry about money is the truest definition of a sell-out.”

But like I said no one really cares.

“Why did you write about gay Blink182 in your gay blog Gwar? You’re gay.”

Yeah, that’s the link to Aaron Litchfield’s myspace page in the title. I can paste in the title section but not the body. WTF Nosy? I would have posted the whole damn thing in the title section, but it was to big.

Anyhow, on myspace, I explain (among other things) that my fandom of Blink182 is based on an adolecent attachment. This is to ensure that everyone knows I would never really be interested in the lame, juvenile band if I wasn’t from the same hometown as them. (Well sort of. Adam could talk, he smoked mary jane with the band when they were shit and played in backyards. Old Solse is a humble fucker- doesn’t ever really bring that up. I’m the big fan and I never smoked with them or anything. If you want to know the truth, I probably would have been a big fan if I grew up in Kinosha Wisconson. Give me a break OK? They appealed to me as a 16 year old girl-hater. Whatever, fuck you if you think I’m gay. Weezer’s my favorite band anyway. You all know that. I even made a reference to them between these parenthesis. $5 {American dollars Nosy} to the first person to find it.)

Anyway I write in this thing that Tom Delonge of Blink is out of his mind. He’s in this new band that he honestly feels will blow the world away. But I’m sure they suck.

Hey Nosy and Yerface, I commented on your comments to my last thing if you haven’t read it yet. I ask many questions.

So yeah, I don’t know my way around the computer. I know. I know shit about the fucking interweb. All you World of War Craft fuckers can have your jokes about me. Let’s hear it man.

I already did some coverage about how the gold farming business is killing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (mmorpg’s) as you can see it covered here. I just happen to find an interesting website recently that cover and take a stand against the gold farming practice in online games. As mmorpg’s getting more and more popular since their commercial introduction in 1997, the practice of gold farming is getting more popular than ever reaching obscene levels lately with hugely popular games like World of Warcraft and Lineage 2.

The main problems associated with gold farming in mmorpg’s are mainly that they screw up the virtual economies over time and the fact that some unscrupulous companies set up so called gold farming sweat shops in which people are forced to work insane hours with piss poor work conditions for ridiculous wages. It should be noted also that gold farmers also affect the gaming experience of the ‘legit’ (non-farmers) players by making resources or monsters/quests acquiring harder than it was initially planed by the mmorpg’s developers by farming the same resources or monsters over and over.

“As referenced here in my blog and as many of you already know, IGE is a slave driving sweatshop business. But of course they don’t admit it, they pay children (16 years) China/Japan/Korea and other poor countries to sit in un-air-conditioned warehouses to play 12 hours a day for 1$ an hour. Tomo and I had walked by a room with over 20 over worked / tired and miserable adults and teenagers sitting in front of computers playing World of Warcraft. We were both sick, we had written scripts so that they could sit in front of computers all day to make no where near enough money to get by.

Yes it is their decision they are not slaves but they are being taken advantage of and everyone who buys gold (I’m sure most of WoW’s player base) supports it. We walked into that office took the check, and reported the building to authorities. It was shut down and moved I am sure to a different place within a week.”

A must see for everyone concerned about gold farming practice, or just playing a mmorpg, the No Gold website can be found here.

My name is Aaron. Every now and then I try to wow people with some funny shit I brilliantly observe from my fucking mundane life. Truth is I have no fucking clue about fucking anything and I try to avoid situations where people suggest certain things I should do to improve my skills as a fucking writer. Like this:
“A good writer has learned to react to his criticism.” Fuck Fuck Fuck.

I also use this site to say “fuck,” “shit,” and even fucking “goddam” every now and then cause it’s like a release for me to do that. Even though sometimes my mom reads stuff and my brother Adam (one of the few subjects I write about, my genius is pretty broad) says “Mom read what you wrote and she’s pissed.”

Maybe you thought it was just a joke. Or an urban legend. A Shoggoth on the Roof: The Musical is a real Broadway-style musical blasphemously combining the works of HP Lovecraft with A Fiddler on the Roof.

If you have a thing for Lovecraft or tentacles and do not mind losing some sanity in the process I urge you to get your hand on the mp3’s of A Shoggoth on the Roof: The Musical. A must hear album for all the demented Broadway aficionados out there. Utuk xul ta ardata. Kakht aktamen ias selah motherfuckers.

A Shoggoth on the roof website here.
A Shoggoth on the roof mp3’s here.

It’s a sad known fact that after more than a year since public release the classes of World of Warcraft could still use some tweaking and adjustment due to some obvious bugs and issues causing imbalance mostly in PvP (player vs player) situations. The official forums are full of threads in the line of “zomfg@$it’s the broken fikzit!” and the like. But on occasion you come across the post of a disgruntled player that makes you smile. This is exactly what happened this morning.

Lujan a warrior from the Ubiquitous guild on the Blackrock World of Warcraft server had a grip about how Bloodthirst, the high-end talent of the Fury specification, worked and the frustration that may result from bad design decisions.

Each of the nine classes of World of Warcraft are broke down into tree sub-classes called specification or specs for short. The 3 warrior spec trees are called Arms, Fury and Protection. Bloodthirst is the top end talent of the Fury tree making it in theory the most powerful power of that specification.

Basically what Lujan is saying is that the talent could use some developer attention because the way it works now makes Arms specification, with its high-end talent called Mortal Strike, the only really viable choice for the Warrior class when it comes to dealing high burst damage. The Protection tree being useless at best for PvP.

Lujan World Of Warcraft thread about Bloodthirst here.
Issues about the Warrior classe here.

Stephen Harper is an asshole. It is a well-known fact. Actually it is his full time job. It is what he his most remembered for, being an asshole. But we must not forget that Stephen Harper also work part time as Prime Minister of Canada since January something-who-cares 2006. Basically at the last elections the Canadians had 2 choices, well maybe 3 if you happened to live in Quebec because you could vote for the poutine party of Gilles Duceppe, anyways.

The first choice were the Liberals – Lead by Paul Martin the Liberal Party of Canada is formed of uber pseudo left wings douche bags who stole millions from its own people, as reported in the Sponsorship Scandal, for more than 10 years and thought they could get away with it. They must be laughing and fucked us good because even if there was a masquerade of a trial and investigation called the Gomery Commission most of the actors of the Sponsorship Scandal did get away with it.

The second choice was the Conservative Party of Canada – Lead by old time right wing fucker Stephen Harper who, being the political mastermind equivalent of Pinkie from Pinkie & The Brain, decided to soften his hard-core views and try to dupe the Canadians into thinking he was not such of a ‘bad guy’ after all.

It was like trying to decide between a fucking pile of shit and a pile of fucking shit. Both taste like shit, smell like shit, feel like shit it’s just that the words and letters don’t seems to come from the same Alphagetti bowl you know. Anyways, eventually a pile of fucking shit got elected as the Prime Minister of Canadass. End of story.

The Igloolounge.net was down at the time of the election and so we kind of missed on the action this is why we decided do a quick picture recap of Stephen Harper’s victory along with some of his most famous quotes.

“The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things.”

“The NDP could be described as basically a party of liberal Democrats, but it’s actually worse than that, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again, but the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.”

“I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it’s legendary that if you’re like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.”

“I don’t know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.”

“I have always said that controversial issues of a moral or religious nature, such as abortion, should be settled by free votes of MPs, not by party policy.”

“For taxpayers, however, it’s a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender. Both men and women taxpayers will pay additional money to both men and women in the civil service. That’s why the federal government should scrap its ridiculous pay equity law.”

“It is simply difficult – extremely difficult – for someone to become bilingual in a country that is not. And make no mistake. Canada is not a bilingual country. In fact it less bilingual today than it has ever been… So there you have it. As a religion, bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness, produced no unity and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions.”

Stephen Harper’s quotes are taken from In Their Own Words.

Welcome to the first edition of the Triple F’s Thursdays, a new feature at the Igloolounge.net. As the name imply, in this supposedly weekly post, we will send our hounds to the far end of the internet and get back to you with the best of what’s still free on the damn web. Like Vasco Da Gama who sailed the seven seas and beyond for cheap ass opium, the Igloolounge will scum the Net for loot and booty while redefining the meaning of the word ‘dirty fucking cheap’ in the process. The year is 2006, we are breathing the information age and Ronald Reagan’s fucking dead so there are no good reasons as to why crackheads on a tight budget should be left out in the cold when it comes to priorities like the triple Fs. Triple Fs like in Free Fucking Fun, as opposed to Solse’s college grades, is a God given right, remember that, it’s important. A fucking God given right! Never ever let responsibilities, laws or bankers get in your triple Fs way. But be at ease, no need to skip or cut down on your trailer loans and don’t throw that five bucks on some overpriced Blockbuster DVD rental, save it for the next fix, the Igloolounge brings you dirt cheap entertainment. We always did.

This week feature is a role-playing dungeon hack called Tales Of Middle Earth based on the Angband game that is itself an offspring of Umoria and Rogue. Don’t be fooled by the 1994 graphics this game is rich in skills, spells, phat loot and almost infinite replayability value because for every new game the engine generates random dungeons Diablo style. I cannot stress enough how I strongly recommend this game to every dungeon crawlers out there, I started playing Rogue-like games back in 1998 and Tome is definitely the best of the lot.

Tales of Middle Earth (ToME) is a fantasy adventure game, based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a game that emphasizes intricate, challenging, and varied gameplay over graphics. Hundreds of different monsters in randomly-generated, unpredictable dungeons will strive to slay you by various means, and you counter - if you survive - by developing the skills of your choice and wielding mighty artifacts. ToME’s races from Hobbit to Troll and classes from Swordmaster to Summoner allow for many different playing styles and a replay value that extends through years.

Tome-Tik is the flavor we recommend for this game, it may not run on the latest release of Tome but it uses much-improved graphics based on the David Gervais tiles for Angband.

Download TomeTik from the official web site here.

Visit the official Tome web site here.
Read more about the history of Angband games on Wikipedia here.

According to a report from the University of Swansea’s School of the Environment and Society Greenland glaciers have begun to flow and break up more quickly due to global warming. In fact the Kangerdlugssuaq (wtf?!) and Helheim glaciers had doubled their rate of flow to the ocean over the past two years after steady movement during the 1990s.

“The report followed a warning earlier this week from Britain’s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research — a branch of the Meteorological Office — that the Greenland ice sheet could be disappearing faster than previously thought.

Scientists predict that global average temperatures will rise by between one and six degrees Celsius this century unless urgent action is taken now to cap and reduce carbon emissions.

Scientists said on Monday the world had to halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiraling towards destruction.”

Once called alarmists, lunatics or just plain delusional alfalfa smoking hippies, scientists who defended the global warming theory in the early 80’s seams to gain more attention lately and with good reason. These are the people who tried to warn us that a greenhouse effect was happening 20 years ago while everyone was too busy living it ‘to the max’ and snorting cocaine to listen. The international community basically laughed at them and told them to go fuck some goat cheese. Now that scientific reports and facts from all over the world leave no doubts that good old planet Earth temperature is on the rise, the same guys are telling us that if no radical action to cut down on greenhouse gas emission is taken we will face a point of no return in 15 to 20 years. I don’t know about you but for fucking humanity sake maybe, just maybe, we should listen to them this time or WE could be fucking goat cheese sooner than expected.

As of February 2006 the United States, the world’s biggest polluter, still reject both the Kyoto protocol in its current form and any suggestion of expanding or extending it.

More about global warming on Wikipedia here.
Climate change predictions by the Hadley Center here.

GG Allin portrait by John Wayne Gacy as featured on the cover of the Hated DVD.

Taken from Wikipedia.

“American Serial Killer Art is normally defined as art work created by American serial killers while in prison.

Manson and Kennedy by Gacy starting at 800$.

Often, this process of painting is used as a therapy device (see art therapy), or for further understanding a particularly disturbed psyche, while in other instances it is purely a method of time spanning entertainment for imprisoned individuals. The artists usually vary dramatically in skill and themes covered.

John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez, and Henry Lee Lucas are a few of the better known American serial killer artists.

Collectors typically must have direct contact to obtain and authenticate this art. The actual pieces can sell for large sums of money depending on the individual artist, and their notoriety through serial killing.”

See and buy more wacko artwork here.

This could happen more often that you think in the near future.

According to their official web site The Syndicate®, a more than 10 year old Ultima Online, Everquest and more recently World of Warcraft guild, just registered its guild name.

“As one of the oldest, largest and most powerful guilds in all of online gaming, The Syndicate® has developed a strong reputation over the years. We seek to protect that reputation from misuse of our guild name and have taken the step of Trademarking our guild name “The Syndicate®” along with our logo and our motto.”

The Syndicate® operates on the Zuljin World of Warcraft server and I don’t know shit about the legal implications if you happen to run a guild with the same name on another server, but according to them:

Can We Use Your Mark As Our Guild/Clan/Organization Name?
No. The Syndicate® does not grant permission to use our Mark to any other groups, for any online gaming related endeavor. That includes, but is not limited to, online gaming guilds/clans/organization names and online gaming related site names. Permission to use The Syndicate® has never been granted and if you see anyone using the mark please report them to us and we will take the necessary action to protect our mark.

Can I Misspell To Get Around The Mark?
No, you cannot. Deliberate misspellings are a violation of trademark law as well. Also tacking words onto the Mark is also a violation. Legally that is known as being “confusingly similar” and we site a concrete example, above, that we ran into when we tried to register our mark. Some examples of things that would be a Mark violation are as follows (Note: this list is NOT all inclusive. These are merely some common examples):

Syndicate
Cyndicate
Syndikat
Sindicate
The Cyndicate
The Syndicate XXXXXX (where XXXXXX is some other word)
The XXXXXX Syndicate (where XXXXXX is some other word)

Sounds like a huge pile of nazi shit to me. And it raises the question of one game specific EULA (End User License Agreement), is it conflicting or does it violate one EULA to run a registered guild or product into one copyrighted work? Who fucking knows, one thing for sure is that it’s pushing further the old ‘virtual-property’ debate. After people buying items and currency in a virtual world with real world money we are now facing trademarked guilds. Maybe in the near future we will see the birth of legal trademarked farmers guilds that are being run like small business. Fuck, and I though that the whole point was to play a game and have fun.

Raph Koster a designer for the original Ultima Online had a view about this here.
The Syndicate® official web site can be found here.
Previous Igloolounge.net coverage about player owned properties in virtual worlds is here.

Is Jose truly the root of all evil in Montreal? Or is it the fucking tuque?

Until the two consecutive wins by shutouts Saturday and Sunday, a result of stellar performances by #2 goalie Christobal Huet, the Montreal’s Canadiens had lost six of their last eight games. In the last two weeks whenever pathetic starting goalie Jose Theodore was in the crease the final score looked like a horror movie:

Carolina 8 - Montreal 2
Ottawa 3 - Montreal 0
Carolina 7 - Montreal 3
Vancouver 6 - Montreal 2

Yet another spectacular attempt at something.

In fact as of January 31th 2006 Jose Theodore had the following unsavory statistics: He gave 18 Goals on 63 Shots, he displayed a save percentage of 71.4% and he was chased out of the net 3 of his last 4 games. Last week angry fans were requesting Theodore’s head on every radio and TV shows, tensions were high and we could feel that the city was on the verge of imploding. Unable to work a trade within the NHL due to Theodore clown performances and high salary, Montreal’s General Manager Bob Gainey had no choice but to put Jose Theodore on eBay to avoid ensuing riots, chaos and mayhem.

Product Description

Former Vezina and Hart Trophy Winner, own the rights to washed up goaltender and Montréal native, José Théodore. I can’t promise that he’ll come through for you or even show up on your doorstep considering his recent track record in showing up for games but I can promise a lifetime of unpredictability for truly exorbinate prices!This could be the ideal gift for someone in a cold place because he’ll warm your bench with style and grace, all the while keeping that five hole open for late night scoring. Certainly not worth the paper he’s written on, I am sure you will find his unbridled Québécois charm is unmatched and could brighten up any arena while keeping that bench warm for your hard working players. Act now and we’ll throw in his sidekick and travelling companion, one pathetic half-wit of a man named Mike Ribeiro. We’re not quite sure what he does but if it’s anything like his hockey game, I’m sure it will bring your countless hours of nausea and send you into fits of violent rage. While we could spend hours describing all the many beautiful qualities of Jose Theodore, prettiest goalie in the National Hockey League, we will leave the rest for you to discover in your many, many seconds of joy and lifetime of misery.

AND HEY FREE SHIPPING ! FOR THE LOVE OF GRETZKY TAKE HIS MAN AND RUN LIKE THE WIND ! PLEASE ! I’M BEGGING !

Note that I do not own José. I hope never to own josé and if you bid on this you’ll probably get nothing, which is about the same thing.

Edit (8/02/06): According to Wikipedia

In February 2006, Théodore was the target of a practical joke on eBay. A female Montréal Canadiens fan named Jazzyreg put him for sale on the online auctioneer, with the item listing, “Slightly Used Washed-up Habs Goalie (?) Jose Theodore”.Within a week, the listing received over 55,000 hits and was mentioned on the TSN program, That’s Hockey.

Original eBay auction for Jose Theodore can be found here.

Ding! Level 1 to 60 in just two days. You better pack on ramen.

The timing may be a bit off, it is probably more accurate to say that leveling from 1 to 60 will take around a week at best with some people sharing shifts over the same character, but still an excellent source to what to kill and where to powerlevel.

Two Day Grind
Horde Grinding Spots:
0-15 - Questing fastest possible exp.
15-20 - The Barrens - Harpies *
15-20 - The Barrens - Bristleback(s) *
20-25 - The Barrens - Bael Dun Exavs *
20-25 - Hillsbrad - Hillsbrad Farmers (etc)
22-26 - Thousand Needles - Galak Scouts (etc) *
26-30 - Hillsbrad - Mud Gnolls *
25-30 - Thousand Needles - Grimtotems
30-38 - Shimmering Flats - All monsters. *
38-40 - Dustwallow Swamp - Very North East Islands, Murlock Warriors/Oracles.

Horde And Alliance Grinding Spots:
40-46 - Feralas - Woodpaws (stay away from the ones that disease for
slow casting speeds) **
46-48 - Feralas - Frayfeather Skystormers *
48-50 - Feralas - Harpies
48-51 - Southwest of Gadgetzan - Thistleshrubs *
50-54 - Western Plaguelands - First ‘field’ to the left, assorted monsters.
54-60 - Western Plaguelands - Scarlet Lumberjacks
52-60 - Eastern Dire Maul - Lashers ****

* = Recommended

EXP Rates:
Levels 30-40 = 18-20k exp/hour
Levels 40-51 = 20-25k exp/hour
Levels 52-60 = 40-50k exp/hour (Dire Maul)

Power Leveling
This is the method the power levelers have used since closed beta and I finally got one of them to give it up. It is by no means the way to go if you want to maximize your experience in the game as this method will bypass almost all the content in the game and essentially ignore many of the fun, unique aspects of WoW. This is not recommended for new players and is meant for players who already have experienced the content and just want to level up an alt to play with their level 60 friends (ie. your level 60 instance group needs a priest and there are no priests to be had). As a benchmark to how successful you are with this, download cosmos (Cosmos) and use the clock feature to measure your xp/hour. At level 50 you should be getting about 40,000+/hour. 1-20: Newbie lands, stick to the friendly zones (not contested). Just grind. The quests are a waste of time up to level 20 if you are focusing on maxing out xp per hour. 20-26: Wetlands quests and raptors/slime/orcs for grinding. Redridge mountain Lakeshire quests.

26-30: Duskwood quests and undead for grinding. Hillsbrad critter roamers for grinding.

30-35: Did these all in a day on Daggerspines in Hillsbrad right next to Southshore along the coast. Huge spawn, very fast respawn rate, easy mobs to kill. Purgation isle (island in the very far Southwest water area of Hillsbrad) also a nice secluded place you can grind on undead.

36-40: Hillsbrad southshore quests. Desolace quests and kodo grinding for 36-38, then Undead Ravagers in the southeast for 38-40. Cresting exiles at the circle of outer binding in Arathi also for 37-41; extremely easy mobs with a fast respawn. Alterac ogres from 35-40 for grinding. Drywhisker kobolds in Arathi east of Hammerfall for 36-39 for grinding.

41-45: Hinterlands trolls, owl beasts, and wolves for grinding and quests. Badlands ogres, gnolls, and quests.

45-48: Tanaris quests and pirates on the eastern paninsula for grinding. Stranglethorn vale quests (only if you need rewards imo). Badlands greater elementals for grinding.

48-52: Felwood deadwood gnolls for grinding and quests from the sanctuary in the south. Blasted lands dreadmauls for grinding. Un’goro crater (best started at 50) for primarily quests and grinding off the plants and tar elementals. Azshara undead highbornes and thunderhead hyppogriffs for grinding.

52-55: Azshara blood elves for grinding. Burning steppes dreadmaul rock ogre caves firegut ogres (very low AC) for grinding. Felwood irontree woods and cave for grinding (great spot). Western plaguelands questing for argent dawn and grinding on undead throughout the various camps.

55-58: Eastern plaguelands quests from the sanctuary, grinding on undead at the ruined towns. Winterspring grinding at winterfall village or Lake Kel’Theril undead highbornes (my personal favorite camp). Blackrock Stronghold in Burning Steppes for grinding.

58-60: “The” yeti cave in Winterspring, due Southeast of Everlook (very nice place). Grosh Gok compound ogres in Deadwind pass (great spot, no one knows about it). Eastern plaguelands Fungal Vale undead grinding and argent dawn token farming. Moonowls in northeast winterspring for grinding.

Thanks to JaSon11 from the forums for the information.

Originaly posted on wowguru.