We Need To Read, Dammit!

One thing that I have always done ever since I first began to read as a child was to read about video games. Not necessarily news about games (and I still don't as I just found out a few days ago that Super Mario Galaxy was out for the Wii and my mouth dropped, and also that I found out that Sonic was in Super Smash Brothers Brawl a week after it was announced) or even general info about the game, but I would actually sit and read walkthroughs of the game on the internet or in strategy guides. I would either sit on my bed as a child and read every article in Nintendo Power even if it didn't interest me or I would read through a whole strategy guide of a game, studying the pictures, tactics, bosses, etc. The funny thing is that I really never read to beat the game, but just to read about it. In general, you have a tendency to reads things more that you're interested in, and I guess I was extremely interested in video games and fictional stories. I specifically remember finding a great interest in a Harvest Moon 64 guide on the internet that I would read multiple times. Each time seemed fresh, and the guide seemed to never end; and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Some may find this to be unusual as one may only read a guide when they're stuck in a game or want to know what's going to happen in the near future of the game's plot. I just read everything for the hell of it, I guess.

I thought of this childhood behavior while reading some World of Warcraft lore today on WoWWiki. I started reading about the history of World of Warcraft gathered from in-game books scattered about the game today when I realized that I never lost that behavioral trait of reading about games. Not only am I reading about the game, but I'm reading about the events that once took place in the time period of the Warcraft series, and even before. How wonder a lot of my friends pass me way off in level on the game, as I'm mostly offline on the game reading about the game. And it's not only lore that I read, but everything -- including instance guides, information on classes and races, zones, professions, etc. And yet again as my history has shown, reading about the game doesn't mean I'm good at the game. For example, back in the good ol' days, I read strategy guides on Pokemon, Luigi's Mansion, Digimon World, etc. but did I ever come close to beating those games? Hell no. I may suck at playing games, as I still do especially when I have to fight against another player on World of Warcraft, but at least I'm a good reader. I guess that can be reflected by my good grades at school (i.e. my 104.00 for the first quarter on my report card). Anyway, WoW lore is just extremely interesting and as I stated earlier, you'll read things that you are curious about and want to learn about. I'm just amazed that the Warcraft series has so much depth to it and one thing links to another in a very smooth transition. For example, this guy killed this guy in the battle of this and so-and-so fought in the battle of this who was known to be the father of this tribe which resulted in . . . you get the point. It's good stuff. Even if you don't play any games from the Warcraft series, you should check out some of the lore. For the link to WoWWiki's lore page, click here.

One thing that really bothers me is that I think this country of America is decreasing in intelligence. Woah, don't start throwing bricks and stones at me just yet. I'm not saying I'm the smartest guy in the world and I believe that I'm not smart in a lot of different fields of study, but when you have statistics such that 25% of Americans didn't read a single book last year, you can clearly see that something wrong is happening. In the days before television and computers were at their prime, the main form of entertainment when one wanted to do something inside was to read. The newspaper would be scanned over and articles of interest were read, and thick and juicy novels were placed at a person's bed stand and read a bit every night before bed. Nowadays, however, people would rather watch the movie of a book or play video games on their consoles or computers than read a book. I think Americans need to start shifting their gears and get into a better mental state and educate themselves better. I could go on a rant right now talking about how my high school, for example, barely educates us enough for the real world and would rather teach us how to take tests, but I'm going to avoid that and save it for my valedictorian or salutatorian speech when I graduate. Now, I wasn't an avid reader myself and just recently started getting back into reading thanks to Carol letting me borrow some of her fantasy books, like Eragon and Eldest. However, I do believe that the reading I did online too contributed to helping my English skills overall. Many people don't even read online though. To the average teenager, the only thing online nowadays is MySpace and Facebook, and did you ever have an AIM conversation like this:

Person 1: hello
Person 2: hey
Person 1: wats up
Person 2: nm u?
Person 1: nm
Person 2: kk

Very intellectual, isn't it? I honestly dislike the use of improper grammar in AIM conversations and abbreviations. Now, I will use 'brb', 'bbl', 'k', etc. sometimes, but when you have that person whenever you say something and they respond with 'lol' or 'cool' and nothing else, you want to jump off a frecking cliff into freezing cold water. Like why don't you give me a little more of a comment or input? And the AIM conversation type like the one depicted above is what I like to call the "awkward stub", a short conversation that to me just feels highly awkward. I won't talk to somebody unless I have something to say. If somebody messages me, I expect them to have a meaning in messenging me, whether it be for a conversation, help on homework, etc. And when somebody asks me "wats up?", I say something like, "Nothing much really. I was just playing WoW when I decided to get off to write a blog entry. You?" And when I said that I dislike proper grammar, I'm not being a hypocrite of any type. I don't have the best grammar ability, but at least I make an attempt at it. Somebody can be horrible at math, for example, but they'll try as hard as possible to attempt it and try to understand it. The last time I ever learned grammar was in seventh grade, and because I never really saw it since, it sort of slipped away from my reachable knowledge bank. And that's another point for my graduation speech. Grammar needs to be reinforced every single school year in every grade and there should be a grammar elective for the upperclassmen. But no, my school wants to do literature, literature, literature. What's more practical in the real world -- being able to write properly or knowing the theme of a poem written by Emily Dickinson? It's ridiculous! I'm not sure how the curriculum in other schools around the country or even the glove are set up, but Lakeland High School is the complete opposite of excellent -- it's freaking horrible. And let me add in there quickly that it's the most disorganized school in the country. The officials of my school do not know how to run it properly. The students are as confused as the facility most of the time. Okay, I need to end this rant before I get myself executed, but damn did it feel good.

As my AP chemistry teacher says, "We want moles, dammit!", I respond saying, "We want readers, dammit!".

Anyway, a bit off the track of this reading topic that you have read if you're this far in (and this blog will enhance your reading skills so stay tuned regularly or read older entries as far back as July 2005 . . . unless it causes you to become stupid, have the IQ level of a seven-year old, and twitch a lot, then . . . read it anyways). I want to talk about World of Warcraft a little bit. I know a few people who would squirm at the sight of that name and would avoid the rest of this paragraph, but I need to just spit some things out quickly to ease my mind of tensions. As I said very briefly in my previous blog entry, my WoW addiction as been renewed. Why? It's because I now have a main on a PvE server, meaning I can finally enjoy questing, instances, etc. in peace without fear of being ganked constantly. And also my toon is on the Horde. I had a few Alliance toons on various servers, such as my level 47 dwarf hunter on Azgalor, my level 13 gnome mage on Whisperwind, etc., and also a few Horde toons, but I never really got into being a Horde and liked to side with the Alliance. However, I realized that the Alliance was a bit immature, behaving with some manners that turned me off from Runescape when I used to play it. I decided to try a Horde after I found out that I disliked dying all the time on my mage (they're so squishy), so I created a troll hunter. Why did I choose a hunter if I already had one on the Alliance? For two reasons: 1) I tried a few other classes and decided that hunter is my ultimate favorite, and 2) on my level 47 hunter, I finally learned how to teach my pet new abilities when I was 40 using the pet training menu, so I was deprived of having those needed advantages from 10-40 that would've helped me a lot, so I wanted to see how much easier it was using them from 10-40 this time around. And let me tell you, I never had so much fun on WoW than I am now. Imagine being a hunter and not having growl on your pet from 10-40. Yes, I died a lot on my dwarf. But now I barely die on my troll, and my pet barely dies too. My talent tree on my troll is different too -- it's beast mastery. So my tiger has a lot of health and a lot of armor. We can take on three enemies at once around the same level as us without coming close to dying. My strategy is that if an enemy is attacking me while another is fighting my tiger, I have the tiger attack the one that was attacking me so that my tiger uses growl and it stops attacking me, I kill off the one my tiger was attacking, and then we tag team on the one still alive. I'm really questioning myself on how I lived without growl on my dwarf hunter. Anyway, the Horde is an awesome faction. They're a lot more mature, helpful, and friendly, and I believe the average of the players on the Horde side are older than the Alliance. However, the downfall is that I happened to find a server where the Horde isn't the best at battlegrounds. Now I was only level 19 when I tried Warsong, but out of the two battleground rounds that I went into, we lost twice and I died like crazy. The Horde always dominated on my old server, Azgalor. I'll have to find out how we really are when I try the battlegrounds again at 28-29, as I'm currently level 20 and would be destroyed if I went into a battleground now.

That's enough Warcraft talk. Now to general rambling. I have to go shooting my .243 rifle tomorrow morning, so I need to rap this up, read some WoW lore (very nice!), and then go to bed. But some bulleted items of note:

• My kitten, Zoey, that I mentioned in my last blog entry is doing good. She's now a true member of the family. She runs around like she was always living in this house, and is one of the cutest and friendliest cats that I ever laid eyes on. She's fearless too. When we first got her last week, my dog was terrified of her as the kitten would threaten the dog with hisses and would bat at it. Now they're a bit friendlier, but I beg to differ when it comes to the other three cats we had before we got Zoey. They're still getting used to her, and I'm not sure if they made up their minds whether they like her or not. I'll be sure to get up pictures of her soon, but first I must take pictures. I need to hurry before she grows up, so we can always remember how small and cute she was.
• Lakeland's football season is over after we lost to the Dunmore Bucks on Friday with the score being 27-22. Lakeland's final season score is 7-4. This season wasn't our best, but in general it was an interesting season. Actually, our only losses were to Abington Heights who destroys us every year as they're quad A and we're barely double A (and we're moving down to single A next year), Dunmore who beat us twice (once in the regular season and once in the playoffs), and Riverside who just destroyed us in a game that I sat in the car during because it was freaking pouring out, windy, and freezing. Otherwise we had a successful season, destroying pretty much every team that came in our way. Well, there's still hope with next year's team that we'll go far enough that the state game may become a reality, but the scary factor is that next year is the last football season that I'll be in high school during. Hm . . . I hope the new coach does something amazing. It would be a dream to win our first ever state championship in my senior year.
  

That's it. Time to watch a Knox video and head off to do my own thing. Have a good one, and if I don't write anymore before the holiday, then have a happy Thanksgiving!