the suburbs.

arcade fire has a new album, and you should listen to it... all of it. like, now.

tonight.

tonight i'm thinking of you.
you hijacked my thoughts and i don't think i mind, tonight.
but will this be it?
just thoughts of you, one night (tonight) in my mind.
would you think of me too, tonight or another?
will some night bring thoughts of me to your mind?
i don't think i'd mind.
even if it were sometime, like tonight.

tonight, if we think of each other,
the thought comes to mind that i'd like to keep thinking of you,
beyond tonight.
if you don't think you'd mind,
we can just keep thinking of each other,
the way i think of you tonight.
do you think you'd mind?
think about it, tonight,
then let me know you've made your mind,
whether you think we can keep thinking of each other,
on any other night.


tonight i'll keep thinking of you.
i'm wondering, what's on your mind?
is it thoughts of me that you're thinking, tonight?
i think i know i shouldn't think like this.
i can't think what's on your mind.
i think that you'd mind, even just tonight.
but i'm thinking, tonight,
and the thoughts are of me, thinking of you.
i think i thought you wouldn't mind.
do you mind?

and tonight, if i think of you,
the thought comes to mind that you might think of me too,
if only for a night.
but when i think of you tonight,
i think i want to keep thinking of you,
beyond tonight.
do you think you'd mind, thinking beyond tonight?
or more than just thinking,
for more than just tonight.
i'm thinking of more than thinking,
thinking of more than tonight.

entering the world of warcraft.

yeah, that's right, this is a post regarding the online sensation, and instant geek insignia that is wow. that's what we call it, cause that's what it is, wow. previous to my purchase of the basic game (no expansions... yet) i had succumbed a year earlier, to what i believe was a two week trial that i played maybe five or six evening sessions. i don't think i even leveled my character to double digits. if you don't understand, don't worry, you will. unless of course you wish to move on, in which case fuck... i mean, thank you for stopping by and have a lovely day. now, for the rest of you thinking, "hey, what the hell is this all about? i don't want to read a stupid post on internet dwelling, social rejects", yet when i say, "but maybe you do!" you suddenly feel a strong sense of curiosity, compelling you to know just what transpires when millions of geeks co-exist in a virtual world of complete fantasy. truth is i can't really tell you, from a social perspective. i don't understand three-quarters of what i read in the chat window, and even now that i have finally joined a guild (player created team), there isn't really much going on most of the time. perhaps now is a good time to explain...

in the world of warcraft you adopt a character, or an avatar (not that avatar) who exists in a certain "realm" of the ever evolving lands and dimensions, known as azeroth. your realm is relative to your location, so you're playing with others who are in a general radius of you, albeit a large one. now, like any good fantasy, there are two main waring factions: the horde v. the alliance. each faction consists of several races that have bonded through (almost too obviously) their set of spiritual and social beliefs. the alliance members include (not limited to) dwarfs, gnomes, night elves and humans, while the horde has orcs, tauren, trolls and the undead. each race has unique abilities and starting cities, which are designed to help your character level (or evolve) early on, based on both race exclusive storylines, and your chosen class within that race. your class is essentially your battle designation, and there are several to choose from, though not every class is available to each race. basically it breaks down to varying forms of damage dealing soldiers and magic using healers, and those somewhere in between. as an example i'll describe my own character, zisou, who is a night elf hunter that just reached level sixty. as a hunter, zisou's specialty is long-ranged weapons such as bows, crossbows or guns, while his close combat attack is a two-handed axe. in wow, all skills are learned and there is little limit as to how many skills you can know. for instance, zisou is capable of equipping other weaponry like swords, or maces, or throwing axes/daggers, etc. but once you "learn" most skills, no matter what level you may be, you start with zero experience in said skill, and have to fight/practice your way to an equalization between level and skill. so, if i decided to equip a sword let's say, at level sixty, i would have to travel backward to an area designed for players leveled roughly thirty, or less, and fight enemies of about the same. it's a fickle bitch (i think i've typed that somewhere else...).

at any rate, the complexities are cannily real(ish), and this is heightened even more by blizzard's unwavering updates, patches, information, support and most of all, patience. all that i mentioned in the previous paragraph is only the base game, there are two expansions (the burning crusade, and wrath of the lich king) that have been available for some time, and a third (cataclysm) due for release relatively soon. with these, players can access more races and classes, new lands/dimensions along with new quests, and new items/weapons from new enemies. needless to say, this game (like any good online game) takes a lot of work to keep it running relatively smoothly, and also safely. while gamers may care about their characters and don't wish to lose their efforts to a virus, or other means, what is really at stake is the "real" money and personal information that flows into the company (let's not forget, they've also got starcraft and, to a lesser extent, diablo). but these folks are the best in the business at nearly everything they do, from what i've seen, and they've generally got your back with security. most times someone has a problem, i assume, is because they're naive enough to link to the spam messages that rarely pop up in the chat window, promising you free upgrades or warning you of bogus issues. gullibility too, is a fickle bitch.

but regardless of any of this, the thought that draws me to this game is it's environment; it's world. to put it quite simply, the lands of wow are everything i ever wanted real life to be, from the ages of about five to thirteen (damn you alcohol, you shattered my dreams). seriously though, including all the amazing characters already listed, there are also various giant beasts, including but not limited to: felines, canines, gorillas, insects, aliens, dragons, dinosaurs, hydras, centaurs, spirits, ghouls, goblins, elementals (wood, stone, fire or water creatures), pirates, machines, sasquatches (sort of), not to mention kings, queens, sorcerers, knights, demons and so many more. and again, i only have the base game! i have little idea of what waits beyond the limits of azeroth, but i imagine it's going to be epic the whole way up. i reckon i might just find that imaginative kid i loved to be, before puberty, the education system, and social retardation took full effect. maybe we should all be playing wow, or better yet, use it's core idea/format as an application to design scenarios for our own world, before just rushing into our next disaster. we may never design a "perfect" world, yet better alternatives to ours are not just reasonable, but necessary and achievable. make life, not warcraft.

oh, what a world.

okay... in lieu of recent events, i'm going to make an attempt at expressing myself with more of a positive, and pleasant demeanor. to do this i have decided to ask more questions, even if they may fall folly to rhetoric. i feel this will help to keep my finger from pointing in any individual direction, and rather, open my own ability to communicate concern, inspiration, or at the very least, my thought process. so let's get started! 

first, the big question: what are we all thinking? seriously. very soon there could easily be ten billion people on our relatively small, but absolutely marvelous planet. isn't about time we started to communicate with each other a little better? and to that end, be ridiculously, maybe painfully honest with ourselves and everyone else. we're all either fighting for some fractured shard of a much greater puzzle, or we're ignoring any sense of responsibility to bring the whole picture into focus. and for what? for a tiny, individual piece of existence that could never exist on its own. for brief moments of experience that connect sense, emotion and memory to various temporary expressions, or circumstances, out of context. there is more than that, and we all know it. from the depressed to the ignorant, from the oppressed to the deified. but we have to move beyond knowing, believing or hoping, we have to make it real. right now we use the conceptual like everything else, exhausting it of only the resources that create commercial, or exclusive items and ideas. what's worse, so many inventions or discoveries are kept from the majority of us, sometimes for generations. whether excused with straight denial, or sold to the public through methodically precise, behaviour conditioning marketing schemes, our access and understanding of truth is manipulated and contrived. that's just no way to build a thriving, surviving civilization of co-existence. it's time to rework society, and to dig through the mounds of bull-shit our brief history has managed to pile on.

as an obvious example of a modern-age lie to ignorance to acceptance situation, i turn to the same substance millions, if not billions of people turn to at some time or another: alcohol. now, obviously i've been know to drink from time to time, and some of those times i've been known to drink too much, or too fast. i apologize to any person who has ever had to witness, take care of, or experience my usually very public, sick scene. this being said, i've hardly felt a strong passion for alcohol, and i generally drink to punish myself. don't get me wrong, i'm talking about getting drunk, binging and the likes. i very much enjoy a little whiskey in my coffee, or a cold beer, but we were misinformed then lied to, and now alcohol flows disregarded with significant social acceptance, poisoning our civilization with it's disillusioned sense of euphoria in an abundance that reeks of disrespect. this the simple fact folks: alcohol makes people retarded. i'm not fucking kidding, or using colourful language, it quite literally retards your brain. if you don't understand the actual definition of retard please don't be offended just yet, and click the link for an online definition. or, if you don't trust my choice of dictionary, you're welcome to search yourself. but please, no urban dictionary or wikipedia, you'd just be proving my point. i do not condone using this word in a derogatory sense, everybody is retarded in some way or another, as in we have obstacles, ailments, accidents, defects and the like, which retard us from a veritable smorgasbord of different things in our lives. but alcohol makes it so much worse! especially when it's the fuel of most people's social lives.

while i realize it may seem biased, ponder a different scenario, or an alternate history of modern social behaviour, in which marijuana was the dominant social lubricant. pot, which does NOT KILL BRAINCELLS (but alcohol DOES), would have lead to a radically different modern norm. we would have thinkers, instead of drinkers; high folks, instead of low folks; inspiration, instead of depression; lovers, instead of fighters. but we were lied to, so by now we have this barely walking mess of self-induced retardation, and all her friends, followers or fans. ask yourself, do i even want the existence of the possibility that any child i may have could end up like this, or worse? if you're answer is "yes," "whatever," or "i don't care"... please, never ever procreate. think about it, honestly, we do not want this for our children, or theirs and so on. and if human life has become so complex, complicated, stressful, and the majority of daily routines so confining that we feel the compulsion to actively retard our unique minds, then don't you think it's about fucking time to make, demand and expect a completely truth based, faith driven experience for our capable and curious little species? lets have faith in the existence of life, not god, not an afterlife and not economies, politics or celebrity. real faith, in real life and it's real possibilities. refuse to accept the pitfalls of mediocracy's simple complacency, refuse to believe our existence is essentially insignificant, because it most certainly is not. true, we are fragile, temporary, fallible, etc. but this planet is the ONLY home to life, that we know of, and we are its highest form of able intelligence, for better or worse. that part's up to each of us, literally, everyone of us... there's a long road before us, but i hope a society of these will soon be in our rear-view mirrors: