The Godfather

Ohai thar…

I don’t really have a particular accent when I speak, but I can affect one really well when I want to.  Specifically, a New York accent… or even more specifically, a Staten Island one.  They are very unmistakable, those Staten Island accents.  Very similar to the Jersey Shore sound but with its own special twang.

For some reason I randomly decided to slip into one the other day when I spoke to my brother.

“Wut?  Iono wut ya tawkin’ abowt.  Stawp wut?  This’s just how I tawk.  Why you gawta hate foah?”

He looked at me for a second in frustration, and then opened his mouth.

“OH YEAH? THEN I’LL USE MY OLD JEWISH GUY ACCENT.”  It was the loudest, nasallest, most obnoxious screech I’ve ever heard.  As I gaped in horror, he goes into a random monologue.  “IF YA GONNA USE THE TOILET, PLEASE REMEMBA TA FLUSH TWICE. ONCE FUH THA BULK AND AGAIN FUH THA REMAINDA.”

Later he revealed that he was doing Mort from the Family Guy (I don’t watch much TV so I didn’t recognize it).  But seriously, I’ve never been quite so appalled.  It was awesome!  I’ve been trying to pull it off ever since but I don’t think it sounds quite the same.

************************

In the wonderful world of warcraft, we’ve re-formed a new guild.  Me, Nerdboy, Supertank and The Godfather.  And things are crazy.

The Godfather is actually this girl who has a cult following and far-reaching connections on all different servers.  It’s really weird, she’s got a network of brainwashed players who will follow her every command.  Really very much like The Godfather of WoW, you don’t want to get on her bad side.  She’s nice, practical and likeable on the surface, but SOMEHOW gets into a lot of drama although it’s never her fault, IF YANNO WUDDAMEAN.

Nerdboy is going to be our new raidleader & he’s already chafing under The Godfather’s rule.  Supertank’s a nice guy & the best tank I’ve ever seen, but he’s very much The Godfather’s stooge.  I can definitely foretell some tension in the future because Nerdboy is a strong-minded guy with a lot of opinions and I’m a pretty independent thinker myself.  We both found out very quickly that when sharing leadership with The Godfather, there will never be any disagreements between us even when we strongly disagree.  If you get my drift.

This all probably sounds silly and exaggerated, but trust me… it’s EERY.  I’ve never seen anything like this in the game.  People are people, charisma is charisma, popular girls are popular girls, but I always thought players, especially good players, are able to think for themselves & have their own opinions no matter how much you like someone.  I disagree and argue with my friends all the time!  When we think the other’s wrong, nothing holds us back from saying so.  With The Godfather’s mafia however, it’s seriously like a bunch of Stepford raiders.  You wouldn’t believe the crazy stuff I witnessed… Supertank for example spent two hours ranting about how much he despised this one player, and then the next day performed a 180 and lavished praise on the same guy acting as if he had always thought well of him, all because The Godfather decreed we were going to accept him.  And he’s genuine about it, as if his memories were erased or his personality re-programmed.  It’s uncanny and makes no sense at all, but I see the same phenomenon in all of her people. And very much in the Stepfordian fashion, I find myself pretending I’m as brainwashed as all of them because if someone ever voices any hint of criticism or rebellion, she WILL hear about it and her followers WILL crucify you.  I used to like her very much until I realized this was not a normal popular-chick-has-a-lot-of-influence type of thing.  Influence means you’re still allowed to disagree/have your own opinion.  This is not mere influence!  My friends and I were spooked enough by it to make a secret pact NOT to get brainwashed.

If today’s raid doesn’t go well, I’m definitely thinking of dropping this place altogether and applying to a guild far away from this crazy twilight-zone stuff, some place where people just care about raiding like normal players instead of this fanatic WoW-goddess cult.

Alimony

Life

is

weird

sometimes.

After about four months of total silence & a clean break on both parts… um… Biggie logged onto the game the other day.  He sent me some very civilized Hi how are you tells, and went on to say he was quitting for good & sending me all his gold & items.

I didn’t really know how to feel.  It was immensely awkward just seeing him on, my first reaction was to log off!  LOL.  I just didn’t know how to respond… these overtures coming from someone whose last words to me basically amounted to “If you see me walking down the street, you’d better turn around and go the other way.” I told him not to bother, I didn’t want anything, etc., but he did as he pleased.

All I gots to say is… only 10,000 gold?  Pfft.

Maybe I’ll finally purchase that traveler’s mount, the one with the npc vendors.

I dunno.  I got terribly melancholy for a bit.  But only for a little bit.  And no one will ever know.

The Curious Case of Tiny Tim

So there’s an officer who’s our unofficial GM (the official GM is this guy’s puppet), let’s call him Scrooge.  He is basically all of your most negative, condescending, irritating gaming personality stereotypes rolled up in one gnomish ball of discordant strife.  Super-sized ego?  Check.  Loves rubbing other people’s faces in the dirt?  Check.  Can’t take the slightest hint of criticism himself?  Check.  Loves arguing about anything, anytime, any place?  Check.

The weirdest, inexplicable part about this is… I mean Scrooge is the first person to jump on anybody’s mistake and the last to let it go, but…

So we have this boomkin who is That Guy, to the infinityeth degree.  Let’s call him Tiny Tim.  Tiny Tim is not the sharpest tool in the drawer, he’s a dim bulb, he’s… slow. Basically he’s a sweet guy with his heart in the right place; he tries really hard and earnestly, perfect attendance, always flasked… but he is just incredibly, frustratingly, absurdly SLOW.  Slow to understand things, slow to learn, slow to react, slow to obey explicit instructions, just all-around unbelievably sloooooooooow.  A guy who needs BOTH his hands held.  Did I mention he’s slow?

We have geared him up the butt- Tiny Tim’s in the top 5 best-geared moonkins on the server, yet his damage done is consistently barely above the tanks, usually BELOW the feral tank’s.  We literally carry him through most fights, and when I say carry I mean he is dead for 95% of the time. He is a wet smear of feathers on the floor watching the rest of us fight.  If you Armory’ed him, you’d think he’s good because he’s got some fairly hard-to-get Achievements, but the sad truth is he was dead baggage as the rest of the raid 24-manned not some… not most… but ALL of them.  All.  Of.  Them. We handed him his Rusted Proto-drake on a 9-man silver platter.

So here is the burning question the rest of us raiders have:

Are Scrooge and Tiny Tim related?

Because, inexplicably, to the complete bewilderment of us all, Scrooge (an obnoxious prick notorious for mercilessly tormenting good raiders for hours over once-in-a-blue-moon fluke mistakes) is strangely, astoundingly quiet over Tiny Tim’s repeated, constant, spectacular-in-their-stupidity routine mistakes.  And what’s more… he defends him!  He defends him with all that obnoxious, sarcastic aggression he normally reserves for making perfectly competent people feel bad.  It boggles the rest of us.  There is a multi-page thread on the forums about how bad Tiny Tim is and why he’s still in the raid… that thread was started three months ago.  Guess who’s still lying there, a bloody lump discreetly tucked in the corner of the room in all our raids?  I don’t wanna sound elitist but it does make me grumpy to think that this kind of person may have a chance at getting a server first… it’s not right!

I just don’t get it.

Scrooge says stuff about how valuable Tiny Tim’s raid buffs are compared to his personal damage but, as the rest of us point out, his raid buffs don’t count for much when he’s dead 5 seconds into the fight.

Scrooge says the rest of us don’t know how hard Tiny Tim is trying, and how he’s breaking his back at a minimum-wage job so he can save up and buy a new computer and not lag so much.  Nobody responded to this because we just sounded like bullies after a while, but honestly?  It’s a game not a charity.  Not to be heartless but… should that really matter to the rest of the raid?

Anyway, lag is the least of Tiny Tim’s raiding problems.  A laggy computer is not what keeps making him give his innervate to WARLOCKS, or run to the exact frost patch we spent an hour telling people NOT to run to.  About ten people sent me LMFAO OH GOD messages when Tiny Tim was assigned to be a soaker on Twin Val’kyr, and sure enough he lasted all of 10 seconds.  Nobody says anything anymore when Tiny Tim flamboyantly messes up, vent stays eerily silent as we just let the stupidity sink in, and we’re all silently flabbergasted anew at how and why Scrooge can seriously keep his mouth shut about it.  And then we move on, as if we don’t comment on such vulgar things in polite society, just sweep the feathery roadkill under the rug.

I just wanna know, why?  Scrooge is just about the least likely person in the world to take on a charity case; he’s the opposite of a carebear officer type; what the heck is going on between him & Tiny Tim?

Are you there, God? It’s me, druidchick

It’s been my personal experience that children of pastors often turn out very religious, or very rebellious.  I went the rebellious route myself, although I didn’t take it to the extremes that some acquaintances did.  However, my youthful anti-establishment stance has mellowed somewhat over the years, and now in my grand old age of late-twenties I’m ready to think over everything again with an open mind to both sides.

What the heck is this completely-inappropriate-to-wow-blogging twaddle?

Well I went to church today for the first time in a while & it got me thinking.  I mean here’s a question- so Jesus was the Messiah, and the only way for people to get to heaven is to believe in Him… but then what about all the people who lived & died before He was ever born?  What about the people who lived & died before the Israelites ever left Egypt, before the Ark & the Covenant?  What about the people who lived & died before Moses brought down the Ten Commandments?

Once when I was young, I read something in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series that always stuck with me:

There was a young soldier from an enemy country who basically worshipped Tash (Satan) all his life, but he was a good & honest man, just born in the wrong religion I guess.  When Judgment Day came, he saw Aslan (Jesus) and he knew instantly that he should go to hell for having lived his life following Tash.  But Aslan said, “No, Tash & I are such opposites that any good deed you did in the name of Tash was really in my name.  Any promise you made and kept in Tash’s name was accorded to me, and you wouldn’t have followed Tash so long & faithfully if you weren’t really searching for me.  In the same way, any evil that men do in my name, they are really serving Tash.”

I totally paraphrased that but you get the gist.  I always liked that thought, that in the end we’ll be judged on our merit rather than our different faiths.  I’m not rock steady on where I stand on Christianity yet, but I think that idea’s something I’ll always hold onto…

Pretty random but it was the most interesting thought I had today.

In other news I got Tribute to Insanity (10) today.

Group comp:
2 resto druids (me+Babyfresh)
1 holy priest
1 feral tank
1 warrior tank
1 dps warrior
1 dk
1 hunter
1 warlock
1 enh shaman

Babyfresh & My Exemplary Behavior

I’ve definitely been spoiling Babyfresh too much. He’s been tantrumming a lot lately & it’s getting tiresome.

Babyfresh is a sweet kid and almost ten years younger than me (my God!  I sound old!) with a cute squeaky voice and he’s a quick learner, great gamer, and very attached to me, much like my own little sidekick, so of course I’d spoil him!  We’ve been playing for about 2-3 years together now, server transferred a few times together, etc.  So of course I like to pamper him & bully other people into being nice to him too.

But I never took into account that in real life he’s the youngest of several siblings… several doting  sisters. With doting parents who just got him a BMW for his 17th birthday.  Aaaaah!!   He’s used to getting spoiled in real life too!  He… kind of expects it!  It’s weird that I never realized until recently.  Because he’s a genuinely sweet, nice kid, not a brat.  So it was kinda hidden, how he kind of expects things to go his way.

In our last guild, we had the same exact too-many-resto-druids situation except the officers favored him.  Babyfresh commiserated with me about being sat out all the time, but he never said anything to the officers or offered to switch.  Whereas now in this guild, I’ve been making heated posts on the forums, arguing spiritedly for hours with the one officer that I have a huge personality conflict with, and switching out the majority of the time, all on Babyfresh’s behalf.  I sit for him because I don’t wanna see him down, but the thought of returning the favor or rejecting my offer rarely crosses his mind. It’s slowly dawning on me that Babyfresh takes all my efforts as his due… Little punk!

It’s hard to stay mad at him for long though, cos he’s a good kid.  I think one good talk with him will be enough to set him straight, cos he’s pretty conscientious.  And also… you know what… he’s kind of like a sponge. He’s so easily impressionable that it’s actually a little alarming- I’m really like his role model.  Like if I get excited about something, he picks it right up & gets all excited too.  If I sneer at someone for being a bad player, ever afterwards he jumps on every opportunity to point out how bad they are.  Every choice I make in game, whether it’s trying a new spec, new meta, different flask, different glyph, whatever it is… he copies it.  I actually suspect he made a resto druid in the first place to be more like me, way back when.  LOL.  Now… I never used to nerdrage, but I confess I’ve been having some bad fits of temper lately (ever since I picked up tanking on my DK- “hey can you guys wait til I get aggro I said WAIT WTF OMG OKAY FINE YOU CAN TANK IT THEN GO AHEAD YOU TANK IT I’M NEVER TANKING FOR YOU GUYS AGAIN.” Heh.  I think I’m not cut out for tanking, who knew I could have such unexpectedly explosive anger problems).  Coincidentally, Babyfresh has also become more volubly prone to nerdraging and emo tantrums as of late too.  So maybe this is all my own doing.  Bad role model!

I guess really the best way to calm him down would be to calm down myself.

Tree’s a Crowd

Oh why helloooo there, are you still around?  Poor blog, all neglected…

Well if you’re bored you can check out my recent video log of the guild’s 25 firefighter achievement!  Yea I don’t think I’ll really become a regular vlogger, despite recent prolificity, but I do wanna film the cool stuff.  Like if we get server first Anub down!  Crossing fingers…

Things have been going pretty well, WoW-wise.  My new guild is pretty good & I really like & respect most of the people, there’s just this one person (hey if I’m not anonymous anymore should I not gossip/gripe about people anymore, cos their identities may be guessed at?) (nah who would go to the trouble anyway) who I could rant about if I wanted my comeback post to be angry, but let’s save that for a rainy day.

There’s a bigger problem than personality conflicts, anyway!  Such as… We have three core raiding resto druids.   And if I may be so bold, we’re all three very good, top of our game I’d say, and very well-geared.  With perfect attendance.  This used to be okay, but now with more & more healer apps and fights requiring more precise group compositions, we’re all three taking turns sitting much more than we’d like, me moreso because I am way too obliging of Babyfresh’s feelings.  I’ll just say it straight- the officers prefer me & the other druid (who is an officer herself) so Babyfresh is the one most often chosen to sit out, for both 10 mans, 25 mans, and special achievements (like Algalon).  He’s aware of this & has been getting steadily depressed, questioning himself, asking me if he’s not good, etc., and the sad thing is, he IS!  He’s excellent, and in any other guild he’d be a hot commodity.  It’s just really too bad that this guild has all three of us… and all three of us are so dedicated.  The obvious alternatives have been suggested- for one of us to go boomkin, perhaps make another toon our main, etc., but all three of us apparently have the same tastes- we love resto healing the best.

Anyway, in my adopted role of Babyfresh’s older sister (or something), I’ve been switching with him a lot when they try to sit him out.  But a little too much, I think.  Because I’m actually the one sitting out the most now, and it bothers me more than I thought it would.  I thought I could be mature, not whine & question myself & go all emo & threaten to quit the game the way Babyfresh does… and I haven’t been… but it’s getting a little close for comfort now.  I honestly don’t know what kind of good answer there is for this situation… I keep thinking, if only Babyfresh had stuck with his original warlock toon, but I feel guilty for thinking it because he’s absolutely got his heart set on druid healing now, and he really is a great one.  But… I don’t like sitting in Ironforge anymore and… I don’t wanna go boomkin!  :(

Otakon 2009 Pix

So here are my photos from Otakon 2009:

To begin with, let’s start off with The Car.

The Car.  How nuts is that?

^Inexplicably, The Car’s license plate is not quite in keeping with The Car’s all-around theme.  Oh well.  Still awesome.

I didn’t dress up this year, all the drama left me no time or energy to cook up a costume, but I saw lots of nice ones.  No one from WoW (boo), but I got a pic with Master Chief:

Obligatory Mario Bros. cosplay, but I liked their poses:

Bill from Left 4 Dead:

LOL he was trying to eat, poor guy, but we just had to bother him for a pic.  So cool.

^The Gender Bender.  Hee.

^Okay, so not the best picture, but oh man this was the cutest aww moment!  I just love it when parents dress up their kids!  This little guy was all confused but excited, running around putting on his helmet backwards and upside down, so darn cute!

The most awe-inducing costume. Luckily the guy was pretty ripped, because that stuff was heavy!  It was so cool, he actually got up on sturdy, expensive-looking stilts.  Then a cast of a half-dozen people, all in their own costumes btw, helped assemble & fit stuff on him.  He had some kind of voice-modifying speaker built into it, & was screeching away in the coolest manner.

Then… the Best Moment?

^A little girl playing Optimus steps out of the crowd.  xD !!!

There were a lot of really awesome Silent Hill cosplays.  My favorites:

Here’s me & a pal with Kool-Aid man!  Oh yeah!

I think next year if I cosplay, I might do the Silent Hill nurse one myself.  Looks easy except the mask, and comfortable.  More comfortable than most of the elaborate cosplays, yet still just as attention-getting.

That’s all!  Bye now!

WoW Art: The Paladin’s Regret

Otakon was fun!  Photos coming soon.  Meanwhile, I did finish a new WoW drawing… My ancient scanner doesn’t hook up to my nice new computer so I just took a crappy picture of it.  Hope you can still read the bubbles:

Heehee.  Inspired by a specific incident when there was only one pally for 25 people who all wouldn’t settle for Kings… and Mr. Obnoxious kept insisting on keeping his pet buffed although it kept dying!  xD

Anticipation Abounds: New Computer & OTAKON!

I’m leaving for a 4-day weekend extravaganza at Otakon today right after work!  I’m excited & happy.

Oh btw I also bought myself a new computer… a GAMING computer!  I was trying to tell myself, Self you really can’t afford to waste money just for WoW… but really it was just too sweet a deal (<3 newegg <3) and honestly a new computer is a new computer, it’s a good investment!  It’s not top-of-the-line, pretty modest really with such a budget (about $540, $570 with shipping), but nevertheless it’ll be a huuuuge upgrade.  I’ve been playing on my laptop for the past few months because my old desktop was too old to run Wotlk.  It has 4GB of RAM (with capacity for 6GB, which I am going to do), 500GB hard drive, and an NVIDIA Geforce 9500 GT with 1GB of dedicated memory.  I know it’s really low-end compared to the newest video cards now, but honestly 60 fps is MORE THAN ENOUGH for me.  My old desktop had 4-6 fps on the lowest video settings in Dalaran.  My laptop currently is clocking about 6-10 fps in raids (it used to be faster, I dunno what happened!  Need to clean the fan maybe…) So yeah.  60 fps.  More than enough.

***

Just came back from lunch & boy did I get my parade rained on!  Attempted to brag to my friend Metroboy & he told me I could’ve gotten a much better desktop with a superior Geforce 9800 graphics card from techbargains for $500.  I am dismayed.  “Research”?  What’s that?  I suck.

Whatever!  60 fps.  I’ll just cling to that thought.

I was also eyeing a 22″ LCD monitor for only $130… but I managed to restrain myself because I have a perfectly good 19″ that works just fine.  I mean, 22″ would be nice but it’s not really necessary… and besides what would I do with my 19″ then?  Ebay it?  Too complicated, and possible shipping problems wouldn’t be worth the hassle… better just keep it… but wow!  $130 for a 22″ widescreen… I paid almost twice that for my 19″ a couple of years ago!  No, no… Voice of Moderation… Argh I really want that 22″!  Everybody says the difference between a 19″ and a 22″ is astounding… I bet it is!  And for $130, seriously!  But…

I won’t get it.  Instead I’ll blow that $130 at Otakon.  :D  I’m not dressing up this year… all the drama kept me too preoccupied to make fancy costume plans like last year.  I guess I could recycle last year’s outfit again but.. BO-RING!  And to be honest I haven’t the energy.

I’ve been okay… bouts of melancholy here & there, and this sad loneliness that people are assuring me is “separation anxiety” and that it will fade.  Hope so.  Biggie hasn’t been online since the breakup, so I figure he quit, so I’ll be staying in my guild.  We haven’t had contact since that last rage-filled incident on WoW, and the further I draw away, the more I’m okay with putting that relationship behind me.  And then other times I can’t believe it’s really already in the past.  >.<  Just separation anxiety.  I’m glad I’m going to Otakon.  :)  You take care, Internet.

At Least I’m Not A Butt

Well I survived my first Biggie-less weekend, mostly WoWed it out hardcore.  Thank God for Babyfresh- he kept me from feeling too lonely.  What a sweet kid!  We farmed Sethekk every day for the raven mount- no luck yet, but my goodness, it is so much faster when you’re with another druid!  We just stealthed through all the mobs except the ones in Anzu’s room.  I bet I could solo-farm it actually, but it’s more fun with Babyfresh.  We have some kinda synchronized mind-meld ESP thing going on when we play together, he’s like my little sidekick.  Hmm I hope he doesn’t think it’s the other way around.

I played my hunter a lot, she’s 42 now.  A lot of it was from Babyfresh running me through SM & Zul’Farrak.  To be honest… not to sound ingrateful but… I sometimes would prefer not to be run through stuff.  It happened a lot on my druid too- my brother & his friends all kept trying to run me through things.  I know that I’m lucky to have people who offer to waste their time leveling me, and of course I like the fast leveling and I appreciate their kindness… but sometimes I get in the groove of learning my class, concentrating on quests, enjoying my lovely pet (I finally got a gorilla!  I love him so much!  His name is Chester!  I only realized the punniness after the fact!), and then it kind of just ruins the whole experience to have to tag along just following someone picking up their droppings as they run me through an instance. 

I diplomatically told Babyfresh to go do his own thing, but he was too bored.  IMO, boredom is quite a serious epidemic once you’re done with the week’s raids.  So he just started popping up wherever I was, lurking in the background, killing my mobs before Chester could pound them into the ground.  It was really quite creepy, a big hulking boomkin trying to shadowmeld into the scenery whenever I looked for the culprit responsible for the premature death of my Hunter’s Marked target.

BTW I’m sure y’all know this already since I’m very late to the game of Huntery-ness, but this macro made my life a sunny sparkle of rainbows and joy:

#showtooltip
/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack
/cast Charge

My brother Mr. Obnoxious, who is renowned for being a superior hunter despite his obnoxiousness, scoffed at me when I asked if he uses any macros.  I suspect he does & he’s just pretending his leetness is all from innate magical abilities, but in any case!  Macros make me happy.  I’ve come to love Chester deeply, from the bottom of my soul, ever since I learned how to make him do everything for me.  Who needs Biggie when I have Chester?  When Chester gets big, red, and angry, he takes it out on mobs!  Ohoho… mm… yes…

I’m still painfully noob at Huntering but whatever, I’m muddling my way through and having a lot of fun at it.  It’s costing me uber gold though, spent at least 2,000g over the weekend.  Power-leveled Alchemy to 300, got 20-slot bags for every slot including the bank’s, and… I know this is Dumb x Infinity especially considering how I’m being run through several levels but… yeah I buy BOE’s from the AH.  Yeah I said it.  I did it on my druid, I’m doing it on my hunter, and I’ll do it again if I ever level another toon.  It’s a free country! 

It all boils down to how I love my druid so much.  My hunter looks like her identical twin sister.  She’s so cute, all blank-faced & clueless, I have to spoil her with the nicest gear for her current level, no matter how quickly she’ll replace it!  See, if I’d rolled a Horde from the beginning, I would be much richer right now.  I don’t know that I would feel the same desire to spoil a big ugly tusked Tauren.

YEAH I SAID IT!!  BIG UGLY TUSKED TAUREN!!  Or, B.U.T.T. if you prefer.  Yeah that’s right.  You got a problem with that?  Take it up with Chester.