You Write Like … Varian? Garrosh? Arthas?

Every once in a while I check back at I Write Like to see if I’ve changed. I used to be a Cory Doctorow but at one point I changed into a Chuck Palahniuk. Don’t know how I changed from a Cory to a Chuck but I seem to be consistently Chuck now.

This got me thinking about the WoW blogs I read. I KNOW there are writers I would recognize from their posts. Some of them I’d only need a paragraph or two and there are a few where one word would suffice … one word and I’d know who the post was written by. For example, the picture above. If you read her you will instantly know who that is.

The rest of my life, whenever I hear someone shout out SHEEYIT! she’ll be the first person I fondly think of. This may not be the best reaction because I might want to get out of the way of whatever caused the SHEEYIT! in the first place but there it is. I can’t change it.

I think I would recognize Matty by the lyrical beauty of the story. I think I would recognize a Navi poem anywhere. I could go on and on.

I was trying to figure out how we could test this but typically … because I’m not a planner … I was off willy-nilly in another direction. I’m still thinking. Maybe I’ll come up with something or one of you planners will.

Me? Oh that’s easy.

OMG! … WTF! … !!! … yeah. The End.

Free Association Blogging

free association
n.
1. A spontaneous, logically unconstrained and undirected association of ideas, emotions, and feelings.

When I get up in the morning, check for new posts, I never know where it will lead. Matty’s a great one for sending me off on a journey that will end who knows where. It might be WoW related, it might not.

Yesterday Redbeard sent me on a audio journey of the 80’s. He and Navi were talking about Star Wars and Back to the Future and in the comments he said “brat pack flicks.” OMG!

This set off bells! The Breakfast Club! Why The Breakfast Club? My daughter is in London on business and was excited about seeing OMD perform. So after listening to that I noticed the suggestions. OMG … again. Taylor Dayne!

I’ll Be Your Shelter by Taylor Dayne I listened to I don’t know how many times. If I could sing, which I can’t, I would want to have that voice. Damn, that’s a voice. I’m listening again right now. Shoot. I wish I could sing.

This made me think of Khizz at Blog of the Treant who CAN sing, so jealous. I’ll see if she’s saying something. Nope, still cute little kittens.

Well seeing them I just had to go check Emergency Cute Stuff on Twitter. This made me think about pets I want.

Which probably caused this. Cat! Sasche was saving all those dinosaur bones for a mount! That’s mean! You made her spend 999 of her 9999 bones on a pet. You owe her big time Cat, really.

So yeah. Blogging, every day is a battle. I battle envy of blogger blogs with their updating blogroll. In fact there are a few blogs out there that I use to travel the WoW internet, hope they don’t mind. My biggest battle though is finding my way back to where I started. I had wanted to comment. Who sent me on this trip? Today I remembered, other days not so much.

This whole thing has been further complicated by my husband being on vacation this week. He doesn’t read fiction, he reads history almost exclusively. I am trying to find my way back to where I want to comment and he throws out an interesting fact.

“Did you know that in 1900 Minnesota’s grain production was larger than that of Great Britain and Ireland combined?”

Um … no … no I did not. Thanks.

Well, now I have to stop myself from going off on a google journey of the US in the 1900s. Wasn’t too hard but still.

WoW blogging … not for the faint of heart.

Collaboration and the Marshmallow Man

I received an email that I forwarded to my bank alt. She was a fail Mage but she’s a shrewd businesswoman unlike me, so I let her handle these matters. I was horrified though, when I first read the email I discounted it immediately because of the ciao. Apparently, and unbeknownst to me,  I have cultivated a prejudice about people who use the word ciao.  I didn’t even know it, I mean NO ONE I cross paths with on a daily basis says that but here I am being all snarky about it. I hate being so judgmental but there it is.

Okay, so I’m also nosy so I visited his media agency group website. Imagine my horror on seeing it’s based out of Malta, he’s ALLOWED to say ciao. My bad, making snap judgements like that, thank goodness my Mage is in charge. Being nosy I really am curious to know what type of collaboration that client has in mind. Especially considering my frequent and flagrant misuse of words like nude and Raquel Welch.

I’d really like to know, but my Mage said it clearly states that I’m to ping him back ONLY IF I’m open to collaboration NOT just because I’m curious about the proposition and have no intention of collaborating. Sigh … I guess she’s right, I guess I can’t go around pinging people for a proposition if I have no intention of following through, I’m just being nosy.

WordPress is really starting to piss me off. It just threw away half my post again and my marshmallow man picture. Now I’m going to have to neurotically save after every three words. What I HAD ALREADY TYPED, was that I’ve accidentally without noticing become a giant marshmallow. I kept thinking, “Why in the world do I feel so heavy and uncomfortable.” Really. I did. The fact that my jeans zipper unzipped every time I bent over to pick something up wasn’t even registering. I thought the zipper was faulty.

Yes, yes, I’m not very logical, me and the dogs wander through life “sensing” things, no logic involved. But you’d think I could have “sensed” that I’d eaten my way into becoming a giant marshmallow. Finally something seemed off so I weighted myself this morning and OMG.

Apparently walking a couple miles every morning and then exercising only my fingers the rest of the day and oh yes, running up and down the stairs a few times to get something to, er, eat isn’t enough. AND APPARENTLY all the exercise that I get running around killing all the things in game doesn’t even count. Not even a little.

So anyway, just a heads up. If I sound really grumpy I am, and I wanted you to know why, it’s not you, it’s me. The Giant Marshmallow Man of WoW. I mean there aren’t any calories in Chocolate Gelato are there? I was eating it specifically because there weren’t any calories cause it’s Gelato, it was my diet food. Who knew.

Organized? Not so Much

I really need to get this blog more organized. Since I’m not an organized person, it makes it kind of difficult. So I’m blaming it on Cat, she can take responsibility while I shirk it, I’m not above that. I’ll use her picture again to throw everyone off.

My blogroll really doesn’t reflect all the blogs I now read, but my method of reading them is pretty much a digital Rube Goldberg contraption. I find one I like and quickly bookmark it. But I use four different browsers depending on which email account I’m using. Oh yeah, and then there’s the bits of paper too. Very low tech but I do use it on occasion. I just can’t locate the bits later. Or I write over them, making it difficult to read. I KNOW it’s disorganized, I just can’t help it.

My favorite delivery method is an email notice that there’s a new post. This is a visual cue for me to go directly to the blog cause I like to read posts where they were created. In case there’s cool pictures and stuff.

I tried taking off some blogs from my blogroll that haven’t posted for months. That didn’t work out so well because I keep thinking they might. I took one off and now I have to put it back on because what if he posts, I’ll miss it and he’s funny.

I took someone’s old blog off and forgot to put his new one on, geez. And I think he’s mad at me now. He made some kind of Freudian slip and buried me. He changed my name to Tomb of the Ancient. Take that you forgetful Tome, dig your way out of there, I dare you! See I’m getting in all kinds of trouble here.

So I’m going to locate as many of the bookmarked ones as I can and add them. The bits of paper ones may be more of a challenge. But I guess I can do it a little at a time. And the feedreader ones and the WordPress following ones and the  …

If my blogroll starts to take five minutes to scroll through will I look greedy? Oh hell, I’ll just throw caution to the wind and take that risk. And really, whatever happens it’s all Cat’s fault anyway.

Random Thoughts from a Hookah Lounge

I leave her alone for two days and really, what is she doing? And where the hell even is that? Anyway, this isn’t a proper post with any kind of theme or underlying point to be made. Just random thoughts and stuff.

I’ve been reading a lot of posts on blogging generated by the The Newbie Blogger Initiative. There are so many posts with great advice for new bloggers, but a really poor showing on the bad advice so I thought I’d give that a go.

I haven’t read all of them and someone may have touched on this, but another good reason to blog is you can do and say whatever you want. Well, not WHATEVER, some things might get you put on some government agency’s watch list, but I mean you can have fun! No rules!

I am a great fan of outdated words and expressions. I really never say, “I’m going to beat you like a rented mule” irl but I can here. I can use strumpet and scofflaw and tomfoolery all I want. And irl I’m not a big fan of rules. I find grammar and punctuation tedious.

I’m not 100% positive but I think it was a biography on Georgia O’Keeffe where I read what I thought was the absolute MOST sensible approach to writing I’d ever read. The idea being, the only form of punctuation necessary was –. Brilliant woman.

a thought – a thought – a thought

That’s it! Simple! I haven’t adopted it here yet, but I’m pretty close and I could if I wanted to, that’s the beauty of blogging! You can use … sort of like fashion accents in the copy where it looks visually boring, or put in links to something that’s totally irrelevant to your post, because a link would look pretty right there. The sky’s the limit, you can make the rules!

YOU CAN SHOUT IN CAPS!

I have a confession; I pretty much do that one irl. You can use dirty words or not, your choice. See how much fun this is!

Be a linguistic pioneer. Help language evolve, need just the right word? Make it up. Don’t listen to stodgy old spellcheck, be creative!

You can do:

Vrykul Nude, Ancient Nude, SWTOR Nude

And as a result you’ll get all kinds of really cool spam to read.

You know on second thought, perhaps you should just listen to them.

Let’s see what else is going on. Oh, yeah. Ironsally is really mad at me. Browsing the web she found The Great Warlock “Epitome” Tmog Contest at Warlockery and wanted me to enter her to make up for the whole embarrassing gardening outfit thing. I told her I couldn’t because I’m too busy slaying demons in other lands. This made her mad on so many levels. Slaying perfectly good demons? Seriously?

So I HAVE to go fight demons in other lands because incredibly generous Laz, who makes appearances in fiction at Effraeti’s RP, gave my Barbarian a rare two-handed mace, Shadow Force. She now has twice the damage and she’s got to go give Fuad the Cannibal another try.

OMG! Now that’s just scary, apparently Navi and I are psychically linked! In the middle of writing this I checked her blog for updates, and look what I found! It wasn’t there when I started writing this … spooky.

The Cake is NOT a Lie or Nom, Nom, Nom

Norwegian Carrot Cake spammer man was not kidding! This cake would improve anyone’s posts. Thanks are due to quick thinking Erinys of The Harpy’s Nest for the translation. I never think of Google translator. I will give the recipe, but first I had a few problems with Google’s take on Norwegian. I really think they might have been wrong on the title. I’m pretty sure this must be a Norwegian Army Platoon Carrot Cake.

Let me be clear, I’m not much of a cook. Left to myself I’d probably live on frozen pizzas with an occasional banana or something thrown in for good health. So I really wasn’t paying much attention. Had I been a REAL cook, the 7 cups of grated carrots, 6 eggs, etc. would have alerted me to the fact that this was going to be one freaking big cake. Unfortunately I was taken by surprise and had to try to mix it in three different bowls cause I don’t have anything large enough to hold all that stuff … because you know, I’m not a cook.

Another reason I’m not a cook is all the stupid pots and pans you’ve got to use. I hate that. I hate making a big mess and having to clean it up. My husband refers to me as the “One Pot Cook,” and it’s true. I try to only make things that can be made with the use of one pot.

So anyway, just warning you. This is a big mess-making cake to make. I was getting really worried that it wouldn’t come out good enough to justify all the mess I made. Experienced cooks probably don’t make this much mess, but just so you know … kitchen … big mess. But I have dogs so I didn’t have to worry about the floor.

Also, another problem arose when I went to the store and forgot to take the recipe with me. I thought np, I’ll shop from memory. ROTFLMAO! I can’t even begin to believe I really thought that would work out.

So I was ready. I wanted to make it even though I’d screwed up the whole ingredients thing. I forged ahead nonetheless.

I used the recipe below with these changes.

I didn’t remember the ground almonds. I hold a grudge against almonds as one broke a tooth of mine so that’s probably why. So, no almonds.

Whoops! Forgot the Canola Oil. So I substituted with Olive Oil which is the only oil I did have on hand.

Substituted sugar for Sukrin.

I think I have Cardamom way in the back in the cupboard where I keep the spices but I was too lazy to look, so no Cardamom.

2 cups spelled or rye flour

Just used regular flour, if I wanted to drive to an upscale grocery store I maybe could find rye flour but I’d have to drive to another county as there’s no upscale anything in my county.

Not sure what Eventuellt raisins are or what I was supposed to do with them so I just threw a whole bunch of raisins in the batter.

Note: Duh, I just thought to translate Eventuellt. Apparently it means possibly so I accidentally did the right thing throwing them in there.

I was completely flummoxed by the whole glaze direction thing. It’s kinda like I am when I’m in an instance and get nervous, I get stupid and stand in bad stuff. So I decided to just make regular old cream cheese frosting to avoid a problem.

The cake is really delicious, my husband doesn’t like carrot cake and even he likes it. And look at the ingredients; it’s health food really. You can eat without guilt, all those carrots and apples and oatmeal!

There are so many fine benefits to be had by blogging about WoW, but this! Unbelievable! Who knew! Beneficial spam!

Oh all right, I’ll come clean. There is one more ingredient in there. I don’t really know the amount but I’m pretty sure there are probably some black dog hairs in it. There are black dog hairs everywhere in this house but if you don’t have any I’m sure it’ll still be okay or if applicable substitute cat hair. Bon Appétit!

WoW Bloggers Norwegian Army Platoon Carrot Cake

For those times when you feel your posts aren’t up to snuff remember what spammer man says:

“Hrm, Not the best post unfortunately. Sorry to be so blunt! You should try some Norwegian carrot cake ( ) to cheer you up instead.” — Norwegian Carrot Cake Spammer Man

Heat the oven to about 200 degrees Celsius = 392°F.

Mix the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and spices in a measuring jug or bowl. Grate the carrots and apples, chopped walnuts and apricots roughly, mash the banana.

Beat eggs and Sukrin fluffy. There will be an eggnog with Sukrin, but it will taste good anyway.

Add the oil in the egg mixture and add the flour mixture little by little so that no lumps.

Then put in the remaining ingredients and fill the mixture into a small roasting pan or a large round shape.

Cooking time will vary from stove to stove, but expect that it takes about 1 hour. You may want to check for respectively 15 and 30 minutes that no heat is too strong.

When it is cooked, take it out of the oven and loosen it from the mold. Let it cool on a wire rack. Let cake cool completely, about 30 minutes before you start with a glass texture.

Eventuellt raisins

Sukrin is brand name sugar substitute.

6 eggs

1 cup Sukrin

2 cups canola oil

2 cups spelled or rye flour

1 cup oatmeal

100 g ground almonds

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon cardamom

1 teaspoon ginger, or allspice, or both

2 teaspoons baking powder

7 cups grated carrots

1 can (100 grams) walnuts

½ bag of apricots

2 mashed ripe bananas

1 grated apple

Eventuellt raisins

Blogs and Dogs, or the detritus of an unfocused mind

Dogs

Yes, another rambling WoW related brain dump, mostly about blogging. I’ll put in titles to make it easier to skip stuff. First, it’s cold and rainy and icy so I thought a festive dog photo would be cheery. This was taken on holiday; we were at the beach so he’s wearing his beach hat. I felt bad that our little girl dog never gets to be a web star. Both our dogs have issues. My boy suffers from separation anxiety and will chew off his foot if left without a human for long. That’s why we all vacation together.

Our little girl does not take a good photo. She looks terrified in most, like the photographer is standing there with a polearm, ready to beat her. She’s a rescue and we thought we’d be able to help her but the consensus of the experts is her fearfulness is genetic, probably why she ended up in a rescue. She’s the sweetest girl ever but her heart really belongs to my husband.

Her favorite thing of all is to ride in the car. I just don’t get this because she squeals in terror the whole time. She doesn’t want to get out anywhere, just ride around. I wonder if a car ride is the canine equivalent of a roller-coaster to her. She’s not telling. So there she is looking only semi-scaredy.

What? Yes, I frequently wear a bag over my head at home. You know, bad hair day … too lazy to put on makeup. In this case I wasn’t though … that’s not even really MY HEAD.

My Servers

Morning Fenris! I just wanted to give a shout to Fenris. I can always tell what server I logged into and what faction by glancing at the chat. Yes, Alliance side, Fenris. No doubt there, and a bonus this morning. I don’t even have to black out any language. Horde side is usually nicer. Zangarmarsh is much nicer. Kind of freaked me out. People throwing out buffs, being helpful. It took some getting used to. I have a bunch of other servers but these are the two that I’ve spent the most time on so, Hi!

Norwegian Carrot Cake

I was so happy that Norwegian Carrot Cake man came back. They told me, “Hrm, Not the best post unfortunately. Sorry to be so blunt! You should try some Norwegian carrot cake ( ) to cheer you up instead.” Cyrme at Bubbles of Mischief said he visited her too. Yes, yes, I know I’m playing right into his hands but really, I want to make it. Here’s the recipe but I can’t read it. The only part I think I’ve got down, is to preheat the oven to 200° Celsius, then I’m stumped. If anyone can translate it, let me know I’d like to make it. I can’t stop thinking about Carrot Cake now, and I guess the Norwegian’s make the best ones.

Fashionista, So NOT

This one made me laugh so hard. The comment was, I love your fashion sense. My idea of dressing up is putting on a clean pair of jeans. Maybe she was talking about my Druid but that still doesn’t make sense. Below is the transmog outfit she put together. It’s what she wanted, a working girl look. I don’t know about you but to me her outfit kind of reminds me of those movies where there are the “townies” and the rich, smart, pulled together looking kids. Some of the people on my blog roll are the pulled together looking kids. It’s not my Druid, she’s kind of fashion challenged if you ask me.

My Druid kind of cracks me up. She’s so cute with that whole mean scowl she’s got there. Ooooo … such a scary Druid. Works much better in cat or bear form, human form just isn’t cutting it.

Search Terms

“ancient nude sexy” not once but TWICE! Aw, thank you but you shouldn’t have. I’m not sure where you actually saw nude pictures of the ancient, but I’m going to take your word for it. Chickens coming home to roost from my flagrant misuse of the word nude.

“pissing sopa” I KNOW! Me too! I feel exactly the same about it! That pissing SOPA! It’s nice to know we’re all on the same page here.

OH NO! This post is becoming ridiculously long, straining the  patience of kind readers to the breaking point and I haven’t even gotten to over half of what I wanted to say, geez. Okay the rest will have to wait, but just one more thing. I promise. Just one thing about three things but it’s really only one thing.

Links to Good Stuff

I saw that Niki of Gamer’s Fridge has a new SWTOR related blog up, Moz’s Cantina Crawl. I know, how cool is that. Although I have a Bounty Hunter too, her’s seems to be doing useful stuff like healing and all. Mine just runs around screaming, “Die, you #%@?##$@#er’s” and using Death from Above.

And Saz of World of Saz has a FaceBook page where she has tips and advice about all things enhancement shaman. This brings me to the place where I was going to talk about getting an Ancient FaceBook page and my inability to multitask well but I’ll but I’ll save that for another post cause this one’s just too long.

Oh, and here’s my rhyme, I’m so proud of it, it’s the only one I’ve ever done.

Navimie the Rhyming Machine and Healer Supreme oh wait … or, or,

Navimie the Rhyming Queen and Healer Supreme

OMG! I thought of another!! I’m getting good at this!

Unlicensed WoW Blog

Yesterday I did the self-portrait above. I do this kind of stuff when I’m upset. Maybe a year or so ago I wouldn’t have been caught off-guard by a comment, but no one has ever been anything but nice here … so yeah … I was lulled into a false sense of security. We’re all friends here I thought, and then I got my feelings hurt by a comment.

My problem is, when I get a compliment I tend to think, oh, they’re just being nice. When I’m told something negative I just jump right on that bandwagon. They’re right, I’m awful, what was I thinking. I should just shut up, go out in the garden and eat worms. If negativity is directed at me I just seem to embrace it. I don’t get mad, I get depressed and accept I deserved it. After the worm-eating stage I then vent by doing self-portraits. Which is lucky, as when I’m really, really, angry I lose my words, seriously. My vocabulary shrinks to one word, you know the one, and I scream it using it as noun, verb, adjective, etc.

If you’re such a delicate little flower perhaps you should be writing in a padlocked diary instead of on the freaking internet, stupid. But that would be giving in and if nothing else I am stubborn, so no, I’m not.

I deleted the comment so fast it’s as though I thought it carried the Ebola virus but to paraphrase it said more or less, that I was unqualified to speak about WoW and should stop. Apparently, and in fairness to me I didn’t know this, you have to raid to be qualified to write about WoW. I was stunned, a lot of, probably most of the commenters here raid. They’ve never taken me aside and said … Ancient … come on now … no one wants to hear your adventures as Wolfie McLonewolf.

I dug out some other pictures I’ve done under the affect of varying amounts of self-loathing.

This one is work related and I call it “Just a Few Changes.” I don’t think it needs any explanation, I think EVERYONE has heard that one before. Yes, I did. The blood on my teeth is what was left of my employer.

The one above was after my traditional, homemade, Christmas Ginger Snap cookies failed to, I don’t know, cook. They lay flatter than pancakes. This didn’t upset me too much and I learned from it. Don’t use baking soda that’s possibly ten or twelve years old, so it was a learning experience.

This last one I did because I don’t know how much longer I can, or what I’ll have to end up doing, in the battle to try to retain even a semblance of attractiveness. This one’s so last year. I have given up. I don’t care anymore, I am free!

So anyway, I was left with a decision. What to do. Continue writing this unlicensed WoW blog and possibly risk the wrath of more players? What are my options?

Take GoDaddy up on that tomeoftheelderly domain name and blog about fighting off becoming elderly? Because really, I’m fighting that one. Elderly is going to have to drag me kicking and screaming because I’m not going willingly when my time comes. I could offer advice and health tips, like take up gaming to improve your hand-eye coordination and stuff.

Could I start a SWTOR blog? Do you think having done Black Talon twice is enough street cred? Or would I be drummed out of SWTOR blogdom too?

I’m feeling a lot better. Between the self-portrait and writing about it I feel almost back to normal. So I’ve decided to STAY HERE AND ANNOY YOU. Oh, not you, I didn’t mean you, I meant the person who commented and caused all this.

Oh, and the whole thing may have hit me harder than it would have normally because once again, WordPress and Blogger aren’t speaking so I’ve been hitting PUBLISH, over and over on blogs I read and nothing. I started to get paranoid that they had a unlicensed WoW blogger filter on their blogs. I know silly, but I did.

So my next blog post … let me see … what would be supremely annoying. I have it! It will be “A WoW Soloist’s Bucket List,” by Wolfie McLonewolf.