The Dead and the Wolves

And there's some evil mothers
Well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
You know, that women never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes
And that, you know, children are the only ones who blush
And that life is just to die
But anyone who ever had a heart
Oh, they wouldn't turn around and break it
And anyone who's ever played a part
Oh, they wouldn't turn around and hate it

I was dreaming about walking around my elementary school with Arnold Schwarzenegger when we ran across Amanda Palmer sitting in the grass.

"I like the darkness around your eyes," Schwarzenegger said to her. "It's very authentic."

I never thought Amanda Palmer's eyes were particularly dark, but she thanked him before standing up and walking away, leaving her bag behind. Schwarzenegger reached into her bag and pulled out a black handgun.

"You have a permit for this?" he called after her.

She smiled back at us, frowning slightly in mock consternation, pretending she couldn't hear. She kept walking away.

"So if you're carrying a gun around," I asked Schwarzenegger, "do you just figure people won't bother you because they'll recognise you as the governor?"

He said, "If it comes to whether I'm the governor--"

And he was interrupted by my computer alarm clock playing "Sweet Jane" by The Velvet Underground. I have my alarm clock set to select a random mp3 from a playlist I put together and I really had to commend it on its choice to-day.



I spent far too much time playing World of Warcraft yesterday, levelling up my new blood elf hunter, Sichilde. I named her after a Frankish Queen, and I'm rather pleased to have finally come up with a name that, at least according to the WoW Armoury, no one else has on any other server. Or no one else has a Sichilde higher than level ten, as that's all the Armoury tracks. I'm not even sure how to pronounce "Sichilde"--I figure it's either "Sikealed","Sitch-eeled","Sikeald-A","Sick child", or some other variation of those. I don't really mind as I like all those pronunciations.

I started a new Horde character because on Saturday night Tim and I rode around the new, Worgen starter region of Gilneas, which is currently empty except for a few flocks of sheep. Mostly World of Warcraft looks like a minigolf course designed by Hulk Hogan, but the new Gilneas region is rather nice looking--grey, Hammer horror looking eighteenth century houses and stone canals under gloomy sky with countryside generally split between dark soil with some kind of red leafed, white flowering plant and rocky moor land. Tim pointed out how the bare stone mountains actually look like sculpted rock instead of the smooth, seismograph look of most of the vanilla WoW mountains, even after the cataclysm.

You can't use a Worgen yet, of course, but it looked like the plot for the Worgen players corresponds now with the Forsaken, the undead race. So I made my blood elf and immediately went to Tirisfall to do the Forsaken phased quest chain. The undead stuff in WoW is another one of the few visual aspects of the game I actually like, as it's always had a nice Disney goth quality. It's even better now with wicked, dark purplish walls erected everywhere and sexy blood elf women guards surrounding Sylvanas' encampment in Silverpine. The first character I made for WoW was a Forsaken warrior, so I was especially excited by all the changes to the quest chain, which quickly shapes up into an all out war with the Worgen taking place after the events of Wrath of the Lich King. I wasn't even listening to The Howard Stern Show for once, actually putting together a playlist of Danny Elfman, Brian Eno, Gyorgy Ligeti, among others. It's like a completely different game.