Monday, December 06, 2010

The Continuing Mass Hallucinatory Journey

Plenty of energy to-day. My normal breakfast of plain oatmeal and grapes couldn't happen because I was out of grapes, so I decided to see if I could make up for them with more soy creamer in my coffee and some hot apple juice. Everything after breakfast felt like it was taking much too long to get over with.

More time was spend to-day researching for my comic project and Christmas shopping. I saw a woman at the mall a couple days ago holding an infant and begging people for money. She looked and sounded like she was from the Middle East which was probably why she wasn't used yet to prohibitions against beggars at the mall. I managed to give her all the quarters I had in my pocket before security shooed her away. I still get the little twinge of reluctance in these cases, bred into me by a culture loath to confront the dictates of their own conscious. So they come up with rationalisations to help them see casual charity as a bad thing. I remember hearing several times an urban legend about a guy who became a millionaire "scamming" loose change off people, like this is some kind of unspeakable crime. I figure, if this unlikely scenario is true, then I'm out maybe a dollar and he lives comfortably. Why should I get worked about it?

People see it as an unspeakable crime, though, because of what I consider to be the false belief in the ability to earn money. People think the work they do is somehow magically transmuted into the money they receive from their employers. It's no wonder right wingers dislike charity and the arts--Artists can be seen working their asses off for very little remuneration or receiving millions of dollars for a couple months' work. I remember Michael Moore a couple years ago getting into an argument on The Howard Stern Show with Scott DePace--the show's resident conservative. DePace demanded how Moore could justify getting millions of dollars for his movies, and Moore said it simply happens to be the money he brings in.

I haven't been listening to Howard Stern as much lately because I was actually feeling involved with the story in World of Warcraft, but I'll probably listen to the show to-night as it looks like I've come to the end of the really good Forsaken stuff--that bug I mentioned the other day, by the way, was fixed. There was kind of a neat showdown between Sylvanas and the Worgen leader, though the dialogue was a bit awkward as always, featuring a reference to Interview with the Vampire I'm not sure was intentional, but more like an amateur writer asking himself, "Okay, if I were a bona fide, purple prose type goth writer, how would I write?" Still, it was a fun story with nice atmosphere provided by the uncommonly good art design for WoW. And I was able to get my blood elf Exalted reputation status with the Forsaken faction.

I'm glad I was able to get Burning Crusade when it was temporarily five dollars, though I wasn't able to order Wrath of the Lich King when it was on sale because there was some kind of foul up in the Blizzard works. I simply can't spend forty dollars on an add-on, so I'll content myself with Burning Crusade, which I've barely scratched the surface of. Anyway, now Blizzard can expect to receive only the precise dollar amount their alchemy's meant to transform their product into.

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