Dear Matty: Chivalry Is Dead Edition

Dear Matty:
This is so damn petty of me, but it's gnawing at me so: sometimes the real world sucks. Yesterday for example, I noticed not only was the toilet paper roll completely down to the bare cardboard, but "no one" had even bothered to go to the other cupboard and resupply the area with fresh rolls. This may not seem like a big deal, but this happens quite a bit, and then that "no one" apologizes! That is what makes me angry! And this morning I was putting away a big stack of laundry, found a warm sweatshirt to keep me comfortable in the chilly morning air, and then was told to not wear it. Okay, okay, so it wasn't mine, I should go find my own, but there was a bear sleeping in the cave where I left my hoodie, so...anyway. I am just sick of folks in the real world being selfish and petty, and once in a while want to just get my way without fuss or fights. In Azeroth, my guildmates are always happy to see me, stand by me in battlegrounds and LFR, and send me companion pets. I mean, really, how awesome is that? Matty, what do you do about your real life nuisances?

Signed,
Mama's Out Of Mana

Dear MOOM:
Whenever there is a disruption in domestic bliss, I turn to my trusty resource, Urban Dictionary! According to UD, 'chivalry' is something that is dead and should stay dead. Well that's not its original meaning - chivalry used to mean treating others, specifically ladies, with a code of honor and ethics. Now it's just come to mean a double standard. In other words, we want our toilet seats down and rolls filled, too. There is a lot of "mine" and "yours" in the Matty-shack, a whole lot of boundaries and not a lot of sharing is caring sometimes. This puts a huge debuff on a romantic's heart, I understand. There is a passage from one of my favorite novels, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez where the wife, Fermina, forgets to put in a new bar of soap or some trivial thing and is so put out by the pettiness of the husband --it's a powerful, poignant moment. Reading it intermittently over my life shows me new understanding or insight. But that's heavy literature: you're just trying to be happy in both worlds, yes?

“She felt the abyss of disenchantment.” 

― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Well here is what I do know: the more you do for yourself the better, that way any time someone does do something nice for you it's all good, unexpected, and a pleasant surprise. The boons will surface like flowers in a field of cow patties, rising above.

To you youngun's out there who are far too sophisticated to admit that there are sometimes you want to feel like a princess or a knight in shining armor (careful, kids, I did not assign gender roles to this - you did that yourselves), forgive yourselves. It's okay. Everyone wants to feel that swept-up thing, and it's very real, powerful, and necessary. What keeps us human after all.

And this article and short film will come in very, VERY handy:
What To Do When You've Made Someone Angry by Peter Bregman  (hint: just say you're sorry and shut up)

It's Not About the Nail

Matty

Postscript: Yes, I am going. I really am. The Matty-shack household is on different schedules: I take the  morning shifts while everyone else is on swing or graveyard. May not be funny, may not be fair, but that's the way it is.

Here are some books I'm taking on my trip:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (started reading it last night --!!!!)

The Child Thief by Brom

The Night Life of the Gods by Thorne Smith (thank you Erinys - I am loving it!)

Bye, bye Miss Warcraft Draenei....

Sung to the tune of "American Pie" (apologies to Don Mclean)

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that daily used to make me smile
And, I knew if I had my chance that I could party g.r.e.n.a.d.e dance
and...
maybe they'd not nerd rage for a while
But, July came with real life questing, and this is no light jesting
I can't remember if I cried, with one more loot roll, wipe and died
Something touched me deep inside when Azeroth and Real World collide

So Bye, bye Miss Matty Draenei
drove my rocket to down to Sprocket but the Sprocket was high
Them good ol' Dwarfs were drinking whisky and rye singing...
This'll be the day that I die...(to Garrosh)
This'll be the day that I die...(by gosh)

Did you write the Book of Spells and how many rune totems, have you felled?
If the Off-Hand tells you so
Now do you believe in King and Chief, can priestess save your mortal soul and
Can you teach me how to raise my rep, not slow?
Well I know that you're in love with Wrynn cause I saw you placing hopeful hymm
You both kicked off your boots, man I dig those trinkets and loots!
I was a lonely teenage hooven girl with a flagon, and a souped-up low rider dragon but
I knew I was out of luck
the day the worlds collide

I started singing Bye, bye Miss Matty Draenei

drove my rocket to down to Sprocket but the Sprocket was high
Them good ol' Dwarfs were drinking whisky and rye singing...
This'll be the day that I die...(to Garrosh)
This'll be the day that I die...(by gosh)

Now for three years I've been on my own and moss grows on a Duskwood gravestone
but
that's not how it used to be
I dont want to go off into the woods with there are bears, aches and sunburns
Would gladly stay and take my queue turns
Along with all the others...did you take my feathers?

The mage is locked in her tower, and the hunter off picking flowers...
Oh and the King was looking down to Jainna who took the staff
and whacked him till we all started to laugh
She and Vereesa took over, Alliance rollin' in clover!
But that'll have to keep till I came back...when worlds collide


Bye, bye Miss Matty Draenei
drove my rocket to down to Sprocket but the Sprocket was high
Them good ol' Dwarfs were drinking whisky and rye singing...
This'll be the day that I die...(to Garrosh)
This'll be the day that I die...(by gosh)




So, I'll be back soon. Thank you for indulging another bad song parady. I am leaving Mataoka at 19729/21000 with the Shado Pan Assault. Hate those loose ends. I need this break from WoW, but am really going to miss you. Yes, you. You.

Dammit. Just. Dammit. (Or the Very Confused Grub)

I know, I know...it's Fourth-of-July in the States - our big show -- all hot dogs, s'mores, sparklers and mosquito bites. The best Fourth I ever spent was on a chilly summer night in Colorado, blanket, fireworks, and well never mind.

Very different vignette this morning: it's a full container of left-over expensive beef lo-mein I forgot to put in the fridge, whiney little dog, huge stack of bills and whatnot, and dammit all to hell---I clicked on something in Curse and then when I logged into the game, all of my hard work in setting up elvui was gone. Well, more annoying than that: there were bits and pieces of it, but it made no sense. When I looked in the add-on folder, all seemed to be well.

Look - I'm not asking for any diagnosis or sharp-shooting here. I am just kind of laughing to myself because if this was twenty, hell, even ten years ago, I'd have no compunction about waking up a young leet druid to get his ass to go mow the lawn or something. But these days, I hesitate, because waking him up for his expertise to come and fix whatever his addled mother broke seems....bizarre. 

So my choices, self-imposed of course

My phone is ringing...what the f*ck? Why is this person calling me at 8:34 AM? 

Anyway....so my self-imposed choices are to be a grown-up. A grown-up wouldn't have a big stack of bills that need paying sitting in front of her, or a laundry room full of unmentionables, or even a full container of now spoiled beef lo-mein. A grown-up would fix her own damn UI, and answer that call. (I didn't.)

I was thinking about Cyrme's post Cha-ching with very helpful ways to make gold. In my world, the achievement would be "most gold wasted." Most checks written to people doing a job I should do myself. Most containers of Chinese food or spaghetti left out. Most times I undercut myself on the Auction House. Most repair bills for complete stupid mistakes. It's the thank-you notes I need to write, the vacation photos I need to look at and comment on, the stories that are half-finished begging to be completed. A half-overturned rock sheds no light at all, but just confuses the grubs underneath. I am a confused grub.

This UI debacle is just one example of, if I choose to be all mojo-and-superstition, sprinkled with superstitiion and a hefty serving of mumbo-jumbo gumbo*, the universe telling me NOT TO PLAY. STOP. Stop it now! But I do believe that a detox from Azeroth may be in order, even though I think I would be just like this reporter. 

So onto my half-assed morning, which will include an amazing piece of writing by John Updike. We read this again on Tuesday in my little writer thingy, which comprised mostly of either middle-aged women complaining of their divorces or other middle-aged room judging them. Good times. Everyone needs to just step off.

Apologies: back to Updike: 

For Guarf -- 

A&P
by john updike

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knowit made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.

By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag -- she gives me alittle snort in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem -- by the time I get her on her way the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a pushcart, back my way along the counters, in the aisle between the check-outs and the Special bins. They didn't even have shoes on. There was this chunky one, with the two-piece -- it was bright green and the seams on the bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just got it (the suit) -- there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadn't quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long -- you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very "striking" and "attractive" but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so much -- and then the third one, that wasn't quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn't look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima donna legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it. You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar?) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.

She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know -- bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty. 

She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was unravelling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your straps down, I suppose it's the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high her neck, coming up out o fthose white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn't mind. The longer her neck was, the more of her there was.

I just wanna walk in an A&P in a dirty pink bikini and be queen of the world for a few moments, you know? Oh well---taking out the trash.

*Just like Momma Troll used to make

Postscript: Oh Look! Matticus found something that might help!

Storm warning....

The shaman felt her lightning shield spark, an anomaly. Warning: Do not replace healing rain with gasoline. As it was, she dropped her healing tide totem, and reminded herself to calm down. This wasn't the first time her 'unedited big mouth' debuff got in the way of harmless thoughts.

"Nits in beards indeed...!" she mumbled to herself. "I'll have to defend my love of Dwarfs, I suppose..."

So to dearest Roo -- after you read these loving tributes of Mataoka's clear and respectful relationship to her adopted Dwarven brethren, if you still believe she owes you an apology for the nit comment (it was true! The nit was in the tater salad! Or wait, maybe it was an errant poppy seed...), then let her know.

But be warned: anytime a shaman tells you she wants to 'have a chat' better hope the levee holds:

Blackberry Winter

Drinks with Dwarfs, revisited

Unsung Heroine: Moira

Tiny Story Time for Day Twenty


Now - why, oh why??!?!?!

Young leet druid thought it was high time I redo my UI. I have a stomach ache now, and hours to go to even get to the point I can whack on a target dummy.

Maybe I'll just go get a pedicure instead, but this links will be a topic of discussion in the near future:

ELVUI: http://tukui.org/dl.php
http://www.icy-veins.com/enhancement-shaman-wow-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities

There might be bears...

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!

Have yak, will travel...

Very soon I shall be traveling across new terrain and territories to witness natural wonders and geographical oddities: I haven't done any travel in a wolf pack-cadre in over four years, far too long. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, like the family road trip to give perspective. In preparation for this grand journey (believe my crossing of the threshold moment shall come right about Spokane...), I decided I could take two companions with me, at least in pixelized spirit; the question is, who?

Considerations: There will be bad food, bear mace, astronomy, small car, large people. And relatives.

Best Trinket Ever: Bad Juju - oh I am definitely packing these girls!

Candidates:

Mr. Snerggguls noticed a typo: it's HOW to play opossum, not hot opossum

Well, since I don't need anything discovered under a bridge, and don't want to get in trouble with the law, the clear choice is gnome, and backing up would be dwarf. Now if you're offended that I am not bringing your race along for the ride, don't be. A Blood Elf would rock the beaches of Maui, and you'd better believe I would bring a troll to where there are lot of bridges. Now if I could get a gnome rogue to protect me in case of bear attack, that would be stellar! Put some of that bear mace on daggers, and make sure the oil is changed...hero time!

Theme songs:

The Passenger/Iggy Pop

Wild Rover/The Dubliners

Who would you take??

Troublemaker...

Got that ax, baby...now...what the hell do I do with it?! My poor buddy took me along into a heroic scenario the other morning, and wouldn't you know? I am so out of practice! Between the computer issues, and my own forgotten muscle memory, I screwed up big time. He got a phone call and had to go, and the kind druid that was along for the ride was polite, but I'm sure a 'Thanks but no thanks" -- I really screwed up.

What's a girl to do to get her chops back up? 

BRAWLER'S GUILD NATCH!

Perfect, Kallixta!

Badda-bing-badda-boom up to over Level 5, got my Clock'Em, and felt much better about myself. You should've seen the other guy....

Theme songs: (yes, I have a tiny metal piece in my heart: don't want to hurt my neck head-banging though...)

Drowning Pool/Bodies

Dreams of Darnassus....

Ah, insomnia. Lovely, interesting, mind-bending insomnia. I told a dear friend I would go to a writer thing today (and see some of my favorite people) and yet again, 3:11 AM needs me, and has me scheduled to toss and turn until 4:36 AM or so, therefore I am feeling a little grumbly. But, I have to say, when trying to go back to sleep, nothing is as meditative as imagining myself in one of the Keebler tree-forts the Night Elves have built: open moon breezes, soft downy comforters, and polite crickets lull me back to sleep.

Question: when you're feeling stressed out, can't sleep, or need to pull it together, where do you go in Azeroth in your mind's eye?

Green Chili Burning....

Kellda! STOP! You are going the WRONG WAY

Mataoka came into  little bit of gold the other day, and apportioned 2.5k gold and paid for Kellda's library fines, prominently for Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion. Dang, that thing accrues monthly compounded interest! The first part of the quest chain is deceptively easy. Young leet druid sees that I am attempting this, and says it was one of the most difficult things he's ever done in game (he's played warlock since forever). So...discouraged? Disenfranchised? Discombobulated?! OH YES! I will fail a hundred times, and watch videos, but green fire shall be mine...

Warlock Green Fire Quest, Part 1/3
Warlock Green Fire Quest, Part 2/3
Warlock Green Fire Quest, Part 3/3

I need to watch these because I went into the Black Temple without finding the right Ms. Shadowbreaker, immediately establishing the derp-factor. I ended up going through Black Temple solo,  looking for her, but alas, only ended up getting my mascara runny and minions pissy with the council.

Cowl of Benevolence...sure! 

Kellda did end up with some fabulous priestly garb, which will be mogged henceforth to a "white witch" theme in the near future.

Theme song: La Verdad --Locos Por Juana (get your moves on....)

Postscript: I have no idea what I am doing.

Things that make you go....

I don't care how weird things get in Azeroth; they will never top this.
Jerry Beans?


Please see the Tommy Lee Jones one...

Yes, but is it art?

Answer: Hell yes it is.

Tsk tsk tsk...all these players who are devoted to reading Tome's blog dissin' on my...choice of...attire. Or lack thereof. 

Whatever.

TOME: YOU ROCK!

You know - I shouldn't be surprised. Before I read the comments, I was laughing to myself at something my buddy Turk said the other day, that I dress my characters often like a teenage boy's fantasy. I never considered that---I only considered my own fantasies --

As the blogger says, "Yes boys, even girls have fantasies..."

I could get into a whole big thing. I really could. Suffice it to say, I have a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in painting/printmaking. I took figure drawing. I see beauty in all forms, ages, genders, and revelations.

And if this doesn't get the computer fixed, well, gods help us all.