A Pilgrim’s Digression

Recently at work, someone I came to like and respect very much announced her retirement. Joyce’s colleagues planned a party for her, held yesterday at lunch, and I did not go. I am normally not the kind of person who attends parties at work anyway. Sociability is something I have to force upon myself, the way some people have to force their pants to button around their waist.

But in this case I thought seriously about going, but then decided not to. Today, at our regular Thursday meeting, I saw Joyce for the last time before she is “out processed” [the technical term used in government] tomorrow. She actually asked me why I didn’t come to her party, and her question shocked me enough that I lied and said I hadn’t received the email. “Oh, but I’m sure I put you on my list,” she said.

A colleague helped me out by saying, “We’ve just been swamped with work lately, Joyce.”

Later, he told me, “I didn’t go either. Those things are always as awful as funerals.”

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My wife tells me that when I write a post about World of Warcraft here at my blog, she doesn’t even read it. I’ve heard the same from other people, as well. Thus in the interest of further segregating my “real life” from my “WoW life,” I have decided to create a World of Warcraft blog as a kind of diary of my daily adventures in Azeroth and Outland.

Kilrogg Was Here is my WoW blog. I decided to use the free Wordpress domain for this blog simply because, due to time constraints, I desire ease of use more than anything. I don’t want a lot of control over the page design, or a large amount of disk space for pictures. I want a simple blog where I can log in and write an entry, then post it and forget it. Wordpress.com gives me the same functionality as my personal Wordpress install, without having to do the install or the maintenance.

Anyway, if you want, you can read about my goals for the site over at Kilrogg. Lately I’ve just come to recognize that although this is a generalist blog (hence the word “Digression” in the title), I can’t expect everyone to be interested in the same things I am. Especially in terms of this particular video game.

Personally, I think it’s a cultural phenomenon. Others, especially non-gamer spouses of players , think otherwise.

By most media accounts, the 2008 Democratic primary is all but over. Obama has won the last ten primaries, in some cases by large margins of victory. The Clinton campaign is “fading,” according to the AP. Other media outlets have told us, again and again, that the March 4 primaries will be “make or break” and “do or die” for Clinton.

Thus the stage is set for a spectacular Clinton comeback in Texas and Ohio.

Don’t be surprised if it happens. Conservative pundits I listen to are still predicting that Hillary will win the nomination. To some extent, their belief is motivated by an almost irrational view of the Clintons as so power-hungry that they will stop at nothing to take back the White House. Exactly how they would overcome the votes of millions of Democrats who have chosen Obama as their candidate is unclear, but it usually involves blackmailing and/or bribing Super Delegates.

However, looking at the election realistically, I don’t think we should count Hillary out until she formally withdraws. Nor do I think the media has the story about the March 4 primaries exactly correct.

The thing to remember is that a cable news station thrives on suspense as much as any network TV drama. Cliffhangers bring people back next week, and the week after. And as long as the primary election can be portrayed as a cliffhanger (”Tune in March 4 to find out if Hillary Clinton survives”), ratings will stay in the stratosphere. The election may be two weeks away, but junkies like me will still tune in to hear Bill O’Reilly, David Brooks, Chris Matthews, and a plethora of other pundits tell us the same thing over and over again: March 4 is “do or die” for Hillary Clinton.

You get the point, don’t you? If Clinton succeeds in pulling her irons out of the fire on March 4, it will be the biggest comeback since Harry Truman was prematurely written off as an ex-President. And the media will be able to report on it in bold exclamations and hours and hours of commentary. Obama will be thrown off stride, just as Hillary has been thrown off her stride by his wins and the media’s endless reporting on her campaign’s death throes.

Meanwhile, if she wins, the tag line underneath the talking heads will have to be changed. Is the Mississippi primary on March 11 “do or die” for Barak Obama? Tune in to find out what our talking heads have to say.

“Chris, March 11 is make or break for Barak Obama. He has to win Mississippi to prove that his momentum hasn’t faltered. It’s all or nothing on March 11.”

On and on it goes.

The fact is that there probably is no “make or break” primary election, now. Neither of the two candidates will be able to win enough votes to achieve the needed delegate count. This may well be a primary that is decided by Super Delegates rather than the popular vote. In a way that would be ironic, given Democratic frustrations with the 2000 election and the way in which the popular vote was thwarted by political insiders and judges. Yet even more ironically, it is that thwarting of the popular will that is Hillary Clinton’s best hope for success.

How else to explain her plea that Super Delegates “exercise independent judgment,” rather than voting for the candidate their constituencies chose? She cannot win, now, without the Super Delegates overriding the votes of ordinary Democrats. One might suggest to her that nine Supreme Court Justices also used their “independent judgment” in handing the 2000 election to George Bush? I suspect such a comment would not go over well.

Interestingly, in the article linked to above Clinton also suggests that the nomination battle will last well into summer and will probably go to the convention. What she leaves unstated is that it doesn’t have to be that way. She could always cede the field. Every indication is that she has no intention of doing that, no matter whether she keeps losing or not. I suspect she still believes she will be nominated by the fiat of the Super Delegates, and that once the decision is made by the party elders, everyone else will fall in line behind her. Obama will have to wait his turn, and she will be free to wage her lackluster campaign based on “results” and “solutions” against the equally lackluster geezer John McCain.

We may have a few more cliffhangers ahead of us before the candidate is chosen; however, if Hillary Clinton is able to wrench the nomination from Obama, largely due to the media prematurely writing her obituary, 2008 is going to be a long and very typical American campaign season. Get ready for a snooze as Clinton and McCain debate the minutaie of health care reform.

Goodbye Super Obama Girl.  Hello Big Sister.

Although this was not the first time my guild successfully cleared Karazhan, this was a first time for me. We began work on it Tuesday evening and had a really successful run that first night. No wipes. We killed all the bosses in one shot up to Illhoof, the optional satyr boss in the library. We resumed the fight Saturday night with Netherspite. I was expecting a pretty easy time of it, since the trash was basically cleared for the final three boss fights. Kara was empty except for a few Shades and Horrors, plus Prince Malchezaar and Netherspite.

Netherspite gave us fits. I think we spent a good hour and a half on him, trying and wiping, over and over. I had no problems riding the blue beam on my warlock–I just drain tanked through the hits I was taking–but I wasn’t seeing the void zones when they would open up beneath me. Finally our raid leader, Jimby, asked me if I was zoomed in to first person view.

I wasn’t in first person, but I was zoomed in pretty close. That’s how I have always played, normally. He told me I needed to zoom out as far as possible for these bosses so I can see more of the area around me. It makes sense, but had never occurred to me that something so simple could be inhibiting my playing better. It made all the difference though. Netherspite is a huge, blue dragon, and when zoomed in, one can see very little of what’s going on around the room.

Next up, we took on Prince Malchezaar. If Netherspite was frustrating, this fight was impossible, at least that night. Prince is a giant Draeneii-looking creature who, by himself, would be a pushover. But he summons Infernals who fall from the sky, landing and, while standing in one place, casting a Hellfire-like area of effect spell that forces you to move around. Where the Infernals fall is totally random, but if luck is against you, they fall in such a way as to isolate your casters from being able to cast spells on the boss, or else they fall in such a way as to hem in your tank and melee DPS, essentially forcing the healers to heal through the Hellfire. He also casts a spell called Enfeeble that takes a random two or three players and reduces their hit points to one point. He then casts a Shadow Nova after a few seconds that, if you get caught in it during the Enfeeble, will essentially ensure death. You cannot be healed during the Enfeeble. It wears off pretty quickly, though, and actually proved to be no problem at all, since as a caster I was standing at max range anyway (out of range of the Shadow Nova). Still, it is rather shocking to see your health bar drop down to one point, and to know there is nothing you can do about it.

What killed us again and again on Prince were the Infernals. They just weren’t dropping right for us. The fight is all about luck in that respect, and I could tell it was frustrating people. It was frustrating me. We were a good group. We had the tank and the DPS and the healing to take him down, but we were getting bad drops on the Infernals.

We finally gave up about eleven-thirty. We are all East coasters, most of us with families, and so we rarely play after midnight.

Then last night, it happened that most of us were online anyway, so we decided to make one final try to kill Prince. Again it seemed like we were going to be unlucky. We got him to 3% health on the first try. Second attempt we brought him down to 6%. The problem was we were getting him down in health, but people were dying to the infernals. It was getting late and people were making mistakes, too, such as not being at max range (sometimes the Infernals make that difficult though). And in one case, we just had to laugh because after all our meticulous preparation prior to starting the fight, the hunter misdirected aggro onto a healer instead of the tank. I looked up and all I see is this big blue demon charging towards the DPS/Healer group instead of towards the tank standing out there on the balcony. It was a prime “Oh shit” moment.

Finally, finally, we did get him down, though. And again it all came down to luck: the Infernals didn’t pin us down, and we didn’t lose anyone. He dropped some pretty good items, too, which was a relief because after all the time we spent on him this weekend, I think everyone expected him to drop crap. I got my Tier 4 helm token, for the Voidheart Crown. I think it’s incredibly ugly, so I will probably leave “Show Helm” unchecked in my preferences. Occasionally in PvP I see people wearing it, and to me it just gives away how well-geared you are to your opponent. I’d rather my opponents be in the dark about me and my gear.

One of the two hunters with us also got the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix, so all in all, it was a good kill.

At this point, it was about eleven fifteen. We decided to make one shot at Nightbane, another optional boss that you have to summon. Nightbane is a fiery, skeletal dragon that has a number of abilities, but he proved somewhat easier than Prince to kill. We had a wipe the first time we tried him, though. Our pally was supposed to pick up the skeleton he drops on us so that I could AoE them with my Seed of Corruption. I waited for him to tell me he had the skeletons, and then I cut loose with the Seed. Well, he didn’t have them. Not all of them anyway. Two of them attacked and killed me, and with no one else to AoE them, the group was facing Nightbane and his skeleton minions. Wipe.

However, one of our Priests was still Soulstoned from the final Prince fight. She rezzed us and we re-grouped without having to run back from the graveyard. The Soulstone was about to expire anyway, so I stoned her again, and we tried one more time. This time we took him down hard. The pally waited an extra three seconds to make sure he had aggro on the skeletons, and it was smooth sailing. I don’t remember what dropped from Nightbane. I already had my purple for the night, so I wasn’t rolling on anything anyway.

As people were hearthing out, I took this screen capture of the flaming pile of bones that is Nightbane (clicky click on the tumbnail), and us standing around gawking. I like the imposing mountains in the distance, and I think this shows how well-designed the instance is aesthetically. Karazhan is definitely a work of art, both in terms of game art and game play. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

I would not make a good political commentator, unless I was paid to do it. Here it is one in the afternoon and I am only just getting around to mentioning that my candidate, Barak Obama, won the Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. primaries last night. ABC called the Virginia primary for Obama shortly after seven, and at that point I did not bother waiting for any more news. Virginia was the big prize.

It’s rather ironic that he won so handily here in the Chesapeake region because just yesterday I wrote that I thought Hillary would do better than expected. That was not just a statement I made to lower my own high expectations. I really did think she would do better. I was feeling more sympathetic towards her myself.

I listened to the podcast of the 60 Minutes interview with Clinton, in which she came across as genial, sympathetic, and even genuine…a word I never would have imagined myself using to describe Hillary Clinton. I read news articles throughout the day, and I watched ABC’s recounting of her activities during the day, shortly before the polls closed–noting how the reporter was sure to put in a sly dig at her at the end, saying that she seemed like she couldn’t put D.C. and the Potomac primary in her rear view mirror fast enough as she boarded her plane to depart for Wisconsin.

Furthermore, NBC anchor’s David Shuster’s comment about Hillary and Bill “pimping” Chelsea out to Superdelegates, who she has been calling on behalf of her mother, also seemed designed to play on my sympathies. It was way out of line and seemed in accord with the Clinton complaint that some news organizations, like NBC, are unabashedly in the Obama camp. Can you imagine what would have happened to Rush Limbaugh if he had said that Obama had “pimped” his wife to Superdelegates?

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Knowing I would not be able to go to a polling place and vote today, on Friday I went down to the Registrar’s office in the county courthouse and cast my vote for Obama in the so-called “Potomac Primary.”  I voted an absentee ballot, but it wasn’t exactly absentee since I sat at the Registrar’s own desk and checked off the name on a slip of paper.  There were no issues and no other candidates on the ballot.

I have actually come to prefer voting absentee.  There is something concrete about the small piece of paper with the names printed on it, something more real than the antiquated lever voting machines, or the push pin machines, or the more modern (and even more remote) computers.   I always imagine my paper ballot going into a real, wooden ballot box the way things used to be done in the nineteenth century.  It’s an image that makes me feel my vote really counts.

Anyway, it’s hard to know what it is going to happen today.  My wife and I are basically canceling each other’s vote.  She is voting for Hillary today.  Our neighbors, of whom I wrote in my last post (the man and wife who play leap frog when making love), are canceling each other’s vote, too.  The wife is voting for Hillary and the husband for Obama.  It’s hard to say whether this is a generalized trend or not, but I tend to think so.  Limited as I am in my social interactions, I have yet to hear of a man voting for Hillary.

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I am convinced that the stereotype of the gossipy woman is actually a man-generated myth meant to provide cover for our own nosy nature. This is especially true concerning one topic in particular: sex.

Men love sex gossip. Or at least I do…but I don’t think I’m the only one.

The other day in the car, Lynn and I were talking about a friend of ours and her troubles. Laverne and her boyfriend are separated both in terms of age and distance. He is in his late fifties and she is in her mid-forties, and he lives in West Virginia while she lives a couple hours away in Virginia. Suddenly, Lynn offered the following titillating bit of gossip: “You know their sex life is not so good, either.”

“How so?” I asked, trying to be non-nonchalant, though I was suddenly all ears.

“He’s on anti-depressants, and he has to stop taking them three days before he sees her. Then he has to take Viagra prior to sex, and she has to warm him up in order to get him going. I said to her, ‘You don’t need that, Laverne. That’s too much like work.’”

“Wait, go back…” I said. “So how does she warm him up?”

“Well I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t ask? Why didn’t you ask?”

“It didn’t seem relevant.”

“Of course it’s not relevant, but I want to know. I mean, I can use my imagination, but my imagination is pretty wild.” I was imagining electrodes hooked to his genitals, perhaps the use of a sex toy to stimulate the prostate and thus an erection…but in truth “warm him up” probably just meant oral sex.

“Well, I didn’t ask,” Lynn said.

Maybe that is one big difference between a man and woman. I think I would have found a way to ask, if I were in a conversation such as that. Probably such a conversation would never occur between me and another woman, though. Women don’t talk to male friends in quite the same way as they talk to intimate female friends.

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Although over the past weeks I have written more about the Democratic candidates for President, I have also been paying close attention to the battle within the Republican party. I still listen to Limbaugh and Hannity, when I can, and it is impossible to listen to them and not come away with the feeling that there is something deeply amiss in the heart of the Republican party.

I admit I have never understood the antipathy to John McCain from within the talk radio conservative community. In the end, it may come down to, as Rush Limbaugh said yesterday, that McCain is friendlier to his Democratic rivals, who want to bury him, than he is to his Republican friends. However, that is only a character flaw if, like Limbaugh, one views politics as merely an extension of war, in which one’s opponents are never to be trusted unless they are dead. And even when they are dead, it is necessary to throw some more dirt on their grave occasionally, just to keep them buried.

Frankly, much of the talk coming from Limbaugh and Coulter and Hannity is just crazy, however. I was listening to Fox on XM radio last night, driving back to Washington, and I heard Ann Coulter say something that almost made me veer off the road in shock: “If [McCain's] our candidate, then Hillary’s going to be our girl, because she’s more conservative than he is…I will campaign for her if it’s McCain.”

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