Return to Azeroth

Some time in Winter of 2006 my then Girlfriend (now Wife) got me into World of Warcraft. It took me a while to really get into the game. I bounced around classes, wanting to like Warriors but finding i was too tunnel visioned to play melee. Then in June of 2007 i created my hunter Bedrock and for the next five and a half years he was my constant companion. He and his wolf Jet fought and killed the Prince in Kara, emptied Naxx and became known as “the Undying”, Killed the Lich King, and so many more things. Then the Cataclysm came and I started to lose whatever it was that I had to raid and sit at the computer for long stretches because I had too. Firelands broke me and pretty much the guild as well. I came back for Panda’s for a small time but left before the expansion was over almost two years ago. My WoW days were over.

Just over a week ago (after months of talking to a co-worker about WoW) i fired it up on a ten day trial. The original Bedrock (for reasons) had transferred servers and was now Lodestone. At the time we moved i didn’t want anyone else to have the name so i made a place holder. I deleted that and made a new Hunter named Bedrock and there I was in the snow covered Dwarven starting area. Little did I know that some time since i left WoW had found its magic again.

It took me a bit to go though all of my toons to see what I had and to understand all the changes that have been made in my absence. My wife laughed at me. I had been talking about it for a few weeks and she told me to do it and have fun. She sat there on that first night back home in Azeroth and said. “Dammit you are making me want to play.” She went into her office and fired up a ten day trial. We started to play together and laughing. “How do I WoW” was said more than once. Trying to remember all the / commands sent us into giggle fits more than once. “Oh yeeeeeah” and “Right I forgot” have been said a ton. I didn’t realize how much I missed this game until I head a Dwarf Guard tell me “Be Good!” i got goose bumps. MY smile stretched across my face and I was happy.

A week on and we have bought the expansion. are in our early level 40’s and bought a game token with gold that we had on our old mains. We are hoping to hit 60 over the weekend and boost up to 90 to see what the xpac looks like. I know it won’t be like the old days, as we don’t want to be in a big time raiding guild. I know that most of what made the memories were the people we were with. It is my hope that my wonderful Wife and I will get to play together and have a nice time together, find goofy achievements to pull off and see some of the game we missed (i promised to get her a particular achievement she missed out on with the old guild) and maybe hit up the LFR or Time Walking events. Hell we may just play WoW Pokemon all night who knows. All i can know is it looks like we will settle for having fun.

Book Review: “Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard Vol II”

Every Culture has a tradition of story telling going back all the way to our days in caves lit by fire. It was in those days that we started our oral traditions, painting lessons as tales, our old teaching the young with naught but words. It is in that vein were we find this wonderful Mouse Guard Anthology. The basic premise is one any gamer would recognize stories told in a warm Inn. The Inn keeper has asked the story tellers back for a contest. It seems the last time they were there they did not pay their bills and whoever told the best story would have their bill erased.

Each Mouse in turn tells a story each with some sort of lesson for the reader to find. Tales of pride that kills, honor in death, love waits, or weapons aren’t always wielded by the powerful. Each lesson the stories give is one that is suited to the all ages nature of the book. My personal favorite of the stories is “Love of the Sea” by Christian Slade is told without words to great effect pulling in the reader to love found and lost then found once more.

The stories while geared to the younger reader are beautifully illustrated and have something for the adult reader too. While the stories have elements of danger and high adventure they don’t drift far into the world of the gritty that too many super hero books do. I would tell any parent who asks me about a comic to read that this one is the one they want.  A Special thank you to The House of Pop Culture for lending me this book to review. Check them out on Facebook.

 

Fishing with Pop

I am not different from many kids who grew up in the 90’s when it comes to parents. I, like many of the kids I grew up with, had parents who split up before we were teens and all the drama that comes with it. For a lot of us this meant that we only got to see one parent every other weekend and for many of us (myself included) that was the fate of Dad.

I think I was luckier than many of my peers as I could count on Pop to call my sister an I every Wednesday at 7pm like clock work and be there every other Friday to take us to his place for the weekend. During the summer Pop and I would take a day to just go fishing. He would spend the day with me away from his lawn business more often than not drowning worms instead of catching fish and listening to what ever goofy comic book induced fantasy I was having at the time. I can remember spending the days before the trip daydreaming about the wonders we may catch or the things we might see.

Like almost everything fun between Father and Son they where also mini competitions. They where never anything more than bragging and pride but it was fun to be able to say that I caught more than he did only for him to smart off right back “Yeah but i caught the biggest!” It was in these trips that I got to see my stressed out old man find his easy smile and relax for a day.

Of course like everything else when you get older other things get in the way and the fishing trips became a casualty of adulthood, work, and limited vacation days. Thankfully life has a way of letting things fall into place from time to time and on a lazy August Saturday I got to spend several hours with the old man on a lake in my old stomping grounds fishing. Some things felt as if the endless march of time had not moved a day. Lures where lost to boulder fish, reels spooled out knotted line, and both of us removed enough grass from the lake to make a nice lawn. The fish weren’t really biting but that is why it is called fishing not catching. The time spent not catching much was filled with catching up on each other and all the things that never seem to get said in short phone calls used to keep up when time allows.

Time did find its way to move on and I had to head home. It was then in the ending moments of this lucky to find day that no matter how much time passes between this trip and the next I will still be that young boy looking forward to going Fishing with Pop.

The Return of Poison Elves

by Drew Hayes

In 1997 I mostly read X-Men comics and what ever super hero book was cool at the time. It was then that my old haunt (Guardian Comics) was having a sale on back issues. When you are in your late teens a 75% off comic sale is too much to overlook. I bought most of X-Men that had anything to do with The Brood but, lucky for me, one of the owners told me to check out Poison Elves. I was looking to read more adult themed comics and, at 75% off, I was happy for the advice.

In every comic collector’s life, there are going to be comics that change the way you look at the medium. Poison Elves was one of those comics for me. Here I was, a kid who had been reading comics since he was 12, and never before had I picked up a comic as uncompromising as this. From the art, to the execution of story, Poison Elves was a sharp punch to the jaw.

A good example of this was issue #10 (the cover pictured there). A wordless comic, each page depicted a sex scene between Lusipher and Cass consummating their relationship paired with the two of them assassinating marks for their guild — Sex and Violence. Each scene was more brutal and more passionate than the next, ending with the two of them resting in each others’ arms.

When your diet of comics consists of X-Men and Spider-Man, Poison Elves was so new and so different I couldn’t stop reading. I called the comic shop and added it to my pull list before I had gotten through the stack I had already bought.

It was Poison Elves that made me look for other comics that were not just the super heroes nor PG-13. This comic was my gateway to Sandman, The Crow, and V for Vendetta; as well as  contemporaries such as Preacher and Dawn.

The comic did more for me than just show me more and better things to read, it also helped me deal with the death of my Grandfather. He died some what suddenly in February of 1997 — three months before I graduated High School and that about broke me. I went from a somewhat normal teen to a sullen, angry, and wrathful teen. I fell into, what I would later understand as, Nihilistic Behavior Pattern and it did nothing good for me.

In the comic, Lusipher was very much walking nihilism and his actions and dealing with his despair at life held up a mirror to me and let me see what I was doing to myself and the people around me. Granted, it wasn’t fast or automatic, but after about a year of reading the comic I could see too much of myself in Lusipher. It made me think about life in ways I am not sure I would have otherwise.

You can imagine how much it hurt to find out that Drew Hayes (the creator and artist for the series) had passed away in 2007. He had told us (through the letter page of the comic and the comic itself) that he was sick and that was the reason for the sporadic, at best, release of new comics. Sirius (the publisher) was putting out mini series to keep up reading so there was no reason to think the comic would not go on. Then he died…and with him the story. Issue 80 gave us some unfinished art and some notes on how it was supposed to go. No end. No final word. It was just over.

Thankfully, we were wrong — the story would live on.

Nine years after the last issue of the Sirius run, Ape Comics got the rights and all of Drew’s notes and it lives again. While it starts at #1 all over again, the story doesn’t. This new series picks up from where the comic stopped so long ago. It is all there too, same characters, same smart ass commentary on the world and the same essence. The art had to change, Drew is not there to draw it, but the new artists use a style that does justice to the original.

In truth, I am so happy to have this comic back from oblivion to finish the story I don’t think I could say anything bad. I have very high hopes for this comic and will be buying it monthly just as I did before. I can only hope that this time we see the end.

The Moral Grey Ground

No comic book character walks the line between Black and white than Oliver Queen the Green Arrow. In all of his comics that I have read is that more true in issues 59 & 60 of Green Arrow vol 2. The long and short of the plot is that Green Arrow and Black Canary are trying to stop a child predator from raping and or killing another little boy. How far do they go to do this? Black Canary flirts with a bar full of thugs that the bad guy is in to stomp him down then force his hand to try and grab a kid. When he does she jumps in the van beats the hell out of him forcing him to crash on a pair. Seems like where the story ends right? Not even close, the weight of the story is coming up. Canary manages to hand cuff the kid toucher in his own restraints and hops out. Green Arrow and two detectives are waiting outside of the can and start to try and figure out what they can do with the guy since he didn’t get he chance to hurt the kid he tried to grab. Well as luck and the weight of the van on a damaged pier would have it the van falls in the water with bad guy in it. This is where we see Green Arrows justice come into play. He just stands their with the cops and lets the bad guy drown.

What really hit me about these old comics is that first they did not try to dodge the fact that the antagonist raped and killed a kid. I can not remember the last time a DC brand comic used the word rape much less in the area of a child. Yes this was a mature reader book but even then DC is normally not that graphic. Then we have the bar scene where Canary basically uses people as weapons to kick the guys ass. that alone seems almost harsh for a hero to do but both Green Arrow and Black Canary have never been the cleanest of heroes. The final shock is the death of the rapist. When the van hits the water both heroes can save him but don’t even try. There is no moralizing about it they just let him die.

In an age of comics where hyper violence is the norm it is almost more shocking to me to see Heroes act that callously. I like the fact that we see how human those two heroes really are. They don’t bother to save some one who has done the worst crime in society even when the are able to do so and do not see it as wrong. I will admit that i am a giant sucker for the Mike Grell run of Green Arrow and that The Longbow Hunters is one of if not the best story told in comics but this story felt like a punch in the face and i am glad comics can still do this to me.

Two years is a good rest…yeeeeah rest.

Ok so i made a blog and then let it sit here doing nothing for a bit over two years. Why am i writing in it after so long? Well a bloody addicting Facebook game called Song Pop. I know what you are saying how did that happen. Well the game knocked loose a few memories that sat some where in a corner of my mind not used since I legally became allowed to drink. I have spent the better part of this evening trolling you tube (like fishing not  how most people troll it) for music that i had forgotten about and remembering all the goofy things that a song can bring up.

 
Black # 1 by Type O Negative reminded me of a girl I knew circa 1998 and her fishnet hand stockings, the way she smoked a clove, and the memory of the first time I was called cute with out there being a punch line behind it.

The Way by Fastball kicked loose a memory of hanging out at the Waldorf Mall and really desperately wanting an eternal summer doing nothing but being in that perfect existence that only summer in your late teens can bring.

The Crab Louse by The Lords of Acid brought the memories flooding back of a 1997 concert at the old 9:30 club and how for once in my bloody life I felt like I fit in with every one around me. (odd that i was the only one not rolling but still fit in)

Those where just a few of the memories kicked loose that I wanted put down so that maybe this time they don’t fall somewhere between the cracks of memory. If I don’t try to remember them they could just hide in the corner of my mind that knows you shouldn’t smoke in the subconscious…it’s bad for the Id. (if you get that reference grats on the indyish comics knowledge or you hung out with me far too much)

Guilty Book Pleasures

As the summer of 1993 was winding down i found myself in the Waldorf Mall’s Walden books. I had decided that i was going to read something that was not written by Margret Weis or Tracey Hickman for the first time in what felt like forever. There I was 14 bored with 100% expendable income looking at the names of the books in all of their oddly designed glory and managing to skip all of the  millions of Xanth novels to find the book pictured to the left.

When I pulled the book off the shelf two things jumped out at me. 1) Holy shit that is an awesome name! and 2) hey isn’t that the art from the  Molly Hatchet albums? So since those two things where enough for any person to buy a book I didn’t even notice that it was book 3 of a series (i was a dumb 14). I remember very well jumping into it and tearing through the first few chapters. It was a very cool thing to me at the time, there was all sorts of adult themes in the first few chapters that I had never been able to read in books before. Sure the Dragonlance books had sex scenes in them but there where implied not straight up written out. There was also a great amount of drug use and a level of violence that I had only seen in movies Dad let me watch. I kept reading this book every night until the night before my first day of high school. I remember that night very well as the end of the book neared Shannon Hoon came over the radio telling me his life was pretty plain. There was something peaceful about that night.

I went back to Walden’s and bought the other three books int her series and devoured them in only the way a 14 year old geek could. There where adult and they where awesome.I also started to read abut the man who had paitned the covers and who the Death Dealer belonged Frank Frazetta. I tired to find posters of his so i could have them on my wall (as i did not have a van to air brush them onto) but never could find one.

Fast forward about 15 years and decided to re read them as an adult who had seen much more that the world had to offer. Guess what…those books i thought where awesome? yeah no so much. The writing was perfect for a kid who had not seen much and thought that there had to be some sort of soul selling needed to get a smile out of a girl much less get laid. Still, thinking back about reading those books as a kid I still feel the jungle that the Death Dealer was running around in. I remember with great want the weapons that the hero had and how awesome it would be to live that fantasy life. I won’t take those memories away from younger me. I have no doubts that everyone who likes to read has a similar story.  If anyone out there in internetlandia has a book like this please share with the rest of us geeks.

July 4th

I love being an American. If i wanted to i could get in my car and drive from Maryland to California with out ever having to show some one my papers. If i dislike what my government is doing i can start a protest,send a letter to my congressman, or just vent my spleen online and there are no people who will send me to room 101 to make me disappear. Being an American means that I am free.

I know that the country that I love is far from perfect. We still have a problem with racial tensions. We as a country are still coming to grips with the fact that not all people have the same rights. There are grown adults in love that do not have the right to marry. That means that just because they are the same sex they do not have the right to protect their loved ones with the weight of law that comes with marriage. One of the biggest problems we face is that in a secular country the different religions that we as the citizens believe in clash with each other and the people that don’t have a religions. With so many different thoughts on right and wrong they clash and with that clash we have hate being spewed back and forth at each other that our respective gods would be ashamed of.

Even with all of the strife that we have in this beloved country I would not live anywhere else. Our ancestors that started the revolution that gave us this country wanted their voices heard so that they might live freely with out a Tyrant to rule them. They had to fight off a King and his troops. They had to risk their lives, their homes, and their freedom just so they might live as free men. The legacy that they leave behind for us is that we have freedom that many in other countries could only dream for. I ask you all as you go about your day today with friends and family before this day is over take a minute and be grateful for those freedoms. Say a thank you to the soldiers who fight for our continued freedoms. Enjoy your freedoms and always let your voice be heard.

Our Voice Is All We Ever Have

When I was in High School I had to read this book during one summer. Like most kids i didn’t want to read anything that did not have Jim Lee’s signature in the bottom right hand corner. I started reading it just to get it done and found myself completely gripped by the story. That book made me think a bit differently at the world. Fast forward to yesterday when i read a story about Harper Lee. In the body of that story I was shocked to find out that it is one of the most challenged books in the public Library system.

When I started pouring over the list of book I was shocked at who and what was on there. On that list where some of the most important books in my life. The books there opened my mind to new ideas and thoughts. There where books on there that when it comes to literature I hold them almost as sacred texts

1984 The first time i read this book i had no clue what i had just gotten myself into. It was the first book i read where love could no win the day. I vowed to myself after reading this book that no matter what it could cost me i would rather give up myself than the people that i loved. Its an odd thought at17 that there are things that you would be willing to give up yourself to protect.

The reason its challenged so often? It has communist overtones. Let me get this straight, the horrible world that was created was well in a word….horrible. People equate that horrid life as Communist and want to ban it…because it makes the thing they dislike look bad.

The Call of the Wild: I read this book in the third grade. It was several grades above my level to be able to read. My teacher put me in a better reading group because i was reading it on my own. I am pretty sure that this was my first experience with a book that pretty much said “The world is harsh. Good people die and you will have to do some hard things if you want to live in it”

Why is this one challenged? Well simple put because it is about dogs people think its a kids book. Ok sure i can get that. There is just one little thing. If you are going to let you child go to the library…don’t you talk about/monitor what they check out? Why try to take a book away from everyone you don’t want your snowflake to read? If you don’t want them to read it um try not letting them check it out. If you want your kid repressed that’s your business stay away from my freedoms.

Fahrenheit 451. This is not just a book for me but a warning. This is what we can look forward to if we let people start taking books away because they find them offensive. Which ever teacher had this on my summer reading list thank you. This is one of those books that can change they whole way you think about your world. I think more than any other book this one has impacted my life.

Why or why is this book challenged so much? For all the same reasons that make this book great. People find the language used to be offensive so they want to make the book go away or (even worse to me) redact the offensive words. They want to stop the words from being read. This makes me so mad as to have a hard time even writing that all out.

When it comes down to why people want books out of our public places of knowledge we find that it is ignorance. We all fear the things that we don’t know and want them gone. I understand that thoughts that are different from your can be scary things. Its when we hide them from public view that have sinned to the point as to be near unforgivable. If anyone reading this thinks that an idea is so strong that it scares you don’t try to make it go away to room 101 face it and learn.

As always thanks for your time folks.

Zombies! Part 1

There is a certain amount of fear of death in all of us. No where is this so certain than in the genre of Zombies. Personally i have a big place in my heart for Zombie movies and all the things that go with it. From books to games the whole world of the Zombie fascinates me. In the first part of my talk about Zombies we will talk about how they are made, the type of zombies there are, and the fears they represent.

Zombie Creation

In the very first of the Romero Zombies (more on that category later) the dead start to rise due to a comet and space dust (damn you space dust you have doomed us all!) This idea was also picked up in Gangs of the Dead but this time the thing hit in LA and not just orbited the world. I find that this is one of the more abstract way that Zombies come about. It is the Dues Ex Machina of the Zombie world and it doesn’t ask you to care if it makes any sense.

The next an most popular way that the Zombies rise and eat our tasty flesh is the tired and true (and some would say too close to real) Virus/doctors with questionable ethics event. This concept of Zombie creation has had a big rise in popularity in the last ten years and most visible with 28 Days Later and its sequel. While these two movies are very well done with concept and execution of said concept no conversation about the creation of Zombies by virus of we do not talk about Resident Evil.

Before Resident Evil and all of its squeals came out (both games and movies) the main world of the Zombie was run by Romero and the D&D Necromancer. Once we where told of Umbrella and the T-Virus the game of Zombies was changed forever and also gave birth to the explosion of Zombies in modern culture.

The last common way that zombies come to life is the way of Magic. This comes in many forms and is the way that the myth/legend of the zombie comes to the real world.  Be this truth or fancy the puffer fish is the basis for real world zombification with its tetrodotoxin. They say that a powder made with this chemical will make a person mindless much like the Zombie. In the fantasy world a necromancer with the right ritual can bring the dead back as mindless zombies to do their bidding. Really what D&D player hasn’t killed tons of these as a matter of course in any game?

Types of Zombies

There are really only two types of Zombies in the world of the risen dead. There is the classic shambling zombie that is the gestalt for most people when you say the word Zombie. There is also the new comer to the world of brain eaters in the fast Zombie. The internet is rife with arguments that fast Zombies really aren’t true zombie but for the sake of this conversation we will include them.

The slow zombie is a classic horror icon. You are stuck in a farm house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a horde of slow moving dead people who aren’t very strong but can kill you easily if enough of them grab you.  The slow zombie has a power that can only be explained as a mental one. When that zombie starts walking to you for your succulent flesh you can’t reconcile that the zombie used to be your beloved Aunt Nora and now she is about to kill you horrible.  That slow steady walk to you filling you so full of fear that you can’t move. This of course (by the end of the movie or as soon as it starts if you are the lead) can be overcome and then its just a game of aim for the head and don’t let them box you in.

The fast Zombie is another creature all together. They run. Think about it the Slow Zombie was all your fears of death in front of you but at least it was easy to escape. Now you have this faster than you beast on your tail and it is going to catch and eat you. It is stronger than you and you haven’t run a 100 yard dash since 12th grade. The fast zombie doesn’t just represent death it is a death that you cannot even stave off. You are just a pre-zombie at that point. The fear that the fast zombie invokes is not just our collective fear of death but also our primal fear of being prey.