We didn't do anything for Thanksgiving this year. As a rule, our family doesn't really give a rat's ass about any of the holidays, but on Thanksgiving at least one of us usually gets up the ambition to cook an assortment of the usual holiday foodstuffs and we get together and mumble crap at each other whilst stuffing our faces and watching TV. I especially love picking at what's left of the turkey over the next couple of days after, often in the dead of night. It's just comforting. Give me a hacked up bird and some leftover turkey gravy and jellied cranberry sauce and I'm all set. Not this year, though...

Instead, I ended up having canned beef chow mein for lunch (I wanted chicken chow mein, but I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and opened the wrong can), and spaghetti for dinner. Too thrilling.

Edit: Yes, that's my holiday icon. I wanted something generic that was suggestive of all holidays, but I couldn't find anything. Then I went blue and tried to find a picture of tits with little Christmas bows on the nipples. Let's just say that the results of that particular Google image search were rather horrifying and fruitless. So I went with the pagan harvest festival ending in a human sacrifice angle.

I hate my life.

Edit: Also, I suck (not dicks or anything, just generally speaking).

Apparently Susan Atkins died back in September. Not that I was a fan or anything, but I would have thought I'd have seen something in the news about it before now.

I only found out just now when I saw a headline in a sidebar while reading about a group of guys down in Peru who've been killing people and allegedly rendering their fat for sale to cosmetics companies (though the veracity of these claims is in doubt, as the medical industry apparently produces a large amount of surplus human fat that's up for grabs).

...when you make a comment or suggestion on an online message board that initiates a massive response with lots of people offering their opinions and debating whatever you were talking about, only they've completely missed the fucking point of what you originally said and they all go off on some boring tangent about something that you couldn't give less of a shit about?

I had a metric shit ton of weird-assed dreams last night, but I can barely remember any of the details of any of them. Celebrity guest stars included Artie Lange and Steven Weber. One had something about Hawaii in it. Another something about a party at a big house somewhere. Yet another something about nipple biting, but not the fun kind.

And so it went on, into the night....

...cold and rainy today.

...for my plate-wearing Horde characters yesterday (my tauren warrior and blood elf paladin). Just the warrior shoulders, though. They have a paladin set, but I'm not blowing an extra 200 Stone Keeper's Shards on that.

I had one last night that was about some "60 Minutes" story that was nothing but shot after shot of people feeding (or trying to, anyway) live, large rats and various other furry critters to large snakes. At one point hedgehogs came into play, which I didn't approve of at all.

The "report" ended with a geeky-looking guy in glasses standing at a counter with Mike Wallace, trying to force feed a brown, wild-looking rat to an uncooperative snake. A ceiling fan was running over their heads, and a bird of some sort was flying around it. The geeky guy switched it off so the bird wouldn't fly into it, then looked and Wallace and complained, "You think I want to do this for a living? I wanted to write screenplays!"

Pull back to reveal me watching the report on my TV in my bedroom, lying on my couch. An elderly black woman is sitting on the couch with me, leaning back against my legs, also watching. As the report ends, she smiles at me (I don't know if it was in a friendly way or not), then gets up and leaves.

In another dream, I was in a large mall with my niece and two young teen-aged girls (about 13 or 14) who were supposedly friends of hers. There were a lot of other people there, too. It was set at night, and it was dark in the mall, like the power had gone out and only some kind of emergency lighting was on. A massive thunderstorm was raging outside. I asked the girls their names, but between the noise from the storm and the crowd and my hearing not being what it used to be, I had to ask them more than once. Even then, I only got "Elissa" from one of them.

At some point, we heard a lot of screaming from another part of the mall. Everybody ran in that direction to see what was going on. I lagged behind, because I had to put my pants on (???). Hey, at least I was wearing underwear. Once I got my pants on, I ran after the others, only to round a corner and find the place deserted. Cautiously, I advanced a little farther, and saw a few Warcraft-style ghouls wandering around.

...freezing my ass off. I got out of bed and was shivering like a mother-fucker. You'd think we didn't have any heat in the damned house.

...I'm at the point where I'm "actively" looking for work again. So far, it's off to a very inauspicious, uninspiring start.

I drove over to one of the local employment agencies, and they told me they didn't have anything and wouldn't until at least the start of next year. Disappointed and not entirely surprised, I drove home and looked on the internet. One listing said entry level government jobs starting at about $30,000 a year were available in my area.

Long story short, I ended up calling a number and ordering an exams package for government work for around $57, including postage. (Yay! More debt!) Supposedly you get a complete refund if you don't pass the exam or find work. Hopefully it's legit and not a complete fucking scam. You have to take an exam to get postal work, after all, so it might not be. I'm not sure how all of that works. (Is my retardation showing?) Hell, I'm pessimistic about fucking everything these days. It's going to take 10-14 days to get here, though.

In the meantime, I suppose I'll try and call the other employment agencies in town tomorrow. Or maybe even today. Fuck, who knows?

I waited waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to start looking again, but I've been a complete mess emotionally. It's not like I have any friends to chill out with to relieve stress.

Just me and these four damned walls and a whole world of shit.

Five words I would like to never see again in the "How to play..." instructions for your games: USE ARROW KEYS TO MOVE.

Seriously, is this the best we can do? You can't write a few fucking games where the player moves by mouse clicking? Not all of us have amazing hand-eye coordination.

I had a bunch last night, but all I remember is waking up with a start and a little "huh-huh-huh" grunting noise.

Zombie was gonna get me.

...not much going on.

I went to the first wedding I've ever been to this past weekend. One of my sisters married the guy she's been living with for over a decade now. The general consensus is that it was because of pressure from his side of the family more than anything else, as they're into the whole religion thing. Yes, I had to go into a church. Ugh...

I wore my job interview clothes. I have a funeral suit, but I wasn't about to drag that out and look up how to tie a Windsor knot on the internet again for this particular event. Like I said, they've been living together for years. Hell, when we got there, half of the people on the groom's side were wearing blue jeans. I didn't even know who any of them were apart from my BIL-to-be's parents, who I've met on several occasions. A lot of fat people. My BIL-to-be asked me if I wanted to "work the music", but I begged off that as fast as I fucking could.

Eventually, things got underway, and something like 20-25 minutes later my sister was married. It would have been only 5 minutes if the minister would only have spared us all of the religious bullshit, but of course it's his job not to do that. Then everybody stood around for about another half hour and ate so-so cake and drank some heinous variety of punch that was apparently part ginger ale and part something else.

My other sister took pictures of the goings on, including a couple of me. I asked her to e-mail a few of them so I could have a look, and it was very depressing. Let's just say that the "gnome" part of my LJ username is not too far from the truth. I look like a chubby, homely elf. I look like I should be wearing a little Santa hat and pointy shoes with bells on them and making toys in a workshop at the North Pole (if only I knew where to apply).

(heavy sigh)

But whatever...

...built his Jeeves butler-bot tonight.

Just now as I was in the bathroom looking down and noticing how shiny and white my feet were, I also noticed that they've gone bald. I used to have hairy hobbit toes, but no more.

Weird, but thankfully not nearly as horrifying as the discovery I made a while back. That being that now when I try to sit cross-legged (which hurts now in my old age), the skin on my legs twists and wrinkles and looks like elephant foreskin.

We had a measure pass locally that will finally allow the sale of hard liquor in our city, so that you don't have to drive out to the middle of nowhere whenever you might want a bottle of something.

I don't really drink at all, but I'm generally happy to see the repeal of any law that was basically only enacted to placate religious freaks in the first place.

Shoulders!!!



Shoulders!!!



SHOULDERS!!!



My Alliance clothies have finally got their heirloom shoulders! I got them today within an hour of logging in after maintenance (we won the first Wintergrasp battle in good time). 

They'll have to share the one pair, but now leveling them should be a little less painful.

Apparently, this is an actual, serious film...

( I love it when she moos! )

Well, Hallow's End is over.

I didn't really do much this year, partly because I'm a big, socially anxious dweeb (the same reason I didn't do any Coren Direbrew runs during Brewfest), and partly because I had 17 characters to work on. I was hoping I could get a Sinister Squashing pet for all of my toons more than anything, and--with exception of my poor tauren warrior--everybody got lucky in that regard.

So far as the holiday's achievements went...

Bring Me the Head of...Oh, Wait... Kill the Headless Horseman. 1 out of 17. Only my blood elf hunter main has ever gotten around to killing the Headless Horseman, and that was last year, when I wasn't so down in the dumps and actually got up the nerve to get a group together.

Check Your Head... Throw a flaming pumpkin onto the head of one character of every race. 5 out of 17. All of my toons over 70 finished this, but the lower level characters had trouble finding characters from the other faction, even when they wandered into enemy territory.

G.N.E.R.D. Rage... Earn 50 honorable kills while under the effect of a G.N.E.R.D. buff. 4 out of 17. All of my level 80s got this one. My main got it last year in Alterac Valley, the rest this year in Wintergrasp.

The Mask Task... Receive a Hallow's End mask. 17 out of 17. Everybody got a mask.

A Mask For All Occasions... Receive one of each Hallow's End mask. 0 out of 17. Not only did I not get this achievement on any of my toons, but I didn't see anybody else get it during the entire two week holiday. The closest I came was on my undead warlock, who was only 1 mask short. My main only needed 5.

The Masquerade... Get transformed by all of the Hallow's End wands. 1 out of 17. My blood elf main, last year. You have to group with people who have the various wands to do this one.

Out With It... Eat so many Tricky Treats that you get sick. 1 out of 17. You eat candy that the Headless Horseman drops until you barf. Again, my blood elf hunter.

Rotten Hollow... Sabotage/scout out the other faction's Hallow's End celebrations. 6 out of 17. Most of my higher level characters finished this. Some of my lower level characters on the Alliance side finished one of the required quests, but never got around to running out to the Undercity to do the other one. Lower level Horde characters are at somewhat of a disadvantage here, as both of their quests require them to wade into Southshore, which is full of level 40+ guards.

The Savior of Hallow's End... Complete one of the quests to save a village from the Headless Horseman. 12 out of 17. The Headless Horseman flies over various villages on his spectral steed and sets them on fire. You and other players have to use buckets of water to put them out.

Sinister Calling... Obtain a Sinister Squashling and a Hallowed Helm. 13 out of 17. You're looking for a pumpkin pet and a pumpkin mask. My tauren warrior was the only character of mine to not get a pet, but she did get the mask.

That Sparkling Smile... Use a toothpick from a treat bag to clean your teeth. 17 out of 17. Everybody found a toothpick.

Trick or Treat!... Go trick or treating. 17 out of 17. Everybody went trick or treating. To the point where they got sick of it.

Tricks and Treats of Eastern Kingdoms... Visit the candy buckets in the Eastern Kingdoms. 4 out of 17. My level 80s and my level 72 troll death knight.

Tricks and Treats of Kalimdor... Visit the candy buckets in Kalimdor. 5 out of 17. My level 80s, my level 72 troll death knight, and my level 50-something dwarf hunter.

Tricks and Treats of Outland... Visit the candy buckets in Outland. 4 out of 17. My level 80s and my level 72 troll death knight.

Tricks and Treats of Azeroth... Visit the candy buckets in the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Outand. 4 out of 17. My level 80s and my level 72 troll death knight.