I mentioned my love of Dr Demento yesterday.

Today, the husband of Nas of Alts Ahoy, Squirrelz, joined Sidhe Devils.

And every time I see the name Squirrelz, it torments me.

It drives me crazy.

I hear voices.

High pitched little voices.

And if I have to hear the voices in my head, singing that damn song, then I’m going to spread the crazy.

Only in Dr Demento do you get to hear classics like that.

In other news, Cassie and I spent some time last night visiting friends that live up north, and chatting. They have kids too, some of them in the 12-14 year old giggly girl range, and the laptop was brought out while the kids browsed Youtube for stuff that is apparently ‘famous’ among the school crowd.

One of the Youtube videos sparked massive giggles, and repeated playing, and I thought I would share it with you. Because just listening to it cracked the rest of us up too. I present “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”

Thank you all for your very smart and wise comments on keeping perspective and balance in the game, the guild, and remembering to have fun.

Stress over the pressures from guildies to raid lots is nothing new. I have been in this situation once before, when BC originally came out, and I quit that guild because of the pressures I was feeling to always raid. I’m not planning on doing that now, for one thing the people in this guild are a lot like a second family to me, and there are better ways to handle things than quitting, taking my ball and going home.

But the fact remains, this is a game, and stress from a game is stupid.

In this case, the main reason I feel obligated is because I accepted the responsibility of being an officer in the guild.

It’s absolutely right for anyone in a guild that has real life commitments to not sign up for, or go to, last minute raids or even every single raid.

But, and there has to be a butt, I have that feeling that I should be there, every time, because I am not just another member, I am one of the officers, and I feel that if I do not show strong support for our attempts to progress, then I’m letting the guild down.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t one of the best geared tanks in the guild right now. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this stressed, either, since our healers and other tanks are in the same boat. The very best geared and best players, people like Whirlish, Gerolan, Kellas, Shadewynn, and Rynadur… these are people that, if there is a raid scheduled, are counted on to be available for us to have a strong chance.

How many times am I on, and it’s 7 PM for a scheduled raid, and we’re short one or two people, and we have 4 or 5 guildies that are moderately to maybe acceptibly geared available, and the following is heard on Teamspeak; “Well, Kellas isn’t on yet, but we really need her there. We’ll give her another 15 minutes, and if she can’t make it, we’ll pick someone else.” “Did Kellas sign up?” “No, but she’s usually on by now.”

The things I’ve personally been trying to do so far, are to take responsibility for putting up regularly recurring guild raids on the website calender, and then use a macro to advertise them constanatly whenever I am on, to make sure people are aware of them, are encouraged to sign up in advance, and get the word out that we are doing progression events. I do this in the hopes that the big raids will be scheduled and well attended, and leave the rest of the time for people to schedule Karazhan runs or do 5 mans or have fun.

It just hasn’t been working well so far because we have folks not show up for a run.

I don’t know what I am going to do, so far. I know that if I am online, and the guild is piecing together a 25 man run, that if they are short or need a tank, it’s highly unlikely I am going to get all pissy and say “Well if it’s not on the calender, I’m not going, nyah nyah.” These people aren’t the manager from Office Space, no matter how much it feels that way sometimes. They probably just figure if I am tired I won’t go.

I guess the first thing I am going to have to do, is be more assertive when it comes to saying “I’m sorry guys, but I am too damn tired for an all night run tonight. I want to do dailies, sit back and chill with my shadow priest while shooting the shit and listening to Irish music. I’ll see ya on Saturday though.”

 But please, by all means, keep the advice coming, every one of you helps me to get my head straight about it.

As an aside… if anyone reading this has a software program that lets them take an mp3 and strip the vocals off to make a backing track, please let me know ASAP. I might have a… new song in the works, but I can’t find a backing track anywhere. kthxbye!

I’m just kind of curious… I am going to write up a ‘what Druids can look forward to in 2.4′ article for WoW Insider, kinda assuming we’re getting the patch live tomorrow.

While I’m looking at all this stuff, I was wondering.

How many of you, whether a druid or otherwise, are really looking forward to the new 5 man and 25 man instance/raids on the Magisters’ Terrace for new gear, and how many of you are looking solely at new Badge of Justice rewards?

I know that I had blown off really looking at the new Badge rewards too closely, simply because the cheapest thing I thought I saw that was a big upgrade was a minimum of 100 Badges.

But really, after looking at the great roundup that Allison did last week covering every new Badge reward that druids of all specs can look forward to, it made me wonder.

I have assumed the big news was (at my level) we had a new 5 man instance to delve into, and that raiders got a new 25 to tear up.

Are you most excited by the instances? The new content? Or are you most excited to have new purchaseable gear upgrades to save up for?

Me, I’ve been looking forward to having some new daily quests, a new reputation grind for what sound like sweet rewards, and a new 5 man instance to tackle.

The Badge rewards, frankly, are expensive enough that I can’t find myself getting too worked up over them.

LOL. At the same time, I’m sitting on a little over 80 Badges, Badges I was planning on using to buy a Waistguard of the Great Beast, the last tanking upgrade from the old rewards I was saving for, because I haven’t done the Rawr analysis to see if the belt is a better upgrade for me over the new chest or leggings… but I don’t want to use those Badges just yet until I know for sure.

So, instead of getting all worked up about something that’ll take a long time to get enough Badges for… I’m all stoked about getting out there and hitting the dailies, and doing the new instance for the first time.

How about you? Would you rather that Blizzard continue the path of Badge rewards, or would you rather have more instances to run in the hopes of getting that one to three drops that you can use, whether from regular or heroic modes? And once you do get your drops… do you go back to those isntances for any reason other than to farm Badges?

Yeah, so, I’m headed out the door in five minutes. And as you know, brevity was never my strong suit. But I’ll try.

Cassie and I ran Karazhan together last night with an awesome set of guildies…. but because the guild had a Karazhan group the night before, and put together a ZA group the same night as our run, we took people that were eager to go, rather than try and pick and choose for a mix of classes.

Our only real swap out, was a friend of one guildie, a Fury warrior not in our guild, was going to go along, but we asked her to step out so we could have one of our guildies bring her priest on the run rather than her mage.

Our breakdown for the run was:

• One feral druid
• Three mages
• Two paladins
• One priest
• One hunter
• One rogue
• One healing shaman

Now, heres the fun part… both paladins were specced healing, along with the shaman. However, we got Gerolan the paladin and Teysa the shaman to bring their tanking and enhancement sets with them.

Why, B^3, where’s your off tank? Well, we didn’t really use a dedicated tank. instead, Gerolan stayed healing specced and threw on his tanking set when we need an off tank for Moroes.

We cleared through and downed Curator last night, and it was much more fun than normal because we had to change things up so much.

On Attumen, I handled tank and off tank while everyone else did healing, and we used the priest shackle and the hunter ice trap for crowd control. At one point, early on against the trash, a two horsie and 1 stable hand pull, I looked up and did a quick horsie count… 1… 2… 3… 4… wtf?

Someone got feared into the 4 pull. So we had 7 on us, and I started tab targeting ansd swiping and jinking around, Shadewynn kept one shackled and was overhealing, DPS went nuts in a free for all, and Gandoulf kept his kited cause it broke trap early.

No one died. It was rather exhilirating. It’s one thing to say you lived… it’s another to say, “We pulled an extra 4 on that fight, and no one died.”

That’s the kind of thing that brings home how much fun it is to play with friends that are on top of their game.

Anyway, on Attumen, I simply tanked both Midnight and Attumen. I used my two trinkets in order, kept them ocpied, and we got the job done. First time I ever took on both, and in my opinion, it went faster than we’re used to.

On heading to Moroes, obviously we had some worries. Gerolan was going to have to be an off tank, and he got his tanking gear, but he didn’t respec. We figured we’d give it a try.

We wiped twice trying to figure out how to take the adds down in the right sequence, but what we ended up with, was I pulled the enemy, and when Shadewynn shackled one I pulled the rest further away so consecrate wouldn’t break it. I don’t know what I just said, it’s just what Gerolan told me. I don’t understand pally tanking, so please don’t flame me, I got enough to do trying to master hunting, druids and now priests, ok?

Anyway, we had an X target and Moroes. I kept the X and Moroes, while there was a shackle and a kite/ice trap, and everyone burned down the loose one first.

After the loose one was down, they killed the ice trap, and then my X. Then it was all out on Moroes, and he went down smooth and easy. Finish up on shackle, and we looked around and went “Whee”.

Moving on, we were running late if we wanted to down Curator on a work night, so we skipped Maiden to go straight to Opera.

We weren’t sure what event we might get, and if it was Romulus and Juliet we would need two real tanks. So gerolan hearthed and respecced full prot.

After he got back, the whole nature of the game changed. His threat generation so outstripped mine in an AOE, that I started spending more and more time as a Cat. By the time we actually got to Opera, and got the Big Bad Wolf, I was running cat in kitty gear full time. Gerolan full prot is just that badass.

I’d run down the Opera fight, but I don’t have to. I recorded it in movie form, and if I can find a damn song that is two minutes long, I’ll post it up today or tomorrow. It was fast and fun.

After that, Gerolan just tanked as I did kitty DPS, and we cleared up to Curator. one of the mages had to leave (bye bye, Unprodigy!), but that let us bring another of my favorite players in, Kellas, the priest class lead for Legatum.

I did the tanking on the Syphoners, of course, since apparently mana drain and pally tanks don’t mix well. But on Curator, again I was mostly Kitty and made sure I stayed #2 on threat (to take the hurtful bolts or hateful bolts, or whatever it’s called), while Gerolan spanked Curator.

Seriously. It was a lot of fun. At the end, someone noticed that Teysa was way high up on damage charts. Turns out the little bastard was doing DPS in enhancement gear most of the time because our healers were so incredible.

Just kidding Teysa. You know we love you.

Anyway, thats my breakdown of last night.

Anyone got any “We did Karazhan with a wierd mix of peeps” story they’d like to share, or one on their blog they’d like to link to? I always find them great fun to read.

Have a great weekend!

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Allison Robert’s writing? No?

Consider it mentioned lately.

Yeah, I loved her PVP guide, it made me laugh long time, honey.

But I started my morning reading, business as usual, only to find that the weasel has returned! And is tackling a guide to selecting a guild!

On the very first page, one word made me spew my coffee… because I see it all the time, and I form an entire encyclopedia of assumptions the second I see it…

“Wut”.

Omigod, yes. Lolwut, or wut, the defining mating calls of the utter moron when faced with questions too complex to process… questions like “Are you keyed for Karazhan”, “Can you chain trap?”, and my all time favorite, “Why do you want to raid with us?”

I prefer seeing them use lolwut, personally, since it is their way of trying to imply that not only are you asking a stupid question, but omigod what a noob you are for asking them the question.

Anyway, go read her latest funny. Will you learn anything? Maybe not… but this is what I want in my morning reading… to be entertained. Highly entertained.

Damn, I hope that she keeps the series alive.