I’ve been trying out the new Refer-A-Friend system in WoW. And as I have no friends who are even remotely interested in WoW and yet are not already playing it, who else could I refer but myself?

Yes. I am now officially a dual-boxer.

Dualling Mages

Boy, it’s fun. I love setting things on fire anyway, so controlling two fire mages? Awesome. I can certainly see the appeal.

On the new refer-a-friend system:
My pair of diminutive pyromaniacs get triple xp when questing together, thus propelling them through levels extremely rapidly. This means you get to hit level 60 very quickly (the triple xp stops there). It also means you’re doing many fewer quests and killing many fewer things, so your characters are constantly broke and often unable to afford new skills or spells. So, although it’s good to be able to bring people in and get them to the endgame fairly quickly, the referring player ought to already have a high-level character to act as a rich patron for the two new characters.

Also, the level granting feature is nice.

Next up: twin shamans…

Another in our occasional ongoing series exploring just what the hell songwriters are jabbering on about, and what, if anything, can be done to bring their output a little more in line with reality.

Today: Arthur’s Theme, by Christopher Cross.

We’re going to concentrate on the chorus for this one, as it is here where much of the madness may be found. I will run through it with you line by line.

When you get caught between the moon and New York City

Seems somewhat unlikely, but it’s early days yet. We move on.

I know it’s crazy, but it’s true

Well, I suspect you’re half right, Chris.

If you get caught between the moon and New York City

We seem to be building up to something here. Given the circumstances outlined so far, can it be anything other than unpleasant?

The best that you can do…

Is…

The best that you can do…

Get on with it, man.

Is fall in love.

Now. Here I really have to take issue with him. The whole thing completely comes apart at this point. For one thing, falling in love, even under ideal circumstances, is not exactly easy. In the situation where one is trapped between the surface of the moon and the sidewalks of New York it’s surely next to impossible, even if one were trapped right by a suitable candidate and they were not too busy screaming in agony to pay attention to one’s amorous advances.

Additionally, if the moon is sufficiently close to the surface of the Earth to trap people underneath it, then a disaster of monumental, nay, epic proportion is currently under way and thoughts of anything other than survival should be far to the back of one’s mind. If, however, one is among those trapped, there is surely little one can do but hope that the end comes quickly.

Therefore, I propose that the last few lines of the chorus be replaced with:

If you get caught between the moon and New York City
The best that you can do
Is pray for a swift and relatively painless death

We can probably leave the crazy part the way it is.

I guess one of the supposed benefits (and there are precious few) of being ill is that it gives one time to muse, and to think deep thoughts, to ponder upon the nature of existence and the meaning of life. To consider the universe and one’s place within it. To come, in short, one tiny step closer to attaining understanding.

What actually happens, of course, is that you spend quite a lot of the time musing on how much of a pain in the arse it is to be ill, particularly on a bank holiday weekend when you had plans which you’ve had to cancel because you can’t climb the stairs without needing to take a break once you reach the top much less spend the day running around a field in Northamptonshire with a gun even though you booked and a bunch of your mates are going and you bought the camo gear and everything.

The rest of the time you don’t spend thinking about very much at all, because thinking is so very tiring.

Then you think about how you hardly ever post on your blog except to whinge about being ill when you’re ill.

Then you go for another lie down.

It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, being ill.

Enough with the fake Heath Ledger grief. You didn’t know him. You didn’t know Diana. If you reserved your grief for those people actually close to you, it might actually have some meaning. More meaning than it has when you spray it like brightly-coloured vomit across the obituary pages of Heat.

Jesus.