Well, This Stings

Well, my home life took a bit of a turn yesterday.

Friday is trash day in our neighborhood, and last morning I figured I'd gather some extra yard waste since the trash truck hadn't arrived yet. So, I marched over to where some weedy shrubs were trying to outcompete the evergreen shrubs that already were there, and I began using a saw to cut them down. 

About 5 minutes into this work, I felt a brief stab of pain on my ankle, like a sticker bush poked me.

I looked down, and no, it wasn't a sticker bush, but a bee.

I grumbled and shooed it away, then I got stung on my knee.

"What the hell is going on?" I groused as I looked around. It was then that I saw it: bees were flooding out of a small hole in the ground next to me, very upset that I'd decided to maintain my yard right there.

At that point, I did what any rational person would do: I fled.

(With saw in tow.)

I ended up getting stung a third time, on my freaking armpit, before I could evacuate to safety. I checked for bee stingers, but found none. Therefore, these were likely yellowjackets and not bees, but still the stings certainly hurt like hell at first.

Yeah, that's the culprit.
From The Pest Detective Ohio's FAQ on wasps.
as of August 2nd, 2025.

On the bright side, I'm apparently not allergic to these stings, because at the moment (some 15 hours later) I have some pain but almost no swelling at all. So I likely dodged the worst of it.

Still, I have to deal with a surprise hornets' nest right next to my house. Luckily they decided to not bother me while I cut the grass nearby over lunch, but I will have to do something about this in the long run. I kind of have to maintain that part of the yard, and simply waiting until winter to clear out weeds and whatnot isn't much of an option. Given also that they're pollinators and despite the attack on me pollinators are really needed, I'm going to have to figure out a solution in the long run. Maybe I'll talk to my barber, who is also a beekeeper among his other hobbies. (Such as being a drummer in a punk band.)

#Blaugust2025

Looking Across the Way

Something I've been increasingly curious about is a certain game that I was originally familiar with by the spam that Parallel Context would get when I checked the blog's email:

From Steam.

I'm not going to dissemble here, but all that spam initially turned me away from ever wanting to consider playing Old School RuneScape. So that I'm now actively considering checking out OSRS just to see what's up, I'm either deep down the rabbit hole of Stockholm Syndrome or maybe I've come around to wondering if the OSRS method of horizontal progression is what WoW Classic+ ought to be.

Knowing how I work, I never do things on impulse, so it's not like I'm going to drop everything and try out OSRS in the next month, but MadSeasonShow's video that dropped yesterday about the differences between WoW Classic/Season of Discovery and OSRS got me thinking about this very thing.

Don't get me wrong; the graphics are something I'd have written in the 1980s, and if you thought that Vanilla WoW had some clunkiness, OSRS makes Vanilla WoW look like the latest Call of Duty game. 

No naked elves dancing atop the Stormwind Fountain.
From Runescape.com.

The graphics don't bother me that much, but the gameplay might. We'll see, when I go try it out. (Probably 2026, knowing me.)

#Blaugust2025

EtA: It's 2025, not 2026.

Meme Monday: 80s Metal Memes

Yes, I was inspired by Ozzy's death.

And so were other people. Such as the
person who posted this to Facebook's 
Metal Memes group.

So it only makes sense that I'd have this Meme Monday for 80s metal memes. Which also means a lot of hair metal, but that's okay. I'm pretty sure I'll survive.

And for the record, what makes this so funny
is that Twisted Sister used to get dressed up in
lingerie for shows. From memes.com.

This is true. My first Iron Maiden album
was Somewhere in Time, which included
the song Alexander the Great. 
From Facebook's Heavy Metal Memes group.

At the crossroads of He-Man and Heavy Metal...
From Cheezburger.

One can only hope, but there's also going to be
people complaining that they're not playing Garth
Brooks and Alabama.
From Facebook's Classic Rock Videos group.

Ah yes, Cinderella. The music was good, but
the voice of the lead singer sounded like eating
ground glass. Very distinctive, tho. From funnywallphotos.com.

And finally, we have this weird juxtaposition
of Ronnie James Dio (lead singer of Rainbow)
and Rob Halford of Judas Priest (who is gay).
Unlike some other musicians, both Rob and
Ronnie got along and respected each other
(Rob sang on Dio's tribute album), so this was
just done for effect. From Pinterest.

Fading Away

This week, a significant portion of my youth passed away.

First, the news broke a couple of days ago that Ozzy Osbourne passed away, a few weeks after the Black Sabbath Farewell Concert. While it wouldn't shock me if he decided euthanasia was the best answer to his struggles, it could also have been due to complications from Parkinson's Disease. Ozzy's death reminds me a bit of Freddie Mercury's passing, who died a day after he publicly announced he had HIV. In both cases, I suspect they both knew it was time.

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I began listening to Ozzy midway through high school. Given that my parents were very strict about what music I could and couldn't listen to, I had to get around that by copying acquaintances' cassettes of heavy metal bands. That way, my parents couldn't really see what I was listening to, and once I got a car --and a cassette deck in said car-- I did most of my listening while driving or on my boom box while working after school or over the summer as a janitor. Bands such as Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Scorpions, and Autograph found space on my Maxell and TDK blanks, but the second heavy metal album I copied* was Ozzy's Blizzard of Oz. It may have been a copy of a copy, since the sound quality wasn't very good, but at least I had it.

I couldn't find the cassette with Blizzard of Oz on it,
but I could find these.

It took my going away to college --and away from the prying eyes of my parents-- for me to more fully embrace music found on "Satanic" lists by Evangelical preachers.

The funny thing is that since I began listening to heavy metal midway through the 1980s, I came to Ozzy first through his solo career. To me, Black Sabbath was this band from the past that wasn't really relevant today. This was hammered home by my encounter with graffiti I had to clean off of a chair in my high school (I was a janitor, remember?) that said "Black Sabbath Rules The World". A couple of coworkers happened to wander by, snorted, and one of them said derisively, "They need to put an album out first!"

"First an album, next the world!" the other quipped.

It was only much later, in the 1990s, when I began listening to Black Sabbath and realizing that hey, they weren't half bad after all.

Still, Ozzy had penetrated into the national consciousness through the Satanic Panic. I didn't put any credence in all of the claims --I played RPGs and wasn't about to sacrifice small animals to Satan, after all-- but plenty of people did.** 

Ozzy even found himself in the then popular comic strip Bloom County:

From the 1987 compilation book "Billy and the
Boingers Bootleg", Page 80, by Berke Breathed.

From the 1987 compilation book "Billy and the
Boingers Bootleg", Page 81, by Berke Breathed.

Yes, I was a Bloom County fan, and yes, I had all of the compilation books.

Here's the proof. I still have the floppy
record that came with the book.

In case you wondered what the songs sound like, here's one of them (courtesy of YouTube):

Over the years, my interest in heavy metal waned, but I still have a soft spot for heavy metal from the 70s and 80s and what it meant to my own personal declaration of independence as an adult. While the Bloom County cartoons played up for amusement the concept that Ozzy was just a "regular guy" playing around with heavy metal, the reality that came out decades later was that he pretty much was just a regular guy after all and his Ozzy persona was just an act. 

***

Yesterday, the news broke that Hulk Hogan had also passed away, and with that another chunk of my youth vanished. 

I wasn't that much of a World Wrestling Federation fan, as I used to watch the rival organization World Championship Wrestling (the home of Dusty Rhodes and "Nature Boy" Ric Flair), but you couldn't not be aware of WWF and it's biggest star, Hulk Hogan. Among the WWF pantheon, I cheered more for Andre the Giant than Hulk, but Hulk was the face of the WWF. There's no denying that.

This was at the end of Andre's career,
when he "turned bad" and wrestled against
Hulk in 1987. From The Detroit News.

To be clear, I wasn't one of the pro wrestling fans around school who were so far down the rabbit hole that they subscribed to one of several wrestling magazines, but I was enough of a fan that I could at least hold my own with those hardcore fans. The fans fell into two camps: those who loved Hulk and those who hated him. Most people loved him, but there were a few contrarians who preferred Hulk's enemies (such as Rowdy Roddy Piper) instead. 

But that Golden Era of wrestling is fading from memory. Hulk is just the latest to pass away, as Dusty Rhodes, Andre the Giant, Randy Savage, Rowdy Roddy Piper, George "The Animal" Steele, and The Iron Sheik are all gone.

***

Finally, overshadowed by Hulk Hogan's passing, was also the passing of Chuck Mangione. You know, the "Feels So Good" guy.

This is the full version. The radio edit/singles

version can be found here.

If you're of the right age, you couldn't avoid Feels So Good. It was all over the radio, and it helped to drive the Soft Rock radio format to greater heights. The irony was that while I heard it on radio all the time --my parents listened to Soft Rock, after all-- my biggest memory of Feels So Good tied into our first color television set. 

That first Saturday we had the Sears color television around the house, I woke up and went downstairs to turn on the TV. It was pretty early in the day and before the Saturday Morning Cartoons came on, so I flipped to one of the independent or PBS stations (I can't remember which) and suddenly there was a video of the sun rising on my screen with Feels So Good playing as an accompaniment. Being one of the first color TV images I ever saw at home, that moment was etched indelibly in my mind. 

Over the years I grew to appreciate Chuck's jazz output and his loyalty to his hometown of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music, of whom he was an alum and an instructor. I learned much later that Chuck was also an alum of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, of whom he played alongside Keith Jarrett. 

***

All three of them had left an indelible imprint on my youth. Maybe it wasn't the three themselves that I remember most, but what they represented: rebellion, guilty pleasures, and the music my parents listened to. Still, it feels weird to be reminded of my past only when that past is permanently lost to us. 

In an ironic twist, at times like these I'm reminded of this little segment from George Carlin. George's stand-up comedy hasn't always aged very well, but in this case it actually has. The entire video is worth watching, but I highlighted this one specific bit at the 4:55 mark:

Note to self: Google doesn't like it if I try to embed

YouTube videos at a specific time marker.

*The first was Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry. Yes, really.

**And still do today, just to be clear about it. If people give them half a chance, these devout folks would attempt to eradicate "satanic" music and books once more. After all, look at all the attempts to ban books and media today. Cancel Culture is not simply a thing on the political left.

A Few Changes

Well, I can say that I'm getting closer to getting a mount on a few accounts.

Yes, Hoots is holding a two-handed sword.
Standings as of July 23, 2025.

Another thing I can say is that of the eight toons I've been leveling, the slowest two have been the Feral Druid and the Holy Priest. It's not that I had issues with playing them, it's that it takes a while for them to kill anything. And let's be honest, it's a bit difficult to level a healer if you don't go into group content, and I really had no intention of taking Shaluna into instances from the get go. I have gotten better at healing since my original days leveling Quintalan back in 2009/2010, but I've seen enough bad behavior by tanks and DPS in the pugs I've been in that I just look at healing random groups and give it a hard pass. 

Did somebody say bad behavior? How about a Mage who didn't buff casters or Hunters* or provide water or food to the same? I was on Hoots at the time, so I could understand the Hunter part, because if you only played Retail before coming to the Anniversary servers you might not realize that Hunters use Mana in Vanilla Classic, but not even buffing the healer until they repeatedly asked for it? Or even asking if people need water or food? 

"That's borderline criminal," a Paladin tank in a later instance commented after I mentioned that Mage's behavior.

"I was offended, because I main a Mage," I replied. 

Before you suggest the obvious that perhaps that Mage didn't understand English, he commented several times in chat in the instance run, so yes, he knew English well enough. He just wasn't interested.

But yeah, after watching behavior like that, or a tank just continuously rushing forward while I and the healer were sitting back, drinking, I think I much prefer being DPS and not dealing with stress-inducing behavior as a healer. (Or a tank, for that matter.) Whenever my Questing Buddy bitches about pugs when she's a tank or healer, I totally understand. It doesn't stop me from needling her, since we first met in a pug, but I understand where she's coming from.

***

Okay, I'm sure that somebody out there might be wondering why I just don't group up with my friends to run a few instances or so.

There's one big problem there: nobody seems to be at the levels my toons are at. And if they are, because they're leveling an alt, they shoot right on past me very quickly because they're using one of their max level toons to boost each other. For example, my Questing Buddy borrows her husband's Mage --whom she also leveled by boosting him with her own Mage alt-- and then levels those alts by boosting.

The other thing is that I'm leveling 8 toons at once, so even if they were just leveling by questing they'd naturally pull ahead, even though they're raiding and doing other things on their mains on a regular basis. 

I've been told that once I reach L50, my friends intend to nab me and chain run instances until I get to max level. And no, I'm not happy about that, so I'm starting to think that I might slow down my logging in when I reach L49 or so on toons. I hate carries.

***

In other news, AQ40 is already done and open, and the 12 hour war has passed us on the Anniversary server. This caught me by surprise, because I figured that at least a few more guilds would have worked to get Scarab Lord for toons, but it could also have been that one guild was being an asshole about it and rushing ahead to get Scarab Lord solely for themselves.

When I heard that there was some Qiraji fighting going on at Gadgetzan, I hopped on a flight down there and promptly discovered that it wasn't exactly the safest place for an underleveled Hunter:

Shortly after I took that screenshot, a respawn happened with me too far away from the flightpoint...

so I rushed back to try to escape with predictable results:

My friends group did what they usually do, and gave me some crap about it, but I gave as much as I got:

For the record, the ones giving me the most crap
were all women.

I guess that means that by early October people will be ready to move on to Naxx.

***

Oh, and I guess I ought to mention one more thing: given how slow the Holy Priest and Feral Druid are progressing, I'm going to start leaving them behind a bit. I might also do that to the Shadow Priest, but we'll see. I'm not giving up on them completely, but I have tried to keep all 8 toons together, and I think I'm ready to keep 5-6 of them in the same range instead of my current modus operandi. Given that two of them weren't going into instances, and the Druid was mainly going to be used as an Herbalist and Skinner, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'll just keep plugging away and see how things progress.

*Since I've never played Hunters until now, I never knew that Hunters had their bar changed from Mana to Focus --akin to a Rogue's Energy-- in Retail. It took the impending (and now current) Mists Classic release for me to realize that.

EtA: Fixed some grammatical issues.

Meme Monday: Miscellaneous Memes for July

Because I didn't want to put together a themed Meme Monday this week, here's a bit of a grab bag of stuff...

Yeah, this is what it feels like at times.
From Thunder Dungeon.

I've never personally had that happen in a dungeon,
but I have had that happen while waiting for a boat
on a dock. THAT was awkward. From Facebook's WoW group.

Self-explanatory. From Reddit.

Yes, that is me, right before I die.
From FYXT.

...and this is Monday. Doesn't matter that I set this up
on Sunday evening, this is ALWAYS my Monday.
From Memegenerator.

Brushing off the Cobwebs

I just took a look at PC's design last night, and it's pretty out of date.

Well, not the overall design, since that's pretty much a blog design in a nutshell, but more like the references are dated and ought to be revamped. 

Geek and Sundry? That place kind of imploded when founder Felicia Day and then Critical Role left.

The About Me section? Hoo boy is THAT dated.

Some parts of the blog design I can't get around Blogger's limitations, such as it's inability to provide the latest YouTube content in the same way that you receive blog feed content. You'd think that Google owning both Blogger and YouTube would want better integration in the same way that Google+ worked, but nooo.....

Still, I'm not giving up on the platform right now. I just need to freshen this place up a bit.

Yeah, there went my motivation.
From Cheezburger.