The Queue: Not a great winter so far

So last month, just after Christmas, Lemmy Kilmister died of cancer. He’d literally just turned 70 years old, his birthday was December 24. Then this month, both David Bowie and Alan Rickman die of cancer, Bowie just after his 69th birthday, and Rickman less than a month before his 70th.

All three of these men had a pretty substantial affect on my life, so I’m sort of in a daze right now.

Anyway, this is The Queue.

I’m going to tell you a story.

When I was a younger person, around sixteen or so, my mother and father had recently divorced and it was a fairly trying time for us as a family. My mom was forced to take a second job even though her first job was as a full time teacher because America didn’t then (and still doesn’t now) respect teachers enough to pay them anything. As a result, we didn’t have a Christmas of any sort that year. This didn’t bother me, but I knew it bothered her, because she had always enjoyed Christmas.

One night I drove to pick her up at her secondary job (a place called Ann & Hope, if any of you live in Rhode Island you might know of it) and she had chosen an assortment of movies for us to watch. Being my mother, she had an eclectic idea of what made good holiday fare — Among her choices was Silent Night Deadly Night, a little movie I’d not heard of called Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. We went home and watched the movies, although I wasn’t particularly graceful about it — I’d intended to go out with some friends and get drunk. (I’d been a functioning alcoholic for six years by this point.)

Still, while I’m not a big fan of slasher movies, I did enjoy Lethal Weapon okay — it has a few fairly obvious Christmas shout-outs but I’d argue it’s not a Christmas movie, it’s just a movie that takes place over the course of Christmas. But when we got to Die Hard, for the first time since the divorce, my mother did something.

She noticed someone.

Now, I’m not saying my mom went ape for Alan Rickman or anything, but she noticed him. His performance as Hans Gruber engaged her, and while at my current age I understand what was going on, at the time all I really noticed was that my mom was more herself than she’d been for a while. I’ve always remembered that.

My mother died a couple of years later. I haven’t really been able to watch Die Hard since that time. And I won’t watch it again now, because frankly it would probably make me cry and that’s just weird. But I’ve always felt a strange sort of personal gratitude to Alan Rickman for giving my mom back a little bit of the vivacity she’d had when I was a small child.

So thank you, sir. I hope you rest well.

As to your question, I have never seen a Harry Potter movie nor read any of the books, so I’m going to say he’s a Sith. He’s a Sith Sorcerer from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Go ahead and google the words ‘cat saves’.

Oh, never mind. I’ve done it for you. Some of them are marginal, but the cat that got in a box with a baby and tried to mother it basically saved that baby. It saw a human kitten and said to itself ‘Why would stupid humans put kitten in box?’ and got right in there.

Here’s one of a cat saving a little boy from a dog. That’s right, the cat saved the human from your supposed awesome species.

So I’d have to say that your argument is invalid. You’ve now heard of two acts of heroism from cats on the behalf of humanity, and one of those acts is one of suicidal bravery as a housecat threw itself at a much larger dog to protect a human child.

I personally have no preference. Both dogs and cats are good pets, and each that I’ve met has been an individual with its own personality. But the old trope about cats being aloof and disinterested in humans is simply a hoary old pile of kodo droppings. I have three cats and all three of them are lively, interested in me and what I’m doing, and if they wouldn’t save me from a dog attack it’s mostly because they’re very small and would get hurt.

So far I haven’t managed to talk about a single Blizzard related topic this Queue. This alarms me.

I initially read this as a gold plated zeppelin, and immediately started ruminating on what the most ridiculously ostentatious mount imaginable would be. A gem encrusted Skyfire style airship? A lead platform carried aloft by four electrum-plated dragons? A flying train that automatically traveled between various Caverns of Time instances?

Eventually I realized you hadn’t said that, but now I’m curious — what do you guys think the most ridiculously expansive display of ostentatious wealth would be in a mount? What’s worth being the ultimate gold sink?

Pretty much the same way I prepare for any class, I’ve played it some on the Alpha, I’ll keep playing it until I decide if it’s worth sticking on the small pile of non-Warrior alts I keep around. I’m planning on level boosting my hunter to 100 this time around.

All I’m going to say here is this seems extremely unlike Genn, considering what he gets up to in Legion.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Have fun in the comments.