The Queue: Ambient Noise

Over time I’ve started really leaning in to ambient noise soundtracks while I’m working. I’ve done this for a long time, just keeping WoW open while I double check things, so I get all the little chimes from nearby lanterns, or the occasional jingling of horsetack in certain towns and cities. However, now it’s becoming a real necessity for–

Wait, what was I saying? Oh, right, I use the birds chirping soundtrack in Spirit City a lot, and Plant Daddy, also just those youtube videos intended for cats with ambient outdoor noise. Having something neutral like that really helps me focus, when I’m being asked by my kids for–

This is The Queue, the daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll give you goldfish crackers right after we get the kids some answers. No, wait. Other way. I think? Did you…? Okay, no, yeah, I’ll be with you in a second.

I usually don’t pay a ton of attention to Cory’s earworms. Unless they’re one of those universally earworm-y earworms (Lovefool) I don’t get them stuck in my head, and since living in my house with my kids at home all the time is at all times as Vonnegut portrayed his “handicappers” in his short story Harrison Bergeron, not much sticks in my brain for long. So far as I’ve been collecting questions and writing this one response, my son has been singing The Best Day Ever from Spongebob and My Heart Will Go On from Titanic in between making his own sound effects for train crashes.

However, ironically I earwormed myself, because if I need to do some relatively short task around the house and absolutely cannot make myself do it, there’s one song I can put on, and it usually gets done. And now this is the soundtrack for this Queue.

And yes, absolutely, more Hunters is always better.

Usually with things like settlements and towns and cities, they spring up in places that make sense geographically for trade. It would make a ton of sense for there to be a huge city where the Thandol Span is, since not only is it a chokepoint by land, it also has a through river for commerce from sea to sea. The location of old Lordaeron made sense, because of the river to the sea, the huge lake suitable for shipping, and by land it’s close to the mountain pass into the Plaguelands.

But now that the Alliance is actively hostile toward Blood Elves, Stratholme’s location makes no sense as a city. Neither does Light’s Hope. Both are great as fortresses, but they’re ringed by mountains. They’re essentially the end of the line, and cities aren’t usually built in places like that. The only good place for a settlement would be Tyr’s Hand, now that it has access to the sea, and perhaps Corrin’s Crossing, as a crossroads for traders and farmers. And that’s what I see most of the Plaguelands being at this point. Maybe a few fortresses for military defense, and just arable farmland. And not to get too gross, but thanks to all the dead things up in there, that’s probably going to be the best farmland on Azeroth for the next few generations.

In some ways, that might be the most poetic use of that land after so much strife fueled by humanity. Just calm, boring land as far as the eye can see. Birdsong, cattle lowing, the wind in long grasses. And of course, the biggest pumpkins you’ve seen in your entire life.

Of course they would. Shoes are one of the few material goods it’s relatively socially acceptable to hoard, from Louboutins to sneakerheads. Plus, they’re fabulous.

Really the question is, where do shoes — all their clothes, really — go when they’re all dragony. Do they have to pull a Clark Kent in a phone booth and remove everything before getting down to business? Is it like, magically grafted onto their skin? If they get a cut, does it also slice the fabric? I should probably just DM Anne about this, huh.

Give him a big glass of water and an ibuprofen and get him to bed. In the morning, give him an egg sandwich on a buttered toasted roll, and a big glass of apple juice.