Make no mistake: bestiality is wrong.

Man, two weeks without internet access. I suppose that's what I get for trying an ISP based out of Exodar. Can't even fly a gryphon straight out there, I don't know why I was expecting to get a decent net connection.

Anyway, continuing on with reader suggestions, Psyae steps up with:

Relationships (sexually or otherwise) between warlocks and their demonic minions. (Perhaps compare hunter relationships with their pets?)

It's something of a universal inside joke that warlocks get busy with their minions. Apparently everyone except the warlocks finds this endlessly amusing. Psyae, for example, is a rogue, and I could turn this question right back around by asking what kind of sexual relationship she has with her poisons.

I imagine that would sting. I mean, yeesh.

Anyway, it's a little more complicated than that. Consider that warlocks have access to three more-or-less humanoid minions (actually more than three, but I'm not counting the ones that exist only in the fourth and fifth spatial dimensions whose existence are utterly imperceptible to mortal detection), and it would be absolutely foolish to assume that no warlock, anywhere, at any time, had attempted to get her freak on.

As evidence for this, I submit the endless gawking and catcalling my succubus Cattnys endures as we saunter along the road. If Random Human Warrior #4981 wants to have a go at her, I'm sure Random Human Warlock #3827 has at least attempted it. It could be argued that renting out one's succubus is a pretty enterprising way for a hard-up warlock to fall into a pot of gold.

Felguards are big and nasty, but I guess the same rules would apply. It's not difficult to envision, really. I mean, picture it: lonely female warlock, unlucky at love, who has access to a demonic slave who must by binding contract as deep as the nine hells follow her every whim... the math isn't that hard.

That said, I've never done it and don't intend to (I mean, the size difference alone is enough to deter me, if nothing else). I consider my demons to be tools, and nothing more. Warriors have their swords and axes, rogues have their knives and poisons, priests have their guilt trips. Warlocks have minions, end story.

As for hunters, I would jump into the whole "minions vs. pets" thing, except I already did that like over a year ago. But Psyae is a night elf, so we'll forgive her lackluster reading comprehension.

Oh, and for the record, none of the above pertains to orc warlocks. Orcs will nail anything. Anything.

The etymology of "belf".

In exchange for picking the topic of his blog post yesterday, I've allowed that grumpiest of paladins to select mine today in what looks to be a rather interesting series of reader suggested entries.

So, let us speak today on "belfs."

First off, the term "belf" is lazy in addition to racist and offensive. The term dates back to an underground newsrag called "Purity of the Mountain" which circulated around Ironforge for a time back when Gnomeregan refugees were piling in. (I'm using the term "underground" here to mean "independantly published", not literally underground. Every newsrag in Ironforge is, by definition, underground.) Anyway, the periodical in question was funded by some anti-everyone nutjobs who believed Ironforge should remain closed off to all races except dwarves. Now I can't imagine anyone wanting to go to Ironforge to begin with, but that's neither here nor there; point is, the thing ran with the tagline: "Being a weekly Newsletter with the Aim of driving all Pasties, Shorties and Nelfs from Ironforge."

The thing ran a few issues until it was revealed the whole thing was run by a gnomish entrepreneur who merely saw a way to cash in on dwarven ignorance. In any case, the slanderous rag faded away but one part of it remained: a crudely drawn and completely racist cartoon called "Nelfs and Belfs" which pictured night elves and blood elves in an obscene and demeaning manner, frequently involving animals and bodily emissions. "Nelfs and Belfs" found an audience because, politically correct mumbo-jumbo aside, dwarves really like making fun of elves. It eventually made its way to Stormwind and is now distributed as a monthly comic book all over Azeroth. I believe it's even translated into Orcish nowadays and passed around Orgrimmar, proving that racial insensitivity knows no allegiance.

That said, blood elves are just night elves who don't cower in fear of magic. Which makes them marginally cooler tha night elves, I suppose, but if you're going to rock out with some magic you might as well just be a gnome and get it over with. Blood elves are pink instead of purple, so it's not even really a question of how feminine you want to be. Also, they eat their own young.

That's just something I heard somewhere.

Reader suggestions... your chance at immortality!

In an almost unfathomable display of generosity, and to comply with certain court orders, I've decided to tackle the most pressing issues in Azeroth as suggested by you, my loyal readers. For an unspecified amount of time, I will humbly subject my ineffable wit and wisdom to any topic you wish. Simply leave a comment expressing your desires, and they shall come to pass.

Unless, of course, you leave something retarded like "talk about how sexy night elves are," in which case you will become the subject of as much scorn and ridicule I can muster.

Should you grind Sporeggar rep?

I don't know or much care about rep, but I'm here to tell you that after a spring feast at Uncle Sideburns's place I am a firm believer in grinding up the Sporregar themselves. Observe:

Vegetarian Sporeling Lasagne

Ingredients:
1 lb low-fat cottage cheese
1/2 lb part-skim ricotta
2 raptor egg whites
2 tbsp grated Garadar sharp
1 tbsp minced fresh chives
1 tbsp minced fresh parsley
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
8 oz lasagne noodles, uncooked
1 cup minced onion
1/4 cup Brightsong wine
1 1/2 lbs ground sporelings
1 cup chopped zucchini
4 cups red sauce

Instructions:
Set a large pot of salted water to boil, and preheat oven to 375°. Pureé cottage cheese, ricotta, egg whites and Garadar sharp. Blend chives, parsley and pepper into the cheese mixture. Add the pasta to the water and boil on high for about ten minutes. The noodles should be tender but not mushy. Using a slotted spoon, dip the cooked noodles into cold water and lay them out flat on clean linen cloth. Simmer onions in Brightsong wine in a covered skillet for about five minutes. Stir frequently. Onions should be very soft. Add ground sporelings and zucchini, cook about five additional minutes (until soft). Drain the sporeling mixture, and set 1/4 cup aside for later. Combine cheese mixture and sporeling mixture. Spread 2 cups marinara into the bottom of a 9x14 baking pan. Add alternating layers of pasta and cheese until pasta is gone. Cover with remaining sauce and spread reserved spporeling mixture over top. Cover and bake for 1 hour. Let cool for ten minutes before cutting. Serves 9 humans, 14 gnomes, or 1 gluttonous dwarf.

There you have it: a purely vegetarian dish where you still get all the fun of murdering something. Genocide never tasted so good.

Eleven easy ideas on how to be as lovable as I am.

The most frequent question I get asked is, "Crys, would you please take the lid off this cauldron? It's getting pretty hard to breathe in here." But a close second would be "Crys, how can I be as lovable as you are?"

So here are a few easy things you can do to make yourself lovable. I hope you find them immensely helpful.

#1) Be a gnome. If you're already a gnome, good work! You're well on your way to being pretty dang lovable as-is. If you're not a gnome, you might be out of luck. Humans might be able to hack their legs off at the knees and pass themselves off as gnomes with freakishly long arms and bad posture, but everyone else is up a creek. The reasoning here is that small = cute, and cute = lovable. Pretty standard logic.

#2) Get a lovable pet. Warlocks have this one nailed, obviously, because who can't love a scantily-clad demoness or a miniature stegosaurus? Hunters are in decent shape too, I guess, for those who find warp stalkers or giant spiders lovable. Of course, hunters are up the aforementioned creek on the subject of lovableness, since if you're a hunter, you're not a gnome. Catch 22. If you're some other class your only option is to murder some Defias pirates until you find a parrot, then train it to say something cute, such as: "Did I do that?" or "Squawk! I'm all about the bling-bling."

#3) Learn magic. Warlocks? You guys are aces -- magic is your thing and good on ya for it. Mages are in the clear too. Everyone else? Crack a spellbook. You want to know magic because it's mysterious, colorful and flashy. With a good repertoire of magic under your belt, you can effortlessly enthrall the dimwitted and easily-amused. And, if all else fails, you can just light people on fire. Remember: every person you burn to a crisp evens out the ratio of people who find you lovable to the people who don't a little bit more, thus making you more lovable by definition.

#4) Be a girl. Guys are hairy and bulky and generally not very lovable in their natural state. Girls, however, are curvy and pouty and smell nice. Also, our voices are higher pitched, and most people find that pretty lovable. If you're a guy elf, you're actually not in bad shape -- just shave the nappy beard and add a little wiggle to your walk, and nobody else will know the difference. The rest of you cats have a rough decision to make. I know this blood elf in Shattrath who will do a back-alley operation for thirty gold, but that solution is less than ideal, since no matter how lovable you are in that state your days of actually loving are probably over.

#5) Perfect your "tee-hee." Anyone can do this in a matter of hours. Go nuts, giggle yourself stupid in the mirror until it's perfected. Once you've got it down, be sure you only bust it out when really necessary though. A quick, well-placed giggle will knock 'em over every time, but use it too often and people will just think you're empty-headed and annoying. And they'll be right.

#6) Puppy dog eyes. I know, I know. Cheap shot. But it works!

#7) Contract a disease. This will work for anyone, even those who can't fulfill any of the above. Get a bad disease and play on people's sympathies. Now, you have to be careful with this one. If the illness isn't severe enough (say, a sinus infection) people are going to think you're just an attention whore. And again, they'll be right. But if it's too severe (say, leprosy) people won't come within a furlong of your diseased carcass, and with good reason. Also, try not to get anything icky, because icky things aren't lovable. This one works pretty well if you decide to fake it, but make absolutely sure you're capable of pulling off such an elaborate lie. There's a special place in the Twisting Nether for folks who pull a stunt that low, and there's nothing lovable about it.

#8) Paint your nose red and get some big floppy shoes. I don't know how true this is, but they say everyone loves a clown. So if nothing else is working for you, you might as well give it a shot. Nothing to lose but your dignity, and let's be honest, you didn't have much to begin with, right?

#9) Quit complaining. Anyone who uses the word "nerf", in any context, ever, for any reason is automatically unlovable. Nobody wants to listen to you bellyache, so get over it.

#10) Alcoholism. As long as you aren't the kind of joker who yells and punches people and breaks stuff while under the influence, go ahead and get plastered. Everyone loves a big, silly drunkard. If you're a dwarf, this is pretty much the only option you have anyway, so go for it.

#11) Pay people. Everyone loves free stuff and, by extension, the giver of free stuff. If it's absolutely crucial that someone in particular loves you very much in a very short period of time, you could do way way worse than to drop some gold in their lap. Keep in mind, though, that this is a short-term solution at best, and obviously you can't pay everyone in the world. Only the most absolutely unlovable people around should have to resort to this nonsense.

I think that gives you guys a good start. I can't give away all my secrets, of course, since I wouldn't be nearly as lovable as I am without them. Hopefully, we can go ahead and make Azeroth a place filled with lovable people between the Veiled and Forbidding Seas.

Er, except trolls. Nobody, anywhere, loves trolls. Sorry guys.

Crystalis's book club: A steamy romance novel.

Among the contents of my mailbox the other day (you know, various bribes, extortions, body parts of elected officials... the usual) was a book, sent to me by some rogue I know. God only knows what kind of sleazy creature she swiped it from, but if this is any indication of typical Horde reading material I should think we're doing them a favor by exterminating them. I skipped the first few chapters because the pages were stuck together, and started in on this:

First off, "Nahni" is a pretty embarrassing name. My condolences to the twenty-three unfortunate souls who share it (39% of which are elves, naturally). Secondly, the reward for killing murlocs is often as not a recipe for Murloc Gullet Stew or some similar backwater delicacy. Pass.


Not for nothing, but anytime I see some bimbo down on the beach playfully twirling her hair, I side with the murlocs. In case you're wondering, Marcus's broadsword is glowing hot pink because it's been graced with Enchant Weapon: Improved Coitus. That's right, baby: ridged for her pleasure.


Wait, fear and anger is how this clown responds to a hot mage chick who's not only slaughtered a bunch of murlocs for his benefit, but is practically lurching down his throat? As a public service, I've gone ahead and re-written the second half of this page, replacing Nahni with my humble self: "He gingerly lifted her diminutive form onto a nearby bookshelf so as to gaze into her tantalizing emerald eyes. Their lips met hotly, her Fel Armor spell melting the deepest recesses of his soul as his eyes snapped agape in a mixture of torturous horror and pure ecstasy."


Of course there is, honey. It's called "Forty-eight Seconds of Abject Disappointment". Be sure to bring a healer; he's going to need it. (Fun fact: if you ever see a gnome's eyes glittering with excitement, run. The town is either about to explode or be filled with demons. Or, if you're really lucky, both.)


Oddly enough, this isn't a description of how the book continues; this is actually what's printed in the text, and is followed by hundreds of blank pages. In the last chapter, Nahni dumps Marcus for a hunter with +960 attack and a 16% crit chance, leaving him begging for change on the auction house bridge in Ironforge.

I love a happy ending, so I give this one four failed marriages out of a possible five.

107 people who need to die.

So they're doing this new Armory thing, where you can look up anyone in Azeroth and see what spells they know or what clothes they wear. I'm sure this will usher in a bold new age of arrogant mockery and creepy pseudo-voyeurism, but really I have other concerns.

Namely, this.

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but nuts to that. A whole army of unoriginal boobs has stolen my name and I'm none the happier about it. And no, you folks who tried to game the system by going with "Crystalism" or "Crystalisis" don't get a free pass. You look just as foolish as the wanna-bes, and maybe even a bit more foolish because you can't spell right.

The fact that I share my name with over forty elves both saddens and infuriates me, and just for the record, I don't think there's anything fundamentally different between night elves and blood elves. One is purple and the other is orange. All we need now are pink and green elves and we're well on our way to a pack of Skittles, and no mistake, nobody wants to taste that rainbow.

Posers, the lot of you. Ought to be ashamed.

On a more positive note, have any of you cats tried this thing where this dwarf guy pays you to take a sack of bombs, hop on a gryphon, and explode the hell out of a bunch orcs? I'm as excited about this as I am apprehensive. Excited because, let's face it, exploding orcs is pretty much at the top of my list of awesome ways to spend my vacation... but apprehensive because they're apparently just letting anyone in the Alliance take flight with a bag of explosives. It won't be long until some halfwit human gets all turned around and dumps his payload right in the heart of Honor Hold.

Oh, and before I forget: you draenei guys are silly looking and everyone makes fun of you behind your backs. Everyone. That includes the night elves.

Ghosts in the machine.

Blogger was all "hey guys, we have this new and improved Blogger thing that works better, because it's new!" So of course I proceeded to go and break my website.

Demons and black magicks I can handle. Computers are a little more difficult. Please bear with me while I force Jubjub to fix things around here.

Don't forget to /spit.

I'm doling out a fair amount of genocide on some terrorfiends the other day (which, by the way, are about as terrifying as your average litter box) when I come across some nobody tauren. He's mindlessly slaving away, no doubt for some nondescript quest or another, so I do what any self-respecting Alliance member would do: I moo at him, and move on.

A few minutes later I'm riding back and he's still at it, clubbing a terrorfiend silly and healing himself every so often. I decide that I'm just bored enough to indulge myself in a quick mortal diversion. I decide to make this tauren's life hell.

Now, any joker can just murder the poor oaf. I possess a bit more flair than that. Rather than just shadow bolt him into oblivion or let Cattnys whip him to a pulp, I banish the terrorfiend he's fighting. The ugly, hairy tauren looks around confusedly, so I wave at him. He doesn't know what to do, so he goes and picks a fight with another terrorfiend.

I sit down and start making myself some lunch, enjoying the spectacle at hand. No sooner does the tauren get the upper hand in his battle with the second terrorfiend does the first one break out of its banished state, mad as hell. Immediately it jumps right on the tauren's back and proceeds to pummel him.

(A quick aside: I had always figured that banished demons were sent momentarily to the Outlands. Does that mean when I banish one from the Outlands, it shows up in Azeroth? That's pretty awesome.)

Of course no mere tauren could hold off the onslaught of two demons, not even pissant demons like terrorfiends, so he is soon a squishy corpse suitable for nothing but to be spat upon.

A while later I have cause to revisit that same area on an unrelated task, and there's our tauren hero again, mindlessly pecking away at another terrorfiend. Taking a moment to contemplate our world in which, for whatever reason, death is not final, I pull the same stunt again. Banish, confusion, death, /moo, /spit. It's all rather passé at this point.

In any case, I didn't see him out there again picking on any terrorfiends.

I don't really have an excuse for my behaviour other than I was in kind of an immature mood. Anyway, my point is, if you're going to go out there and just murder some Horde, be creative. Have fun with it.

And never forget to /spit.

Just tell me where to pick up the checks.

I spend the majority of my time in Kalimdor, so it wasn't until I flew out to the Dark Portal last night that I saw this picture of me that has been floating around in some EK tabloid.

I'm really not at all upset that my image is being plastered across the EK without my permission. It's a little flattering, really... I just wish they'd have caught me in better light. I can't for the life of me figure out where or when that picture must have been taken.

More importantly, it seems like the Alliance would have to cough up some royalties, don'tcha think? Since I'm already swimming in gold, I think I'll ask for my payment in honor marks. That would save me the trouble of having to line up in the battlegrounds with a bunch of clowns who think "take three then hold" is an acceptable battle tactic anywhere this side of reality.

Politely shove your "discount coupon key" where the sun don't shine.

I woke up this morning, took a quick shower, popped over to Jaeana's for a bite to eat, then rode the robo-rooster down to the mailbox in front of the bear-bank to reap the profits of last night's wheelings-and-dealings. Made a tidy sum, as always, and also got a most curious business proposition. Behold:

As you can see, I had Jubjub take some scissors to the offending party's internet address, so as not to help them at all by sending any of you fraudulent cretins over to give them business. I'm sure one or two of my readers are at least as noble as I am, and wouldn't think of stooping to such levels, but it's the rest of you cats I'm worried about.

Anyway, you'll notice a few things about this letter straight away:

1. "Kxzrywn" is possibly the stupidest name anyone has ever had in the history of Azeroth. And this is coming from someone who has met clowns named "Ikillpuppies", "Urmom" and "Xxdruidxx".
2. There are chumps out there who are earning their experience and honor (inasmuch as those things truly quantify anything important) by paying someone else to get it for them.
   

Truly, the audacity of some people.

Earning your place in Azeroth is a process which tests your mettle and pushes you to your limits. Some people, like me, surpass those challenges and go above and beyond the realm of mortal accomplishment, and achieve wondrous things most lowly peons could only dream of. Some, like this Kxzrywn jackass, can't hack it in the real world and end up as bottomfeeders, violently clamboring for the crumbs that drift down from above.

I guess my main point is, if you choose to be the type of scum who feels the need to boost your own abilities by paying someone else to go through your tribulations for you... well, that's really no skin off my nose. As a rule I don't have to put up with those types of simpletons unless I have the misfortune of being alongside them in Alterac Valley. But when it lands in my mailbox, it becomes a personal issue. Someone out there assumes that I, astronomically powerful and infinitely humble as I am, would leap at the opportunity to sell my soul in return for a paltry sum of gold or artificial honor. That is truly crossing an important line.

Run far and wide, Kxzrywn. If I ever catch hold of you, I'm going to flay the skin off your bones and feed it to my felhunter Bruunhym.

Bruunhym likes to be patted and scratched behind his horns after eating the flayed skin of a dispicable wretch. He also likes to play Frisbee.