Summon Spectral Tigerzord Now!

In World of Warcraft, once you are high enough level, you get to ride around the lands instead of walking and running. At level 40, you can acquire a steed which moves at 160% of your running speed; at level 60, you can get one that moves at 200%. (At higher levels, you can get mounts that fly, but they are only good in certain areas.) When the necessities of the game force you to pass through the same area for the hundredth time, the bonus speed is quite welcome.

My gnome mage rides a large mechanical ostrich, while my warlock summons a demonic horse. Mounts are expensive, but not rare or difficult to acquire. (Poor gnome is still riding her lvl 40 ostrich because she hasn't yet made enough money for her lvl 60, but that's purely a matter of time.)

Like anything else in the game, there are rare and valuable steeds found only with the greatest of luck. To mirror this, the trading card game for WoW includes ultra-rare cards with a scratch-off code that can be entered into the game to provide the player's character with a mount that few in the lands of Azeroth will ever see. This ghostly tiger is pretty keen-looking; the regular tigers of the night elves are nice enough that some players of other races work for the right to them, and this one is certainly cooler than those.

My point here? One of those WoW "loot cards' just sold on eBay... for TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Great C'Thun, people. It's a CGI tiger. In a game. It doesn't even go faster than shrewlet's armored warhorse or snidegrrl's giant rhino-lizard. Someone just paid the cost of my next Mac laptop for this virtual ride.

Arrrrgh.

The Sound of the Universe

I have all of Doctor Who season 3 on my Mac. I have most of it on the DVR. So it was about time for me to get around to finishing season 2.

The last four episodes restored my interest in the Tenth Doctor, and I'm looking forward now to seeing "Runaway Bride". While I had nits to pick, these scripts really engaged me again, and I honestly think that this season's two-part finale is stronger than season 1's.

But I have to say that I'm pretty divided about episode ten. The episode was clearly about science-fiction fandom, and I understood all too clearly the points it was making from that angle. But the last bits with the guest lead and his grilfriend were wrong in so many ways... and I mean that seriously, not in that rueful fun manner.

( Cut for spoilers and whining )

After all that, though, I've enjoyed the majority of the season, and am slowly learning to just hand-wave such things away. Now for season 3.