One problem with sightseeing in Azshara is deciding whether or not to hire a guide. Without a guide, it’s possible that you will inadvertently walk into a mine field, or be shot by elves. With a guide, you will have to cope with the twenty-four hour a day worry that they, too, may be trying to kill you. Well, not exactly trying. There is, after all, a strange innocence to the little bastards, a good-natured glow to their habit for either destroying everything in sight or turning it into an implement for destroying everything else. They don’t mean you any harm, per se, but if you happen not to survive the round of mortar-frisbee they arranged (at great expense) for you this afternoon, there’s no point in letting all that ground-chuck go to waste, is there? In your memory, they will offer buyers of the world-famous Taurenburger a one time special discount of five percent, not to be combined with any other offers, family members of the deliciously deceased ineligible.

My guide’s name is Mitzi, and today she informed me we are going to play “golf”.

“Golf” is a beautiful thing and I recommend it to anyone who has a few weeks to spare between bouts of trying to stop the world from literally falling apart at the seams. Like the Barrens, it is best experienced while intoxicated. Unlike the Barrens, you don’t have to get loaded before you set out, because they’ll bring the stuff out to you while you’re puzzling over the rules, or the short pants they make you wear.

Mitzi gets me up at the crack of ten by pushing me off the roof. Then, semi-conscious, I am loaded into a wheelbarrow and propelled by constructs to the rocket-station. I properly wake up around the time we stop to take in the sight of Trade Prince Galliwix’s looming visage being burned, chopped and carved out of the living rock. Shakily I make a pot of starfire coffee up under his vulpine grin, reflecting more kindly on dwarves; dwarves may put holes in all of my favourite hillsides but at least they don’t fill the thing with dwarf-shaped beanbags and then toss in dozens of bawling, terrified children to fend for themselves, perhaps by eating eachother. Goblins think this is a child-minding service well worth paying-for.

I am informed that the gentleman being memorialized forever in this manner acquired his high position in the Horde after trying to kill Thrall with a spider-tonk. Wait, what? I bought Thrall like five beers after the whole Wrath-gate thing, and gave him lady advice, and I get Garrosh riding my ass about how the Horde “doesn’t need healers”, and Galliwix gets to be head of the Horde goblins. This is… I mean… I … Im going to get drunk and hit something with a club.

So we get up there. It’s about noon. It’s the greenest place in Azshara, and for a moment my heart melts. Those little bastards, I think fondly, they’ve been gathering rain-water in barrels, or they’ve tapped into the underground reaches of the Southfury, and all this lumber-clearing is just the first step to covering Azshara with lush green parkland. What a marvel!

No, it’s – it’s some kind of solidified oil product. Like, they took that tar that boils on the surface of Un’goro and cooked it into grass. Just the smell is giving me a headache; fortunately,Mitzi has lots of my medicine handy. I work my way through the trestle-full while she explains the rules of “golf” to me.

Rule one is I hit this little ball with a club. Okay, I’m on board.

Rule two is I try to get the little ball in a little hole. Sure, whatever you say, Mitzi, this is all making a lot of sense to me. It’s like… ish like LIFE, y’know? We’re all, all just… jusht tryin’ to get our ballsh in… inna. hm.

Rule two is that if my ball falls into sand or water, I have to pay a forfeit which involves Mitzi paddling me with a wooden replica of Frostmourne.

Rule three is that if I take too many tries to get the ball in the hole, they release the Core Hounds. What – wait, were there two “rule twos” just now?

It goes on like this, I nod along. Actually, I really should have paid closer attention because rule fourteen or something involved teeing off a rocket sledge. That wasn’t really a problem; my motor skills improve with sufficient liquid encouragement.

The problem was trying to balance a dividend income portfolio with 5 pts up on prime in the split-bamboo pig-fence futures while doing it.

Next: Blinded by Science and also by Burning Acid »