I keep seeing these posters in the Roosevelt Island station with pictures of Ms Subways. Ms Subways? What, she’s got a vermin problem? Maybe she smells like pee and is too crowded at rush hour? It just doesn’t sound like the kind of title you’d put on your resume, I guess.

Things remain mostly uneventful. Thanks to some judicious cap-peering at Duane Reade, I have amassed a hearty supply of free iTunes songs - and all I had to do was switch from sugar-free Red Bull to Diet Mountain Dew (for the duration of the promotion, anyway).

I’ve been seeing NIN posters in the subway - only on a couple of lines so far, and only in those cars where all of the ads are different. Strange to see that logo nestled in between ads for Dr Zizmor and his amazing offer for Tighter Skin Without Surgery.

When I was a kid, I never had much of an idea about what I would do when I grew up - I always just sort of pictured myself in an office with a computer and a lot of manila folders. Which is, of course, pretty much how it turned out. While the computer I was thinking of in 1985 doesn’t much resemble the one I actually use in 2005, manila folders have (as far as I know) remained exactly the same over the past twenty years.

Chris hit 60 recently, and because he’s a warlock, that means he can now summon a Doomguard on occasion. Eventually, the enslave spell will break, and he’ll have to kill it before it kills him. (Note his health in the second picture.) But still - for short periods of time, he has the coolest pet ever.

As for me, I’m a mere 53. But the armor situation has gotten a little better - and yes, that’s my very own Tiny Black Whelpling hovering next to me. I don’t know who the half-naked warlock behind me is, though.

Yeah, I couldn’t get tickets either. But I haven’t given up hope - there are strings that yet remain unpulled. Magical strings.

And, you know, I did already see NIN in 2000, so it could be worse.

Not a lot going on. I’ve been listening to Nine Inch Nails pretty much constantly over the past couple of weeks - I guess the pre-album frenzy is starting to hit me, even though the release date isn’t till May. I’m still a shameless fangirl at heart.

One thing that’s interesting is how closely each NIN album is tied to a particular period in my life - The Fragile is my freshman year at NYU, The Downward Spiral is high school, particularly my junior and senior years, etc. I wonder if the new album will always remind me of 2005, and how I’ll remember it, if so.

I also started reading Ender’s Game on the train today, and I’m suitably embarrassed that I’ve never gotten around to it before. It’s exactly my kind of thing, of course, but somehow it’s one I always overlooked.

Because I have, in fact, been drankin’, I’m not going to say much tonight. However, I’ll note that the fact that it is probably ill-advised to visit the Warcraft auction house when drunk has not kept me from doing exactly that JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO. I wonder whether I will consider my purchases entirely wise tomorrow, when I wake up in the cold pre-dawn reality of five in the fucking morning.

So I hit level 50 recently, and because I’m in no huge hurry to reach 60, I’ve been taking some time out from questing and grinding to engage in a little low-level PVP. Since I’m still ten levels below the highest level players, I can’t really go raid Ogrimmar or anything like that, and I can’t hang around in one place for too long or the alarm will go out and I’ll be swamped by Horde players. So what I like to do is ride around to low level towns and kill a couple of NPCs - generally a few Deathguards, and the mushroom vendor. Always the mushroom vendor. And then I leave, or fight whatever higher-level players show up and eventually get killed. Either way, it’s pretty fun. Soon I will become known throughout my server as the bane of mushroom vendors everywhere!

I’d also like to note that the armor situation is getting pretty desparate. I’m a hunter, so I’m in the market for mail items over level 50 with good agility stats - stamina and intellect are my secondary stats. But there’s literally nothing like that on the auction house anymore, either because there are too many hunters my level or because there aren’t enough people in the high fifties to get the drops. So my armor dates in some cases back to levels 40-42, which is pretty embarrassing. I guess this is why I need to do more instances.