Ode to Abner

Was it hard growing up, with no lower jaw?
I remember the undead children, the way they ridiculed you.
They called you Waggy Tongue and Licky.
How much were they laughing on the day,
after you had spent your life training
in the ways of the warrior,
in the method of the blade,
in the three sacred stances of battle,
when you brought the honed edge of your axe to their necks and relieved them of their jeering heads?

You precocious fool.
We would no sooner be conversed in the trade of unrefined ore,
than I would hear tales of you slapping your sword on the ass of a dragon ten times your hunched stature.
Fozruk himself,
contented daily in his peaceful walks through the highlands of Arathi with his friendly guild of three bumbling kobolds,
was not safe from your unbiased aggression.
Nor were hundreds of bright-eyed Alliance champions,
low in level but high in ambition,
whom you felled with your ranged weapon,
a murderous method meant to teach them humility.

And how could I neglect to mention
our journeys through the gloomy, wet subways of Ironforge and Stormwind.
I learned all I ever needed to know about the perils of a leap to and from a speeding train,
by your side.

If I should speak for someone whose voice is not heard in this ode,
it would have to be the scores of piteous fools who watched in disbelief,
and confusion,
and frustration,
as you carried their blue banner across the bloody gulch of the Warsong Woods,
you alone without a healer,
and them stricken with a petrifying fear
as you showed them what their insides looked like
and spit on their fresh corpses
and rubbed the cloth bearing their alliance symbol on your rotting crotch,
in a gesture of mockery.

The halls of Blackwing Lair will forever ring with your name.
The searing lava flowing through Molten Core will illuminate the faces of adventurers who will follow in your path but never truly embrace it.
C'thun will continue to sow his whispering seeds of subversion in every soldier of fortune who enters his ancient temples to steal his treasures,
but as he tires of his routine over the ages,
he will glance over at his nightstand from time to time,
where, to this day, he displays a picture of you,
stabbing his kidneys from the inside.
"There's Abner, the most able warrior who ever stabbed my kidneys," he will say, and then he'll shed a giant tear of remorse from his huge eye.

And etched in my memory,
like grooves on a record,
are the sounds of your mad, cackling laughter
as dozens of Darkshire night watchmen,
under your provocation,
pursue me through the haunted forests of Duskwood
as I run, screaming your cursed name, and helplessly watch you ride into the sunset.

Through it all, these things remained true:
You are a warrior among warriors.
You are my oldest companion.
I will miss you.

The strong, silent type

A man of few words, one who commands attention when he speaks, because his listeners value his rare morsels of exposition. A man who has a skill and does a job and does it well; he's either an indispensable part of a working system, or a self-sufficient loner who can spend eternity by himself without feeling a pang of longing for human company. In short, the "strong, silent type."

For a time, that's the kind of image I envisioned myself embodying. Like Robert Redford in Out of Africa, or the fat driver guy in Ronin. These are men of strong character who don't lie and never need to. Friendly extroverts who are easily swayed by social influences would look at these men and wish for the strength to be like them, wish for the patience to live a life that draws respect and admiration and occasional pity. I've known people like this in real life, people of frustrating brevity who compelled me to pester them into conversation, a task at which I rarely succeeded.

I can never be such a man. When I sit with a group of friends and the opportunity arises to make an obscene or painfully corny joke and run the risk of embarrassing myself, temptation overwhelms me, and fulfilling an ideal image of myself isn't enough motivation to stifle my social compulsions. My quest to become the strong, silent type has led me to believe that such people are either A. Miserable on the inside because they're faking it, or B. Borderline sociopaths.

The strong, silent type, as I've described it, is an extreme. There are midpoints along the spectrum, a spectrum that ranges from stoic recluse to Paris Hilton. Most personalities fall on these midpoints. It's natural for most people to desire to be the strong, silent type, but like I said, it takes patience. And sacrifice.

What needs to be sacrificed as you get closer to the strong, silent type? Catharsis. On second thought, catharsis is too wholesome a word. More like, satisfaction. Personifying the strong, silent type requires sacrificing the satisfaction you get from perverse social exchanges. These exchanges include telling someone their loved one died, your loved one died, or someone else's loved one died; betraying a friend's confidence in order to use their secret to deprecate them, make conversation, or just make yourself seem more interesting; and flirting with someone who's spoken for, just to flatter yourself and, if you're lucky, get them to admit that they'd rather be with you. The strong, silent type doesn't meddle with these selfish endeavors. It's not that he's totally selfless; that side of life simply doesn't concern him. Social deception, petty feuds, all that crap isn't important. He lives in a different perspective.

Sadly I can't think of a way to conclude this now, so I'll have to settle with leaving it at this. My point was, people who engage in the aforementioned perverse social exchanges are people who possess an extreme unwillingness to sacrifice their social satisfactions. They cannot satisfy themselves with being good, quiet people. And yes, this post is heavily influenced by my disdain for these people, or more accurately, this personality type. It's a fast, easy and weak way to live, and one which I find myself embracing on occasion, to my regret. That's what I'm thinking.

postscript: I just wanted to post something since it's been so long since my last post. Maybe this wasn't the most appropriate cessation of my blogging moratorium? ergo vis-a-vis concordantly