DC Comedy Fest 07 and WoW

The DC Comedy Fest started last Thursday and ends tonight. I volunteered to take tickets and got a nifty T-shirt and a staff badge. On the badge is the customary comedy festival "I have to pee" icon, with the American flag waving proudly in the background. "Oh, say can you see..." Every time I see that bladder controlled-challenged, unisex hermaphrodite, a tear wells up in my eye. God bless comedy.

Watching stand-up comedy makes me long to get back into the scene and regret the time I wasted away playing computer games alone at home. I got sucked into World of Warcraft, a popular online game, for the past two months.

This is true: I have a half-written post about WoW making fun of the game, while I was playing it during a trial period. I didn't finish the game because midway through writing it my rogue reached level 20 and got the ability to apply poison to his blade. Then me and a raiding party killed Lord Meneon, and after a successful greed roll on the loot, I got the Tunic of Westfall, and then Lady Elvira flew down on her magical Griffin, and...

I need help. Help rescuing the Prince of Stormwind, who was absconded by a band of bandits and taken to...

No! I need real help. This game is addicting, and I have no self-control. This is also true: I canceled my account over a month ago because I felt I was wasting my life away on the game. On my last paid day, I killed a Feral Rage Scar Yeti (just keeping it real, people). and the monster drops an extremely rare, 1 in 10,000 chance sword. It's the WoW equivalent of kicking a bear and having the Hope Diamond pop out of its ass. Well, maybe I can renew for one more month...

Days later, I was killing Primal Oozes while yelling, "You ooze, you lose!" I got a few game pets, a cat (named him Dog), a bear (Unbearable), a boar (I'mBoard), and a crab (CrabbyMcClaws).

A few weeks after that, the start-up screen hint started displaying, "Do everything in moderation, even World of Warcraft!" You know there's a problem when your computer tells you to take it easy.

I got to the point yesterday where I opened up the parent control panel and limited my play time during the week. 10 p.m.-12 a.m. on weekdays, early in the morning on weekends to motivate me to get up and after 10 on weekends so I'm not tempted to stay home and play.

It's working well so far. Technically, there is nothing stopping me from disabling the restriction, but that extra step is enough for now to get me to stop. If I find myself slipping back, I'm going to put a random password in the Parental Control account so the change will be permanent.

Which means I'll be writing more posts, and doing other creative activities like taking photos and posting them on my Flickr account. Even if this break ends up being short-lived, a small break is better than no break. Which is also the motto of my Orc character, Sir ThugALot.