Since the dawn of the Burning Crusade, I think we've burned through roughly 15 different shaman. I can try and categorize them all, but I'll inevitably fail, since I tend to forget the chaff as quickly as I forget what my last poop looked like or when it occurred, which can be a problem because I don't plan for my poops very well. This often leads to me sitting in a meeting, squirming in my chair, desperately clenching the puckered lips of my anus to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

Perhaps my most memorable poop was many years ago on the way to LA to visit a girl who, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have fucked. She was a good ten years older than me, her biological clock was ticking like Michael J. Fox, and her medicine cabinet was filled with more anxiety and sleeping pills than Heath Ledger's stomach. Hmm.

Anyway, I stopped at Taco Bell and scarfed down a bunch of greasy tacos on the way to her place. By the time I reached Santa Monica, my bowels had become a churning caldera of fecal destruction. Reasoning that it would be weird if I showed up at her place and laid waste to her dainty bathroom, I stopped at a Mobil station and waddled into the bathroom. The poop was so explosive and foul that it splashed off the rim of the toilet bowl and got all over my awesome white boxer-briefs. So I cleaned up best I could with wet paper towels, threw away my underwear, and went to her house.

Later that night, as we predictably stumbled into bed, she remarked how sexy it was that I didn't wear underwear, presumably in anticipation of our liaison. It would probably make the story better if I told you that I let her lick my taint, but no, I steered her tongue clear of my anthrax-encrusted asshole. I have some scruples.

When The Burning Crusade launched, three members volunteered to reroll as shaman. By the way, the plural of shaman is SHAMAN, not shamanS. I know this because I studied shamanism in college as part of my ridiculous religious studies degree.

The first was Reamer, formerly known as the rogue Andelle. Reamer was immediately and ruthlessly mocked for his name, which he insisted was his grandfather's name. We had no pity. Reamer, in his predictably hot and cold streaks became the most hardcore shaman we had, maintained 100% attendance until some other bright and shiny object came along and distracted his attention.

Perhaps my fondest memory of Reamer was the night he blew up at Destiny, our former resident priest and furry. I don't know what's worse: that she gemmed for stamina, artifically inseminated cows for a living, or was a pillar of the furry community. We'd been working on Archimonde for some ridiculous amount of time, mostly because she and a few other chromosomally deficient members couldn't see to stay out of the fire. Reamer completely lost his shit and exploded at her. I believe the exact phrase was: "What the fuck are you doing, you stupid cunt? You are so fucking horrible it's unbelievable."

She didn't last long after that, but that's another story.

Our second reroll was Neji, whose shaman was named Kanden. Neji was a holy paladin from the days of old, who first impressed everyone in Casual with his amazing healing capabilities. At the time, his powers seemed inhuman, but this was before anyone knew what Emergency Monitor was. Over time, as people figured this out, and the mod stopped working Naxxramas, he quickly went from being #1 Paladin to being the violently autistic kid in class that everyone tries to pretend isn't smearing his shit all over the walls. You feel bad enough that you don't kick him from the raid, but you still detest his presence for making life uncomfortable and more difficult.

When Casual reached a boiling point shortly around the time we killed Gruul 1.0 and I led the schism that split the guild (okay, didn't really SPLIT the guild, we just got rid of most of the shitty people) Neji decided that we were all assholes and jerks, and that the Casual he knew and loved had died. So he joined Cry Havoc. He wasn't a very good shaman, either, which confused me, because brain heal spam is about as close to Emergency Monitor as you can get.

Lastly, we come to Dvorake "c u in IF" the warrior. Dvorake went from paladin to druid to warrior to shaman, not being any good at any of them. I guess you could say he was competent compared to most of the mouthbreathers you find in WoW, but he didn't live up to our standards of elitism. No, we're looking for exceptionally skilled assholes and douchebags. The "c u in IF" stemmed from a time during twin emps when I called him out for fucking something up, probably being too close to one of the emperors on a teleport or something. Not being one to take criticism, especially some jerkface raid leader, he hearthed with the famous parting words: "See you in IF." This doesn't really have much to do with him rerolling as a shaman other than the fact that he disappeared and no one really noticed.

As the expansion wore on, we churned through a series of shaman, none of who seemed to last more than 90 days. Either the siren's call of vagina led them astray, or their mom took away the computer, or God only knows what kept us from having any consistent shaman.

It's like before each raid, the raid leaders would cruise past Home Depot picking up day laborers. "Hombre, can you chain heal? Chain-o heal-o, amigo?" They'd scramble into the back of the raid wagon and off we'd go, getting no more than a few raids out of them before INS picked them up and deported them back to wherever it was they came from. I would have written that in spanish, but I'm too lazy to copy and paste the accent marks and ~ marks, so you get to deal with my faux-racist banter. Speaking of which, we actually had a shaman app quit after a few raids because he couldn't handle the "racism" in our guild. Huh? Didn't you read our front page? Given that half of our recruitment post is blocked by most work filters, wasn't that enough of an indication?

You may be thinking, "what a bunch of assholes." You would be correct. But fortunately for you, I don't lead raids anymore. No, that dubious honor has passed on to Stent, who is actually much meaner than I ever was.

The problem with vent is that you can't screenshot the conversations, which is where most of our shenanigans occur these days, hence the death of hilarious news updates. He lacks the cruel vitriol of someone like Sebudai in Juggernaut, but what he lacks in spite he makes up for in pure caustic sarcasm and the ability to make obscure movie references while insulting you.

Take last night, for instance. We've killed Kil'Jaeden a few times now, so M'uru should be no big deal, right? After an hour of fuck-ups, Casual is on the last pull of the night when one of our hunters who shall remain LIND  nameless misdirects one of the sentinels onto THE WRONG FUCKING TANK.

So there's Stent, our paladin tank, watching this behemoth-sized sentinel cruising across the room toward our hapless warrior tank when suddenly the mob whips around and comes hurtling back toward Stent, as if by some blessed miracle of tanking. Stent pants in thrilled elation that there still might be some hope, even in the face of such unbelievable stupidity. And then at 1%, dark fiends wipe the raid.

The following tirade went something like this:

"HOW, AFTER I MAKE THE HAIL MARY TOUCHDOWN PASS WITH 1 SECOND TO GO IN THE FOURTH QUARTER OF THE SUPERBOWL OF TANKING FEATS, DO YOU MAKE SUCH A COLOSSALLY STUPID ERROR? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST."

A brief silence.

"LACES OUT, DAN!"

Stent's cheeriness isn't limited to raiding. Try arenas with him sometime.

"GOLDSPAM, WHAT WERE YOU DOING? HOW COULD YOU DIE LIKE THAT? YOU HAVE THE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS OF A DEAD WEASEL."