How nerdy are you?This week Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died. A whole generation of pasty dice-obsessed nerds owes him big time. Me included.
So, in his honour, how nerdy were you? Are you still sunlight-averse? What are the sad little things you do that nobody else understands?
As an example, a B3ta regular who shall remain nameless told us, "I spent an entire school summer holiday getting my BBC Model B computer to produce filthy stories from an extensive database of names, nouns, adjectives, stock phrases and deviant sexual practices. It revolutionised the porn magazine dirty letter writing industry for ever.
Revel in your own nerdiness.
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chthonic, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 10:32)
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I taught myselfto read and write in runes.
in the 70s.
The best part of that was when I went to a Renaissance Faire. Runes are a very popular decorating motif at those, and it amused me to decipher them- most of the time they were gibberish, but sometimes there would be meaning to them.
I went to one booth that sold rings with runes engraved in them, and studied them for a moment before concluding that they were a random jumble of characters. I moved on to inspect something else, and as I did so a pudgy, pasty ginger kid in his early twenties approached and said in a hushed voice to the woman behind the counter, "What do the runes say?"
"They say everything and nothing," the pretty little brunette replied. "They spell out no words known to man, yet each rune has its own meaning..." She continued on like this for a minute or two, with the kid hanging on her every word as though she were telling him the secret spell that would win him Deanna Troi's heart.
As she paused I sidled up next to the geek and said in a conspiratorial voice, "Don't believe her- they copied some graffitti off an old Irish boulder. It really says 'Sean smells of cheese'."
The woman burst out laughing and the kid looked at me like I had just pissed on Seven of Nine. When she could stop laughing she said, "You know, a lot of the time I'll tell people that they say 'You're about to be struck by lightning, so please hold my cheese sandwich.'"
Together we intoned, "Behold the power of cheese!"
I thought the kid was about to have a stroke...
EDIT: I almost forgot- not long ago I went to one of the trendy little dive restaurants down near the VCU campus where all the art students hang out. When I went to the bathroom I found that they had coated an entire wall in chalkboard spray and had provided sticks of chalk to write graffiti with. So I used it to put up a string of runes that read, "If you can read this, you are a geek." I think it's still there...
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The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 6 Mar 2008, 21:12,
2 replies)
Yes.Especially as my daughter is almost as much a geek as I am.
She denies it, but we can smell our own...
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The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 6 Mar 2008, 21:36,
closed)
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