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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A History of NerdinessA life of nerdiness, punctuated by wonderful activities such as:
- Avid live role-playing fanatic in my teens, involving running around Chislehurst caves with a foam sword yelling "double, double" as you hit "monsters". Got my Scout up to eighth level.
- Correspondingly liked to be referred to as "Garthal the Shadow" in real life for a good number of years.
- Heavily into bus spotting for three or fours years. Big hightlight was seeing Routemaster 1 (RM1) at the London Transport museum. Also travelled on V1 (first Volvo bus) in Roehampton - awesome.
- Taking my girlfriend (yes I did have one) to see Rocky 4 three times.
- Into all role playing games including D&D (usually playing half orc assassins), Runequest (Humakti warriors), Paranioa, Call of Cthulhu, Toon, and Stormbringer. Car Wars and Warhammer too.
- Subscriber to multiple play by mail RPGs including Troll's Bottom.
- Did a degree in philosophy (vice president of the Philosophy Society) and became an accountant when I left.
- As a junior auditor, once spent two weeks adding up a six thousand page policy holder listing..and enjoyed it. (the total was right in the end as it happens - but always worth spending 80 hours to check).
- Came up with a life justifying audit adjustment when auditing the UK subsidiary of a major US software company (the big one) that was material at a USA consolidation level !! It related to an erroneous provision for government stamp duty on a huge property transaction in the Winnersh Triangle.
- Used to spend all day Saturday hogging the display Spectrum at Boots to programme in home made adventure games.
- Spent early days of working life still saying "Si Baroni" until my audit manager told me it was unprofessional to use phrases from Dangermouse in front of important clients.
- Also used to take pride in educating colleagues on the fact that tea is an infusion, whilst coffee is clearly a suspension.
- At the age of 36, recently purchased the entire Dragonlance Chronicles again, and relived happy times rereading them all....twice.
- Oh yes...and my mum cut my hair till I was 15. She wasn't a hairdresser but liked the 70's look - hence I sported a mega mullet basin through to the late eighties.
- In the sixth form, invented "Curse Snooker". One of the most popular curses other people played to avoid was "You will get a blue, Marks & Spencers, leather jacket like Mandrill's for Christmas".
- At parties, used to phone up random people called Smith asking whether they were aware of the high probability that their ancestors were metal workers (hilarious).
I am still proud of all these activities and achievements. To top it off, I am now making myself laugh.
(, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 20:24, 3 replies)
*click*from a former enthusiast of the "basin" haircut.
(, Mon 10 Mar 2008, 10:17, closed)
*click*Anybody who runs around doing the "double damage" thing deserves my sympathy.
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Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Mon 10 Mar 2008, 11:15,
closed)
calling up Smiths at partiesHow bad can a party have been to have resorted to that? And more than once - Christ!
Obviously similar calls could have been made for Wrights, Fletchers etc - but I've always wondered how someone could have ended up being called Palmer: descended from wankers, perchance?
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Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Mon 10 Mar 2008, 11:43,
closed)
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