Nerd pants

Lunch time is usually a happy time. It's a time to escape the cubicle, rant about work, talk about the weekend, and dare others to eat something gross (Frosty Floats from Wendy's made with Mello Yello and chocolate ice cream, for example). These are all fun activities. But some of my lunch time pals are big World of Warcraft players and will often go off on dungeon-sword-magic-critter discussions. I usually respond by calling them nerds.

They argue that it isn't nerdy because over 10 million people play the game. "How can something that's popular be nerdy?" I disagree with this logic. Harry Potter, Star Wars, and video games in general are popular, but they're nerdy. I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal above them by saying this, mind you. I like Star Wars and Harry Potter and video games, and yes, I consider myself a nerd. That's okay. But I don't care if everyone in the whole world is playing this game, it's still nerdy. My coworkers have said, "Well, William Shatner and Mr. T play W.O.W." Well then I have a news flash for ya: William Shatner and Mr. T are nerds.

(I found the Mr. T Muppet Magazine pic while typing this. If you can't read it, the teaser on the cover says, "How tough is Mr. T? Scooter finds out!" If you have to send in a bad-ass like Scooter for the interview, then you know the guy is tough. There's also the caption, "Be a Halloween look-alike: Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson." Oooohh. I feel sorry for those kids.)

Name-calling aside, my coworker Dave has tried to convice me to sign up and play. If it was just a good game that everyone liked I might give it a try, but what irks me about the whole thing is that there's a monthly charge to play W.O.W. You buy the game and then it costs $15 a month to play it! Sounds like a scam to me. Dave has the game and some gaming guides, has been playing for 2 1/2 years, and his wife plays too, so they've shelled out like $1000 playing this game. I'd prefer saving my money by playing other games. Like blackjack... in Vegas.

Anyway, I told Dave I wouldn't mind playing if he paid for the game and monthly subscription. He wants me to join them on quests of killing and plunder or something. Sounds like a lot of work. I asked him what kind of stuff I could do if I just wanted to play in half-hour increments. The following is our nerd conversation.

"Well, when I get home I usually do some herbing." "Herbing?" "Yeah, I dig around for herbs, which I can then sell to buy cool things, like pants." "So you spend $15 a month so you can dig for herbs to buy pants?" "Yeah! And other cool things, like hats and necklaces!" "You spend your time digging for herbs to buy hats and necklaces?" "Well the necklaces can help you. Like, if you're a mage you want necklaces to give you extra intelligence and stamina." "Do they have necklaces that give you other stuff, like strength?" "Yeah, but the mage can't use those." "If you're a mage, wouldn't you already have intelligence? Why wouldn't you be able to buy the stuff you don't have? Why wouldn't you get necklaces that give you strength?" "Well, you can buy them, but they wouldn't work for the mage. The warrior needs strength so it'd work for him." "But the warrior is already strong!" (And why are warriors wearing necklaces?)

So, you spend your money to dig to get money and buy necklaces and pants, and the necklaces may or may not actually help you gain strength or intelligence for your herb-digging missions. I guess you also start the game without pants... hmm, maybe that's why the game is so popular. At any rate, for $15 a month I can buy myself some real pants.

Niños Part III

In past posts I've talked about the banners around the Metrodome and how JoJo's Niños have been adopted and are now Reyes' Niños. I have two new things to add to this topic.

1) Today I was perusing a baseball prospect report and came across a pitcher in the Braves' system: Jo-Jo Reyes. Crazy, huh? The fact that there's actually a Jo-Jo out there is enough to make me happy, but Jo-Jo Reyes? He must be, like, King of the Niños!

2) A coworker and I were talking about the banners after we noticed that Jason Kubel had "Kub's Kid's" and Juan Rincon's banner was super uninspired and said "Rincon's Kids." We started thinking up banners for some of the Twins' newer players and, sorry if this sounds mean, but we came up with one for outfielder Denard Span that just had me laughing all day. Introducing: Denard's Retards! Maybe they can hang that banner upside down too, and they can have Denard Span safety helmet night at the Dome. I know, it's awful of me and I'll burn in Hell, but it still makes me laugh. Yay, Denard, YAAAAY!

Dream I

The other night I had a weird dream. I did not enjoy it, but maybe you will. Everything listed here was actually in my dream, and not embellished for retelling porpoises.

So I'm sitting in a chair watching TV. The room is all wood and pretty bare besides the TV set and a chair and couch. Wood floors, wood walls, and there are windows but they're pitch black, so the only light is from the TV. There's a door on one side of the room that's closed, and another open doorway on the opposite side of the room. I get up and start to walk towards the closed door to go outside and someone says, "Better go out the front door since we don't know the security code." So I turn around and walk through the open doorway into an almost identical room. TV is on in here too, but the chair is smaller and no couch. I head towards the door on the opposite side of this room and the TV promotes, "Stay tuned for a special back-to-back hour-long MacGyver!" but I keep walking because I had been watching TV all day in my dream and was feeling sluggish and needed fresh air.

post-dream note: My sister Lisa and her husband Steve were in town over Easter and borrowed MacGyver season 1 on DVD from Steve's mom to take back and watch in Milwaukee. I myself have not seen an episode of MacGyver in probably 20 years, but I guess that sunk into my brain and made it's way into this dream. After I woke up I later thought, "Weren't MacGyver episodes an hour long anyway?" The TV blurb confused me. Either they were going to show back-to-back episodes (two hours), or it was just one regular (hour-long) episode coming up. I think I'll submit a letter to the editor about that one. Anyway, back to the dream.

So now I'm outside and it's just a perfect day. Really bright sunshine, which is weird because inside the windows were pitch black. I'm outside a really big house and I think I'm house-sitting because of the security code comment. I go down some steps and around to the back of the house. There is a huge pool with clear blue water that surrounds the back of the house. The house is actually submerged in the pool- with the top two floors of the wooden house above water, and the bottom floor below water. There are windows on all floors, even the bottom under-water floors. Above all the windows are shutters. The shutters are like the shutters that are on pirate ships and you pull the shutters up and roll out the cannons. The shutters are open and I thought it was a pretty cool idea to have be able to look out of your basement window and see people swimming. There was a lot of criss-cross wood siding running along the walls of the house. It looked like this house was on one of theose home makeover shows and these were some of the crazy designs they came up with. I looked everything over and remember thinking, "Man, the Kennedys could live here!"

post-dream note: I have NO IDEA where that thought came from.

So, looking at the pool and the clear blue water, I decide I want to get in and investigate some of the windows. I jump in the water, and it's actually a long fall (a couple seconds) before I actually hit water. I swim closer to the house and look down and see that the windows are a lot deeper down than I originally anticipated. All of a sudden a shark slides out just a few feet below me. It didn't come out of the cannonball shutters, it slid out of a small grate at the very bottom of the pool. I was terrified, and had to get out. I start swimming back the way I came and another shark appears to my right, but so far neither of them see me. I get to the wall but there's no ladder out of the pool and, like I said, it was quite a ways down from the surface. Something spots me and starts charging straight for me, but this one I can't confirm if it's a shark or a dolphin.

Somehow I swing onto a rack of canoes. I start climbing from canoe to canoe- they're all stacked up, about five canoes high, and I know that if I can get to the top I can maybe get out of the pool. I'm on the third or fourth canoe and the dolphin or shark that was chasing me jumps up and nips my leg. I don't feel anything but keep climbing and I am sure that when I reach the surface there'll be some blood. I'm fully on top of the canoes now but was wrong about my escape plan as I'm stranded at the top. I see a ladder out of the pool a few feet away, but it would mean jumping back into the pool before trying to quickly climb out. The dolphin (I wasn't sure if the thing that chased me and bit me was a dolphin or a shark, but this one was a dolphin) jumped out of the water and landed on the third canoe. It was upside down and wiggling back and forth to turn it's white belly over.

I don't hesitate. I swing myself feet first between the third and forth canoes and kick the dolphin far into the pool and then jump towards the ladder. I don't know why I thought punting the dolphin would buy me more time than if I just left it upside down on the canoes. Maybe I thought it would distract the sharks too. I can't explain- there wasn't a lot of time to think things through; I just acted on instinct. I'm back in the water but climbing the ladder fast. I'm about two-thirds of the way up when THUD, I am absolutely slammed into the rungs. A giant, tan walrus has me pinned. It's a giant walrus, but somehow I know that it's the same dolphin as the one I just punted. It changed it's size and shape, but this walrus was that dolphin. "I'm human too!" it says, and I shove it in the face and climb out of the pool. Then I wake up.

Everything else here is post-dream, but absolutelty true. I look at the clock (4:00am) and get up out of bed to walk around a bit. Then my stomach makes a weird gargly noise that sounds EXACTLY LIKE A DOLPHIN! I shit you not. I have often made the joke about having a dream about eating tons and tons of marshmallows and when I wake my pillow is gone, but this time I'm not joking, and I kinda freaked out. It took me quite awhile before I stopped tossing and turning and could get back to sleep after all that. Please note, I don't condone dolphin kicking or walrus punching. The End.

Hooray worthless coupon!

I haven't blogged in a long time, and this will be a relatively short and pointless post.

I received an e-mail from Best Buy with the subject line "April Games: $10 off when you buy $75 in store" and there's a coupon and there are pictures of Mario Kart Wii and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Then I see the coupon is good until 4/24/08, but GTA IV and Mario Kart Wii come out the week after the 24th. Boo, Best Buy, Boo! I am looking forward to Mario Kart Wii, using the little steering wheel that houses the wii-mote, and playing the game online. All the fun driving without the cost of petrol! I would be even more excited if I had a non-expired $10 coupon. Happy Monday. Vrrroooom.

Somebody thought of the Niños!

Yesterday was the Twins home opener, and I left the stadium a very happy camper. The Twins had won, Neshek struck out the side during his inning of work, and I had a beer and a dome dog and a malt cup. O yeah, and JoJo's Niños had been adopted.

As I had posted earlier, I was very concerned about the fate of the niños. Well, children, Dennys Reyes has stepped up. That's right, a new banner hangs in center field: Reyes' Niños. Curious, though, was the banner right next to this one: Rincon's Kids. Hmmm. I thought it was weird that Rincon (Venezuelan) had Rincon's Kids. Couldn't they think of anything better? Rincon's Rabids? Rincon's Rioters? Rincon's 'Roid Ragers?

Other new banners included Everett's A-Team (Adam Everett) and Lamb's Flock (Mike Lamb). I tried to convince friends that we should get Mr. T haircuts and sit in the A-Team seats. Everett nearly hit a grand slam at the game, but it was called just foul. Mike Lamb had a decent debut with the Twins, and since he's taking over for Nick Punto, I have dubbed him "Upgrade."

More updates as the season progresses. Twins rule!