Talking Soup

The time has come, my friends. I am a writer. I play Pokemon and other silly video games. I have participated in online LJ RP games. I have long discussions about various sci-fi shows and watch things like Star Trek, Farscape, Doctor Who and Firefly. I respect William Shatner. I watch anime with a somewhat religious fervor at times. I have conversations about the merits of certain weapons, the various histories and lifestyles of the Middle Ages, and complain about historical or logical inaccuracies in movies concerning the era. I have been to a Renn Faire. I have gone to sci-fi and fantasy cons, as well as anime cons. I read comic books, webcomics and manga. I play WoW. I collect Magic Cards. I'm an amateur astronomer and I listen to shortwave radio. I can readily quote Star Wars.

In short, I am a full blown nerd. And the time has now come to tackle the last bastion of nerddom, to venture into the fearsome, Mountain Dew-soaked, Cheeto-stained basement in the nether regions of the House of Nerd.

Yes, my friends. I speak of Dungeons and Dragons.

I am, as we speak, in the process of building a character and will soon start a campaign involving my similarly nerdy Ithaca friends. I am learning all about Spot Checks, Ability Modifiers, and D20s.

With this, I say my final farewell to the world of coolness, fashion and all semblance of sanity. Farewell, Lady Gaga, Eat, Pray, Love, 24, and True Blood. Goodbye, Justin Bieber and Louis Vuitton. Auf wiedersehn, mainstream media. To make a nerd quote, "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." I go now to the Land of Fun, the Plane of Silliness, and the House of Nerd, and never shall I return to hipness, coolness and popularity. Good night...and good luck.

Just be glad I'm not LARPing.

1. 14-hour van rides cross-country can be AWESOME. ...No, that's exaggerating. BEARABLE. Bearable if the people in your van are awesome, that is.

2. Katrina was bad, but so was Rita, and no one really knows about Rita. The area we were in, New Iberia, had houses with four or more feet of water. There were the same X symbols that you see in New Orleans, designating the date and how many bodies were found in the house. Rita was two years ago, so the devastation has alleviated somewhat. But it shouldn't take that long to rebuild.

3. I get along with people older than me more often than I do with my peers.

4. Caulk jokes never, ever stop being funny.

5. I can now scrape, foam, caulk (I'm skilled with the caulk OH SNAP), prime and paint. I can work with asbestos, wood, scaffolding, ladders, and I can do all of the above without dying.

6. Louisiana is humorous without trying to be. It helps not to know that "diabetic shoes" are a real thing, and that either way, they shouldn't be associated with pepper spray.

7. "I'm on dat jigga juice" is possibly the most amusing phrase EVER.

8. I'm not the only one who invents songs about random things.

9. Ithacapella is actually pretty freaking sweet.

10. All that stuff they tell you about how it's better to give than receive, how nothing feels quite as good as when you really help someone, and when they're thankful to you? It's all true.

11. Southern food is AMAZING, particularly cajun food. You haven't lived until you've had corn-crab-shrimp chowder.

12. It is, in fact, possible to see flamingos--real, live, wild flamingos--in Louisiana. Don't ask me how it is possible, because they're not native to the US.

13. People are constantly impressed by my knowledge of really random trivia, like the fact that armadillos carry leprosy and that the fleur-di-lis is associated with French royalty. I honestly don't know where I pick it up.

14. A bayou is not, as I believed, a swamp. It is sort of like the halfway point between a creek and a river and it can, in fact, be swampy.

15. Le petit baton rouge means "the little red stick."

16. The French Quarter is beautiful, beignets are delicious, and New Orleans is generally everything they say it is.

17. It's amazing what a group of people can accomplish when they want to, and when they really care.