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.

Oh my. Sea monsters.

Anyone heard of this? The Bloop? Apparently it's the more famous of several underwater, unidentifiable sounds picked up by an old underwater sound recorder used to track enemy submarines. Now the system is used to track underwater earthquakes, volcanoes, and whales as well. But it's also picked up a handful of sounds that no one can identify.

The Bloop is the most famous of these, recorded several times in the summer of 1997. It's got a ridiculous name, but it sounds ridiculously awesome. As far as I know, it's the only one of these unidentified sounds that's most likely an animal. It sounds a lot like a whale.

How did I not hear about this until now? I love this kind of stuff!

Anyway, you should all hear it, because it's amazing. Personally I like the idea that it's some kind of deep sea creature. We certainly don't know all of what's down there, although the thing making it is supposed to be huge, a lot bigger than a blue whale, and who knows if that's possible? There's a chance it could be something supposedly extinct--they keep finding coelocanths, megamouth sharks--but who knows?

Of course it could all be a hoax, but I like to dream ^_^ We don't know half of what's down there.

Here's the sound file, here's the Wiki page, and here's the Acoustics Monitoring Site that tracked and recorded the Bloop and the other unidentified sounds. Check them all out--it's interesting and awesome at the very least.

Well that's your random stuff for the day.

Went to HP5 again today with my mom this time. She loved it. It was as great as it was the first time.