Worst. Blog Post. Ever.
I used to play Dungeons & Dragons. Upon learning this, many people who are in awe of my stature as a smoking hot specimen of male hunkiness will shake their heads in disbelief. But, it's true. I used to be a D&D geek.
It gets worse. My friends and I were such D&D geeks, we actually built a D&D playing room in my friend's basement. I should note here that the time frame I'm referring to was between my 9th grade and 11th grade years. I mean, it's not as if I gave up D&D just last week or anything.
Our D&D playing room came complete with huge posters of wizards and dragons and skeletons, as well as drawings of knights and weapons I artistically scribbled on the walls. We had a vast collection of player manuals, monster manuals, maps, dice, and binder after binder of D&D characters. We played D&D after school and during the weekends. We were a sorry bunch, even though it was kind of fun in a weird sort of way we could never put our fingers on.
Well, I haven't played D&D in over a decade, but on Wednesday night, after driving up to the cities to spend the evening with Melissa, I was reminded of my geeky heritage and I was confronted with the harsh reality of what my life could have been.
Melissa and I went for a long walk that night, strolling by stores on our way to Ciatti's restaurant. Adjacent to Ciatti's was a game store, and we decided to explore the shop before strapping on the feed bag. This place had every role-playing game you can imagine, from standard D&D, to Star Wars, to Star Trek, to Lord of the Rings. And there were comic books, and their were miniature models of Tolkien's Middle Earth. I mean, this place, by its very smell, stirred my inner geek. It was right out of the Simpsons. Even the guy behind the counter resembled the Comic Book Guy, right down to the waddling walk.
But then, the clincher. Towards the back of the store, there were long tables set up, and each table was packed with gamers of all ages playing all sorts of games. It was like some sort of geek casino. It was downright hilarious just how stereotypically perfect the scene was. Overweight men with ponytails were taking on pencil thin, acne-ridden high schoolers, rolling dice and taking every move so seriously it appeared at times that the anxiety would cause 12 major heart attacks throughout the room.
I remember thinking, "This could have been me," like an old drug user who got off the heroin just as his life teetered on the edge, and who now stood in the living room of a crack house watching those less fortunate.
For the most part, gaming like that is pretty innocent, so long as you don't let it consume your existence. But, I get the feeling that more than just a couple of the people I saw on Wednesday night don't have much for lives beyond that game store. Inside, they're gods, supreme rulers of whatever fantasy realm they escape to daily. Outside, however, they sleep on a bed of pizza boxes in their dingy studio apartments, no doubt dreaming of the day their half-elf will finally find the amulet of supreme power that will allow them to be the most powerful entity on Oerth, or wherever.
UPDATE: It's a sad testimony to my short term memory when I can't even remember writing about this exact same thing in December. First, Tim insists that I posted this before, then Linda takes a quote about taped glasses that wasn't even part of this post. So, I sifted through the archives and found almost the exact same post on December 5. My apologies for the repetition. The big difference this time around was that Melissa and I went into the store and perused the offerings.
When Dodge Ball was Dodge Ball c. Ryan Rhodes, Oct. 24, 2001
This column is not about anthrax. While I sat and pondered the topic for this week, I dismissed anthrax both because it’s tough to think up a good anthrax joke, and because you can find out everything you never wanted to know about anthrax pretty much everywhere else. I’m fairly certain I heard Barney the Dinosaur singing a little diddy about anthrax early last week: “Infect you. . . Infect me. . . Infect one more, so now there’s three.”
No, I decided to dedicate this column to the disturbing trend in America’s schools to ban the time-honored grade school activity of dodge ball. Apparently, jittery school officials and parents of less-than-athletic children have managed to curb the dodge ball practice in several grade schools nationwide. This deeply saddens me. The reasoning, according to dodge ball detractors, is that the game instills violence in students and enforces the mentality of jocks versus nerds, with the jocks being those who hurl the balls, and the nerds being those struck by them.
Now, I’m a product of the dodge ball era. What’s more, I’m a veteran of the era when dodge ball was dodge ball, when the game was played with debilitating rubber balls, not the Nerf contraptions of today. We used thick, rubber, half-inflated burgundy spheres that included a slightly raised star pattern, presumably for a better grip. Any face unfortunate enough to come in contact with a high velocity sphere would wear a painful star pattern for several hours. It was generally believed in school yard circles that these balls were originally created as top secret World War II weapons that mysteriously found their way into our classroom toy boxes.
I realize the absurdity of a 26-year-old male invoking the phrase “back in my day,” but back in my day, dodge ball was the passion of the morning and afternoon school yard. Sides were quickly organized through the demeaning but necessary practice of team captains picking members. I can honestly and proudly say I was rarely the last one picked. In fact, I was often in the middle of the pack, which, oddly enough, is where I find myself today. Anyway, I attribute my dodge ball skill to my early realization that it stung like crazy to get hit by an oncoming projectile. Ducking and dodging came naturally after that.
I was also quite good at catching, which was a highly sought after skill because, if someone caught a ball, his or her team was able to reclaim one of its tagged out members, while at the same time disposing of the person who threw the ball. Therefore, I commonly heard the phrase, “We gotta get Rhodes out early.” I hated that.
In addition to the use of rubber weapons of death, my school was chock full of farm kids and kids who developed physically way, way, way ahead of schedule. I knew I was in trouble when lunch boxes included Gillette razors so my buddies could shave at noon. In other words, there was some dangerous muscle behind roughly 80 percent of every hurled ball.
Each game started out tentatively, with no one really wanting to charge the line and throw their ball at a team consisting of well-armed opponents. So, we normally would huddle up and think up a strategy involving the sacrifice of a team member to draw the enemy fire. Usually, the sacrificial lamb would have a name like Erwin, a poor soul who wore taped glasses because he had been nominated for the same task several times before. Poor Erwin.
Once Erwin exited with a star pattern emblazoned on his face, the real fireworks ensued.
There was some real bravery exhibited on the dodge ball field. Team members would sacrifice themselves to save a good catcher, or to simply retrieve a ball bouncing uselessly in no-mans land. The sharp smack and howl of soldiers being tagged by rubber torture devices reverberated throughout the game, and games could last an entire hour if you had good catchers on your team.
I learned a lot by playing dodge ball, namely that I could be smacked in the groin by a ball thrown by someone who professed to be my friend just half an hour earlier. It was a school yard version of the corporate ladder, where you could trust no one.
In addition, after playing dodge ball for hundreds of mornings and afternoons, and getting hit countless times by speeding rubber projectiles, I’m really not that scared of anthrax.
I've never been in debt. Okay, that's not entirely true. Yes, I've been in the kind of debt where I had to make car payments, and I'm currently in the kind of debt that says I have to make house payments.
I've never been in credit card debt, however. Truth be told, I've never even owned a credit card. I don't trust them. I've been conditioned not to trust them thanks to many years of living with college roommates.
Most of my college roommates had this weird outlook on credit cards. Basically, they thought credit cards were magical pieces of plastic that just magically paid for things and that they were somehow immune from the the ensuing debt that came about due to excessive credit card spending.
I'll admit it: I was sort of jealous of my roommates and their magical credit cards. After all, they always seemed to have money and, if they didn't, they just whipped out their credit cards. Books? Put them on the credit card. Food? Put it on the credit card. Night out at a strip club? credit card.
And yet there I was writing checks and budgeting like a fool. I remember thinking that I was doing everything all wrong. I mean, there I would sit, meticulously lording over my finances, while my roommates went waltzing all over town swiping their credit cards with the careless glee of a six-year-old with a loaded pistol.
Then, one year, I was a roommate with a guy named Chad. Chad was actually a former high school classmate of mine. He was, and is, a tech-head. He's one of those guys who was born to know technology. Way back in elementary school, he taught me how to write simple programs for the Apple IIc, and he always just seemed to know everything about computers.
But he didn't know shit about personal finances. He whipped out any one of his many credit cards with the swiftness and ease of a Old West gunslinger. By the time we became roommates, he had already accrued over $10,000 in credit card debt.
I remember thinking what an incredibly large amount of money that seemed to be, especially when I factored in the understanding that he also received financial aid, and that he also worked. Granted, he worked at the local Brach's candy factory on the Gummi Bear line, which paid about as well as you might imagine, but it was still money, so I came to the conclusion that old Chad was a pretty carefree spender.
Well, one day, I popped into Chad's outrageously messy room where I noticed, tucked between two huge bags of pilfered defective Gummi Bears, a credit card notice that was slugged "Urgent!" and another that was slugged "Immediate Payment Required" and still another that read "We Break Fingers And Toes."
Then the calls started coming in, usually two or three a day. "Is Mr. Haugen available? We really need to speak with him." No, he's not here. "Are you sure you're not really Mr. Haugen?" Yes, I'm sure. "Well, when he comes in, have him call Mike at Discover immediately." *sound of shotgun cocking* Will do.
Chad was masterful when it came to avoiding creditors. He always seemed to leave the apartment just two or three minutes before a creditor called. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. Which was all fine and dandy, except that I ended up being the intermediary between Chad and the creditors, so I got to absorb all the impatient anger and suspicion of basically every credit card company on the planet.
It was the day a creditor appeared, in person, at our doorstep that I realized Chad's debt situation was probably more dire than Chad cared to admit. There was a knock at the door, I answered, and a gentleman in a suit that looked both impressive and threatening stood before me. He asked to see a Mr. Chad Haugen, at which point I heard a little scuffling emanating from Chad's room as Chad scurried out the back entrance which, conveniently, was located at the far end of his bedroom.
We chatted together, the ominous creditor and me, for about an hour, waiting for Chad to get home, even though, of course, there was no way in holy hell Chad was going to make an appearance while that guy was in our apartment. I even had to produce my ID, so the creditor was satisfied that I wasn't, in fact, Chad Haugen.
After that, I believe, Chad ended up getting a loan from his parents, or somebody, so he could pay off his credit card debt at least enough to keep the creditors at bay. He eventually got a job working at IBM, which was a long-assed commute from Winona to Rochester, but paid a whole lot more than the Gummi Bear line.
As for me, Chad's experience with credit cards pretty much scared me away from plastic for good.
First In Line For First Aid
Awhile back, the American Red Cross went and made a mistake of staggering proportions: they certified me in first aid and CPR. The only thing more dangerous than me giving first aid would be to allow Michael Jackson to give parenting tips.
It's not that first aid and CPR are difficult to grasp, because they aren't. After six and a half hours of lectures and videos and exercises and tests, I'm pretty sure I have a firm understanding of the basics. However, I just don't think I would be the level head you'd necessarily want to count on should your chest ticker start to fail you or you lop off a finger while chopping carrots.
I'm not squeamish around blood, and I won't pass out if I see someone walking around with a nail in their head, but when it comes to emergency-type situations, I just have this sneaking suspicion that I'll be the guy who adopts the Homer Simpson "can't someone else do it?" philosophy. Okay, I suppose if I'm the only person in the area, and a tree limb falls on you and breaks your arm in three places, I guess I could summon the resolve to help you out. If I HAVE to.
First aid and CPR really haven't changed much since I first learned them in elementary school, and again later in high school. You still apply pressure to bleeding wounds, and you still use the heimlich maneuver to get choking victims to hock up lodged edibles. What has changed considerably are the CPR mannequins.
My father used to be a member of my hometown's ambulance crew, and to keep his skills sharp he'd occasionally drag home a resusci-annie doll. For those not familiar with resusci-annie dolls, you're lucky. The doll my father practiced on was a legless and armless plastic torso and head, dressed in a blue jogging outfit. My first introduction to the resusci-annie doll left a lasting, and very probably damaging, impression.
My father practiced CPR in our back room where, as luck would have it, most of my toys were kept as well. I was just a young lad, and I went scampering into the dimly illuminated room to fetch my Linkin' Logs. . .only to trip over something. Imagine my heart-thumping horror when I turned around and was confronted by a female torso and head laying on the floor. I can't remember everything that transpired after that, owing primarily to the fact that most of my brain had shut down due to terror, but I do recall my father doing his best to soothe me and explain the function of the perceived corpse I had stumbled over.
The version of the resusci-annie doll I worked on a couple weeks ago is considerably different than the dead woman laying in the back room from my childhood years. The dolls of today are still torsos and heads, because legs and arms don't play a role in CPR, with the exception of the legs and arms required of the person performing the CPR. The big difference with today's dolls is that they have removable faces.
Removable faces are great because each person practicing CPR gets to work with their very own face, eliminating the gross factor of working around the slobber of other first aid practitioners. Back when I first learned CPR in elementary school, my whole class worked on one resusci-annie doll. After one student breathed into the head, the teacher would wipe the plastic mouth off with an alcohol-soaked towelette. This did little to convince me that the doll was then clean of the germs of my 20 or so classmates, especially the kid sitting in the back who I know for a fact picked his nose and ate it.
Another difference between the CPR dolls of today is that they're pretty much gender-neutral. This no doubt provides great relief to CPR and first aid teachers everywhere trying to educate a room full of teenage boys who start laughing uncontrollably when their hands come in contact with the chest of a female doll. Um, not that I ever did that or anything.
So anyway, yeah, I'm now certified in CPR and first aid, which means I can help you if you're bleeding profusely or your heart stops. Just remember that my training is very specific, so you'll have to meet very stringent requirements before I can render aid. But hey, if you just happen to be a gender-neutral torso with a removable face, I'm your man.
The Hilarity That Is IBM
Awhile back, as I sat in the cafeteria gnawing on my noontime meal, my eyes scanned down to a card placed on the table outlining some of the new IBM security rules that the company apparently decided were important enough to call to our attention. I think they're pretty funny, but you be the judge:
In addition to IBM Work Environment policies prohibiting drugs, weapons, and non-approved alcohol on premises, there are additional activities prohibited or restricted at IBM Rochester.
I know I've been snorting lines of cocaine while cleaning guns during MY workday. Who knew I was breaking so many rules?
No non-commute bicycling or roller blading, and no skate boarding at any time.
Skate boarding? Has that really become a problem?
No golfing, flying of model planes or rockets, horse riding, hunting or trapping, dirt biking, ATV or snowmobile operation at any time.
Well, shit, just the other day, I was trying to get into the building, but there was this damn horse in the way because crazy Ed, from accounting, well he parked the beast there so he could go check on his raccoon traps he set near the vending machines. And even after I got into the building, I couldn't get any work done what with all the duck and turkey calls issuing through the halls. Okay, okay, I know these rules mostly apply to the small IBM-owned park outside of the main blue buildings, but come on.
No overnight camping.
Definition of a workaholic? Someone who camps outside of their workplace.
Yet Another Poetry Reading
Michele, over at A Small Victory, is holding yet another poetry contest, this time readers are encouraged to think up poems about Saddam Hussein's 66 birthday, even though it's tough to hold birthdays for millions of atomized particles. Anyway, the contest can be joined right here. Only, don't outdo me, because I think I'm earning a victory here. My contributions are as follows:
1.) With sincere apologies to T.S. Eliot and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Let us go then, Saddam and I
When cruise missiles streak out against the sky
Like a dissident being tortured upon a table
Let us go, through half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless looters in old museums
And coalition forces who do not see them:
Streets that follow like a joyous argument
Of liberated intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "Where is Uday?"
Let us go and enjoy your birthday.
In the streets the people come and go
Talking of Hussein The Asshole
2.) Saddam turned 66 today, a party is in order
Too bad the guest of honor may be across the Syrian border
Or maybe he's all dead and stuff, a rotting beret and big moustache
Crushed beneath many tons of bunker, concrete, soot and ash.
But let's pretend the man's alive, and keen to party down
So let's order up balloons and cake and maybe, yes, a clown
And if he's dead, let's find his corpse, and suffer through the stench
God knows the smell can't be near as bad as partying with the French
Let's get some kegs and hard liquor and toast the fallen man
And we'll throw all of the party trash in neighboring Iran
We'll rock the Casbah day and night, and pull down statues, too
While yelling loud, for all to hear, "Saddam, this Bud's for you!"
3.) As composed and read by the Iraqi Information Minister, Baghdad Bob:
The great Saddam, still in control, is 66 years young
Truly, truly I tell you this, because mine is not a lying tongue
He's alive, I tell you, alive and well, and defeating the U.S. snake
So destroyed are they, that Saddam has decided, to take a birthday break
He will tour the streets of Baghdad, and to show that he does care
He'll hold a rifle with one hand, and shoot it in the air
But the bullets won't just fall to earth, and bury in the sand
No, they'll hit U.S. soldiers on their heads, and kill them where they stand
Because Saddam is great and good, the powerful leader of Iraq
He can take a birthday break, and still repel a U.S.-led attack
Now I must go, this briefing's done, there's nothing more to say
But Saddam's alive, this I know, because this is his birthday
I encourage you all to take part. It's great fun.
Remember The Big Firestone Controversy?
"Reinventing the Wheel" c. Ryan Rhodes, Sept. 9, 2000
It was a cool evening in Olduvai gorge many, many, many, many (and I mean many) years B.C. As twilight descended, radiating the last fainting rays of light through the dense foliage, a male figure could be seen tending to a small fire.
His name was Keldar the Hunter, a muscular hominid with a stout jaw, protruding cranium, and exceedingly bad body odor. Propped over Keldar's fire was some sort of dead animal he found while walking earlier in the day and, as Keldar's next meal, it was fitting that it smelled much like him, even as it cooked.
As Keldar watched the grease spatter from his meal into the firepit below, he noticed a strange smooth stone amongst the glowing goals. Boredom and curiosity prompted him to reach in and pull the stone out. In that same instant, Keldar remembered the oft-forgotten lesson that fire causes pain.
The stone quickly became a source of amazement to Keldar because, unlike all the other jagged stones he'd pulled out of fires in the past, this one, with it's smooth edges, rolled a considerable distance before coming to rest. In a flash of creative inspiration, Keldar found a large boulder and began chipping and shaping it into the same smooth and round fashion. The wheel was born, although it would initially be known as "the thing Keldar did."
Although Keldar was certain his invention had the potential to transform the lives of his 15 other tribe members, reaction to "the thing Keldar did" was lukewarm at best.
Undaunted, and possessing a keen mind for primitive marketing, Keldar renamed his invention "Firestone," in tribute to how he discovered the fantastic rock. He then sought out Follgorth, a neighboring tribesman who ran the only moving and postal service throughout the gorge. Follgorth's company, "Follgorth's Oduvai Relocation and Delivery" (FORD for short), was a successful venture, but Follgorth was desperate for a means by which to reduce the incredible number of employees required to stay in business.
Like Keldar, Follgorth saw the limitless possibilities of "the thing Keldar did." After a drawn out business negotiation in which Follgorth gave Keldar four of his best child-bearing daughters, a lucrative deal between FORD and Firestone was born.
Follgorth's first task was to dispose of his "dragging logs," which were more or less just logs tied together and dragged by teams of four to six men. Although they were good for moving and delivery, there was a high rate of turnover among FORD workers. However, once the "dragging logs" were equipped with four Firestones, a magical transformation took place. The "dragging logs" now required far less labor and FORD was able to reallocate its personnel and expand its service to the tribal community.
Likewise, Keldar was kept exceedingly busy, what with four Firestones required for each of FORD's "dragging logs." Indeed, Firestone eventually had a large number of employees of its own turning out an incredible number of "the things Keldar did."
The fame of Keldar and Follgorth spread throughout the land, and their wealth, likewise, seemed to know no bounds. A rough count estimated that the two men had fortunes exceeding 52 good child-bearing women, a remarkable display of wealth by any standard.
But, trouble was brewing on the horizon. Faced with an increased production quota and an upstart company started by the Goodyear tribe three gorges down, the Firestone company started cutting corners. Rather than cutting their stones from the solid gorge wall, Firestone started pulling the more accessible rock from around the river bank.
For their part, FORD knew that Firestone quality had declined, but the executives were blinded by the appeal of building their own fortunes of good child-bearing women.
However, the companies, much the like the wheels that brought them fame, began to crumble. The unstable Firestones, hewn from the cheaper but less reliable river rock, started to fail at the most inopportune time. Stories abounded about tribespeople being seriously hurt or killed while they took recreational downhill rides on FORD's "dragging logs," only to have the Firestones disintegrate from under them. One truly horrifying story circulated about Tribal Elder Morgoth careening into a tree and being flung headlong into the Olduvai gorge.
No one knows for sure what became of the FORD and Firestone companies, but one thing is certain: of all the people unearthed from Olduvai gorge, none have been found alive.
