My Weekend: Frozen Geeks and Frightened Rabbits

First let me start off by warning you that I am a geek. In fact I’m an Omni-Geek.

I am an art geek, anime geek, movie geek, videogame geek, and an RPG geek. No, you are not going to find me slack jawed staring intently at the most recent game magazines, or writing/drawing fan fic/art of anime characters. You’ll most likely find me here drawing. I like it there. It’s were everybody knows my name… and they’re always glad I came. I am more of a reserved geek. Sure I had my moment when I younger where I thoroughly embraced my geekitude and openly expressed it to everyone. Then I realized that it just made me a geek geek. You understand what I mean right? A geek who geeks out about being a geek. And that’s just not right. So I stopped. That and no one loves you when you’re a geek. So cut it out!

The areas of geekdom I refuse to tread in are as follows:

LARPing

When I was younger I did some time running around a park or college campus decked out in some cheaply made medieval getup swinging a boffer sword. That foolishness carried on into bonfires, cookouts, and occasional campouts in someone’s backyard. A time where the men felt free to act as raving lunatics and either hit or hump things. Drunken revelries abounds and hot steamy moments in tents found. (I never had any of those “moments”. Because no one loves a geek, not even other geeks.) Everybody had their “name” and their “rank”. The group I was a part of was a small local group… a small local creepy group. I’d give you a link but I don’t want to scare you (or have to remember or relive all that shame). With so much fun and socializing why did I stop?

One day a little girl looked at me in my “garb” and asked her father, “What’s that man doing?”. To which her father replied, “Acting like a socially retarded asshole.”. Actually I just felt, looked, and acted like a moron. That and I learned a lesson which was, “Even if it’s a foam covered PVC pipe we use as a sword and it was most likely an accident, when you get hit in the face you ARE going to flip out. That crap hurts!”.

So you will not find me flailing a large foam sword, pretending to be a vampire or werewolf, or speaking in crappy Elizabethan. I will visit the Ren Fair every now and then though. Mmmmm turkey leg…..

Miniature Wargaming

I tend to avoid this genre of gaming. I do not have the patience to paint an entire army of miniature soldiers who are ultimately going to do nothing but gather dust on a long forgotten shelf in the back of my closet. Also the games are very tactical. Meaning there is a need for “tact”. Yeah.. that’s not me. I’ll play a few tactical video games. But there’s a difference. If I get pissed off at the game I can rip the game from the console and fling it across the room. There, game over, I won. This is something that I cannot do to my opponent during a tabletop wargame. I’m sure there are laws against me removing someone’s heart. Although it too would be a way to win… a fun one.

Anime or Videogame Cosplay

My daily wardrobe is bad enough as is. And I do believe I already look like a moron most times. I see no need to dress up (or down) in order to make a further spectacle of myself. I do have to say, some of you ladies know what your doing. And then there’s this guy.

Furry Cosplay

You’re most likely thinking that since this is cosplay it should be grouped with the previous listed. But no. This thing is its own entity. And within it is yet another subculture. A frightening anthropomorphic grotesquery representing some people’s desire to be and/or hump their teddy bears or pets. There’s a whole bunch of scary WTF in this geekdom. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against anthropomorphic cartoons, comics, etc. Hell I grew up on the stuff. From Disney films to things like The Thunder Cats. I loved The Thunder Cats. Except for Snarf. He pissed me off and creeped me out all at the same time. This subculture/mutation of “Furries” is one that seems to garner arousal from dressing as Sparky and getting frisky with someone else in a cracked out mascot costume. I usually see them scattered about at Otakon. Generally harmless as most of them are just the run of the mill Furry Cosplayers. But there are a few out there ready to “yiff” someone. And some don’t care if it’s furry or not. I don’t fault them for having a fetish. But I do fault them for looking at the dog funny. And I also damn you for making Bugs Bunny seem so unwholesome to me.

I’m sure there are few other geekdoms that I avoid. I’ll most likely end up listing them later. Now on with the show.

Saturday:

So now that you’ve been warned of my geekery. On Saturday around 2:00 PM my friend Inq (that’s his nickname. I don’t know how it came about but I think I had a hand in it) picked me up for a fun session of Role Playing Games. (See.. geekery right there.) Well as it turns out Inq lives in the attic of an old two bedroom house out in the middle of nowhere. Do you know what that means? That means the heating in the joint is all sorts of screwed up. That whole scientific deal of heat rising that you learned a while back? Not there. This is the house that defies logic. The basement was warmer than the rest of the house. As you traveled up from the basement it got progressively colder and colder. And then there was Inq’s room were the game session was being held. It was a meat locker. We began congregating in the middle of the room huddling against each other for warmth. Cold stiffened knuckles cracked as we lethargically grasped pencils and dice. The smokers, myself one of them, took more frequent smoke breaks just to be in the warmer basement. (That’s where the smoking room is. It’s the garage connected to the basement.)

It got to a point where we contemplated the following:

1. Who had the most muscle. Did I mention that Inq lives out in vacuous oblivion known as the countryside? That means no one delivers to him, and the closest means for obtaining food is far enough for the driver to die from hypothermia and starvation before ever reaching their destination. (actually I’m kidding. There was a High’s down the street. But that’s not necessarily food. I’m sure all of you think that RPG geeks subsist on junk food. But there are a select few of us who’d rather have something of more substance.)

2. Who was the biggest. This was to decide who was to be gutted so that we could all crawl into their body cavity for warmth.

And then Inq turned on the space heater.

(by the way, sorry about that whole trying to gut you thing, Murray. Yes I know that Murray is not your real name but I can’t remember what it is. And I’m not about to call someone to find out. Because you’re really not all that important and no one loves a geek. Now stop it.)

So with the space heater going the room became delightfully warm. And we realized that we were uncomfortably close to each other.

As the night dragged on we lost more and more gamers to weariness or the need to work the next day. In the end it was Inq, Sharys (that’s her character’s name), and myself. This is basically the norm of our meetings. It ends up with just a few of us sitting around having drinks and shooting the shit. And I have to say we are experts at that. No one shoots the shit like we do. If you should ever need shit shot look us up. We’ll shoot the shit out of that shit. (On a side note. Maybe we could make money that way. Hells yeah! We could have commercials on TV and everything. “Who ya gonna call? Shit Shooters!”. Eh.. maybe not.)

During our evening we began trying to add more detail to our RPG adventure. You see what most of you non-gamers don’t know, and couldn’t care less about, is that a really good RPG session needs plenty of detail. You have to create and flesh out a world or scenario for optimal gamery. (Yes gamery is a word! I thought of it, wrote it, and therefore it is a word!) At some point it came to this:

Inq: Ok.. we need a new term for dignitary or diplomat.

Me: Buttsucker?

Sharys: ew?

Inq: Dip Smack!

Us: What?

Inq: You know… a diplomat.. smack talker… Dip Smack. Ok now one for president.

Me: Happy Homewrecker? (don't ask me where that came from. It had to be the drinks talking.)

*And then there was riotous laughter*

(We were tired and a little tipsy.)

Eventually we all passed out. The next morning I had a wonderful discovery. Inq is not a “pet” person. He tolerates it when his roomies have them. But he himself has no desire to have actual living breathing pets. I believe he makes up for this by turning his room into his pet. I had three sweaters worth of carpet shed all over me. And thus my first words for the day were, “You’re friggin room shed all over me man!”.

Sunday:

We all woke and basically sat around watching movies, eating homemade tacos, and once again shooting the shit. Except sober this time which means our aim was better. Around 8 PM Inq and I jumped in his truck and he drove me home. There I made another interesting, frightening, and hilarious discovery.

I got home to my apartment at around 9 and decided to do laundry so that I could have clean clothes for the week. The washer and dryer are in the laundry room/breakfast nook. (It’s a cheap cheesy apartment and that means all rooms have double use. This one actually serves to house the 4 rabbits I have) When turned on the lights I saw what I thought to be a LARGE grey rat rushing right at me. This incited and entitled me to leap straight up into the air as if the ceiling would reach out and cradle me protectively in its arms. This is not so. I landed on my ass… hard. It was then that I realized that the infamous grey rat was in fact my rabbit Skitters. “How can you mistake a rabbit for a rat?” you may ask. Skitters is fast. Even on tile she’s a speedy behemoth seeming no more than a blur of grey while in motion. And even though she’s a chinchilla grey mini rex breed, Skitters is large. (Well actually fat. Very fat. With a double chin. She’s that large because she overeats, because I feed her too much, because like everyone else in America I feed and feed the ones I love. Feed them until they’re too grossly obese to run away. Or they sue you for feeding them too much tasty food. And being that Skitters is a rabbit I have no fears of being sued.)

So after seeing Skitters make her way to me (after my ass met cold tile floor) I realized that she was terrified. She looked to me with the expression of, “Please help me. I’m lost and scared. Where is my home? Will you take me home?”. The setup of my 4 rabbit cages is two on the floor and the other two stacked atop of them. Skitters’ cage is one of the upper tier homes. It’s like a bunny apartment complex. And then I realized it. When I left on Saturday I fed the rabbits and forgot to close Skitters’ cage. Obviously the cute little dimwit decided to see what was outside and took a flying leap. Then she couldn’t get back up. She had been out of her cage without food or water for the entire time I was gone.

I stood in the room staring down at Skitters for a while. She stared up at me with those big adorable bunny eyes and that twitching nose. Then as if on cue she produced a cloudy yellow puddle about her. I just couldn’t be mad at her for that. I sympathized. If you locked me outside of my apartment for a day and a half I’m sure I’d wet the floor when you came back and just stared at me. Or I’d punch you in the face.

After returning Skitters to her rightful domain and mopping up her puddle of joy/fear, I began to search the apartment for signs of a bunny on the loose. It’s my belief that if I were to let all the rabbits or even one out and leave for a few hours they would have a wild and crazed party. It seems as though I was wrong. As I searched my entire apartment I only found signs of Skitters in the room where the cages are. Seems my bunny isn’t much of a part animal after all.