Getting my Geek On

So those of you that know me, know that I enjoy a good LARP. For those unfamiliar with the term it stands for Live Action Role Playing. It's basically a form of role playing that forgoes the use of dice and requires the player to take all of the actions.

I started years ago playing V:TSM (Vampire: the Masquerade) at the University of Michigan Union. I spent every other Friday pretending I was angst-filled, blood-sucking freak. I felt weird playing at first, thinking it was far too geeky. That is until I saw some of the other people playing. I wonder if they were as geeky as I thought or was I just ashamed that others might see me that way. It was fun, but it really was just a gateway to bigger and better games.

The V:TSM game lead to me being invited to play in a fantasy LARP called KANAR (Knights and Nobles and Rogues). KANAR was amazing. Imaging being a dashing knight, a devious thief, a peaceful cleric or a powerful magic user. KANAR let you live out those dreams. I played KANAR for nearly eight years before I basically called it quits. Moving 200 miles away and developing a hatred for the game will do that to you.

I started to feel the withdrawal symptoms and began looking for some relief when I got invited to a LARP called Final Haven.

Final Haven (and Winter Haven) have a very different view on what a Fantasy LARP is and I will admit I am still getting used to the differences between FH and KANAR. But the big thing I enjoy, good role playing, is abundant at FH/WH.

Recently one of the Game Masters at FH came up with the idea of running a Firefly/Serenity based LARP. I joined up as one of the assistant GM's and so far things look really interesting. Airsoft combat, good old fashioned heroing, and sense of hopeful hopelessness.

If things go well and the turn out for this little endeavor is good, there are plans to make it a continuing event. Hopefully we can find support and interest to run the game at least four times a year from this point on.

So if you're interested in trying out the Firefly LARP, and you have September 5th - 7th free, you should click right here. Register and start getting information on what you need to do to play.

Casting the Justice League

I was surfing the interweb and came across this brilliant blog.

Faust’s Fantastically Fantasmagoric Forum

I would have to agree with them all and find the choice for J'onn J'onzz to be truly inspired.

And I think Mr. Braun will love the choice of Aquaman.

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Winner: Vile Puns

Vowing revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas.

Becky Mushko
Penhook, VA

Runner-Up

The Jones family held their annual family reunion on Easter going through over six dozen spiral-cut, hickory-smoked hams and several bottles of a fine Australian shiraz, before Farmer Jones, the head of the family, took the leavings back to Manor Farm to slop Napoleon and his other champion hogs but the seventy-six ham bones fed the pig's tirade.

Michael L. VanBlaricum
Santa Barbara, CA

Dishonorable Mentions

Jan Svenson, having changed his fortune in the annual "Scandinavian King of the Beach" in Santa Cruz with a bottle of black hair coloring and thus standing out in a sea of fair-haired rivals to win the coveted title, realized the ironic truth of the old adage "That in the kingdom of the blonde, the one dyed man is king."

Matthew Chambers
Parsons, WV

Dimwitted and flushed, Sgt. John Head was frustrated by his constipated attempts to arrest the so-called "Bathroom Burglar" until, while wiping his brow, he realized that each victim had been robbed in a men's room, thereby focusing his attention on the janitor, whose cleaning habits clearly established a commodus operandi.

Jay Dardenne
Baton Rouge, LA

Nell Gwynn, a descendant of the famous English actress and friend of King Charles II, decided she would help French aristocrats, who were being decimated by the guillotine during the French Revolution, cross to safety in England by hiding them under her voluminous skirts and putting off French customs inspectors by confronting them with a face and arms covered with angry red pimples, earning for her the sobriquet of Scarlet Pimple Nell.

Alec Kitroeff
Psychico, Greece

Grand Panjandrum's Special Award

Upon discovering that Miles Black, the famous phrenologist from Yorkshire was going to take up yodeling to lonely goats in Bali, James White decided to balance four planks of wood on a beer keg and call it an abstract work of art in the style of a famous fourteenth-century architect, just going to prove that people will read any old garbage if they think there will be a good pun at the end of it.

Stefan Croker
Bury, Greater Manchester, UK

It was great when it all began

I'm a huge fan of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. There is something decadent about the fun provided by such a simply made movie.

Apparently someone at MTV things it needs to be remade. Someone at MTV needs to get a clue and stop the insanity.

Only you can prevent the travesty.

Riff, Magenta, Frank, Brad and Janet need your help.

The Question - Part 2

Here is part two. Amazing what an imagination and a video camera can do.

The Question

Sometimes you find something amazing online. When that happens you share.