Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Memorable Moments in Roleplaying
June 30, 2006

I used to roleplay. You know, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, that sort of thing. It’s not that I wanted to stop playing, but it seems everyone I used to play the games with has flaked out on me, and not I have thousands of dollars of books that won’t be useful to me until my kids grow up, and even then will probably be outdated enough to replace.

Still, I have a few memorable moments from my roleplaying days that I thought I would share. I’ll start with my early memories, and work my way up.

I first started playing Basic D&D back in 4th grade. Mike Cochard was the only other kid in school who would even talk to me. At recess at school, we’d stay inside and write up characters and invent games to play. I stayed overnight at his house once where his dad actually ran the game for us. And we played Colecovision until Mike passed out from fatigue.

In high school, Derek, Allen and I used to play D&D at Derek’s house. We set up our things on Derek’s diningroom table, and played for hours. We had charaters so advanced that we moved onto epic wargames with miniatures, where our characters would command whole armies. At these nights at Derek’s house is where I learned to eat jalapeno relish, jars of which we’d dump into some Cheez Whiz and call it a snack. We made characters for other games that we never played, simply for the joy of character creation.

NYC WordPress Meetup?
June 29, 2006

Ja wrote me to ask if there were any meetups closer to him in North Jersey than having to trek the whole way down to ours in Philly. I told him that there were a lot of people who were interested in such a thing, but that there wasn’t an official organizer yet, and so there was no meetup.

Well, apparently, he’s trying to get something going, and I figured I would give him a boost by posting some details about what you need to do where it would get some good exposure.

Slave Day
June 29, 2006

I see that my highschool is still being draconian with its ideas on free speech. I suppose their policy is to do as they say, but not as they do. For me, there is a deeper story than what is currently taking place with this “Bible Club”.

One of the rights of passage at Downingtown High School in the years leading up to my graduation was experiencing spirit week. I’m sure that most schools have these weeks, where for some reason the student body is encouraged to show its pride in the school by participating in various strange school-hour activities, usually culminating in the homecoming parade, dance, bonfire, football game, etc.

Some of the activities included “Blue and Gold Day”, where you wear your school colors on your clothes or in body paint. There were also odd ones like “Pajama Day”. These days were voted on by student council and approved by the “spirit commissioner” and faculty.

My senior year included an day-long spirit event called “Rent an Underclassman Day”. The premise is basically this: You buy a ticket from the student council that has a blank for your name and that of an underclassman. With both names filled out and signed, the ticket is returned to student council, and you become registered. On Rent an Underclassman Day, the underclassman (who has agreed to all of this) can be ordered to perform some services for you, like carrying your books to class (which is a big deal in the quarter-mile long hallways of my high school, where you locker is at one end and your books weigh 80 lbs.) wearing humiliating costumes, all in the name of fun and, of course, school spirit.

In the years when my mom was in school, this day was not called “Rent an Underclassman Day”. In fact, only a year or two prior to my graduation, it was still known by the name that my mom called it in her day, “Slave Day”.

Sadly for everyone involved, I was an altruistic teenager, and also editor of my school newspaper.