Er. Yeah. They sneak up on unsuspecting blog writers, and Stun them for several hours.

There are some stereotypical characteristics of the “nerd” which are commonly believed. (Perhaps because there’s a grain of truth in there…) Now, there’s a range of these, but today we’re only interested in 2.

1. Nerds are antisocial, don’t do well at parties and sometimes their personal grooming habits are not as well developed as might be desired.

2. Nerds don’t like sport.

Well, thanks to the good people at Critical Miss (an on-line magazine for dysfunctional roleplayers), we can disprove the latter item by using the former. Their invention is Body Language Rugby. The full rules can be accessed from their latest edition – unfortunately now over 2 years old. The game is suitable for any large and boring gathering, such as a wedding reception, work function or soirée (Ho there, Soirée! No answer? I charge!) The players are split into two teams. An unwitting member of the crowd is “the ball.” “End zones” are nominated at either side of the room. Using nothing but body language, each side attempts to steer “the ball” into the opposing end zone. Points are tallied, and the side which has the highest points at the end of the night is declared the winner.

The field of play. Note the goal posts at the far end.

Huzzah for the guys at Critical Miss! Their magazine is filled with items like this, plus GMing tips for the acutely lazy GM, how to railroad your players, broken and inadvisable scenarios and other entertaining and educational games such as Nuke the Crap out of Europe.

Go forth and enjoy.

No really…

Most Australians probably don’t need much of an introduction to the band Tripod, three guys and one guitar who sing funny songs about being, well, three guys with one guitar. They are a regular staple on the comedy circuit and are, despite being very funny, excellent musicians as well.

Well, I will get to the point… I just, out of curiosity just checked out their official website. For anyone who played D&D back in the day (think AD&D 1, 2) their website is going to have you in stitches… I don’t want to ruin the surprise – go check it out here:

Official Tripod Website

For those of you who want a taste of what is to come, here is a sample song on YouTube…

Update: found this too… bloody funny…

Nerds love Monty Python, right? I mean, there’s even a programming language named after the group… Well, in another case of “there’s nothing new under the sun” it seems that Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot Sketch” is perhaps a little bit older than previously thought. A scholar of Ancient Greece by the name of William Berg has translated a joke book written in the 4th Century CE containing 265 jokes by the comedians Hierocles and Philagrius. This comedy pair compiled a list of jokes called “Philogelos: The Laugh Addict”.

In Monty Pythons sketch, a man attempts to return a dead Norwegian Blue Parrot to a particularly difficult shopkeep. In the ancient Greek version, it’s a dead slave. Obviously, times have changed, but the joke is surprisingly similar. Other jokes, it seems, have also withstood the test of time, appearing in modernised versions around the world also.

From the Telegraph’s article:

Jokes about wives, it seems, have always been fair game.

One joke goes: “A man tells a well-known wit: ‘I had your wife, without paying a penny’. The husband replies: “It’s my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?”

Brilliant… who would have thought that the roots of British humour were so old?

You can see Monty Python’s sketch on Youtube here:

The original joke can be found here in electronic book format.

Many of us grew up with Sesame Street. A lot of us still remember our favourite songs and animations, and we certainly have a little giggle (privately) over the characters that we loved as a kid. And while the vast majority of us grew out of watching Sesame Street, some of us I am sure still harken back to the good old days. Well, maybe Sesame Street grew up too.

So today kiddies, I’m going to teach you a little lesson about the Internets. The internet is a wonderful invention, and it’s so great to have technology at our fingertips. Here is a little song (which is quite possibly nsfw).

They are called Avenue Q and they do a stage show that is quite funny.

[thanks Miss T]

As an avid book collector, this is a strangely hard post to write. It is hard to see what may well be the perfect library and know that you will never get closer than a photo or two that leaks out onto the web. Jay Walker (a somewhat wealthy entrepreneur, investor, etc…) has collected what is one of the most extraordinary libraries of geekery imaginable. And what is more, he built one of the most beautiful libraries to keep it in. Other than books, comfortable looking couches, Escher inspired wood flooring and LED embedded glass work, the library also contains:

• A Sputnik (yes, an actual Sputnik…)
• A raptor skeleton
• An icon of a Mother Goddess from 5000 BCE
• A copy of the 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London
• An instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket
• The prop for the “Thing” hand from “The Addams Family” (also signed by the cast)
• An Enigma Machine
• Oh, and the chandelier from “Die Another Day”…

Recently I wrote a post in bed one night. Literally (although I suppose these days that’s hardly a big achievement). I was reading through a list of new apps that had been released on the iPhone’s App Store and one had caught my eye – iBlogger…

After installing it, I was eager to give it a try, so I immediately posted this article about two gaming stores being next to each other in a shopping centre in Sydney, Australia (Games Workshop, and the appropriately named, Game store). 

Well… Little did I know it, but I was being watched. The people who made the highly excellent software that I had used to create the article were looking to see how it was being used, and they stumbled across my little missive. They noticed that I had managed to reference a Polka in the article too. They even posted about it on their main site. Apparently I had inadvertently referenced the polka classic “In Heaven There Is No Beer”.

Well… At first I thought that it was really really awesome that the company that had made the software that I had used (and really really really enjoyed too by the way ) had linked to the article that I had written. It didn’t take long however until I started to feel a little guilty… 

I had not deliberately referenced a polka… 

Doubt filled me and I started to worry that people would think I was some kind of polka charlatan. So, here are my Polka Credentials.

• I spent most of my childhood in country Pennsylvania. There is a lot of Polka in Pennsyvlania…
• I really like the Finnish Black Metal Polka band Finntroll
• One of my favourite characters in Home Alone is John Candy’s character as Gus Polinski, the “Polka King of the Midwest”
• I recently cheered mightly at the Polka house band at the Lowenbrau restaurant at the Rocks in Sydney

Could this be what heaven looks like? (Or part of it anyway…) Well, no… For two reasons. Firstly, both these places are only interested in making ridiculous amounts of money off of you (in heaven I am convinced games come with money inside…), and secondly, and perhaps most importantly, there’s no beer…

The time period referred to as ‘evening’ starts at 6pm and ends at 10pm. It is official.

In other words, a friend and I have declared it so.

Matter closed. (And no, don’t ask. Or you can. If anyone is interested, you can ask in the comments, otherwise, don’t bother…)

I know this is coming pretty late to the party, but this is probably as close as Dungeons & Dragons will get to a theme song… And I know that a lot of the sentiments exhibited in this song relate only to players of 1st Edition D&D (some women have discovered the game subsequently…). Anyway, old and stale jokes aside, here is the song by Stephen Lynch.