Dec 6, 2009

Time to Update the Ol’ LARP Résumé

Eric poured the first of his new bottle of Jägermeister into a glass tumbler, making sure not to spill any drops of the precious thick brown liqueur.

He was warm all over from drinking the last bottle and sweat formed like dew over the numerous crap lines in his forehead. He threw back the shot, slammed his glass down, and brushed a swatch of greasy orange hair out of his eyes.

"Time to get back to work," he said to no one in particular.

Eric's wife was out of town on business, something that was happening more and more often lately, and he had been left to his own devices.

After getting kicked out of Barnes & Noble by the management when they caught him wandering up to strangers and offering to sign copies of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, he attended the Chester County Library Steering Committee but had to leave early from there too after he fell asleep and began to snore loudly during new business.

It must have been that bottle of Jäger on the way there, Eric thought as he drove home. And that had been Eric's afternoon.

Back home and at a loose end with a new bottle of Jäger, Eric decided it was time to update the 'ol LARP résumé. He sat down at his new home workstation, a rare 300 MHz Pentium MMX system with 512 MiB of memory named hardball, opened a terminal and typed nano $HOME/catb.org/html/larp.html, and began.

First, he had a couple of new roles to add to his already impressive list. He focused his eyes and read the last couple of characters over.

  • Percy Bullock (adept of the Golden Dawn) in Golden Aeon
  • Egil Skallagrimsson (viking badass) in Drink Deep and Drink Deeper.
  • Lucien Volare (revolutionary agitator) in Torch of Freedom

Cracking his knuckles and stretching his neck, Eric turned toward his mechanical keyboard.

Eric's keyboard was something special. First, none of the keys—not a single one—had any of the characters printed on them anymore save for a few white flecks here and there. Eric had worn them away in the last thirty years of typing with unwashed, greasy fingers.

There was also a film of crumbs, dead skin, finger grease, and Jäger congealed between the keys that looked like bile and smelled like a grease-trap in a condemned Chinese restaurant that permeated the air whenever he typed. Miraculously, the thing still clacked like it was 1982, and so Eric never saw a reason to clean it.

Eric was having a hard time finding a DIN-to-USB adapter and so was stuck with PS/2, which was one reason he was loathe to ever upgrade his system. At one point he'd tried to "hack" a newer motherboard to support DIN, but ended up spilling melted flux all over it, burning his hands in the process.

Eric fingered this beast's keys and began adding his latest triumphs to the list.

  • Dildor Cockshadow (bisexual priest) in One if by Man
  • Vas Deferens (badass privateer) in Escape from Planet Prepuce

After another perilous moment of swapping, Eric's changes were saved and his hard drive quieted. Eric then scrolled down, Firefox swallowing memory like Linux developers in a men's room, until he reached the Skills and Interests Relevant to Live-Action Gaming section.

Spot-checking "I have an extensive knowledge base in the sciences and history," "I have good public-speaking skills and can hold an audience," and "I am an expert computer programmer and Internet technologist," Eric smiled. He squinted and began typing again.

I am the leader of hackers worldwide and spearhead the Open Source movement.

Eric hit ^O and leered in satisfaction as his machine once again lurched out of /swap in a heroic effort to write his changes. His LARP résumé would be better than ever.

To celebrate, Eric swung around in his chair and grabbed the fresh bottle of Jägermeister, anxious to dive deeper into 70-proof stupor.

He paused, however, and decided to add a just a little more for good measure. Eric tickled the keyboard, smiling at the joy of talking about himself.

I am a core Linux developer.

Eric rubbed his bulbous gut through his faded OSCON '01 t-shirt as he ftp'ed into catb.org and uploaded the changes. While he was waiting for the transfer to complete he stuck his hand into his pants and took a slug from his freshly-opened bottle of Jäger.

Life is good, thought Eric. Life is good.

5 comments:

  1. Can't decide which one is funnier, this one or the original resume.

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  2. Rollers, sir! Most excellent!

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  3. Very good Mr. Trollaxor you tend to explain Latin with Greek. But let me give you some of my more inspirational quotes:

    "People who are wrapped up in themselves have small packages."

    "A man who loves himself will have no children"

    "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety are not the kind of women I party with."

    "I believe, with all my heart, that one day, upon this great land, our new nation will rise to such great heights of power and prestige that its leaders won't even have to have working brains for the government to function."

    "I'm proud to be an American. I'm even prouder to have an nine-inch penis, but they wouldn't let me put that in the Declaration of Independence."

    "As they say, little strokes fell Richard Nixon."

    America doesn't care about Third World countries like Missouri. If you don't like it, you can go cry to the Russians, you little pansy!"

    "Eat to shit; don't shit to eat. Of course, if you're really stupid, just try to remember not to eat your own shit."

    "To err is human, but to really fuck things up requires a shitty programmer."

    "I just wish we had come up with a better name than 'Founding Fathers.' I really liked 'My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult,' but everyone insisted it was just too 'Goth.'"

    "It's easy to see, but hard to foresee. And don't even mention C-plus-plus."

    "There are no fools more troublesome than those with websites."

    "The devil wipes his breeches with poor folks' laughable attempts at proper HTML formatting."

    "A stitch in time will usually cause Rusty Foster to ban you at least nine times."

    "There are only two things certain in life: Death, and Kuroshits behaving like small children."

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