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ExamForce :: Article Archive :: Newsletter Article
 The Cert Times: IT Edition Article Archive
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| Deck the Halls and Such (B1N@RY N@T10N (A.J. Axline)) |
It was the night before Christmas, and Vector, Sonja, Robert the Bruce, and I were hanging out in the basement. Vector was flying his recently unwrapped RC helicopter around the room, testing the limits of its destructive, or at least disruptive, capabilities. Robert the Bruce was sitting in a beanbag chair in front of the freshly-installed plasma screen, playing a modded version of the original Wolf-3D where all of the Nazis had been replaced with sweaty, monkey-dancing Steve Ballmers. The chatter of machine gun fire along with shouts of "Entwickler! Entwickler!" could be heard with remarkable clarity through the Bose sound system. I don't know why Robert the Bruce insists on being so anachronistic when it comes to gaming. It's a personality quirk that serves as a catalyst for both admiration and endless mockery from the rest of us.
Sonja was lying on the floor with her MacBook Pro, jailbreaking her shiny new iPod Touch. "Needs more apps," was the first thing she'd said after oohing and awwing at the screen upon powering up the unit for the first time. It was a gift from Vector, who clearly knew better than to try to buy a way into her heart... it was more in the way of an offering to the digital goddess, something done solely to improve his geek karma for the upcoming new year. Robert the Bruce and I had made similar offerings in the guise of 'friend gifts', but nothing as lavish as Vector. I give the kid credit-he does nothing by halves where his self-interest is concerned.
Sonja had been generous to us as well. It helps that her father is some sort of mysterious industrial-military spook warlord, and is likely one of the owners of the world. The plasma screen was from her, as were these gigantic individual stockings stuffed with a plethora of USB-powered accessories, battery-powered toys, and lots of Lindt chocolate bells. We don't talk about Sonja's family when she's around, although it has been the subject of many late night chat sessions. Robert the Bruce suspects that Sonja was not so much born as she was manufactured in a top-secret military project run by her father. His theory is not entirely dismissible. She is scary smart, and unconsciously seduces people of either gender just by taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide.
It was a typical social gathering for us. Everyone was just doing their own thing, and occasionally throwing out conversational gambits for verbal batting practice. I got myself a refill of caffeinated eggnog (a traditional holiday recipe I take full credit for) and batted aside Vector's helicopter before planting myself on the couch, getting back to a handheld crossword puzzle electronic toy from my stocking.
"So," Vector said to me, "you make fun of Robert the Bruce's classic gaming fetish--"
"It's not a fetish," Robert the Bruce interjected. "That implies that I derive sexual enjoyment from playing classic games, as opposed to say, watching 80's porn."
"--and yet you get all squishy over an electronic crossword puzzle game," Vector said. "Wow. Just, you know, wow."
"Yes, I am aware of the double standard inherent whereby I make fun of Robert the Bruce's archaic gaming choices, while playing electronic versions of classic pencil-and-paper activities," I replied sweetly. "Thank you for commenting on my hypocrisy. I believe it was St. Francis of Assisi who said, 'SUCK IT.'
"Actually, I think that's a Senator Larry Craig quote," Sonja quipped.
Vector nearly snorted eggnog out his nose.
"Well, if we could kick the Bruce off of the plasma screen, we could actually watch one of the fifty DVDs we've unwrapped this evening," I suggested.
"Black Christmas," Vector said immediately.
"1974 or last year's remake?" Robert the Bruce asked.
"Oh come on," Vector replied. "Michelle Trachtenberg doesn't hold a candle to Olivia Hussey."
"She was in an episode of Pinky and the Brain," I said.
"Michelle Trachtenberg?" Vector asked.
"No, Olivia Hussey," I replied.
"Why do you know that?" Sonja asked.
"Why do you know that, during pregnancy, a woman's uterus expands up to five hundred times its normal size, as you mentioned earlier this evening?" I asked her.
"Well, it does," she insisted.
"I'm just saying that you shouldn't be too quick to judge what other people fill their memories with," I said. "Robert the Bruce, what's the most bizarre thing you know?"
Strangely, the Bruce didn't even hesitate. "Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator. True story. He was the original Commander Adama, you know."
No one spoke for awhile. Robert the Bruce cleared his throat, shut down the Wolf-3D game, and started the virtual fireplace screensaver on the plasma.
"Okay, thank you," I said. "Umm... Vector? Favorite useless fact or bizarre trivia?"
"If you take any number," Vector said after a few seconds of consideration, "double it, add ten, halve it, and subtract the original number, you will always end up with a result of five."
There was a silence while the Bruce, Sonja, and I ran a few mental arithmetic proof-of-concepts.
"That's neat," Sonja said with a smile.
"It beats Lorne Greene's nipples," I said. "Your turn, Sonja. What's the most bizarre or esoteric thing you know? Besides the uterus thing, that is."
Sonja hesitated long enough that I thought she was stuck for an answer. However, after the rest of us started verbally harassing her, she held up a hand for silence and said:
"Okay. The current annual rate of antimatter production is somewhere between three and ten nanograms... with ridiculously high production costs per nanogram when you factor in energy, facility, and security costs," she said. "However, if someone were to create a magnetic nanotube array capable of harvesting antimatter out of the Van Allen belts, you could theoretically collect enough antimatter to power a space craft capable of traveling to Jupiter in less than four months. A similar nanotube array positioned in Jupiter's belt would eventually provide enough antimatter to power an interstellar voyage, or create a weapon capable of annihilating the entire solar system. The whole operation could be funded by mining asteroids. The asteroid Eros, for example, contains an estimated twenty trillion dollars worth of gold, platinum, and other precious metals."
The virtual fireplace snapped and crackled. Vector's helicopter landed in the eggnog punchbowl.
"Hey, I got my iPod jailbreaked!" Sonja said happily. "Now to find games..."
"I know where you can get a port of Duck Hunt," the Bruce said.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Binary Nation. A.J. Axline is the webmaster of The Chaos Jester at http://www.chaos-jester.ca and wishes he had a full-sized arcade version of Gauntlet.
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Posted by
nam on 18/12/2007 16:13 |
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