No Hatin'

It was a quiet weekday afternoon and I was in the kitchen enjoying a dinner of tempura and white rice when there was a knock on the door.

"Come in!" I yelled, which was our customary greeting to houseguests. The only people who ever really came by were the management people, to collect our rent and such.

So I was pretty surprised when a large, strange man wearing a hoodie printed all over with money graphics walked in and sat himself down opposite me at the kitchen table. He sort of had a crazy look in his eye and I wasn't sure if I should try to make light conversation or stab him with my chopsticks and run for cover. As it was, I was at a loss for words and all I could do was wonder how long he was going to sit there and if my rice was going to go cold.

"I recorded a CD," he grunted, and threw a disc across the table at me, which was bedecked in the same money print as his hoodie, "give it a listen." I wasn't sure what to do. Not only was I skeptical of his musical talent, I had no desire to insert a strange CD into my laptop (which happened to be sitting at the table.)

"Sorry, I'm not going to buy your CD, I don't have money," I told him.

"You're tight on cash, huh?" he asked with a steady stare (I answered in the affirmative), "cash is pretty tight over here, too."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Well, good luck!" I told him with what I hoped was a tone of finality. He sat there and stared at me for a long time and I tried to appear interested in my tempura pieces which I moved around the plate with my chopsticks. Finally he reached across the table, retrieved his CD, grunted a "thanks for your time," and walked out.

My roommate Tallia and her fiance Jon came running out of the other room in fits of laughter. I knew they had been eavesdropping. "Thanks for the help, guys," I told them, "that was the most awkward thing ever."

"Don't worry, I was listening the whole time, I would have helped you out if anything happened," Jon assured me. They then proceeded to inform me that the guy's name was B-money, and he was something of a legend in Provo, interrupting all sorts of house parties and asking people to listen to his rap. Jon even did me the service of showing me B-money's music video on YouTube. Some of you may be interested in the familiar Provo locales:



I try to be a non-judgmental person generally and give people the benefit of the doubt. As I reflected on the situation later, I wondered if I had been fair, according to my personal standards. I don't think I was rude in any way, and certainly would have sent the wrong signals if I'd done anything to suggest I might be eager to have him stay. Was I unfair in not even listening to his music to give it a chance? (Well, it really isn't good anyway. At all.) Having been caught completely off my guard, I plead innocent of anything I might have done to offend. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm not a hater.

Entering a New Dimension of Nerd

If this life is actually a metaphysical series of transformations from average joe to supreme nerd and there are certain checkpoints you have to reach along the way, I think I just reached one of the milestones.

For a while now I've been pretty far along on my way to nerdiness, although probably not quite at the halfway mark yet. I get nerd points for activities like regularly checking xkcd.com and reading the dictionary for fun, but I get points subtracted for buying new clothes at the mall and playing the guitar. I'll get there someday.

Anyway, I also recently became a member of YouTube and saw how easy it is for people to get famous these days simply by publicly showcasing a three-minute clip of their talent. Some of my favorites include a guy who simultaneously plays the Inspector Gadget theme song on his flute and beatboxes, and a high-quality animated short entitled Charlie the Unicorn. It got me scratching my head wondering if I have a talent I could get famous for on YouTube. What am I better at than everyone else? And then it hit me. I have the best Minesweeper scores of anyone I know. This skill has developed as my mouse inevitably drifts to the Minesweeper icon on my "games" menu every time I have writer's block. (Hey, don't knock it... J.K. Rowling does it too.)

Unfortunately, upon a quick perusal of minesweeper videos already posted, I found that I am not actually the best minesweeper-sweeper in the world (although my scores are not super far off, I'm proud to say.) However, I was excited to find this video by meganerd Mark Erickson on how to unlock a hidden Minesweeper mode. I tell you, he is a nerd master. It takes skill sometimes to distinguish between a true nerd and a pseudo-nerd but I was tipped off by several hate-comments under his video of people screaming "Nerd!" Hacks Microsoft games and is unpopular? A true nerd indeed.

So did watching this video result in several hours of renewed Minesweeper entertainment in Wraparound mode? Umm.... no. I'm ashamed to say that it didn't work on my computer, and I don't quite have the smarts to figure out why. Perhaps I was tricked into erasing all my high scores. But the point is that I actually tried to hack a computer game, which I'd never done before, unless you count using a cheat to get past a level in Donkey Kong Country. That makes me one step closer to master nerdiness, right?

Indubitably.