Thursday, November 18, 2010

...Everything is better with a side of Nerd...

That is to say, everything is better with a very nerdy imagination. Now what do I mean by all this? Well every day, people are consumed with boring dreary tasks. In my case, they are things like driving to and from work, or creating graphics from a list of market statistics (*snore*). People try all kinds of things to make these tasks more interesting. Some listen to music, some watch youtube videos, some pretend they are somewhere else. Me? I let my imagination do the heavy lifting.

So lets start with driving to and from work. Nobody likes doing this. There's traffic, there's pedestrians, there's just the sheer amount of time you spend behind the wheel getting from one place to another. So how do I use my imagination? Well lets perform a quick experiment. Imagine you are driving down the highway. Got that thought in your head? Just you. Nobody else in your car. Nobody is calling you and nobody is texting you (WHICH YOU SHOULDN'T BE DOING BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL AND YOU WILL DIE A HORRIBLE BLOODY DEATH AND YOU WILL LIKELY RUIN THE DAYS FOR EVERYONE AROUND YOU AND BRING SHAME TO YOUR FAMILY'S NAME).

Ok you got that firmly in mind? Can you feel your eyelids closing? Can you feel the boredom setting in, its grasp closing ever more tightly around your mind? You there yet? Well can you hurry up? Ok good. Now that you've got that going on in your headspace. Imagine that SAME scenario, only with THIS playing in the background.

Do you feel that now? Do you feel the surge of adrenaline as you bob and weave through cars on the highway, bombing down the road, dodging cars and trucks...erm....TIE fighters and Star Destroyers? Do you see the blaster beams, burning bright against the blackness of space, streaking past you as the imperial fighters swarm your Millennium Falcon? "Faster! Faster!" You think to yourself as the warning indicators on your control panel indicate that your rear deflector shields are failing. "Make the jump to lightspeed!" you scream at your dashboard as you floor the pedal and are promptly pulled over by the state trooper you didn't see and subsequently have a very hard time explaining why you were pushing 100 miles per hour on Route 2...

Here's another great one. How about typing stuff up. Making graphics, fudging with data, deleting exactly 1/5 of a 4000 entry spreadsheet (but making sure you don't delete ANY of the WRONG 1/5 because that would FUCK EVERYTHING UP). Do you feel that boredom creeping up on you again? Your vision blurs, your jaw goes slack and your head does that super awkward (and super uncomfortable looking) roll thing where it looks like your head, in defiance of the rest of the body, has decided it has had enough of your bullshit and is leaving you for good this time. Got it? Now imagine it with THIS playing in the background.

Suddenly you are on Tarsonis, the might of the Terran army is at your command against the evil horde of Zerg not far away. Frantically you click all over the screen. Your fingers are but a blur on the keyboard. Your APM rises as Marines, Marauders, Tanks and Thors all come streaming out of the numerous Barracks and Factories you have build all over your main. Your economy is strong and your numbers are great. It is time to move out. There, in the distance, a mass of Zerglings, Roaches and Hydras await you. Your armies stare each other down and, with a mighty war cry (which startles the cute co-worker that sits across from you) the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. Bullets and acid fly hither and thither as wave after wave of units fall. And when the dust and smoke clear, you are left, victorious, perched atop a mound of dead zerg corpses. You stand and raise your arms in triumph, not realizing that this entire time you have been sitting, hunched at your desk, pounding furiously on your keyboard and muttering about "damn lings" to yourself this entire time.

...But maybe that's just me...

And that's what I learned today.

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