It’s almost a constant in my work life that I get approached by The Sarge and harassed about when I’m going to step up and join my other co-nerds in their nightly games of Battlefield2. This is no casual game. This is an enlistment. These guys talk about it more than I talk about Guitar Hero, they have a home page with their game stats, and they even pay for a dedicated server to host voice chat so they can communicate with each other while playing. While it’s always nice to be asked, it’s gotten so drug pusher-like and happens so often that I’m glad Nancy Reagan ingrained “Just Say No” into my head during my formative years.

While I’m certainly not against gaming (and definitely not against gaming with co-workers), I refuse to get sucked into Battlefield2 because of the unyieldingly geriatric pace of previous versions of the game. In a game, I’m looking for “shut off brain, shoot, run, jump/shoot, taunt/shoot, shoot, run, shoot”, not “get in jeep, drive for an hour looking for some form of combat, repeatedly ask everyone where the hell they are, take Metamucil ration, and… get blown up by an artillery strike launched from the other side of the map without firing a shot”. That’s just me.

Anyway, when The Sarge came over to my desk for yesterday’s recruitment speech, he started off with, “So we were reading your blog last night…” which left me staring at him trying to figure out who the hell “we” was and what sort of damage control I would be facing. Because he gave no sign that he would surrender further information without direct engagement, I was forced to ask, “We who?”
“I was reading your blog over TeamSpeak [The in-game chat software] and we were saying how you probably needed a good game of Battlefield to clear your bad mood.”

Holy crud.

After four years of writing, the closest that I have come to syndication is having an entry read over an in-game chat session. I may not be Howard Stern, but the astronomical nerdiness of my first syndication may be impossible to duplicate, so I’ll take it.

Posted in Geeky