New Heights of Geekitude

Sometimes I am so much of a geek that I amaze myself. For example, right, when I was at home over Christmas I downloaded a bunch of free computer games and suchlike of various Mac-sites. I figured approximately 50% of the ones I downloaded would actually run on my machine, and of those about 20% wouldn't suck, so if I downloaded at least ten games I could probably find one that was slightly more addicting than my previous favorite, Einstein.

And it totally worked, so I'm not complaining or anything, but the game I got addicted to makes me more of a geek than ever before. More of a geek than doing theater all through high school, more of a geek than spending my free time in my geometry classroom goofing off with computer nerds (hi, guys!), more of a geek than being a philosophy major, possibly more of a geek even than when I spent my time writing X-Files fanfic. Which I DON'T DO ANYMORE, so you can just SHUT UP.

Wow, looking at that list sort of makes me want to hide under a rock. Anyway.

So this game I am addicted to? All the best of fantasy novels, computer fighty games, and little CGI love. Seriously. I am some sort of human shaped prince-type, whose evil aunt or second cousin or some such has killed several close family members and exiled me and is ruling. You know she's evil because she attacks me with orcs and trolls and suchlike. And I have this wise Dumbledore/Gandalf/Merlin type who follows me around, (I think his name is actually a conglomeration of those), saying wise things and occasionally frying my enemies with magical lighting. More recently I have picked up this high elvish lord type, and I'm not sure why he follows me around too, but if he dies I lose. And I can recruit elves and dwarves and wizards and Riders of Rohan (or whatever) and I keep having to fight of demon hoards and undead wretches and suchlike, and it's way more fun than it ought to be.

Most recently, I have picked up a princess, who is evil, and whose ass I have already kicked, but who I think I am going to marry later because she has very long blonde hair and my little CGI prince says extremely stupid things when he's around her, which he always is, because if she dies I lose, too. You see? It is so completely deliciously derivative that it actually makes me want to go back and read some very stupid fantasy books where long lost princes fight evil goblins and marry snarky princesses.

And of course it was all a free download (I live in fear that when I am about to recapture my crown or whatever a little box is going to pop up demanding a fifteen dollar shareware fee, and for the first time in my whole life I will have to pay it); but what that means is that I am not even a legitimate intelligent computer geek who is hooked on, say, Final Fantasy, no, I am the sort of geek who is hooked on the fantasy game where the characters move on a hexagonal grid.

And despite how guilty this pleasure is, I seriously played it for like two hours last night. I tend to take it really personally when one of my little men dies, or gets knighted, or misses his enemy.

I think I need some sort of real project. Or internet access in my room, one of the two. At least I would think that, if I didn't know that I probably would have gotten just as addicted to this if I had encountered it in college, so it's really just as well I didn't know about it until after my thesis got turned in and I have my degree.