I'm finding I comedy works best to keep me from dwelling on how much longer I'm going to be on an elliptical machine, treadmill or what-have-you. So earlier this week it was an old standby, Office Space. (If you haven't seen it, suffice it to say that it's sort of a cult classic for programmers.) Coincidentally, this was also the same week that someone decided to riff on one of the movie's plot-points and steal fellow programmer's red Swingline stapler. Twice.
I polished off Office Space and turned back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, riffs from which are unavoidable in the SCA. That'd be like trying to play golf without at least one wink-wink-nudge-nudge reference to Caddyshack.
Bad enough that Dennis & I have already trained each other to phrase "or"-type questions (as in, "Do you want four cheese or meat-lover's supreme?") without expecting the answer to be an obligatory "Yes." Or "True" or "1" if someone's feeling exceptionally nerdy. But then I made the mistake of remembering the phrase, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."
(If you're not a Star Trek: The Next Generation maven, here's the schtick: The Federation has bumped into (yet another) alien race that (surprise!) just happens to be recognizably humanoid. Moreover, the Universal Translator can even babblefish--yes, I just used that as a verb-- their language into English words. Problem is, it still doesn't make sense, because the Tamarians exclusively communicate allegorically--meaning through references to stories from their history. Think of it as tribal knowledge on steroids.)
At first I thought, well, we're not that bad. But then I realized--particularly after being chagrined at how much of the "Brave, Brave Sir Robin" song I've forgotten--that any nerdery is a continuum. Meep! Ummm...how many restroom stops until Tanagra?
