The Gloucester Clam

Nerdy Clams Need to Know

by Len Pal, Clamrespondent and Co-Host of MC Hawking’s Podcore Nerdcast

Growing up as a nerd in the 80’s was hard. I mean, you’ve seen Revenge of the Nerds, right? Nerdsplotation, man. Sure, the nerds were the loveable heroes who overcame all odds, won the Greek Games, take over the Greek Council, and throw together a dope musical production number. One of them even tricked the hot girl into having sex with him. (I feel like that’s not cool any more, now that I think about it.) But how much did that movie do to make life easier on the common nerd? NOT ONE BIT.

Young nerds today have it easier. Being nerdy is actually cool now. Plus, with the Internet, you can find other nerds all over the world and in your own backyard. In the 80’s, we lived in isolation and fear, meeting in secrecy for the occasional game of Dungeons and Dragons or screening of movies like Labyrinth and Willow. Today, you have ComicCon and PAX and Nerdapalooza. (Yes, that’s really a thing.) In fact, there’s so much information out there for the budding young nerd that it may be difficult to filter down to the good stuff. That’s where I come in. From time to time, here on the Clam, I’ll give you a few tips and pointers about cool nerdy stuff you may not know about. Music you’d dig. Games you’d enjoy. Books you’d love. At MC Hawking’s Podcore Nerdcast, we have a feature called Nerds Need to Know, and it’s time for that knowledge to contribute to your nerducation.

Nerdy Books

This isn’t Nerd-Lit 101. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by telling you to read Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer, or Ringworld. You’re a nerd, right? You know better. You’ve read those already, along with at least twenty of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, and all five books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. (If you haven’t, don’t tell anyone, and fire up your Kindle – it’s gonna be a long night.) In this section, I’ll bring you books you maybe haven’t heard of yet, but should.

Let’s start with Ready Player One, by Earnest Cline: It’s the nearish future, 2044, and the world isn’t awesome. It’s overcrowded, fossil fuels are long gone, resources are scarce. People live in “the stacks” – towers made from putting one mobile home on top of another on top of another until they’ve become wobbly skyscrapers. This future has only one cool thing going for it: OASIS – a massively multiplayer online virtual reality. Everyone is part of it. There are whole worlds within it. Kids even go to school in it. And when its creator died a few years back, it was revealed that his fortune, as well as controlling ownership of OASIS, would go to the first person to find an Easter egg he had hidden in the game behind three gates, unlocked by hidden keys. The clues were in his will, his journal, and the common knowledge that he had been a big fan of 80’s culture.

Our hero, an orphan teen from the stacks named Wade Watts, finds his life changed when he figures out how to find the first key, within a simulation of a Dungeons and Dragons module from the 80’s called Tomb of Horrors, with a final boss battle from the video game Joust. Suddenly he’s a real player; he’s on the leader boards, and everyone knows his name. He has endorsement deals, so he can afford to go into places in the game previously unavailable to him as on his free gaming account. In the game, he’s the target of the gunters (egg hunters). Out of the game, he’s offered a huge bribe to help a corporation called IOI find the egg, and when he turns them down, the corporation blows up his WHOLE FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD. (They didn’t realize he wasn’t home.) So now he’s on the run, with only the help of a few friends he met in the game. His only way out is to win, navigating through numerous familiar fantasy worlds, sorting out clues that include anything from reenacting parts of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and War Games to songs from Schoolhouse Rock, and Cap’n Crunch cereal prizes.

I could tell you more, but where would the fun be in that? Read the book, already!

Nerdy Games

You know the drill. I know you have a deck of Magic: The Gathering cards kicking around, and you know about D&D. (Uh oh: I’ve mentioned D&D three times in one article. That means that the Hand of Vecna is going to attack me after dark.) You probably own Settlers of Catan, or at least have a friend that does. Maybe you even know about Fluxx. Well, bully for you – I’m going to talk about it anyway.

Fluxx is a card game by Looney Labs. There are several themed versions of the game, including Pirate Fluxx, Oz Fluxx, Cthulhu Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, and Monty Python Fluxx. (Hell, there’s even a Stoner Fluxx, but drugs are bad, mmmKay?) Each of the themed versions has cards specific to the theme, but the basic rules are the same: You deal out two cards to each player. On your turn you draw a card, and then play a card from your hand. That’s it. That’s all the Basic Rules card tells you.

“But Len Pal,” you might interject, “how do you win? How do you even know which card from your hand to play?” I was getting to that, Nerdy Clam. The cards become the rules. Well, some of them do. There are Goal cards that include various conditions to be met in order to win the game. For example, in the sci-fi themed Star Fluxx, a goal card entitled That’s No Moon requires you to have the Space Station and Small Moon cards in front of you. Or in Oz Fluxx, the goal card entitled No Place Like Home requires you to have Dorothy and Kansas in front of you. Make sense? Cool. But not all the cards are goals or Keepers like Dorothy and the Space Station. There are also New Rules cards that change the basic rules, so that on your turn you draw or play two, three, or more cards, or that set a limit on the number of cards you may have in your hand or keepers you may have played in front of you.

Then there are Actions cards that let you do fun things like steal another player’s keeper, trash a new rule, let all your opponents fall asleep in a field of poppies so that you take an extra turn, or trade hands with another player. There are Surprise! cards that you can play even if it is not your turn (provided that certain conditions are met). And finally, there are the Creepers. Creepers are like keepers, except that when you draw one, you must play it in front of you immediately, and draw a new card to replace it. Playing it doesn’t count as part of your turn. Unless the goal card says otherwise though, you can’t win if you have a creeper, so you need to get rid of it first.

The game works best with three to five players. You can play it with just two, but it’s not as fun. And I know from experience that a ten player game technically works, but can take so long that it’s just not worth it. When playing with four players, luck of the draw aside, an average game runs about fifteen to twenty minutes. We typically play five or six hands in one session (sometimes swapping from one deck to another if we get bored with Kansas and Flying Monkeys and want to try our luck with Innsmouth and Yog-Sothoth instead.

And good news, Nerdy Clams: The G33k store and Toodeloos! on Main Street in Gloucester both carry Fluxx.

Nerdy Music

Okay, I’m stumped. I can’t think of any nerd music to shame you about not already owning. Does Weird Al count as nerdy music? Not with a #1 album on the Billboard charts. Plus most of you are probably too young to remember nerdy artists like Tom Lehrer or Barnes and Barnes. So let’s get right to the good stuff: Nerdcore Hip Hop.

If you’re saying “Stuff like MC Chris, right?” well… I’m just going to say “Sure, kid” instead of telling you to fuck off. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. And sure, MC Chris is all right, despite being kind of a dick to other artists in his genre (to the point of even getting pissed when folks lump him into the nerdcore category, because he’s too cool for that). I like his music; I’ve even bought some of his merch. But no, I’m not talking about him. Maybe in some future installment of this column, if I feel he’s worth including when talking about the best of nerdcore.

Instead, let’s talk about the Godfather of Nerdcore Hip-Hop himself, MC Frontalot. Currently finishing up his sixth studio album, MC Frontalot is one of the founders of the entire genre (and who actually coined the term nerdcore hip-hop). Front has been dubbed the PAX rapper laureate, performing at every Penny Arcade Expo from 2004 to 2014. He even wrote the Penny Arcade Theme Song, which he performs differently at each PAX event.

But you didn’t come here for his resume. What’s this dude all about? I’ll tell you: he’s about pure, unadulterated nerdiness in all its glory. He raps about internet life: Message No. 419 is about Nigerian email scams, I Hate Your Blog is probably about this article, Zero Day is about a virus outbreak, and Pr0n Song is about, well, other stuff you can do on the Internet; about love: Goth Girls is about his lack of luck with girls dressing a certain way; about games: Final Boss is about video games, while Charisma Potion and Critical Hit liken his life to D&D, and Hassle: The Dorkening is about his experience playing Magic: The Gathering; and plenty of other nerdy goodness: I’ll Form the Head references the Japanese robot cartoons of my youth, Yellow Lasers describes an experience at a Star Wars convention, and Invasion of the Not Quite Dead is one of my all-time favorite songs about zombies. Oh, and let’s not forget Tongue-Clucking Grammarian and First World Problem – song concepts so good, Weird Al got a number one album on the billboard charts with them. (I’m not saying he stole Front’s ideas and ran with them. It was probably a perfectly innocent mistake.)

I can’t really sell you on a musician just by telling you titles of his songs though, so you’re going to have to take the next step yourself. Go onto YouTube and search for MC Frontalot. Scroll through the results and find some of the titles I mentioned above, and then some I haven’t. Once you realize how much you like his stuff, go to iTunes or wherever it is you kids buy the music these days, and buy his albums. (Nerdy rappers gotta eat.) In addition to the great music, the albums also include skits between songs, featuring folks like Wil Wheaton and Kristen Schaal.

Okay, that’s all I have for you today. I’ll be back again soon to talk about The Dresden Files, The Resistance, and Schäffer the Darklord. Until them, stay out of trouble, you Nerdy Clams.

It’s been a week since I last wrote about the saga of Market Basket – its long, bitter history of family rivalry, its unbelievable hijinks in the state court system, and how Arthur T Demoulas was unseated.

A lot has happened since I wrote those articles (and a heck of a lot of people read them). And, most surprisingly, a lot hasn’t happened on the Market Basket side of things.

As protests continued last week outside all 71 stores, everything seemed frozen in time. The new reality – no produce, a dwindling amount of fresh food and generic brand foods, and few shoppers – was setting in. Nothing was happening. Everybody went elsewhere for food, no one bothered to even see what was left at the Basket. The only fresh faces seemed to be the ones coming to experience what the fuss was about, the ones asking questions, and the ones explaining to their kids what worker strikes were and how they happened. The employees are sticking to their guns – and even upping the game. Cars with posters of Arthur T Demoulas’ face taped to them are driving all over Gloucester, eliciting honks and cheering. The bellwether dog statue at the corner of East Main and Bass Ave is now adorned with a Market Basket uniform and a pro-Artie T sign. In Danvers, dozens of young protesters on Monday braved fierce rainstorms to support their former CEO.

At the end of last week, the employees’ loyalty and their unorthodox revolt started to hit the national news. Heck, even Robert Reich is writing about the Basket now. This is huge. A non-union workforce walked off the job. They said “fuck it” to the very real threat of cuts in benefits and squeezing of the blue-collar workers, and the also very real threat of raised grocery prices – hitting those who rely on the chain’s low prices to make ends meet. Aside from the Occupy movement, which is obviously a pretty different scenario, this is the only time in any recent history a protest this massive has taken place against a corporation in the US – and it’s COMING ALMOST ENTIRELY FROM INSIDE THE CORPORATION.

The board met this last Friday after Arthur T Demoulas gave the board a buyout offer. But they made no major announcements aside from admitting they got the offer, and sticking with the “get back to work” refrain. This is how inept the board and management is – they’ve completely lost control of the company, they are positively hemorrhaging cash on a daily basis, and their only takeaway from a meeting is calmly asking employees to return to their jobs. Who is on this board, Spongebob Squarepants and a bunch of six year old kids?

Are they fucking HIGH? Do they not understand the depth of the problem facing them right now? This ship is sinking like a stone and they’re acting like it’s a slight delay in the maiden voyage to New York. No, motherfuckers, you hit a fucking iceberg, and you didn’t act in time. It’s been a month since Arthur T was fired and all you did was stay the course and hope that the employees would tire themselves out and return to work. I’ll mention again that one of the current CEOs is Jim Gooch, whose former leadership position was fucking RADIO SHACK. Turning this ship around and bailing water isn’t going to get easier with every nightfall.

Market Basket’s PR is abysmal. Known for being one of the few companies that entered 2014 WITHOUT A WEBSITE YES I AM SERIOUS THEY DON’T HAVE A GODDAMN WEBSITE, they are now playing catch-up. What, did they think the Internet was a fucking fad? Literally they survived for decades because some guy bought domain space and scanned the flyer every week. Their opposition – teenagers with twitter, tumblr, vine and facebook, mind you – beat them to the punch by weeks. Their side of the story was everywhere long before the board could even release a statement on why they fired Arthur T Demoulas. You snooze, you lose, or whatever the Urban Dictionary version of that saying is these days.

The acrimony between Market Basket and pretty much everybody else deepens with every passing day. Their supply chain of dairy, vegetables, meat, etc is now a full-scale disaster – those smaller companies who rely on Market Basket to buy their goods are struggling right now, and they are rightly pissed. Some of them may not survive if this board doesn’t get its head out of its ass and do SOMETHING.

But what is this ineffectual leadership going to do? Fucking fire everyone? Yeah, no. Disaster. Not even just in a logistics sense, but from a PR standpoint, it would be a headache to attempt to hire an entirely new work force for every store. Customers are protesting along with the workers, and the fallout from such a move would be drastic. It would take months for a new workforce to get up to speed, if they could even find enough people willing to work there. Do they think robotic minions grow on trees? Not since we told Monsanto to cut the crap with the robotic minion GMOs.

Is replacing the new CEO team not an option? Don’t look at me, I have tattoos, pink hair, live in relative poverty, and I’m writing a freakin’ blog. I’m not exactly in Harvard Business School here. But with these two dipweasels at the helm, it’s not going well for Market Basket. This shitstorm may not be entirely under their control, but they’re sitting there with stupid looks on their faces just letting it happen with no real solutions.

Should they sell? Their options are running out – any other offers on the table that aren’t related to Arthur T Basket are going to start to fade out once the potential buyer realizes the magnitude of the employee “problem” and how much it’s going to take to right the ship – it’s not a turnkey operation. It’s a mess. Another week or two of stalemate, and everything’s going to be in far worse shape and we can probably all pool our pennies together and buy it ourselves.

But half the board hates Arthur T Demoulas. Family values, y’all! Selling the company to him would be the ultimate burn for them. They’d be giving in and he’d be getting what he wanted. And these aren’t exactly the type of folks to put employees, customers, and their supply chain ahead of their own pride. But if the other option is supreme, utter, public failure, selling to Arthur T and taking the huge wad of cash isn’t that bad of an idea, now is it.

I think the Basket might be fucked if nothing happens soon, and that’s tragic. But this is capitalism, baby. If you’re ineffectual these days, you’ll be eaten alive. For decades, Market Basket was anything but ineffectual, but damn if the tide hasn’t turned. You hit the iceberg, now deal with it.

Customers, employees, suppliers and whole communities are looking for the lifeboats here. The board bitching with each other over ancient grudges can’t be the thing between them and survival.

The Winner of the 2014 Tournament of Shitty Parking Lots is… 7/11 Bass Ave!

The battle for shittiest parking lot’s final round between 7/11 and Destino’s ended up neck and neck. By the time voting ended arbitrarily five minutes ago, there were only 3 votes separating the two.

But 7/11 Bass Ave was victorious. Its particular type of bedlam is a horror show for people parking, driving by, or walking or cycling.

It deserves its certificate of shittiness. It should revel in its new distinction. A beam of light should descend upon those backing their R/Vs out into traffic without bothering to check if traffic is clear. A cacophony of horns shall forever be heard echoing through the trees.

Take this, 7/11, and display it proudly. You have conquered all other lots in town. You are the one Shittiest Lot. We salute you.