A long time ago — when these sorts of things were still a going concern commercially, if that dates it for you — I remember debating the "realism" of interactive fiction (at the time, "text adventures"). A key point in the discussion was the kleptocratic structure of the game. I wish I could remember this better. For example, I wish I remember who I was talking to. I do, however, remember the critical line, "no actual adult walks around with a bag full of that much crap". I was reminded of this by Paul Swartz describing the contents of his bag. A typical "adventurer" will have at least a dozen small trinkets, gewgaws and baubles on their person at any given time. These are critical work their way out of whatever jam they happen to be in at the moment. Memorably, sometimes they will also be carrying maple syrup, masking tape, other people's passports, and cat fur.
Granted, I don't have any syrup on me at the moment. I do have a few other bits of technological detritus on my person; more, I think than the average adventure-game protagonist. Now that I'm an actual adult, to win this at-least-a-decade-old argument with someone I can't even remember, I'm going to prove it — and you're going to help me do it!
Okay, okay. You came here to memeplex the blogosphere or whatever the kids are calling it these days, not to listen to me ramble about text adventures or my vindictive streak. So here's the idea. Get ready to head out of your house, office, or apartment — wherever you happen to be reading this post — and then take an inventory of your personal flotsam. Then, post it to your weblog in the style of an adventure game. In true Glyph style (i.e. more complicated than necessary), I used Imaginary to assist me with this task. In order to see the list below in all three of its glorious colors, you'll have to grab the code from launchpad as well as figure out how to set up its dependencies.
Without further ado, here it is:
Rather than the usual fixed number of additional participants, I'm going to say that you can tag one person for each container in your list. I've got 4 (wallet, messenger bag, keychain, microSD reader), so I will tag radix, tenth, exarkun, and washort.
You are carrying:
a digital watch
a bluetooth stereo headset
a grey messenger bag
the grey messenger bag contains:
a mobile phone
a black macbook
a macbook MagSafe(TM) power brick
a small orange microfiber cloth
a mini-DVI to VGA adapter
a beige graph-paper notebook
a 4' USB mini-B to A cable
a wallet
the wallet contains:
a borders rewards card
a boloco frequent burrito-er card
a $35 in cash
a CharlieCard (TM)
a Massachusetts driver's license
a fortune from a fortune cookie
a keychain
the keychain contains:
a samsung MicroSD-HC reader
the samsung MicroSD-HC reader contains:
a 1GB MicroSD card
a RFID building key
an apartment key
a car key
a mailbox key
an office outer door key
an office inner door key
a shaw's rewards card
You get bonus points for generating the list using a program, double-bonus points for using Imaginary and quadruple-bucky-points for resolving an Imaginary ticket while you're at it. This goes for everyone tagged by this meme, not just my tag-ees.
If the resulting score increase causes you to gain a level, I will notify you by e-mail.
(Apologies for the repeated edits.
Blogger seems to have a problem with <pre> tags
HTML everything.)