http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=46536

Due to the general approval of Chapter 1, and several requests for this post to be written, I give you chapter 2 of Life At The Monastery. This time however, I used a Pan-Dimensional Accelerator (PDA) to peek in at mirror universes.::Sudden jarring chord on the organ:: Oh my friends, what I saw there was very frightening. What I saw should not be seen by others. God, it was like a really bad episode of Sliders or Quantum Leap I visited many many universes, and got a lot of grey hair that I didn't have before, but I need to tell you about the other frighterning iterations of the Monastery. Believe me! This IS the best possible world! Whenever you get cranky at life or get downvoted for no apparent reason, remember: the other worlds are MUCH worse!

Monkazon.com
A clearinghouse for millions of the Camel books. It has recently fallen into disarray because of financial troubles, and after CEO Tim Vroomos was accused of the unsavory practice of selling monks posting and voting habits.

Perlmonkfriendly.org
The monks are employees of the IPERL ISP, headed by CEO Vroom. Merlyn speaks with a Russian accent, and spends a lot of his time cracking into things that annoy him such as AOL, Microsoft, and spammers. Lemming is a small furball with feet that walks around and can best everyone at Quake. No one is quite sure what he is and how he speaks. Princepawn works in the marketing department, usually misses the point of most of the banter from the rest of the geeky employees. Periodically Lemming will sing a song with musical accompaniment by the on-site AI, Erudil.

Slashmonk.org
Everything that makes it onto the front page is beset by thousands of trolls who reply to it with "FIRST POST!" A decent place to go for discussion in the Perl world, however posting is severely moderated. Also, sometimes the code posted doesn't work, and the news stories are "exaggerated."

Monkbay.com
The monks put posts, programs, and modules on the auction block and bid Experience Points for them. When you go up in level, you get a different color star, but no new powers. Sometimes monks are untrustworthy and sell bad code or refuse to pay the agreed XP. Rules have been put in place to minimize this however.

The Rocky Horror Perlmonk Show
Undoubtedly the most frightening alternate world I came to. I cannot even begin to talk about what I saw here. It has scarred me for life. Vroom lives in a castle deep in the woods, and the monks (all gender ambiguous; wearing suits, glasses and wigs) dance a simple but infinitly recursive dance with a pretty cool tune. Instead of the usual spots in the Monastery, there are places like "The Lab" and "The Performing Stage" Recent rumors indicate that chromatic was seen wandering the lab wearing nothing but a golden speedo, while FouRPlaY was working on "a weapon that fires a beam of pure antimatter."

Perlmunks.org
Also pretty scary. The entire site was UK-centric. 90% of the monks assumed that everyone else lived in Great Britain. They kept mispelling the word "Color" and sometimes in the poetry section the rhyming scheme would be off because of the word "Aluminium". People would complain, but nobody seemed to care.

I am so glad that I was able to get back into the original universe. Trust me, like I said each one of those worlds was frightening to even imagine, much less actually exist in. Sometimes when I found my counterpart, I actually cried to see how bad off he was. Be glad you live in this monastery! Be glad that the site is assembled as it is! Rejoice that your brethren are just a little loony and not outright mad! We've got it good here!

~W (Note: Caps errors have been fixed. :-)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(jeffa) Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by jeffa (Bishop) on Dec 15, 2000 at 01:55 UTC
    The Rocky Horror Perlmonk Show
    I'll be waiting in antici . . . .

      Say it! Say it!

              - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
        Pation!

      It's just a jump to the left and then a step to the riiiiiight

      You know when you have had too much coffee ;)

      BTW, anyone out there remember or can look up the 'spice' chant used by the navigators in dune?

        I think you're thinking of the Mentat chant.

        It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed. The lips acquire stain. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
        Another handy quote from Dune:
        I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
        Hmmm... I wrote a C++ template class for a binary tree a few years ago, all the way through it are quotes from Timewarp.

        It just seemed so appropriate! I can't be the only one who's done that...

Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by marius (Hermit) on Dec 14, 2000 at 04:59 UTC
    wombat, that was a great way to end my day. Thanks for throwing some laughter into it =] I'm also jealous, because I wish I had the time to come up with that stuff! =]

    -marius
Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by FouRPlaY (Monk) on Dec 14, 2000 at 05:01 UTC
    That was another great job, but I think chromatic and I are going to flame you for a poor job with capitals... =)

    Although, I am glad to have made it in! You like me! You really like me!



    FouRPlaY
    Learning Perl or Going To die() Trying
      I look at it this way -- it's obviously an imitator.

      The Speedo is a device invented to keep hirsute, fleshy European men satisfied with sharing their physical attributes with the world while still maintaining a sense of decorum.

      I'm more comfortable in a *real* monastery. *shudder*

      Amen to the capitilazation thing...FIRST POST!

      redmist
      Silicon Cowboy
Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by mrmick (Curate) on Dec 14, 2000 at 19:50 UTC
    Wonderful!!

    Mandatory grin for this one. :-)

    I just can't help myself here. The following has always been a pet peeve of mine and hopefully won't offend anyone in this thread: I wish you Americans would learn to spell the English language correctly. Colour , humour, honour and many others are ENGLISH words. If you leave these words alone we'll give you credit for statements such as:

    • "like"
    • "you know"
    • most of the swear words (although there are one or two that I like)
    All in good humour,

    Mick

      The way I understand it, the Americans spellings were the ones that were current in the 17th Century. It was only after they left that we changed the spellings due to the influence of the Hugenots.

      Doesn't make them any more right, of course :)

      Oh and, of course, most of the really good swear words are almost unchanged since they were used by the Anglo-Saxons.

      --
      <http://www.dave.org.uk>

      "Perl makes the fun jobs fun
      and the boring jobs bearable" - me

Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by $code or die (Deacon) on Dec 14, 2000 at 05:49 UTC
    By far, the two best posts of the week are by wombat.

    Still waiting for my mention though :)

    FIRST POST! FIRST POST! FIRST POST! (I'm a slashmonk refugee)
(jeffa) Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by jeffa (Bishop) on Dec 15, 2000 at 01:56 UTC
    . . .pation!

    Jeff

    L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
    -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
    F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
    (the triplet paradiddle)
    
Re: Life at the Monastery Chapter 2
by Caillte (Friar) on Dec 14, 2000 at 23:17 UTC

    Ick! I've run out of votes!

    ++ coming tomorrow ;)

    Update: ++ plusplussed ;)