Yesterday, I was in the Zoo with my girlfriend, which is around 5 minutes on bike, from where I live. Good stuff. Naturally, I was looking forward to seeing my gnu-brothers, especially now that I live so close to them, and got myself a seasonal card. However, it turned out that the trip ended in sadness. Upon entering the Zoo, we noticed that the dear wildebeests wasn’t on the overview map, but discarded the thought, as not every animal was on there anyway. Sadly, the fear was confirmed – there wasn’t any wildebeests to be found, and they weren’t hiding.

So, in my disappointment, I wrote a mail to the Zoo later in the evening. I figured it might be good to keep it in a natural tone, as the @gnueless.com-part might give the false illusion that I was trolling. I translated it to English for your reading pleasure:

Hi Zoo,

I had a trip to the Zoo yesterday, and was as always looking forward to seeing the wildebeests again. Sadly, it looked like they’d been removed, and isn’t anywhere to be found in the park anymore. What’s the reason for that, and is it temporary or permanent?

Kind regards,
Emil Erik Hansen

This morning, I got a reply back, which itself it somehow a miracle, but I was somehow shocked at the contains of it. Again, translated to English.

There was sadly a bit too much trouble with the wildebeests – so Zoo have been forced to sending them away – they’re at the Palmur Zoo in France.

The thought is to get water bucks instead – they are a little delayed and probably won’t be here until the fall.

Kindly,
[name]

Disregarding the fact that nothing can ever replace wildebeests, it seems like they were causing trouble. There’s no real details as to why, but my immediate thought was that they got into one little fight, and their handlers got scared, and said “You’re moving in with your auntie and uncle and in Palmur”.

The occasion of these that brought me out of my cave, and made me do this post, was from everyones stable source of the savior of strange vocabularies: Urban Dictionary (cheers for the laugh, Julian), which reads:

gnub
Same as nub, but, the G letter is actualy a 1337 typo wich originaly was: fucking nub, but the spacebar was pressed a bit too early and it ended up: fuckin gnub. Since “fuckin” is a legit 1337 way to spell fucking many people mistake gnub for a totaly new word.
So in short – gnub = fucking nub

And yes, I’m stronly considering getting the T-shirt. It’s simply too awesome, and a great case of self-irony, that already should be showing from the domain name.

Besides that, I went and looked up “Nub” on Wikipedia (something I havn’t done yet, strangely enough), and found more funky meanings of the word:

Nub or NUB may refer to:

1. A variation of newbie, noob and nubby.
2. King Nub, character from the Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine video game.
3. ISO 639-2 code for the Nobiin language of Nubia.
4. Northern University, Bangladesh.
5. Nub, third track off of Goat (album) by Jesus Lizard.
6. Nub City, nickname given to Vernon, Florida by film director Errol Morris.

#1 is obvious, as it was meant as the origin, so that one didn’t catch me by surprise.
#2 “Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!”
#3 While the ISO 639-2 code is always useful, I found it more noticeable that there’s a whole language in “my” name, and seemingly a region of Egypt too. Pure awesome.
#4 Well, it was bound to happen. Some cleverness still lies behind the Nub.
#5 While it’s a piece of music, it’s a fact that a goat resembles a gnu somewhat. Slightly smaller, but never the less similar.
#6 Somewhat in the same category as #3, but still quite nice.

All in all, I’ll still wear my name as my badge, and code of honor.

It all began back in the days of Diablo II, which I – being a big fan of the prequel – had looked much forward too. I chose my first real Battle.Net-based character as a Paladin, and started the long quest towards glory, fame and level 99. After killing, Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, Baal and hordes of lumbering hell bovines, it happened, and other characters was made. Ofcourse, the paladin, being my only level 99 (with a close runner-up in form of a druid as level 95), kept being the favorite as he could solo anything in the game, without breaking a sweat. Good times, which more or less lasted till the time World of Warcraft got out.

Now, without going too much into nostalgia and off the topic, the name of the paladin was the interesting part. I had a small problem coming up with a good name, and for some reason I ended up looking at pictures at a danish website called Gnuland, which I at the current time had enjoyed alot due to the humor it used (this was before my fascination of the gnus started, but it might as well have been the silent catalyst, that eventually surfaced later). I ended up liking the name of a handdrawn gnu called “Gnuliath“, mostly because the pun was awesome, but also because the Goliath-part seemed fitting enough for a paladin. It also sounded nice and unique.

When World of Warcraft got out, and I – unexpectedly – got invited into the later phases of the closed beta, I naturally rolled a paladin with the name of Gnuliath. I liked the class, but only had time to reach the 40′ies before the closed beta ended, and the open started, where I looked at some other classes, with different random nicknames. At release, I rolled Gnuliath once again as my main character, and got him to 60. Originally I had planned that he should’ve been Protection-specced, as it was the way I had always looked at my D2-paladin. He ended up being a healbot though, which I – at that time – enjoyed alot. I still got to enjoy the hardiness of the paladin when I sometimes ventured to Warsong Gulch with my guildies, where I kept the flagcarrier going, while enjoying the pitiful attempts of different classes trying to kill me.

Burning Crusade arrived, and when I found out the Draenei race seemed to have that certain unique look I had looked for, besides the hilarious option of being able to look like a gnu (the horns are perfect, they’re goofy, and they have hooves), I was sold. Naturally, I still digged the paladin class, so my initial though was to reroll as a paladin, but dismissed the though after some time, it was a bit too silly. The shaman class however, did seem appealing, and I loved the thought of being able to throw lightning left and right (my fascination for that had been going for quite some time too, so that helped me choose too). Besides, I was still a hybrid, and could heal if problems arose.

Then naturally, the problem with naming-problem started again. I decided that I’d stick with the Gnu-part, while – in the hopes of being lucky with something cool – being able to add the magic b, that had become a part of it during too many hours of raiding. People were naturally too lazy to call me Gnuliath, so it became Gnu. Common for many, it’s often funny to call each other newbies, and as a result, nub. The connection there was easy: Gnub. It only made it better that the g is numb.

Anyway, after looking around for some good ideas, I ended up with finding the latin word nubigena, which means born of a cloud. I found it fitting in many ways; it fitted the Draenei race, as they “crashed” on Azeroth and lightning comes from the clouds. Since I was going to be elemental, it seemed perfect. Plus, people could keep calling me Gnub, which made everything easier. And thus, it stayed, and I probably don’t intend on changing it again.

I also just found out a pretty random thing. There’s appearantly a kind of plant called “Castilleja nubigena”, which only grows in Ecuador. Keeping the fact in mind that my girlfriend loves the place and has been there for quite a lengthy bit of her life, I found it to be a quite fun fact. It’s a small world.

Had my first day at work at Build-A-Bear Workshop today, and like expected, I found it extremely likeable and fun. Atmosphere, awesome. Bringing smiles to everyone, awesome. Being paid for having a great time, awesome. You get the idea.

I realized quickly that it’s far from just kids that come to the workshop too, filled quite a few bears for some over 25, and an amazingly large number of outlanders too. The most fun part is that, even though it shouldn’t be expected that they’d play along – they did. Everyone. It often resulted in both myself and them laughing, but that’s to be expected. The reason that the whole concept got to be such a great success is far from beyond my understanding anymore. What could feel better than bringing joy to other people, without having to tell them that they won the first price in the lottery? Atleast I can, by this short post, conclude that it’s a place I’m surely going to stay and enjoy working in for lots of time to come.

Now, all that remains is my plan to get a gnu-bear in the works. If there’s already a pony, a turtle, a triceratops (!) and even a elk… surely a gnu can’t come in bad? I know Disney’s “Lion King” ruined it all by making them the bad guys (or well, somehow, “Don’t blame the messenger”-style). The fun thing is that I actually – around a year ago – did in fact send in suggestion to the management of Build-A-Bear Workshop (Denmark, that is), although it seemingly didn’t have much success. Maybe the odds have grown now that I’m on the inside, time will tell.