Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog



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Fark Garlicster Metafilter Plastic The Register SciFi Daily Sexblogs Slashdot Space.com The Smoking Gun Zeropaid [ CARTOONS ] Corrigan Children of the Atom Fiona Smyth Maakies MacKay MNFTIU.cc Secret Lair Smell of Steve [ VARIETY HOUR ] B3TA Hoogerbrugge Milk & Cookies Mumbleboy Onion Rathergood XE [ RERUNS ] [ 2005 ] JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST [ 2004 ] MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER [ 2002 ] [ 2003 ]	Friday, April 22, 2005 World of Troll Boy [left] The lair of Troll Boy is to the far left of the photo. [right] Medlab confronts the Happy Creature (playing Rygar). Ok, here's an oldie. Christie posted a link to this great gamesroom and it made me nostalgic for those classic 80s gamesroom and reminded me of this story I posted back in 2002 ... In my fourth year at York, I managed the Crawlspace video arcade in the basement of Vanier College. That Easter, when I returned to Vanier Residence after being home for the holiday, I found a note slid under my door by one of the girls who worked for me. It read something like: Brett, Security came by and were trying to catch the man who lives in the opening in the wall. So I stood there and read the note a couple of times and tried to figure out, "What the hell does that mean?" I'm going to mention my res room at this point, since I was standing in it. One of my friends had a futon and didn't want the bed in her room, so I took it and stuck it in my room with my own bed. The two beds pretty much filled the whole room, and created a "BED" room, complete with a VCR for movies, an old Atari 2600 for games and an 8th floor view facing south. I loved that room ... even though everyone I knew tried to borrow it to have sex. Back to the story: I took the note and went upstairs and asked the girl about it and she explained that there was a small panel in the wall by one of the pinball machines. When the panel opened, it lead to a small tunnel that led down to a basement maintenance room. The "man" was camping in the tiny tunnel. I went back downstairs, told my friends the story and they immediately named him Troll Boy. I later learned Troll Boy's real name, but out of respect for his privacy, I'm just going to refer to him as Troll Boy for the rest of this post. A few days later I got in contact with campus security and they confirmed that Troll Boy was living in the tunnel behind the panel beside the pinball machine in the arcade and they were eager to nab him. They hadn't disturbed his nest because they wanted to stake out the location. They suspected that he had possession of a huge set of 'Master Keys', great, big rings with hundreds of gold keys that gave the maintenance guys from Physical Plant access to most of the university (including many of the buildings via the underground tunnel network). I'd heard a rumour the year before that a set had gone missing and that someone was entering the basement of our residence, but it was a rumour. I hung out with a pair of security officers in the Crawlspace one night while they were on their stake out. They speculated that Troll Boy emerged from the panel, crawled up on the attendent's desk, up into the ceiling and over the wall, and dropped down into the hallway. That explained why the ceiling tiles were always messed up and why there were footprints on the desk all the time. The security officers described the tunnel and Troll Boy's nest (which was just a sleeping bag and a few other knick knacks). The tunnel Troll Boy was living in was not part of the main York U tunnel system. At York, there is an off-limits system of maintenance tunnels that connect all the buildings on campus. York students explore these tunnels on a regular basis; usually at night after several drinks. One York legend is that, if you get caught in the tunnels you're automatically kicked out of York. I never heard of that actually happening. In the late 1960s, when the school first opened, a shortage of residence spots caused a group of students to take up residence in the tunnels and they became known as the 'Tunnel Rats'. One of my friends had two favourite tunnels discoveries: one time he and some friends discovered a pentagram spray-painted on the floor of a section of one tunnel with melted candles on each point. Another time they stumbled across what he described as a 'bottomless pit'. You can see the tunnels (the the little cart the Physical Plant guys drive around on) in the 1986 movie, After the Food of the Gods, which was shot on location at York. Good luck finding that stinker! Back to our story: the security officers explained that there were several regular tunnel dwellers -- some harmless, but a few who were a bit scary. The security woman described a few of the tunnel dwellers to me, but my memory is fuzzy and the only thing I vaguely remember was one woman or man who 'wailed' through the tunnels. Security would charge these people with trespassing and escort them off campus, but they usually came back. Troll Boy was well known to them and they had picked him up several times. They said that when caught, Troll Boy would always start crying. Apparently, he'd been a student in the mid-1970s and had never left. Security failed to nab Troll Boy that night and I had to know more. A few days later I was talking to the College Master and asked her if she knew about Troll Boy. She did -- she was in the Faculty of Education and Troll Boy applied every year. He'd applied that year! She also described what he looked like and said that he worked at the university bookstore. Now, I know what you're wondering: if everybody knew who Troll Boy was, why the big stake out? The Master Keys were the issue; security's goal was to catch him while he had the set with him. The fact that he worked at the bookstore surprised me, but his description was even more shocking: I knew who Troll Boy was. When I was in second year, I edited the Vanier College student newspaper, the Vandoo. The newspaper office was in the basement of the college and I spent many all-nighters putting the paper together there. Sometimes, late at night (4-5am) I'd leave the office to get a Coke from the pop machine and I'd see this man who looked sort of like a little neanderthal man wearing thick glasses with big, brown-plastic frames. He was short and wiry and had brown, unwashed hair in a bowl cut. While on the stake out with security, I had discovered what he was doing. There was an old, unused locker room with showers just down from the newspaper office. It was never locked, so anyone could use it. Troll Boy kept most of his personal belongings in a locker there and used the showers. So that was it. A week or two later I had to buy a book at the bookstore and saw Troll Boy working the cash. I went to his cash and paid him, feeling like I'd met a living legend. 12:23 AM , # , \|