Posted in My Geeky Life
I Am A Geek: A Tale of Redundancy
You know how you know your a geek? When you see an article online about a star going super nova and possibly allowing our skyline to have two suns in the year 2012. This then sends me scurrying all over the internet looking for other research confirming the science and ultimately causing me to burst into giggles in the hope it might actually happen.
By the way I can hear all the Mayan Apocalypse people dancing with glee. Calm your asses down. No room for conspiracies with good science. The sooner you realize the Mayans were assuming they would have time to update their calendar later, the better off you will be. I mean seriously, we all know the robot apocalypse is going to finish us. That Mayan thing is just silly.
Growing up I always knew I thought slightly out of the norm but it wasn’t really anything you advertised. I read my science fiction and fantasy books. Saw Star Wars a trillion times. Kept my boxes and boxes of comics. Programed my Vic-20. All without letting the outside world in on my secret. I had a few close friends who knew but we preferred to not give anyone else a reason to pick on us (they already had plenty).
It changed for me about 8th grade. Not because it was suddenly “in” to be geek. More because I simply didn’t give a fuck anymore. It was too much work trying to fit in and I was failing at it miserably anyway. It was at that time I let my geek flag fly and I have never put it away since.
I still have thousands of comics. I still read science fiction and fantasy (and even write it now). My wife and I are currently re-watching Buffy, The X-files, and The Twilight Zone. I go to conventions. I get all green with envy at some of my Twitter friends costume parties. Truthfully, I may be even more of a geek now. I have improved and refined my geek to almost an expert level (I used to think I was an expert but then Twitter came along and introduced me to some new people. I quickly realized true mastery when I saw it).
I like that the geek culture is being embraced. I love that I have students who consider themselves geeks and announce it with authority. I find it kind of amusing that my friends and I were considered weird playing arcade and video games. Now video games are a huge part of our culture and generate billions of dollars in the entertainment industry.
Growing up people were surprised when Star Wars and Superman were a hit. Now it seems like there is a comic book or science fiction movie coming out every month. Actors and actresses are lining up trying to score that part which leads to a giant franchise. There is a lot of money to be made pandering to us geeks.
I always knew I was a geek. I mean I was writing my own role playing games when I was 10 because I couldn’t afford Dungeons and Dragons. Now I revel in it. In fact I think I need to stop writing this blog. I have a fantasy story to write and I am about 200 comics behind on my reading. I simply do not have enough time in the day to do all the geeky things I want. I really need to find someone to start paying me for my flights of fantasy. That would be geek nirvana.
>I just saw a wife swap episode the other day where this whole family based their lives on the fact the world was ending in 2012. Check it out online its ridiculous. I figure, they had to end their calendar at some point. 2012 was SOOO far away, they had gone beyond reasonable effort…they could just continue it later on. If I were making a calendar NOW I probably wouldn’t go farther than 2012 and that's next year lol.