MaxedOutMama
Sunday, December 19, 2004
47% Geek
Okay, I joined the dominant culture, although I'm not ever going so far as to watch a reality show. Instead, I took the online Geek quiz, my first online quiz ever, which can be found at the Mad Tech's. Officially I am a Geek liaison, like the Mad Tech. But at 47% Geek I'm close, very close, to drifting over the boundary.
Does this surprise you? Come on - this is a very nerdy blog. If you have read more than one or two entries you are pretty geeky and nerdish too. If you make it to the end of this one, the mighty community of geeks and nerds welcomes you with open arms. Wanna contribute to some open-source software? There is nothing we geeks love more than free, clever stuff that actually works and is completely available for tinkering.
The only reason I took the quiz was because of the staggeringly funny and truly geek-like nature of the translation exercise listed in the Mad Tech's blog (Geek translator is suggested as a career choice for Geek liaisons):
Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.
You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!
Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!
You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.
You have to have some geek in you to realize just how deadly accurate the Trek thing is. A huge percentage of programmers are fans of the original Trek series. It's the ultimate geek show, the Rocky Horror Picture Show of an entire generation of geeks. It so epitomizes geekdom that if a current generation geek ever sees the show he or she also descends into a Geekish enthralled trance. When the victim eventually wakes up, he or she owns five or six Enterprise models, all the DVD's of the original series, and has spent some serious time considering the probable biochemistry of silicon-based life forms. In serious cases, the victim has also begun buying the novels. Some have also learned to play 3-D chess. You get bonus points if you learn any Klingon or Vulcan.
The heroes are the Ueber-Geek Spock, and Kirk, who is a nerd who studied hard and learned to pass as "normal" in order to get laid - but his two real long-term relationships are with the Ueber-Geek Spock (with whom he plays 3-D chess) and the ship. Every once in a while, usually in emergencies, Kirk breaks character and starts talking about really nerdy theoretical things like emergency coldstarts for the engines, thus proving he reads engineering journals for entertainment. Kirk has also studied a lot of history, because he wants to make sure society never repeats the mistakes it made before the nerds and the geeks took over. We understand Kirk's passions, because we too worship the rationality and sheer thrilling brain-power of the Geek God Spock (Adonis gets overthrown in the series - none of that sappy mythical stuff for us rational Geeks) and the beauty of the (say it in a reverently hushed voice) ship.
The ship is everything, because it is the vehicle conveying us to ever more fascinating Geekish discoveries. The Chief Engineer is in love with the ship's engines - he is the engineering Geek. So you have the Captain Nerd, the Science Geek, and the Engineer Geek. It's great stuff - an entire Geek society, which is a totally different thing than a Greek fraternity. The only normal guy is Doctor McCoy, who spends the entire voyage screaming in hysterics as the Geeks push the limits, but no one ever listens to him.
Now, non-Geeks who watch the show think Kirk is a ladies' man. Nothing can be further than the truth. This is a guy who, when he finds himself on an amusement park planet that automatically manufactures all your fantasies, has only one real fantasy - to beat up the Cadet who harassed him at Starfleet Academy. Kirk has a great time doing it. We have a great time watching him do it - we were always the ones harassed by those stupid punks in high school who were provoked by our grades and studying habits. Spock stands by watching approvingly, although he manages to get a word or two in about the illogic of the exercise. Later on we find out Spock too was harassed when he was a child. Harassment as an adolescent is the definitive formative experience of your average Geek.
And the Geeks beat the universe of bad guys! Bloodsucking clouds, evil aliens, Romulans, bureaucrats, laws of physics and aspiring gods and dictators all succumb to the power of the emancipated Geek-ship captained by the triumphant Nerd. And this is very realistic, because Geeks and Nerds really run 21st century society, although the French are trying to escape our dominion by fighting back with "cool" things like fashion, wine and cheese.
They are doomed, just as the Klingons were. Your geek has a formulaic wardrobe, eats only Swiss cheese, drinks water directly from the tap, and sucks down anything alcoholic handed to him or her without worrying too much about labels. The French think they're cool - we Geeks know they're irrelevant. If the non-Geeks ever start trying to be seriously competitive, we just draw straws and one of us writes something like The End Of History, thus sending the non-Geeks spiraling into a black hole of incredibly seductive stupidity for another decade while we get on with building our Linux-based society, in which information is free and Google will digitize all the libraries for us, so we can get our geeky fix free at our computers.
It's a wonderful thing - and the best part is the French have to pay for all this by desperately advertising their ridiculous wines on Google to avoid the rioting wine-makers. They're going to lose the battle, as we Geeks know from the sad cases of Jean-Luc Picard, a space-going refugee from a French wine-making family. Star Trek was the opening salvo of the new Geek world. It's a wonderful place, although we all want to get off the planet as quickly as we can. Somewhere out there Cochrane is waiting with an even better warp drive, which will get us out there even faster! With better special effects! We can't wait to boldly go, although we need the non-geeks to contribute some tax dollars to the effort. Not that they'll ever figure it out. They can't add, much less do percentages.
I now return you to your reality programming. Think about it.
Does this surprise you? Come on - this is a very nerdy blog. If you have read more than one or two entries you are pretty geeky and nerdish too. If you make it to the end of this one, the mighty community of geeks and nerds welcomes you with open arms. Wanna contribute to some open-source software? There is nothing we geeks love more than free, clever stuff that actually works and is completely available for tinkering.
The only reason I took the quiz was because of the staggeringly funny and truly geek-like nature of the translation exercise listed in the Mad Tech's blog (Geek translator is suggested as a career choice for Geek liaisons):
Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.
You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!
Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!
You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.
You have to have some geek in you to realize just how deadly accurate the Trek thing is. A huge percentage of programmers are fans of the original Trek series. It's the ultimate geek show, the Rocky Horror Picture Show of an entire generation of geeks. It so epitomizes geekdom that if a current generation geek ever sees the show he or she also descends into a Geekish enthralled trance. When the victim eventually wakes up, he or she owns five or six Enterprise models, all the DVD's of the original series, and has spent some serious time considering the probable biochemistry of silicon-based life forms. In serious cases, the victim has also begun buying the novels. Some have also learned to play 3-D chess. You get bonus points if you learn any Klingon or Vulcan.
The heroes are the Ueber-Geek Spock, and Kirk, who is a nerd who studied hard and learned to pass as "normal" in order to get laid - but his two real long-term relationships are with the Ueber-Geek Spock (with whom he plays 3-D chess) and the ship. Every once in a while, usually in emergencies, Kirk breaks character and starts talking about really nerdy theoretical things like emergency coldstarts for the engines, thus proving he reads engineering journals for entertainment. Kirk has also studied a lot of history, because he wants to make sure society never repeats the mistakes it made before the nerds and the geeks took over. We understand Kirk's passions, because we too worship the rationality and sheer thrilling brain-power of the Geek God Spock (Adonis gets overthrown in the series - none of that sappy mythical stuff for us rational Geeks) and the beauty of the (say it in a reverently hushed voice) ship.
The ship is everything, because it is the vehicle conveying us to ever more fascinating Geekish discoveries. The Chief Engineer is in love with the ship's engines - he is the engineering Geek. So you have the Captain Nerd, the Science Geek, and the Engineer Geek. It's great stuff - an entire Geek society, which is a totally different thing than a Greek fraternity. The only normal guy is Doctor McCoy, who spends the entire voyage screaming in hysterics as the Geeks push the limits, but no one ever listens to him.
Now, non-Geeks who watch the show think Kirk is a ladies' man. Nothing can be further than the truth. This is a guy who, when he finds himself on an amusement park planet that automatically manufactures all your fantasies, has only one real fantasy - to beat up the Cadet who harassed him at Starfleet Academy. Kirk has a great time doing it. We have a great time watching him do it - we were always the ones harassed by those stupid punks in high school who were provoked by our grades and studying habits. Spock stands by watching approvingly, although he manages to get a word or two in about the illogic of the exercise. Later on we find out Spock too was harassed when he was a child. Harassment as an adolescent is the definitive formative experience of your average Geek.
And the Geeks beat the universe of bad guys! Bloodsucking clouds, evil aliens, Romulans, bureaucrats, laws of physics and aspiring gods and dictators all succumb to the power of the emancipated Geek-ship captained by the triumphant Nerd. And this is very realistic, because Geeks and Nerds really run 21st century society, although the French are trying to escape our dominion by fighting back with "cool" things like fashion, wine and cheese.
They are doomed, just as the Klingons were. Your geek has a formulaic wardrobe, eats only Swiss cheese, drinks water directly from the tap, and sucks down anything alcoholic handed to him or her without worrying too much about labels. The French think they're cool - we Geeks know they're irrelevant. If the non-Geeks ever start trying to be seriously competitive, we just draw straws and one of us writes something like The End Of History, thus sending the non-Geeks spiraling into a black hole of incredibly seductive stupidity for another decade while we get on with building our Linux-based society, in which information is free and Google will digitize all the libraries for us, so we can get our geeky fix free at our computers.
It's a wonderful thing - and the best part is the French have to pay for all this by desperately advertising their ridiculous wines on Google to avoid the rioting wine-makers. They're going to lose the battle, as we Geeks know from the sad cases of Jean-Luc Picard, a space-going refugee from a French wine-making family. Star Trek was the opening salvo of the new Geek world. It's a wonderful place, although we all want to get off the planet as quickly as we can. Somewhere out there Cochrane is waiting with an even better warp drive, which will get us out there even faster! With better special effects! We can't wait to boldly go, although we need the non-geeks to contribute some tax dollars to the effort. Not that they'll ever figure it out. They can't add, much less do percentages.
I now return you to your reality programming. Think about it.
Comments:
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Well, I'm only 27% geek. It's a relief, I guess.
By the way, I'm getting worried about you. You know far more about Star Trek than anyone with a life should know!
Have to go. I'm searching the apartment to make sure I don't have any superglue left anywhere....
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By the way, I'm getting worried about you. You know far more about Star Trek than anyone with a life should know!
Have to go. I'm searching the apartment to make sure I don't have any superglue left anywhere....
<< Home
