Upon the Burning of our House

Recently, I read a very interesting article on the Woot.com blog. The inciting incident: because there is some nominal cultural cachet associated with the 'geek' identity, more and more people who wouldn't have claimed it before are doing so now. The message from the author: Cut it out. The sentiment resonates with me in low and sturdy places, and I'm uncomfortable with how much I want to chastise anyone who disagrees.

To begin with, I reject the fundamental idea that geek is cool. It's no more fashionable now than ten years ago to be, say, a person who debates dubs vs. subs in the middle of a Paranoia game on Usenet, all while cosplaying unpopular Star Trek characters in a barely lit basement apartment. It's acceptable to play Call of Duty, watch Battlestar Galactica, or have played D&D in high school. But these are all more things that intersect with nerd culture, if such a thing exists.

Here's the thing: before the modern era of about five years ago, there was not a "nerd culture". Nerds from different spheres often don't get along with each other, or consider others too below them. Consider the classical text, courtesy of the Brunching Shuttlecocks:

Uncomfortable, but true. The Venn diagram of geek is a near-infinite number of spheres, barely intersecting. This loose confederation is united by the accumulated derision of a lifetime of unpopular choices. Some are hardened by it, some are damaged, some take it as a call to rise above, and some barely notice it, but it changes their perceptions. In a world where their pursuits had mainstream acceptance, there wouldn't be a common ground between a Warhammer 40K player and a furry MUD user. Geek culture without rejection isn't a culture.

But is that a bad thing? This is where my argument falls into hesitant hand wringing, because I'm not even a little sure. I can't try to extrapolate who I'd be if geek had been cool when I was small, and the me that would be produced by that experiment would probably have a different outlook anyway. Geek culture would be more like a series of tribes than the current loose alliance bound by a T-shirt-based hanky code. What is the opportunity cost of unpopularity, measured in wedgies?

I know I lack the objectivity necessary to confidently answer to that question. The thought that my culture is being infiltrated by carpetbaggers leaves me queasy. Some actor claims in an interview to be a "huge nerd" because they play Modern Warfare with their friends, and it feels to me like they're wearing some kind of blackface. Our culture, as it is, exists as a shelter against these people, and now they're co-opting it.

The phenomenon fills me with odium, but I don't know if it's a fair response. A lot of hipsters are at the front of this wave, but a decent proportion of them have authentic claims to citizenship in Geek Israel. Maybe it's like gay people coming out of the closet in the 80's and 90's: now that the water's a bit warmer, everyone's willing to take a dip. See, this paragraph is pure rhetoric: I put a positive counterpoint at the end of a series of negative sentiments, trying to make myself appear hopeful. But I'm not. I dislike people taking advantage of the only culture I've ever been able to call my own, and I want them to get the fuck away.

Seriously?

I don't know whether to feel contempt or pity for the bastard who had to write this copy. Mother's Day is a Hallmark holiday devoted to awkwardly celebrating Mom with brunch and a card. There's an Oedipal brazenness to celebrating by jerking it to the older-than-30 women who make up Silicone Valley's refuse. The artiste who had to jam these sentiments together deserves both a slow clap and a hard slap.

The Unfocused Lawlessness

I've learned how to make a damn good burger and fries. I got this cast-iron grill pan, which I heat up on high for a few minutes, then I throw the beef on there. Flip it, press it, and after around eight minutes throw burger and pan into the oven at 500 degrees, going about another five minutes. In the middle of all this, I drop the fries into a pan of canola oil at low heat, wait 'til they reach a "pale blonde" (internet's words, not mine), then take them out and re-fry them under high heat. Boom! Hamburger heaven. Reader, this is an instruction manual for how to find your bliss.


Also, playing the new Mortal Kombat game, which is frustratingly dubbed . . . "Mortal Kombat". By all rights, it should be "The Mortal Kombat" or maybe "Mortal Kombat: Origins", just to save me from having to distinguish it from the original specimen or the series as a whole. Great game, play it, etc. But! Shao Kahn is some bullshit. He's a legacy arcade boss, an archetype made from wasted quarters and crushed dreams. Every hit you land on him does half damage, every move he has is about fifty percent over the normal damage curve. Half his specials are unblockable. You can't grab him. His super move takes away over half your life bar. All things I expect from a fighting game boss, and traits I can forgive, to a certain extent. But in addition to giving his moves crazy priority over yours, he will often flash yellow and ignore your attacks.

Fight-wise, this makes things near-impossible on your end unless you resort to spam techniques. Personally, it is an insult. See, there was always that kid. Whenever I played tag or cops and robbers or whatever gotcha-based game, this kid would devise a novel strategy: he would simply ignore it when he got tagged or shot or slimed, claiming it never happened. I hated that kid. You probably hated that kid. If you were that kid, I bet you hate yourself. Adding that layer of uncertainty to the outcome of a game destabilizes it. If the rules stop applying at random points, eventually it stops being a game, and everyone goes home. Shao Kahn is that little "nuh-uuuuh" shithead, and he makes me want to stop playing his damn game.

Part of me just wants to shake Ed Boon and say "THIS IS WHY MIDWAY DIED". The Mortal Kombat is a game that trades heavily on arcade nostalgia, but its greatest asset is the long, involved single-player story mode, an approach unheard of when MK cabinets still roamed the earth hungry for quarters. The unreasonable final boss helped arcade operators make quotas, but it serves no function in a post-Diversions world.

Any Blade Will Do

As a much younger person, I used to read tons of fantasy/sci-fi novels. They were all thick tomes, the sort of paperback doorstoppers that are read mostly for the accomplishment of getting through 890 pages in a weekend. I cherished them. Where some had Game Boys, I foolishly chose the Game Gear, becoming another of the walking wounded in the First Console War. The damn thing could optimistically make it four hours on six batteries, and had an even more generously estimated six decent games to show for it. My Star Wars novels and Melanie Rawn softcovers were my only escape during a bus ride or lonely recess period.

During my later teenage years, I gave up reading for pleasure. Twofold explanation: 1.) I got a car and my idle time shrank. 2.) It's really hard to focus on a book when you're high. My excommunication ended a couple years ago, and I took the book back up, along with the bell and candle. Only now, there's a wrinkle: I can't read sci-fi or fantasy anymore. I worry that it's because I buck at the unashamed nerdiness necessary to read the genre. Not that I'd be afraid to read them in public, but in private.

The other truth is that I've learned a whole lot more about the craft of writing in the intervening period, and most of the dragon and robot reveries I read as a kid were not so good. Plots that were barely zapped in the microwave long enough to shake off their staleness. Characters with narrative arcs that could be predicted just by reading their names. Plots constituted of implausibilities stitched together by extremely convenient applications of magic/science. While the hackwork is enjoyable in the moment, I can't say that a single damn one of those books has really stayed with me.

So maybe that's the real answer: time. When I was young, I had the time and boredom to kill maybe a book a week. Now it takes me closer to a month to get through a book I really enjoy. As a result, I choose my targets much more carefully. Steak over popcorn. Don't take that statement as a condemnation of nerd lit to the dreaded Trashcan of the Low Arts; but I have a hard enough time finding books that truly excite me without limiting myself to a limited genre.

Concentrated Milk

This is the sort of thing best never said in the light of day, but, well, I'm sick of having friends. The necessity of interpersonal relations isn't lost on me; it's a grave task to maintain balance or sanity without peers. I've spent months holed up in my house in the past, and I can give detailed testament to how much it sucks and how much it sucks out of me. But all the motions necessary to keep friendships in the green honestly feel like they provide poor return on investment.

See, when presented with the choice of either having fun alone or having the same amount of fun with others, I'd choose the solitary option a solid ninety percent of the time. You have to manage people, make sure you're not going past their boundaries, and think about their happiness. I have enough trouble doing that for myself. I just got back from a night playing cards with a friend, and afterward I had no desire to ever see his ass again. This isn't an uncommon occurrence with any friend of mine, and it really has me questioning my approach. I usually try to soften the blow by calling myself antisocial, but really, I'm a misanthrope, and the mind of a misanthrope isn't hungry for company.

This is too high-school-notebook for what I want this blog to be, but a record of my self needs to include some nerd clichés if it's going to be honest. I want to expand on this idea, make it into a train of thought rather than a bus of sentence fragments, but it may be too unformed for me to grasp fully yet.

Renfield’s Syndrome

The morgue is pretty boring, except for the little sand dunes of dust on the floor. I'm out of breath. While I stop to fish for excuses about why I got here after all the action, a stake falls out of my duster, rolling into one of the ash piles. Now it's official: I am the worst vampire hunter.

Not like the Van Helsings. They're assholes, and what makes them even bigger assholes is that they're really nice about being assholes. The new one, Wilhelmus - every time we, y'know, team up, and I stake a vampire just to the left of the heart, he gets this weird half-smile and gives me the speech. "Paul, go under the sternum and jab upwards. So you don't have to force your way through the ribcage." I can't stand it.

I stick my finger in the ashes, then smell them. They don't smell like anything but ashes, but I figure it's kind of a cool signature move. You never know who's watching, huh? In this business, you get a lot of mysterious strangers spying on you from the shadows. Which is a terrible thing to find out about at 3am while you're pissing in a storm drain.

It was a stakeout, right? Apparently something was going on in Koreatown by the cannery. I mean, I guess it was. I'd been watching the loading dock for the past 5 hours, but all I'd seen were some teenagers huffing toner or something. So I get out of the car to pee, because, shag carpet in the van, ya know? You aim wrong and you never get that smell out. I go down the big concrete embankment, get things going, and, when the tank's half-full, boom, guy behind me.

"Enjoying the evening air?" He croaks it in like a Tom Waits voice, like piss over dry gravel. I kind of jump, but I don't wanna turn around with my pecker in my hands, so I play it off like I don't need to see his face 'cuz I'm cool too. My damn duster's all wet down the side now. His breath hits my neck, but it's cold. Vampire.

Now, I was on the verge of a panic attack, and my zipper was stuck. That's really the only way to explain why I'd say, to a complete stranger: "Not since you bastards killed my uncle." Look, I know. I know! Doesn't make sense in hindsight.

Okay, so I played the dead relative card too early. There are really only two ways you become a vampire hunter: you train from when you're, like, ten, just like those jackass Van Helsings. Or - someone you know dies, and you kinda fall into the whole cycle of justice and revenge thing. It's so cliché and dumb, but when you're at a funeral and an old lady shuffles up to you, hugs you real close, then whispers in your ear, "I want you to find the bastards that did this and kill them." ... I don't know, how can you refuse? You look like a total shithead if you do.


Thing is, I'm braced to get punched, kicked, or the ol' neckbite, so I do like this quick turn around move without even zipping up. I'm giving the guy my best kung-fu-I-can-kick-your-ass stance, which is really bullshit 'cuz I got kicked out of my dojo after two weeks when my check bounced. This vampire, he's a white guy dressed kinda business-y. Khaki pants, white shirt, cropped hair, and snaggletoothed fangs. The way he's eyeing me, it's hungry, and then he looks down at my junk. "My, aren't you a big boy." he says. I give him the once over, preparing to cock back my best haymaker and all of a sudden I realize he's packing. Plain as day, his dick's hanging out of his pants, too.


My brain starts cranking, and it finally chunks it out. That message board that tipped me off was right: there is some action going on here, but it's fucking gay cruising. I'm so embarrassed that I spout a line of bullshit about how now that I've got his attention, I want to save his soul with the power of Christ and lead him away from the path of sin and anonymous storm drain blowjobs. He gives me this super confused look, and after a beat I turn and just start running away as hard as I can, pecker flopping in the wind.


Swear to god, I'm gonna quit this whole game. Wilhelmus says he can get me a janitor job at his family's bakery, but I'm kinda iffy on it. I have my pride, you know?

World of Ruin

It only gets colder. I'll reassure myself that there can't be a colder day in this winter, that there's only a gradual rebirth into the golden land of Spring awaiting me after this little rough patch of absolute zero. But I can't even fool myself. The weather has me indoors, and it's doing more than just fever my cabin. It's leeching out the discipline I've been building in myself for the past year - I still work out, but my mind's fuzzy and I find it hard to stare at any problem without blinking and looking away. It's like my brain's wearing a parka made of fiberglass insulation. It took me thirty minutes to think of that simile, and it's not even good.

The dead of winter is the appointed time of my existential crisis. When all the holiday glow has subsided, when my hours at work get cut back, when all I can hear are the silences of my apartment, I turn inward. I've been working out for the past year now, and I've lost 25 lbs., become physically stronger than I've ever been in my life, and have developed a bit of steel deep within myself. But it's both not enough and too much.

I'm worried that I'm taking it too far. The testosterone fucks with my head and feels awful unnatural. It awakens some atavistic urge to callousness deep within me. If I go far enough, the physical changes will make it even harder to pass. But I need more power.

I need more power.

I don't know what sentence to put after that, so by necessity it stands alone. Written in a story, something so declarative would be pithed out after a definitive trauma. My village is razed by mercenaries while I'm out hunting. A drug deal gone bad leaves my girlfriend in a wheelchair. A bully pushes me down into the sand and I make a tearful, determined resolution. Best as I can see it, I'm reacting to feelings of powerlessness by finding a way in which to becoming powerful.

Super Sonic Speech Impediment

Holy fuck, I used to write some painfully long blog posts.

Sonnet 130, Translated

My bitch is ugly as shit! It's cool, though.

No Carrier

I miss my bike. In the warm moments of summer, it became a meditative oasis for me. Pumping through alleys and exploring the unexamined spaces of a huge city, I recaptured some empty part of myself. Without it, I feel a little bit lost. I detest people who profess a self-righteous affinity for biking, and maybe this post ought to inspire a bit of self-hatred. But I miss my bike.