In which the author is extremely geeky.

As my real life is stalled out while I wait for a co-op closing date to get scheduled, I will now comfort myself in a little fantasy world full of strange tv shows and movies. Hooray!!


First, ZOMG NEW RED DWARF EPISODES!!!!! I met Robert Llewellyn, who plays Kryten, at Dragon Con 2008. I totally fangirled out and embarassed myself, but he's a very friendly person. He mentioned this at the Red Dwarf panel. At that point it was still in the "Maybe... We think so?" stages.


Second, I am starting to plan for DragonCon 2009. It's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm starting to plan in January. If you think this sounds odd, you've never been to DragonCon. It's a geek bachanalia. Four straight days of Nerdvana. The main hotels are already sold out!


Third, Edgar Wright, who directed Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, is working on his next film Scott Pigrim Vs. The World. I've never read the Scott Pigrim comic books, but the director's blog photos suggest he's researching a lot of kung fu and teenage romance movies. I am intrigued. I just wish he had a proper blog that wasn't on Myspace.


Fourth, season/series six of Doctor Who is shaping up to be ... different. David Tennant is definitely leaving this time, which is extra annoying, because the producers shortened series five specifically so he could stay on the show. I don't have much info on the boy they have for Doc #11, and I'm very disappointed it isn't the awesome Paterson Joseph.

I also wonder how Stephen Moffat is going to put his own mark on the Doctor Who franchise as he takes over for Russle T. Davies. Based on his earlier works (previous DW episodes and the BBC series Coupling) I have this theory:

The companion will be pretty, blonde, and blue eyed, and be totally into other women. The young looking new Doctor will turn emo because for once HE is chasing the companion. *Doctor Angst!* The episode where the companion gets the most female-on-female action in the series will be called "Inferno."

Coupling is a hillarious alternative to the American show Friends, but Moffett isn't great at writing female characters. A typical Moffat DW episode consists of a new, better female companion for the Doc, which makes the established companion very whiny. Except for "The Doctor Dances," where Captain Jack makes sure to seduce Rose and the Doc so nobody feels left out.


And now for the sad nerd news, at least for my NYC people, Kim's Video may be closing it's doors. I've heard rumors that it's moving, but it's really the last wacky video store/rental left in the East Village. The Powers That Be are slowly but surely turning St. Marks into a strip mall :-(


Geek on, my friends. And don't forget to sign up for the Singles Awareness Week Blogathon!

GEEKSIGN

I've been trying to formulate this post for a while, with my limited writing/whinging skills.

Luckily, musical artist Marian Call already did it for me! Check out her tune Nerd Anthem, or I'll Still Be a Geek After Nobody Thinks it's Chic and that's about where I was trying to go.

I still don't know why "Geek Chic" happened. Did the normies get jealous when they realized that we rule the world? Followed by an attempt to emulate us? Is this another level of making fun of the weirdoes who sit together at lunch? Is it supposed to be (shudders) ironic?

All I know for sure is there are bars in NYC that cater to fanatics of comic books and classic arcade games. Unfortunately they are overrun with trendy people in horn rimmed glasses, plaid, and argyle.

I'm not against people embracing new lifestyles and dissolving old stereotypes. There is just something disheartening about finding a nice nerdy (looking) guy at a bar, only to have him inch back slowly in fear when I start chattering about Doctor Who. I don't think this bait-and-switch technique is fair to either one of us, sir.

OK, so you've seen Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings movies. You like the new Battlestar Galactica (new?). Maybe you've been to the Rocky Horror Picture Show ... once. Renaissance Faires are a fun place to go to watch girls in corsets "talk all like Shakespeare." You use a computer at your day job. *golf claps*

But where were you when I was an outcast teenager, being shoved into lockers by girls who matched their shoes with their backpacks? When I was being called rude names by people that wanted me to write their essays for them? When I was studying like mad to get a 5 on the AP Bio exam so I could have more fun in college?

Geek isn't just liking the right tv shows and ugly socks, it's a shared heritage of being odd and feeling out of place, but not on purpose. Not for it's own sake, and not for irony. The funny clothes, fandoms, and treasure troves of useless trivia are a side effect, not the source.

So stop teasing my people with your cute horn rimmed glasses, OK? Don't get me wrong, I like normie guys, but this is just confusing. Why not put your dinner jacket or Giants t-shirt back on and try the mainstream watering holes? I'll go back to my Pangalactic Gargleblaster and no one need know you were ever here.

THE ROMATRIX HAS YOU NEO

Still working on the book Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis. It is interesting, but a little dry. A very good read if you remember reading Nietzsche and Freud in college, and probably even better if you studied some political science. The author says up front that the point is not to convince the readers, or herself, of one point or another. In her own words:

A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won't injure you (well, not severely); it's just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.

Her book focuses on romantic love (not family or friendship so far) and how obsessed our society is about pursuing and maintaining romance. Love at any cost. It's almost like this drive is programmed into our psyches, and the structures we build around us, as deeply as all the instincts that rail against commitment and domesticity.


So as soon as I thought of "programming" I realized...

Romance is like the Matrix. It's not something that we really need to survive, and history shows we didn't consider needing it until relatively recently (19th Century, similar to when romance novels gained popularity). Before that time it was an amusing or entertaining concept in contemporary fiction, but marriage and domesticity had their own mutually exclusive place in the real world. Romance happened outside of marriage, for the most part.

Western culture is now hopelessly dependent on the Matrix- no wait, I mean Romance. The desire for Romance evolved over the years, resulting in a strange social slavery where pleasure becomes very hard work to maintain (domesticity). This slavery is even endorsed and registered with the state (marriage). We have internalized the system so much that people who are not currently eligible for this sort of slavery are fighting to get it (gay marriage).

But no matter how hard the work is, we don't think for a moment of living without it. Potential separation from the Romance system causes great fear and anxiety, and people put in a ton of work to either stay in the system (unhappy, codependent relationships) or try and get hooked up (the billion dollar match-making industry). We are so convinced that we cannot live without Romance that we never question if : 1 + 1 = 1? Anyone who does not fit into the system, willingly or otherwise, is persecuted or coerced into finding Romance.


It's a fun metaphor to play with, but NOT 100% accurate. There are unhappy, passive aggressive people in all kinds of situations that like bringing other people down, and Romance is just one system.

On the other hand, I know lots of happy people "hooked up" to the system. They don't patronize me for being single. They respect and support my decisions as much as I do theirs, and are very secure about themselves and their lifestyles. They see their friends as whole individual people, and not halves of a Romance-unit.

Some people fall in love because they just do, not due to psychological programming. And many people are secure enough to accept when a romance is over- without sending an agent in a black suit to terrorize their mate.