Nerd Pride

I wrote the following for AcaDeca.

I returned home dejected from a rough day of the second grade. When I professed my dream to be a science fiction author to my whole English class, everybody just laughed. When I asked the cute girl who sat in front of me in math on a date, she recoiled with a nasty “No!” My limbs were sore from a thousand dead arms as the bullies chanted “Nerd, nerd!”

I slammed my bedroom door, dropped my backpack on the ground, slumped in the chair and turned on the boob tube. I was welcomed by the sort-lived tech-talk show Unscrewed with Martin Sergeant. His guest today: Wil Wheaton, better known as Wesley Crusher of Star Trek fame. I never expected that what I would hear that day would change my life.

He expressed with great confidence and detail that he was proud to be a nerd. He was proud to have been a part of Star Trek, to play video games well into his 30’s, and write books about it. He took the word “nerd” and turned it from a label of shame into a badge of courage. He was proud to be different, and wasn’t afraid of who he was. At the time, that was a foreign concept to me.

But still, I took what Wil Wheaton said to heart. I realized that I could be proud of my unmatched knowledge of video games, my uncanny ability to quote lines from Star Wars, and recite lines of Tolkien. The next day at school, I couldn’t wait for my first chance to demonstrate my new-found self-confidence.

Those bullies approached me with the usual threats of trashcannings and locker-stuffings, but today I was ready. “Nerd, nerd!” they chanted for the hundredth time, but in response, with a scrawny fist raised high, I shouted “Nerd Pride!” What did they do? Well, they laughed. Not the usual nefarious cackle, but a different, warmer chuckle. I made it through that day unscathed and un-bruised. From that day on, my confidence grew and my reputation changed. I learned that people will accept you as long as you accept yourself. I found this was true in many facets of sophomoric preteen life, and easily extends to this day.

I’m now eighteen years old. My favorite movie is Star Wars, I love to play video games, I have no clue how football works, and I’ve never been on a date. But that doesn’t change the fact I’m proud of who I am: a nerd.

We nerds are a resilient people. The decades of taunts and teases at the hands of schoolyard bullies have molded us into strong, charismatic individuals. Nerd pride isn’t isolated. With the rise of the internet came a new forum through which we nerds have been able to band together better than ever before. The Greeks said that philosophers shall inherit the earth. Certainly the same is true today, nerds being today’s philosophers.

Note: Most of this has been exaggerated. I don't have a TV in my room and I'm pretty sure nobody has chanted "Nerd, nerd!" since 'Nam.

'Nother poem

And lo he lay, lying limp, his legs

Shattered on sheets of shale, his sheath’s

Blade blackened by beast’s blood.

His soul was set on songs and stories, but sundered

Torn apart terribly by the teeth of ten ‘taurs.

If you're dense, it's a bout a warrior who sought fame but got a little over his head when he confronted "ten 'taurs". Shows, you have to have your head in the moment and not be distracted by rewards. This poem was inspired partly by my English teacher thinking two words in the same line as each other that started with the same letter in a loose translation of an old English poem somehow constituted deliberate alliteration. "That ain't alliteration, THIS is alliteration."

Jawas and Sand People

Within the first half hour of the first Star Wars movie, we're introduced to the Jawas and Sand People. These indigenous folks from Tatooine are essentially the first Aliens to ever be introduced in the entire pantheon of Star Wars. Their respective cultures and traits have been fleshed out over the years, as with so many other alien races.
So why is it that nobody knows what either of them actually look like? You'd think after over three decades somebody would have come along and canonized exactly what they look like beneath their hoods and masks. But obviously they haven't. And it makes me sad.

Yo.

Team Fortess 2's Scout and ShamWow!'s Vance: separated at birth?

Things the next generations are gonna think is wierd:

My kids will think its weird that:
-My phone number was a number.
-I played video games with my hands, and ONLY my hands.
-I was alive during the release of the Star Wars prequels.
-I remember 9/11.
-I attended the release of a Harry Potter book.
-Pokemon could actually have been popular.
-My television used cathode ray tubes.
-I remember the birth of the internet.

My grandkids will think its weird that:
-I was alive at the same time as WWII veterans.
-I was born in the 20th century.
-I didn't take a ride in a space shuttle till I was 50.
-I had the same name as one of the most famous actors of they day, but they likely would not ever have heard of him
-I played a non-orchestral musical instrument for recreational purposes.

DragonForce

Okay, all I have to say on my little soap box about DragonForce is that anyone who thinks they suck and are trying to be hardcore speed metal or whatever doesn't get it. It's power metal. It's supposed to be retardedly ridiculous, and not supposed to be taken seriously.

I often hear that "every one of their songs sound the same". Oh what, like Metallica? Except at least Dragonforce is interesting to listen to.

Meh, here's some Operation Ground and Pound and a 9-year-old kicking your ass.

Parents Just Don't Understand

Recently I dusted off one of the most cherished and beloved vestiges of my childhood; something most people who were alive in the latter half of the 90's are likely to remember: Pokemon.

At first glance, Pokemon was a simple multimedia franchise, based around the idea that cute, fantastic monsters would be trained by their human masters to do battle with their equally adorable ilk. The idea becomes a lot more complicated upon glances 2 through 17, however. It was a conventional Japanese-style role playing game in the guise of something much simpler. It was a gateway drug, if you will, for more complex JRPG- style games such as Final Fantasy.

Although the history of Pokemon as a successful children's entertainment venture could fill several volumes, here I will only touch on but a chapter. My namesake, rapper Will Smith, once said the "parents just don't understand," a mantra of adolescents that persists to this day; equally persistent is the assertion that parents DO understand. Well, parents obviously know what goes on in a teenager's head as they have been there before. But what I think his majesty the Fresh Prince was talking about was Pokemon.

When I was but on the cusp of preadolescence, my own parents and the scores of parents of my friends possessed their own ignorant vocabulary for the creatures we held dear. The correct pronunciation of course is poke-ay-mon. If anyone over the age of 16 had their way, the number of pronunciations soars to countless numbers: pokey-man was post prominent, implying Pokeyman was perhaps a super hero. But I have also heard Pokeymon, Pikamon, Pokaman, Polkaymoan... some adults even went so far as to assume Pokemon was actually the same thing as Pac-Man. "I remember playing this in the arcades when I was your age," one parent said. "Sure has come a long way."

It didn't stop there of course. In all fairness, there were over 150 unique characters to keep track of, a fifteen-way rock-paper-scissors elemental system, evolutionary charts, plot events and subculture aspects to memorize, could we blame them?

Of course we could! We could remember all that stuff no problem. If we invested all of our Pokemon time into school in stead, we'd have a generation of geniuses on our hands. My proposed solution: teach Pokemon in elementary school.

Since I came into my own as a young adult, I stopped paying attention to that which wouldn't relinquish it before. As a quick Wikipedia survey manifests, there are currently 493 Pokemon. Purists such as myself will maintain that only the first 151 actually count, due mainly because the new ones look completely stupid. Fuck that shit. I'll keep my good ol' Pikachu and Charizard, thank you very much. You next generation Poketots can have you Chimchar Lucario inanity.

An Exploration of a Camp Counselor's Experience

For the... MAYBE two of you out there unfamiliar with the southern Californian junior high curriculum, there is a program which all sixth graders must attend called Outdoor School, wherein students are shipped off to the relative wilderness for a week, and return with a greater affinity for nature and more keen understanding of the importance of conservation. The program has an able team of administrators, but must draw from the dubious talent pool of high school kids to fulfill the nominal and menial rank of cabin counselor. (Or councilor; I'm not really sure what the difference is, despite my sagacity.)

Going back a number of years when I attended my own outdoor ed program, located at Camp Bloomfield, Malibu, I remember a great deal. Every attendee picked a nature-related nickname for the week. I chose Shadow. Lame. My councilor was named Cougar. I was in cabin 11. And I got sick that week, so I was unable to go on the beach hike. This left a mark of disappointment on the whole experience that lingered for years to come.

My limited experience at outdoor ed was a part of the reason I wanted to return, but also to make a mark on the next generation (read: plant the seeds of corruption) as Cougar had done for me. As soon as I heard about councilor applications, I signed up, and after an interview and many many forms, I was in. For one week, I was Thunder, boy's cabin 11 counselor. I was depended upon. I was the boss. People knew my name and valued my opinion. I was somebody.

The cooperation I received from my kids was mixed in more than one way. There was the inherent disobedience that came with being that awkward age between childhood and adolescence; between docility and rebellion; between inanity and maturity.

On the other side of the coin, I was bigger than them. I could beat them up. I wielded subtle weapons of authority and loyalty, like the driver's license and the razor blade. My assigned position as their cabin councilor- the defender of their sanity and sanctity- drove them to be reliant upon my wisdom and knowledge.

They approached me nonstop with a barrage of questions. "Thunder! Thunder!" said the incessant chorus of their inquisitive voices. To answer every voice was impossible due to the sheer volume of their queries, but that isn't to say I didn't try my hardest. Mostly they asked what time it was or where they were off to next. But they also requested tidbits of personal information, about which I either lied or withheld to maintain the mystique of my counselordom.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" They inevitably asked. "I've had a few in the past," I responded. A vague, white lie to keep their minds wondering without me appearing pathetic to them. "What's your real name?" they also often asked. I changed the answer every time, however. As far as they know to this day, my real names include Adam, Derek, Leonard, and Dave. A young fellow disinclined with English as a first language once asked "What school is you go to, Tawnder?"

His name was Jimmy, or Tornado, and he became my buddy. As did Matthew, who payed the paid the closest attention to my every command. There was also Tristan, the self proclaimed second-in-command, a position consisting entirely of yelling "You guys, shut up!" as loud as he could, usually to no avail. One boy had hair longer than any girl's, another could complete a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes, and another spoke even less English than Jimmy, but was a consummate guitar player. It was a mixed cast of colorful characters in cabin 11, with its share of rebels, loyalists, and separatists.

They respected- and feared- me. No matter how they disobeyed me, and no matter how hard I scolded them when they threw fucking rocks at each other or ran down Hamburger Hill, they had undying and infinite capacity to forgive me. In a way, they loved me. Indeed, the greatest realization of the power I possessed came when I unleashed all manner of unholy chastisement upon a particular insubordinate nemesis. I saw in his eyes defiance, and then ignorance, and then... guilt.

The councilors also were charged with maintaining order during mealtimes. I will not delve into the specifics of meals, but I will say that I felt like I was propelled far into a dystopian future, where all foodstuffs were constructs of essential nutrients, ingested on a strict schedule and administered by our robotic usurpers.

Of course, I wasn't in the nonstop presence of my cabin kids. In addition to cabin groups, there were trail groups, and trail group time was essentially break time. Either we counselors were assigned to accompany a trail group and assist the "naturalist", or camp teacher, in keeping the kids in line- not terribly difficult, most of the time- or we had two hours to ourselves, to spend in the councilor's lounge, take a shower, or to explore the trails and paths of Camp Bloomfield's intricate terrain. Even in these moments of silence, the chorus still chimed "Thunder! Thunder!" faintly at the back of my head.

And after lights out, and all my cabin kids were to bed, I went outside to patrol the cabins. Surrounded by night, enclosed by trees, and lulled by the oddly soothing dissonance of a million crickets and frogs by the creak. If I really concentrated, I could even hear the waves crashing on the Malibu beach on the other end of the valley. It was a transcendental experience.

It is interesting to note that during the Summer, Bloomfield is a camp for blind children. This comes to me with great irony as it is located in the least blind-friendly terrain imaginable. You take a bad step, and you are falling down a fucking cliff.

A Brief Observation of New Slang

3oth post... Ok, moving on.

I am generally supportive of slang. It offers spice to the dull grilled cheese of language. Although some recent additions to the colloquial jargon, like most recent additions to anything ever, strikes an ill chord with me. It is my staunch belief that such words must die in a fire, or be found in a ditch, defecated upon.

GOOD new slang words include:
Dece. Pronounced "deess", and short for decent. Can be used to describe one's general physical appearence or most other things as passable, preferable among most, yet not outstanding.
Ridonk. Short for ridonkulous, a variant of ridiculous. Has yet to become common, but I sense it is on the rise.

BAD new slang words:
Cash. Pronounced "caj", and short for casual. Often used by guidos, bros, and spoiled Westlake kids. It makes me want to puke. No, scratch that. I'd never WANT to puke. Puking sucks.
Awkward. Has entered mainstream use in much the same way awesome has; it is an actual word, and is often applied correctly, but Awkward is not immune to mortality, unlike its 80's cousin.
Random. Whenever somebody says random in reference to something that is not random at all, I must apply a lottery comparison. The following is based on an actual exchange that occurred this morning:
"So Fable is, like, just this randomly awesome game."
"Really? Randomly, eh? So it had equal chance of being awesome or terrible? But they randomly selected it to be awesome? Lucky it."


Coming soon: A Brief Journal of a Camp Counselor and Pantstown Commentary.

My New Hobbie:

Inspired by Alice Cooper's name carved into a desk in my English class, I've taken to inconspicuously writing "Alice Cooper" on other peoples possessions. For instance: Classmate's notebooks, used car advertisements as vehicle features, graphing calculators in the Y= thing, various teacher's white boards disguised as vocab words, etc.

I don't even like Alice Cooper that much.

A Humble Couplet

Over time, we change, but how? We can't pick.
I once was a pussy, but Now I'm a dick.

10 Things We Take for Granted

1. The sanctity of our mailboxes. How do you know there won't be a rattlesnake in there the next time you open it?
2. The status of Alex Trebek's mustache. At this point I've forgotten if he has one or not.
3. Human waste disposal. What if it didn't exist? Yes, that includes chamber pots. Where would we put all that shit?
4. Human waste. What if we never shit it the first place? We'd just build shit up in our bodies and bloat bigger and bigger throughout our lives. People would have deflation surgery to look younger.
5. Did you know our brains do the least thinking when we're idly watching television? What would we do for low brain activity if we didn't have mildly interesting TV?
6. Paris Hilton. There's nobody on the celebrity lampoon spectrum even close to her. She's the new world's standard for crass materialistic stupidity.
7. Top 10 lists. You folks always assume they're gonna have 10 items on them. Well this is what I call an express lane list; that is, ten items or less. Fuck off.

Call of Duty and Impending Adulthood.

Happy New Year, my attentive fan base. 2007 was a great year for video games, except Bioshock and Halo 3 were extraordinarily overrated, winning GotY awards left and right when the clear winner should have been Call of Duty 4 in my opinion. CoD4 is he first game to ever make me cringe, much the same way I do when hypodermic needles are present. One of the game's missions is nothing more than awakening in a crashed helicopter and trudge around the scene of a recent nuclear explosion for a minute, the whole time ominously hearing- and feeling, via force feedback- your own slowing heartbeat. No towel head shooting gallery here, just witnessing the means of mankind's own destruction at work. And when your eyes find themselves transfixed on the massive mushroom cloud slowly rising on the horizon, you die. Yes, the objective of the mission is to die, and never have I died more poignantly in a video game before.

Enough about Call of Duty 4, though, it's 2000 motherfucking 8. I turn 18 on September 18 this year, whereupon I will promptly be granted a great deal of grown-up liberties, like the ability vote, stay out late as a want, fight for my country, be tried as an adult, and pay taxes! Fuck yeah! The only new concept I am yet unable to ascertain is whether being an adult in high school will rock or suck.