{"id":1687,"date":"2009-03-24T16:30:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T22:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2009-03-24T16:30:31","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T22:30:31","slug":"geek_life_meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/24\/geek_life_meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Geek Life Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday over on Facebook, I was tagged by Kelly &#8212; better known in these parts as <a href=\"http:\/\/byzantiumshores.blogspot.com\/\">Jaquandor<\/a> &#8212; to do a meme about my life as a geek. I of course complied immediately, because, well, it&#8217;s a <i>meme<\/i>. I&#8217;m reposting the results here, with some tweaks to the formatting and a few comments that I&#8217;ve reconsidered:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThe instructions: Cut-and-paste and <strike>mark the things you&#8217;ve done with an &#8216;X&#8217;<\/strike> bold the things you&#8217;ve done. (I like bolding better than the X thing.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>You spent a day watching all of the <i>Lord of the Rings<\/i>\/<i>Star Wars<\/i>\/<i>Star Trek<\/i> movies.<\/b><br \/>\nWell, sure, back when I had far more disposable time &#8212; and, to be honest, a longer attention span &#8212; than I do now. Many years ago (longer than I&#8217;m comfortable remembering, to be honest), I attended an all-day screening of the original <i>Star Wars<\/i> trilogy, and then a couple years later, an all-night screening of the same. I definitely enjoyed the daytime experience more &#8212; it&#8217;s tough to enjoy your favorite movies when you&#8217;re fighting to keep your eyes open &#8212; although it was kind of cool to nap during <i>Return of the Jedi<\/i> at the all-nighter. you see, I dropped off just as the rebels arrived on Endor and woke up just when the fleet came out of light speed, thus missing all the boring Ewok village stuff. Score!<br \/>\nMore recently, I&#8217;ve had some friends propose watching the LOTR trilogy all in one day, but I honestly don&#8217;t have the stamina for that, especially if we were going to use the Extended Editions, which, of course, we&#8217;d have to. Being geeks and all. Sadly, I&#8217;m an <i>old<\/i> geek now.<\/p>\n<li>You spent next two days after watching commentary, outtakes, and behind the scenes footage.<br \/>\nUm, no, kids, my all-day screenings were done the old-fashioned way, <i>in a movie theater<\/i>. We didn&#8217;t have your fancy DVD extras back then&#8230; and we had to walk to the theater, in the snow&#8230; uphill both ways!<\/p>\n<li><b>And you bought the soundtrack.\n<li>You went to a midnight release of a movie.<\/b><br \/>\nQuite a few, actually. And that&#8217;s not even counting the ones I had to attend because I was running the projectors!<\/p>\n<li>You camped in front of the theater for more than 12 hours to get tickets.<br \/>\nI waited in lines for the <i>Star Wars<\/i> prequel trilogy and the <i>Lord of the Rings<\/i> trilogy, but never more than a couple hours each.<\/p>\n<li>Camping did not prevent you from being in costume.\n<li><b>You can have an entire conversation with friends consisting of quotes from your favorite movies.<\/b><br \/>\nWhy, can&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<li>You own at least three game systems.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m not much into gaming.<\/p>\n<li>You have lost weight because you forgot to eat while trying to reach the next level in your game.\n<li>You own more than four game controllers (of any kind).\n<li>You have existed on three hours of sleep per night so that your &#8220;Sims&#8221; get eight hours and are refreshed for work.\n<li>You upgraded your computer because you wanted to buy a new video game\/expansion pack.\n<li>You have dressed as your game avatar, or as a npc in that game.\n<li>You achieved level 60 on <i>World of Warcraft<\/i>.\n<li><b>You have played <i>Dungeons and Dragons<\/i> or any other RPG.<\/b><br \/>\nI played D&#038;D a couple times back in middle school. I never got into it.<\/p>\n<li><b>You know what &#8220;RPG&#8221; stands for.<\/b><br \/>\nRocket-propelled grenade, right? Kidding&#8230;<\/p>\n<li>You dressed as your RPG character would dress.\n<li>You own dice with more than six sides.\n<li>You have been accused of having a &#8220;gamer&#8221; scent.<br \/>\nI assume this isn&#8217;t referring to some kind of cologne&#8230;<\/p>\n<li>You can identify a Black Lotus.<br \/>\nA what now?<\/p>\n<li>You can identify a Charizard.<br \/>\nA whozit?<\/p>\n<li><b>You have bought any of the Harry Potter books after standing in line until midnight.<\/b><br \/>\nYes, the final one. The funny thing is, I hadn&#8217;t even read the earlier ones in the series at that point, I just got swept up in the &#8220;event mentality.&#8221;<\/p>\n<li>You waited to get your Harry Potter book in costume, quoting favorite lines.\n<li><b>You have attended any function with &#8220;con&#8221; in the name.<\/b><br \/>\nAh, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2004\/06\/conduit_day_one.html\">memories<\/a>.<\/p>\n<li>You stood in line at said con for more than four hours to have an item signed.<br \/>\nUh, no. I&#8217;ve stood in autograph lines, but never for so long.<\/p>\n<li>You spent more than $50 on a costume to wear to a con because you wanted it to be authentic.\n<li><b>You own more than 50 comics.<\/b><br \/>\nMany more, yes. But not as many as my friend Waylon.<\/p>\n<li><b>You collect your comics in longboxes.<\/b><br \/>\nWell, I&#8217;ve always preferred the shorter boxes, but they&#8217;re the same configuration.<\/p>\n<li><b>You know what a &#8220;longbox&#8221; is.<\/b><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s kind of implied by the answer above, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<li>You&#8217;ve met and had your comics signed by the creator(s).\n<li>You know how many Robins there are.<br \/>\nThree, I think &#8212; Dick Grayson, Jason whats-his-name that got killed, and the little girl in <i>The Dark Knight Returns<\/i> &#8212; but I&#8217;m not sure.<\/p>\n<li><b>You know that the portrayal of Rogue in the movie <i>X-Men<\/i> is completely wrong.<\/b><br \/>\nWrong, yes, but Anna Paquin looked so very yummy in those long gloves and that hooded trenchcoat thing&#8230;<\/p>\n<li><b>You have chatted online more than in person.<\/b><br \/>\nWith certain people, yes.<\/p>\n<li>You chatted online enough to learn the time zones.\n<li>You think that when the Mythbusters say &#8220;Don&#8217;t try this at home,&#8221; they really don&#8217;t mean YOU.\n<li>You have participated in a movie\/tv marathon that involved a drinking game.<br \/>\nNo, but not for lack of good intentions.<\/p>\n<li>You can sing along with the <i>Buffy<\/i> musical episode.\n<li><b>You know Seth Green from more than just the <i>Austin Powers<\/i> movies.<\/b><br \/>\nOz!<\/p>\n<li>You can name all eight Kevin Smith-directed movies without referring to IMdb.<br \/>\nI find Kevin Smith overrated and frustrating, so, no.<\/p>\n<li><b>You have participated in a <i>Clerks<\/i>-esque discussion about <i>Star Wars<\/i> (or any other movie).<\/b><br \/>\nAnd yet I understand what is meant by the <i>Clerks<\/i> reference. Go figure.<\/p>\n<li><b>You have participated in a Kirk vs. Picard discussion.<\/b><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t think you could&#8217;ve been around the SF scene in the late &#8217;80s without having this discussion.<\/p>\n<li><b>You have participated in a <i>Star Wars<\/i> vs. <i>Star Trek<\/i> discussion.<\/b><br \/>\nWell, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2008\/12\/well_i_guess_that_settles_that.html\">yeah<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<li>You have participated in a <i>Babylon 5<\/i> vs. <i>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/i> discussion.\n<li><b>You know who &#8220;jms&#8221; is.<\/b><br \/>\n(That&#8217;d be <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._Michael_Straczynski\">this guy<\/a> for the uninitiated.)<\/p>\n<li>You have ever corrected anyone who called you a Trekkie.<br \/>\nNah. I&#8217;m fine with the term, and think those who insist on &#8220;Trekker&#8221; are being pretentious twerps. Maybe it&#8217;s a generational thing.<\/p>\n<li>You have worn a Star Fleet uniform.\n<li>You own a Star Fleet uniform.<br \/>\nNope. But I wouldn&#8217;t mind having a <a href=\"http:\/\/darthmojo.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/mojo2007emmys2.jpg\">Colonial Warrior jacket<\/a>.<\/p>\n<li>You think <i>Twilight<\/i> is lame because everyone knows that vampires burst into flame in the sunlight.<br \/>\nActually, I think it&#8217;s lame because it&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Sue\">Mary Sue<\/a> story built around a twelve-year-old girl&#8217;s idea of romance: the heroine thinks of herself as klutzy and unpopular, only everybody in school thinks she&#8217;s uber-cool and wants to be her friend, except for that one really cute boy (who isn&#8217;t, actually &#8212; seriously, am I the only one out there who thinks Robert Pattinson is kind of odd looking?) who ignores her, but that&#8217;s only because he&#8217;s so crazy for her that he gets physically ill in her presence, and they can never, ever be together because sex is scary, er, he&#8217;ll hurt her with his inhuman strength if they try to consummate their overwhelming urges, so he&#8217;ll just be her guardian angel and take her home to meet his &#8220;family.&#8221; Bleah.<br \/>\n(I need to apologize at this point to my darling Girlfriend, who loves these books and the movie. Sorry, ducks, I&#8217;m not trying to be mean&#8230; just keep in mind that I&#8217;m really not the target audience for this thing, am I?)<\/p>\n<li>You have written fanfic.\n<li>You have watched <i>Bizzare Foods<\/i> and thought &#8220;I&#8217;d try that.&#8221;\n<li>You can pinpoint the moment at which <i>Lost<\/i> jumped the shark.<br \/>\nActually, I think the show has been pretty awesome this season.<\/p>\n<li><b>You know who Stan Lee is.\n<li>You know who Jack Kirby is.<\/b>\n<li>You know who Geoff Johns is.\n<li>You have built a website.<br \/>\nNo, but a friend built one for me.<\/p>\n<li><b>You have started a blog.\n<li>You maintained a blog for over a year.<\/b><br \/>\nLook about you and despair!<\/p>\n<li>You know what the Genie SFRT is.\n<li>You have a Twitter account.<br \/>\nI really don&#8217;t get the Twitter thing. I have a blog, I&#8217;m on Facebook&#8230; what does Twitter have to offer in addition to these?<\/p>\n<li>You have over 500 followers on Twitter.\n<li>You purchased a smartphone just so you could check Twitter on the road.\n<li>You forget your family members&#8217; birthdays because they aren&#8217;t your friends on Facebook.\n<li><b>You have given virtual gifts on Facebook.<\/b>\n<li>You have Superpoked your boss on Facebook.\n<li>You have gotten a date through Facebook (and we&#8217;re not talking dinner and movie with your buddies).\n<li>You have broken up with someone\/been broken up with through Facebook.\n<li>You&#8217;ve reached level 30 or higher in Mafia Wars.\n<li>You know what Mafia Wars is.\n<li>You participated in more than three social networks.<br \/>\nOnly two so far.<\/p>\n<li>You&#8217;ve spent more than 200 hours playing the same video game.<br \/>\nThis is one of the reasons I have little interest in gaming &#8212; who has that kind of time?<\/p>\n<li><b>You&#8217;ve seen any movie in the theater more than three times.<\/b>\n<li>You can name the episode of MST3K where Joel was replaced by Mike.\n<li>You&#8217;ve argued why the comic is way superior to the show\/movie when discussing <i>The Tick<\/i>, <i>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/i>, <i>X-Men<\/i>, <i>Fantastic Four<\/i>, <i>Spider-Man<\/i>, etc.<br \/>\nI know this is heresy, but in most cases, I prefer the movie version to the comics, usually because I was first exposed to the movie. Or the Saturday morning cartoon, in the case of <i>X-Men<\/i>.<\/p>\n<li>You have the soundtrack for <i>Dr. Horrible&#8217;s Sing-Along Blog<\/i> on your MP3 player.<br \/>\nUm, no. It was kind of a fun little experiment and all, but I really don&#8217;t want to listen to the songs out of context with the actual video, you know? Same with the <i>Buffy<\/i> musical. Without the visuals, it&#8217;s really kind of annoying.<\/p>\n<li><b>You are willing to defend the <i>Star Wars<\/i> prequels.<\/b><br \/>\nSure. I don&#8217;t love them the way I do the original trilogy, but I really don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re all that bad, either. They have their pleasures and strong points.<\/p>\n<li>You openly disparage the <i>Star Wars<\/i> prequels because they don&#8217;t live up to <i>Empire<\/i>.\n<li>You&#8217;re openly concerned about the timeline ramifications that J.J. Abram&#8217;s <i>Star Trek<\/i> movie presents to the canon.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m less troubled by the timeline ramifications than the lack of reasons for doing a <i>Star Trek<\/i> remake at all, and the apparent transformation of Kirk into an angsty delinquent. But as long as you mentioned the timeline, if you&#8217;re going to do a remake, why you wouldn&#8217;t just start at square one instead of trying to contrive some reason why this version bears any relationship to the original?<\/p>\n<li><b>You own anything written by Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, or H.P. Lovecraft.<\/b><br \/>\nGaiman and Lovecraft, yes, but I&#8217;ve never read Moore. (Yes, it&#8217;s true&#8230; I have not experienced the glory that apparently is <i>Watchmen<\/i>. Should I surrender my geek card now or at the end of the day?)<\/p>\n<li>You have a flying spaghetti monster on your car.\n<li>You&#8217;ve seen a midnight showing of <i>The Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/i> with live actors in front of the screen.\n<li>You know the REAL reason Spider-Man had a black costume.\n<li>You know the NCC numbers of at least two starships other than the <i>Enterprise<\/i>.<br \/>\nNot the NCC numbers per se, but I know that <i>Excelsior<\/i> was the NX-2000 and the (apocryphal, in my opinion) first <i>Enterprise<\/i> was NX-01.<\/p>\n<li>You know what &#8220;NCC&#8221; stands for.<br \/>\nI used to, but so much has faded with age&#8230;<\/p>\n<li><b>You own an original <i>Star Trek Concordance<\/i>, <i>Technical Manual<\/i>, and <i>Blueprints<\/i><\/b>.\n<li>You own at least two medieval weapons.<br \/>\nNo, only one.<\/p>\n<li>You have participated in battles with foam-covered swords.\n<li><b>You know who &#8220;Major Matt Mason&#8221; is.<\/b><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.majormattmason.net\/\">Cool old toys!<\/a> (And yes, I knew about them without Googling.)<\/p>\n<li>You have seen bootleg copies of the original Fantastic Four and Justice League movies.<br \/>\nNo, but I&#8217;ve heard horror stories about both&#8230;<\/p>\n<li>After having had children you realize there&#8217;s now more people to costume and relish it.\n<li>You&#8217;ve managed to turn four days at Euroquest* into nearly eight because, who needs sleep?\n<li>You&#8217;ve spent more than $1000 on your &#8220;spot-on&#8221; costume (and it&#8217;s still not quite right&#8230;).\n<li><b>You&#8217;ve made a fan film.<\/b><br \/>\nIn a manner of speaking. Years before the Internet gave rise to what we now think of &#8220;fan films,&#8221; I appeared in a homebrew <i>Halloween<\/i> sequel and a <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/i> parody in which I got the stuffing kicked out of me by a fedora-wearing jackalope&#8230;<\/p>\n<li><b>Your fan film has been seen by more than your immediate family.<\/b>\n<li>People know you by your online name instead of your mundane name.\n<li>You know what Pennsic is.\n<li>You&#8217;ve camped at Pennsic.\n<li>You have\/had personalized plates on your car proudly proclaiming your fandom.<br \/>\nNo, but I have a pretty clever vanity plate in mind if I ever get around to getting it&#8230;<\/p>\n<li>Your spouse and\/or friends do as well.\n<li>You yell at your kids when they try to open a toy\/book\/comic\/figure etc. that you&#8217;re collecting.\n<li>Your kids have broken your Hallmark collectible <i>Star Trek<\/i>\/<i>Star Wars<\/i>, etc., ornament.<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t have kids yet, but this is one of my worst nightmares about parenthood&#8230;<\/p>\n<li><b>You&#8217;ve traveled more than 500 miles to attend a con.<\/b><br \/>\nYep, Salt Lake to Los Angeles, 750 miles.<\/p>\n<li>You have a tattoo related to your fandom of choice.\n<li>You met your spouse at a fan-related event or con.\n<li>You got engaged (to be married!) at a sci-fi convention.\n<li>You are publicly willing to defend <i>Dollhouse<\/i>, because Joss Whedon must be trusted.<br \/>\nWatched the first episode, thought it wasn&#8217;t bad, but haven&#8217;t felt compelled to watch it again. Make of that what you will&#8230;<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday over on Facebook, I was tagged by Kelly &#8212; better known in these parts as Jaquandor &#8212; to do a meme about my life as a geek. I of course complied immediately, because, well, it&#8217;s a meme. I&#8217;m reposting the results here, with some tweaks to the formatting and a few comments that I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memes-and-quizzes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}