True Confessions

Hm, as apposed to False Confessions.  ‘Father, forgive me, I have sinned.  I had sex with two Swedish twin sisters at the same time, while watching Battlestar Galactica.  And I filmed it.  And then put a link to in on Facebook.’  ‘My son, that is an unforgivable sin.  You will burn in Hell forever.’  ‘Woah, woah, chill out!  I didn’t really.  Just, you know, wouldn’t it be cool...’  Mind you, I suppose I could ask the Guildford Four about that...

I was reading a discussion on Fark about who would win in a fight between Spiderman and the Green Lantern.  (My money’s on Spiderman, just so you know.  I mean, Spidy always beats the odds, and the harder they’re stacked against him the better.  Plus the Green Lantern is a bit of a dick.  I’ve never really read any Green Lantern, but all-American hero with phenomenal cosmic power?  Always turns out to be a dick.  Mind you, in any fight Batman wins.  He’d just have to whack anybody with his giant adamantium balls, and game over.  Apart from Judge Dredd, of course.  Dredd nuked East Meg 1 without blinking an eye.  Dredd not only stared straight into the face of Judge Fear, but delivered an amazing one-liner before putting his fist in Fear’s face.  Different league man, different league.)

I read eight pages of people arguing about Spiderman vs. Green Lantern.  I’ve never read a Green Lantern comic.  Truth be told, I’ve never read a Spiderman comic either (used to love the Saturday morning CGI-enhanced cartoon show, and seen the first two movies... and the other Spiderman movie from the 80s.).  But I was enthralled by all these comic book geeks fighting it out, the trivia becoming more and more obscure.  And then it struck me:

I am not a geek.

I’m not.  I read Penny Arcade almost religiously, but the last time I went to buy a video game I brought a book instead, and didn’t regret it.  I use Linux but the closest I get to programming anything is putting leftovers in the microwave.  I follow Wil Wheaton on Twitter.  I love, love listening to music and talking about guitars and how they sound, but can just about manage to change from a C to a G.  I’ve seen all ten Star Trek movies (the reboot doesn’t count... I’ve seen it, and you can’t make me acknowledge it), TNG, DS9, all six Star Wars films (nothing in the Star Wars EU counts... you can’t make me acknowledge it), at least two different versions of Blade Runner, own the first to seasons of Quantum Leap and watched the whole thing back when it was on TV, can name all ten Doctors both in chronological order and in order of personal preference, can quote extensively from the first six seasons of Red Dwarf (seasons seven and eight... you get the idea) I’ve read some Asimov and love Bradley... But I don’t know enough about any of these things to have really, really geeky discussions about them.  As illustrated by the Spiderman/Green Lantern thing, I know enough to make broad judgements, but not enough to get into the meat of these things.

But I love watching the geeks.  I love watching argue and fight over trivia, digging deep into their reserves to win a point which means nothing to anyone on the outside.  I love watching them take some show they love and has been destroyed by the latest irritation, and twisting and turning, trying desperately to make it all okay again.  I love reading about them doing all their geeky things.

So, I’m not a geek, but I love to watch them.  I’m not really a geek geek, because--again--I don’t have the in-depth personal knowledge about geeks. 

I don’t play football, but I love to watch it (ah, the beautiful game indeed).  So, does that make me a geek fan?  That sounds a bit weird.  It’s also pretty self-explanatory, and we can’t have that.  There should be a degree of esoteric Gnostic cryptography about the pigeon holes we put ourselves in.  We must do something to keep the outsiders out.  So... I’m not a geek, but I love the things that geeks produce.  I consume the geek product.  A geek consumer?  That sounds way too sexual.  And, again, weird.  We should go with something a bit self-referential, I think.  Geek end-user?  Hmm....  Yeah.

I am not a geek.  I am a geek end-user.

(I’m also not a furry, I’m a furri.  But that’s another post.)

Surgery and Hacking

Just so you know, I’ve been working on Bambi VI recently. By working, I really mean ‘re-working’. I may even mean ‘re-writing’. How many words from the original work need to be left for it to be counted as the same piece? I’m taking out one half of the main story, putting in another one, putting in four extra characters who weren’t there before, changing the relationships between all the main characters... oh, yes, and tearing the whole world apart. Which includes the slaughter of millions of avatars--people who live solely in the digital world. They have souls, so they’re people. But, more significant than that, Bambi goes from tricking her mother into killing herself to convincing her to choose life and sacrifice her pedigree. That’s kind of like getting Jerry to save Tom’s soul.

Tomorrow, Allegra, ngaio and I are off to Chester for a barbeque with the 1816 Society, being the S.T.E.A.M.C.R.E.W. It’s a chance for us Steampunks in the North West to get dressed up, talk about reshaping society and who would win in a fist fight between Darwin and H.G. Wells, and eat corn cobs and sweet potatoes. And, of course, have the odd beverage and cup of tea. I made a Battenberg for the occasion. I hope it goes down well.

Maybe I can find some more converts for my ‘Steampunk Quantum Leap’ pet project. It has to be done, and it will be awesome. By ‘pet project’ I mean, of course, idea I like to get heated and rant incoherently about. Alfonse--Al--will be ‘magic lantern’ 2D projection onto flat surfaces and will chomp on a pipe, and he will communicate with the project’s difference engine ‘Bierce’ through his walnut hand communicator which gives off the occasional hiss of steam. Alfonse: “Samuel, Bierce says that there’s a 96.4% chance that you’re here to ensure Miss Feathering-Smithe attends the passing out ball on Tuesday... as the timeline currently rests, she sprains her ankle and misses the ball, and never meets Jonathan, her husband and inventor of the clockwork match-striker--which was inspired by his wife!”...and, Samuel: “I’ve leapt into the body of Charles Darwin... Egads!”