Saturday, February 19, 2005
revenge of the nerds
I recently came to a startling and disturbing realization. It turns out that there are a lot more nerds in the world than I had previously been aware of. Over the past year or so, I haven't seen a whole lot of people in a typical day. Mostly just my family and the people I work with. I am already aware of the nerdiness of my family and my co-workers. It's somewhere below Trekkie and somewhere above Brad Pitt. But lately I've been seeing a lot more people, and what I've seen has been shocking, to say the least.
Before we moved into our house two weeks ago, I drove to work every day. There are not too many ways to determine a person's nerdiness by seeing them on the highway. You really only get one quick glance at the driver's head. Well, in the case of the nightmarish traffic I trudged through every day, you could study the driver's head quite thoroughly. But you still can't gauge that person's nerdiness very effectively. Mostly, your only way to measure a person's nerdiness is by the car they are driving and the bumper stickers they display. While there are certain cars, like Pontiac Grand Ams, that nerds just love, you really can't get a lot of information about a person's nerdiness from the kind of car the person is driving. And unlike hippies, nerds don't tend to use bumper stickers very liberally.
But since I began taking the train to work, I started seeing a lot more people. And what I've seen ain't pretty.
First of all, let's begin by noting that a lot of people clip stuff to their belts. Cell phones, pagers, PDAs, MP3 players, ham radios, and various other objects are clipped on, clinging for dear life to their owner's already overworked belts. Clipping a device to one's belt is nerdy enough in itself, but when people are using this much of their belt space not to hold up their pants, but to hold up multiple electronic devices, then people, we have a problem. Granted, there is often more than enough belt space to go around, but folks, it's not 1993 anymore. We are no longer impressed that you own a cell phone. You don't have to clip it to your belt to show us. Your pants have pockets, you know. But I suppose the people who partake in belt clipping typically wear extremely tight pants, so the pockets are rendered useless. But isn't that why they invented the fanny pack? Never mind.
You can also assess a person's nerdiness by his reading material. Before proceeding, I must admit that I am currently reading an incredibly nerdy book, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Hey, what can I say, I enjoy theoretical physics. There, I said it. But the other day I actually saw a grown man reading a Dungeons & Dragons player's guide. And all of a sudden, I'm not so nerdy after all.
You might think you'd see a lot of cowboys and hicks in Texas. You'd be wrong though, it's mostly nerds. ¶ monger187 wrote this on 2/19/2005
Before we moved into our house two weeks ago, I drove to work every day. There are not too many ways to determine a person's nerdiness by seeing them on the highway. You really only get one quick glance at the driver's head. Well, in the case of the nightmarish traffic I trudged through every day, you could study the driver's head quite thoroughly. But you still can't gauge that person's nerdiness very effectively. Mostly, your only way to measure a person's nerdiness is by the car they are driving and the bumper stickers they display. While there are certain cars, like Pontiac Grand Ams, that nerds just love, you really can't get a lot of information about a person's nerdiness from the kind of car the person is driving. And unlike hippies, nerds don't tend to use bumper stickers very liberally.
But since I began taking the train to work, I started seeing a lot more people. And what I've seen ain't pretty.
First of all, let's begin by noting that a lot of people clip stuff to their belts. Cell phones, pagers, PDAs, MP3 players, ham radios, and various other objects are clipped on, clinging for dear life to their owner's already overworked belts. Clipping a device to one's belt is nerdy enough in itself, but when people are using this much of their belt space not to hold up their pants, but to hold up multiple electronic devices, then people, we have a problem. Granted, there is often more than enough belt space to go around, but folks, it's not 1993 anymore. We are no longer impressed that you own a cell phone. You don't have to clip it to your belt to show us. Your pants have pockets, you know. But I suppose the people who partake in belt clipping typically wear extremely tight pants, so the pockets are rendered useless. But isn't that why they invented the fanny pack? Never mind.
You can also assess a person's nerdiness by his reading material. Before proceeding, I must admit that I am currently reading an incredibly nerdy book, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Hey, what can I say, I enjoy theoretical physics. There, I said it. But the other day I actually saw a grown man reading a Dungeons & Dragons player's guide. And all of a sudden, I'm not so nerdy after all.
You might think you'd see a lot of cowboys and hicks in Texas. You'd be wrong though, it's mostly nerds. ¶ monger187 wrote this on 2/19/2005
