9to5 (dot cc)

A little while ago I started (and subsequently abandoned) the mission of revisiting a lot of the geek milestones that Ernie Cline touched on in his (amazing) ode to 80s geekdom “Ready Player One”. Cline’s story was almost directly responsible for one of the most talked about (in my friend circle) occurrences of 2013: that time we played the original Tomb of Horrors like idiots. The whole experience got me to thinking that I wanted to write a regular column about stuff that I had experienced. Sort of like a 1960s Playboy columnist but writing about geek shit. Or regular shit. Ok, I just want to have a column where I tell you about things you should be doing and consuming, or about current events.

I regretted almost immediately my decision to call this stuff “The Perspicacious Geek” for a number of reasons.

1)      I have only had to write the word “perspicacious” twice (thrice if you count this sentence) and I have mangled it all three times. I like to challenge myself physically when it comes to typing.
2)      It is super pretentious sounding; this is a double edged sword. I like sounding pretentious since I think there’s a certain contingent of the internet who will be like “what a pretentious cocksucker, I will read this article to see how wrong and stupid he is”. And let’s face it, readers are readers, gotta get ‘dem clicks, holla! However, in the world where I pretend to be humble (whatever world that is, I don’t think “humble” would be on anyone’s list of adjectives that describe me) I am in no way extremely perspicacious (nailed the spelling first time). Sometimes people have to explain things to me like a hundred times and when I “get it” I’m still just nodding along blindly hoping the conversation moves on to something else.
3)      In reality, I’m really into terrible movies and watch a lot of pro-wrestling, this is pretty much the opposite of perspicacious.
4)      If I didn’t know the definition of the word, I would think that it is somehow related to perspiration. So if you’re bad with English you might think this article is about a sweaty geek. Which is like, the exact opposite of the intention.

What should you expect from this column? I’m not 100% sure; I’m sort of figuring that out as I go. The basic idea would be to catalogue various events and activities all with a sort of “theme” of being a trend setting geek. I feel like I’ve sort of found a balance of being trendy and geeky at the same time and hopefully that middle ground will provide at least a somewhat balanced viewpoint. As comic book movies and TV shows hit the mainstream and your mom plays video games I think there’s place to be a guy who is a deep rooted geek trying to avoid some of the stigmas that often plague the subculture. And hey, if that’s not for you then fine, don’t read it.

I think the nerdiest phase of my life was college. I was pretty poor so video games were my go to activity. If I was going out, it would often be to go to bars to LARP (Live Action Role Playing, a massively nerdy endeavor). Still, even though geeky activities dominated my time, I still made it out to a lot of shows, paid attention to my clothing and kept up with other hobbies like skateboarding and snowboarding. Even at that time I felt that there was only a small percentage of my fellow “gamers” (used here to describe the Live-Action variety) that were well balanced in their interests. I think I somewhat had it together in terms of balance, partying, gaming, being a big geek and occasionally getting the girl.

Maybe that’s what I’m going to go on about in this column? A balanced geek? Is that a thing? We’ll see.

We all know there’s a social stigma around being a big nerd, but what I’m proposing (and hopefully over the rambling course of this column) is to try to shake the stigma. Why is “geeking out” considered a bad thing and why are other activities supposedly more deserving of our time and energy than nerdier endeavours?

If you’re still with me at this point I tip my hat to you, I hope you at least have some idea what this column will be about but if you’re unsure, don’t worry, so am I. This whole thing might be a massive train wreck. If for nothing else, please check in next week to watch me fail.

Now, if for some reason you’re a long time reader of what we do here on 9to5 (dot cc) you’ll know that if there’s one thing we’re good at its having good ideas and then almost immediately abandoning them after a few tries. I’ve abandoned a handful of blogs, the comic has taken multiple hiatuses, Fine Arts are spotty at best and Jono has written like 3 articles. Not this time though. How do I know this will be different? Well, if you’re reading this it means that I have at least ten articles ready to go (counting this one, so that means I need to write nine more. Nine more? What the fuck am I thinking? That will take forever.). I’ve learned from mistakes of the past and will build up a body of work under the Perspicacious Geek banner before I undo my buckle, unbutton, unzip and unleash this work into the world. In short, if you’re reading this very article that means you will at least have something to read for the next 9 weeks and hopefully more.

So, I guess if you like reading what I write you’ll be safe until mid-November. Scott is working on some nifty graphics to go with this so those should be along shortly too. What’s up first? I could tell you what it might be. It might be an article about playing on your phone in public, or it might be something else that I write in between now and next Tuesday. The suspense will no doubt cause you to have a hard time sleeping.

As always, feel free to comment either here, on Facebook, on Twitter, or in person. This is a small blog so I can pretty much assure you that I will read and almost certainly reply. See you next week.