Nerds are Cool Part 3

Image by Sapphireblue via Flickr

Hi. I was on vacation. But I’m back! 🙂 Let’s see, where were we…

Originally, being a nerd was associated with people who worked with computers. Even today, computers and electronics are considered “nerdy” interests.  Really, though, it’s evolved to mean someone who is enthusiastic about any one thing.

“…nerds…are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it…when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’” (Green)

So, if isn’t computers or glasses that define nerds, what is it? It may be their introversion, and the resulting lack of empathy.  Not only do nerds “seek…to avoid physical and emotional confrontation”, they may not even understand it. Author Benjamin Nugent invites us to think about Victor Frankenstein, a classic example, and what makes him “an ur-nerd”.

“The young scientist…betrays a combination of rational thinking and technical prowess coupled with a childlike inability to fully grasp that other people are just as needy, ambitious, and sensitive as himself- as Harold Bloom once put it, Frankenstein is ‘a being who has never achieved a full sense of another’s existence.’ That’s what enables him to make the monster and fail to think, How would I like it if I had skin that barely held together, was eight feet tall, and had yellow eyes and black lips, so that people were inclined to run from me in terror? How would I like it if I had no family? His failure is a failure to emotionally confront another person, a failure of empathy. In a stupid person, this lack of empathy might not matter, but in a modern man with a godlike capacity for making things, it can create disasters. The root of evil in Frankenstein is the mingling of scientific brilliance with a deficit of emotional connectedness.”

10 Things I Love

I’m far too distracted by all my summer activities to write a SQUIRREL! serious post. I have 5 in the works, but I keep getting distracted. But they are coming. Pinkie promise!

1. I need this bench for my room.I’m running out of book space…again!

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”  ~Anna Quindlen.

“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.  ~Henry Ward Beecher”

 

 

 

2. I know…more ponies. But it’s Serenity! Come on! That’s just epic.

3.

This was the first episode of Doctor Who that scared me at all. But it also made me laugh like crazy, which is why I love this poster.

4. My summer game plan:

 

5. I’ve been listening to The Alchemist over and over.

It’s a “…5-song concept album in the musical theater style. The Alchemist follows the tale of an aging alchemist desperate to create an elixir which will bring him back in time where he might save his childhood love from an untimely death.”

I really enjoy it! The whole thing can be listened to online using bandcamp but here’s a sampling: The Turn Part 1: The Choice by Mike Lombardo

6. And if you like that, you may like Frankenstein, another musical I’m into at the moment.

7.

8.  For those of you who are Harry Potter fans, this may just be the creepiest thing ever. Well, maybe not ever, but it’s pretty creepy. There’s a Parseltongue translator online that turns any phrase into creepy snake speech. Do with it what you will: parseltongue.php

9.

10.  I’m not a country music fan, but there are few things I enjoy more than dancing around singing country songs with my sister. Some Taylor Swift, a bit of Dixie Chicks, maybe a little Brooks & Dunn or Erin McCarley…oh yeah! We are awesome at lip synching!

10 Things I Liked This Week

1.

2. “Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.”

– You Should Date An Illiterate Girl (There’s a little bit of language, but it made me think and appreciate the fact that I am well-read.)

3.

4. I am going to read this book. It looks incredible!

5. And there’s the behind the scenes for that video:

6. “When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. . . . I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision — I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous Creator of the world. “–Mary Shelley

I am so glad to be done with Frankenstein!!! Finishing my final project for it as we speak…

7. Hunger Games moment of the week: Epic? I think so!

8.  I’m excited for “Brave” a new Pixar film about a Scottish princess named Merida. It will be the first Pixar film with a female lead. Plus it’s all about Scotland.  (more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1217209/)

9. They’re so hipster/poseur-ish, but I love these glasses. I bought them for my performance as Elphaba and I would wear them all the time if I could!

10.  I reread Anna and the French Kiss…again.  This makes it about the sixth time! But it has brilliant lines like:

“I mean, really. Who sends their kid to boarding school? It’s so Hogwarts. Only mine doesn’t have cute boy wizards or magic candy or flying lessons.”

“I wish friends held hands more often, like the children I see on the streets sometimes. I’m not sure why we have to grow up and get embarrassed about it.”

“Why is it that the right people never wind up together? Why are people so afraid to leave a relationship, even if they know it’s a bad one?”

“So what do I wish for? Something I’m not sure I want? Someone I’m not sure I need? Or someone I know I can’t have?”

“Soap?”
“School of America in Paris” he explains. “SOAP”.
Nice. My father sent me here to be cleansed.”

“I don’t want to feel this way around him. I want things to be normal. I want to be his friend, not another stupid girl holding out for something that will never happen.”

“Har. Bloody. Har.”
He smiles. “Oh, I see. Known me less than a day and teasing me about my accent. What’s next? Care to discuss the state of my hair? My height? My trousers?”
Trousers. Honestly.”

“Oof,” he says.
“Hey, there’s a bed there.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“No problem.”

“Why?” His voice is suspicious. “Are you two going out now?”
“Yeah, we set up our first date right after he asked me to marry him. Please. We’re just friends.”

“You must think I’m a complete idiot right? That I’m just some doormat who’ll wait for you on the sidelines forever? That you can keep running back to her every time things get difficult and I’ll just be okay with it?!”

“Beautiful. He called me beautiful! But wait. I don’t like Dave. Do I like Dave?”

And those are my likes for this past week.

10 Things I love today

1. I bought this today for $4.  I did some research, and it usually costs between $10-$20! I’m so happy! It has creamy blank pages, a ribbon marker, and a pocket in the back. It reminds me of the Grail diary from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade“. It isn’t identical, but still! Pure epicness.

2. This video. There’s a little bit of  language. As a girl who isn’t graduating from high school, but is starting college, this seems really relevant to my life at the moment. It’s good stuff.

3.

4.  Robert Walton in the first few letters from “Frankenstein”. He is conceited, arrogant, and wordy to thew point of being funny. Dude is a frustrated writer. It’s too bad the poetry gig didn’t work out.  With that verbose prose…it’s really overwhelming.

5.  I love the Leia/Han romance. It might be my favorite part of Star Wars. Might.

6. music_movie-loves-a-screen.php  

I love this song!

“Maybe what I mean to say
Is that I think about you in the most romantic of ways
And I’m hoping you’ll be open to discussing us and nothing in between

Maybe what I mean is that I love you more than any other I’ve seen
If you couldn’t tell well I hope you’re quite keen on it
Like a rhyme loves a sonnet
Like a movie loves a screen
that’s what I wanna mean to you”

Thank you April Smith. This made my day!

7.  Three-way calling. It’s incredible how much more you can accomplish when you don’t have to call someone, ask a question, hang up, call someone else, answer their question etc. in a endless cycle.

8. It’s just so perfect!

9.  If I don’t wear a dress like Kate Middleton’s, which I loved, I want to wear one like this:

10.  You!