BEING A NERD ISN’T ABOUT the things you love — it’s about the way you love them.”
— Wil Wheaton
Tag: “Bob”
Cult of the Hidden Joke.
Hiding in Plain Sight
THE BEST YOUTHFUL HANGOUTS MAKE deep, lifelong memories — especially after they’re gone.
Among our local, accessible, destinations in the late 1970s/early 1980s were those we called “The Bin,” “The Corridors,” “The Nuclear Plant” and “The Structure.” (Another, “The Twilight Zone,” has been written of elsewhere.) Listen, o seeker after others’ nostalgia, and attend:
THE BIN: In the middle of a church parking lot near the Walnut Creek BART station sat a shipping container-sized recycling receptacle. Continue reading “Hiding in Plain Sight”
Waiting for the Apocalypse, or Something Like It
AND SO, EARTH CONTINUED TO shake off the irritants that had plagued her since the rise of the Industrial Age…”
— Barbatus the Elder
Fandom as Cargo Cult
IF WE BUILD IT, THEY will come — again.
First, you need to know what a “cargo cult” is: a folk religion among some groups of Melanesian Islanders who believed that they could attract cargo-carrying airplanes by engaging in sympathetic magic. They got this idea during World War II, when real airplanes (both Allied and Japanese) visited these islands and airdropped actual cargoes — food, weapons, clothing, medicine, and the like. After the war, the planes stopped coming. But the islanders, convinced that the proper conditions would bring more goods, built airstrips (in some cases, complete with landing lights) and otherwise mimicked certain behaviors they thought would achieve their goals. It’s a powerful communal buzz, and easy to get lost in. Continue reading “Fandom as Cargo Cult”
First Graf: The Dharma Bums
IN MANY WAYS, THIS 1958 book is better than the earlier On the Road. Kerouac’s signature stream-of-consciousness narrative style is more flowy, and the novel’s lionized centerperson (poet Gary Snyder, or “Japhy Ryder” as tDB calls him) a more noble character than OtR’s Neal Cassady — pardon me, “Dean Moriarty.” The Buddhism as portrayed is sympathetically casual without being didactic, which I suppose is also true of Buddhism itself. The book opens up in Los Angeles, where Kerouac (ahem, “Ray Smith”) is trying to “get the hell out of Dodge…” Continue reading “First Graf: The Dharma Bums”
Blow ‘Em Out
AS DETAILED IN A PREVIOUS post (c. 2010), every March my sister asks what I would like for my birthday (it’s on the 22d, BTW) and my answer is always the same: “I already have everything I need.” That said, and for the sake of obliging my sibling for my 58th year, I do still have a semi-whimsical list, with some items apropos an autodidactic home cook. Go wild, Susan!
– Working tricorder or lightsaber
– Warp-capable spacecamper (preferably Danube-class)
– Several plain black short-sleeved T-shirts, size L
– Hawaiian shirt (or two), size L
– Pea coat, size L Continue reading “Blow ‘Em Out”
The Brotherhood of Blood
SOMETHING ELSE THAT HASN’T SURVIVED into adulthood is the kid-concept of “blood brotherhood.”
It works like this: Two boys (did girls ever do this?) make an incision or a pinprick on their thumbs, then rub the wounds together. “Now we are blood brothers,” they will intone (if they intone anything at all, which they also may not). It’s an expression of intimate friendship; a ritual of bonding with what’s-today-called one’s BFF. And not to be entered into lightly.
I don’t know how old is this gesture is, or even if, in this hazardous fluids-aware world of ours, it is still practiced. Continue reading “The Brotherhood of Blood”
The Order of the Stinking Rose
There is no such thing as ‘too much garlic.'”
— Your author, in a culinarily inspired moment
Ol’ Thinkypants’ Advice For Those Purporting To Know What G?d Wants (Or, Especially, Hates)
“OH, MAAAN — DON’T FALL INTO that trap.”
“Strangers Stopping Strangers, Just to Shake Their Hand…”
Well, I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong —
It seldom turns out the way it does in the song.
Once in a while, you get shown the light
In the strangest of places, if you look at it right…”
— Robert Hunter, a”h
Confessions of an Earnest High School Dropout
IT ENDED LIKE THIS: “MRS. J—–,” I said evenly, “you should work for the city sewer department instead of teaching English — because you know more about scat than you do about good writing.”
Except I didn’t say “scat.”
And that’s why I didn’t graduate from high school.
Some background is in order: Mrs. J—– co-taught senior AP English at my Walnut Creek high school. She was a bitter, vindictive, tenured old woman who terrorized the other teachers, to say nothing of her students, and she had it in for me from day one. Continue reading “Confessions of an Earnest High School Dropout”
Words to Bring Back: “Pink”
– Definition (per SubGenius usage): adj. Happily and/or militantly vapid and mediocre; commercially soulless n. One who or that which exhibits these traits.
– Used in a sentence: adj. “I’m surprised to see the otherwise excellently talented Tom Hanks in a movie as Pink as Forrest Gump.” n. “Spank the Pink who tries to drive you nuts.” (DEVO)
– Why: Not so much a WTBB as a word deserving of greater currency. It’s a genuine and succinct Four Letter Word as nasty as any of its once-taboo brethren or sistren.