Dork Meme
List 5 reasons why you are a dork. And make them good reasons. Justify them. Explain them. Be loud and proud about how big of a dork you are! Then pick the 5 biggest dorks you know and have them do the meme. [I'm not sure that this isn't about geekiness, but...in any case...]
I don't remember if I got tagged in this or just was going to do it, but either way, The Last Week Of School interfered.
1. Television/Fandom. Seriously--could I be a bigger dork? I have (and I know this is a smaller collection than some, even factoring in switches to DVD) over 420 tapes of things I've recorded off television. My oldest taped shows are 9 years old. I have, in their entirety, at least eight to twelve series on tape. Many others I ONLY don't have because I know someone to does and am thus lazy. I like to marathon my way through entire dead shows--for hours and hours at a time (something that was easier before my body started to object to being still for that long). I had a bag that was the Designated VCR Transportation Bag because it was the perfect size and I was the one who brought the VCR to cons for years. I have made or worn costumes from at least three different series. I am deeply sad that I ONLY have three of my favorite series on pro DVD (and one is still on its way) because, since the trend of putting them out occurred, I've not been flush enough to throw money at it). I've written for zines in three different fandoms. I edited a zine. I've written fanfic in five or six fandoms and beta'ed fic in at least twenty others (some of which I'd never seen the show for!). I've been in active, participatory fandom for over half my life, and have been a fan for over 2/3 of my life. I learned to be social in fandom (go figure!) and learned large chunks of my literary analysis skills and expository writing skills from chatting/writing about TV shows on lists and with others. I have all the tapes of stuff I've taped numbered so that the computer file with the list of what's on them (which has them listed by Roman numerals, though the tapes are labeled in Arabic numerals) so that my collection is searchable on the first 400+ tapes. I love picking apart a show I like. I love brainstorming fic. I love trouble-shooting fic that's been written into a corner. I love watching favorite shows with other fen and corrupting new fen with it.
2. Medical Information. In college, when I worked on campus at a word processing/copying center, I had the privilege of being the primary typist on a medical textbook called, Psycho-social Aspects of Medical Disorders which would explain the physiological system in question, explain how it could break down, define and give symptoms for all the chronic diseases (inherited or caught as infectious disease) that can disrupt that system. Before that, I used to watch Disease of the Week shows on television and rad Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and Reader's Digest every month, which inevitably had Disease of the Month stuff. I filed all of this in my fairly-impressive memory and know FAR more (and in FAR greater detail and accuracy of language) medial information than most laymen (similarly to how I know more Bible than many PREACHERS). I started fanfic_med to improve medical accuracy in fanfic (even if it's often...um...inaccurate...on TV itself).
3. Shakespeare. I'm not nearly as much of a dork here as folks like jennetj, who's seen EVERY play in the canon on stage, or wiliqueen who's BEEN IN something like a dozen of the plays and directed a couple and can talk and ad lib in Shakespearean/Elizabethan English comfortably, but amongst my colleagues, I am THE Shakespeare dork. I created the two Shakespeare courses (and course descriptions) for the entire Chicago Public School district. I have freshmen through seniors giggling and cackling at Shakespearean word play, sex jokes, and cultural jokes, and gasping at vicious insults and subtleties. I LOVE that I can do that. I love that there are a few dozen people who love Shakespeare because of me, who've been to see a play for the first time because of me, that I can SHARE this one, and spread the 400-year-old love on to the next generation because ultimately it's all about people and human nature, neither of which have changed in that time.
4. Random Trivia. When my family first got Trivial Pursuit, I stayed up almost all night reading over 1/3 of ALL the questions, just for fun. I have whole mental files of left-handed celebrities (Michael Landon, Bruce Boxleitner, Stephanie Zimbalist, Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Carey, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Julia Roberts, Marlee Matlin, Lisa Kudrow, Dean Butler, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Jerry Doyle, Richard Dreyfuss, Goldie Hawn, Emma Thompson, and on and on), of trivia about US presidents (how Teddy Roosevelt's boys used to toboggan down the White House stairs on cookie sheets from the kitchen, how McKinley was shot after giving his lucky red carnation to a girl in the crowd, all the Lincoln/Kennedy parallels, how the first First Family to have electricity in the White House left the lights on for days because everyone was too afraid to touch the switches and on and on). I have probably a decade's worth of Reader's Digest anecdotes in my head. I know (and carry a little book listing) episode titles for over a half dozen TV shows (see #1). The most freakish part is how well filed these things are in my head and what good fortune I have to be able to access them when needed and often expound at length (see #5).
5. Obsessive depth of study (aka: autistic tendencies). When I was in junior high, I discovered Morris Library at SIU campus, 2 miles down the road from my childhood home. Morris is one of The Largest Open-Stacks libraries in the COUNTRY. I found out doing a history paper that they had archival microfilm (no, boys and girls, not even microfiche: microFILM--reel-to-reel) of all the local newspaper issues back to The Beginning. I found out that they had a HUGE room of archived, bound copies of dozens of magazines and periodicals (including the TV Guide going back DECADES. I would BEG to be allowed to go there on a Saturday and spend 6-8 hours straight copying out descriptions of old eps of Bewitched from the microfilm and of old eps of Barnaby Jones from the old TV Guides--by hand, into spiral notebooks, with dates, airing times, titles where available (fans are, after all, born, not made). Today, of course, all that info is just available online somewhere--click of a button. But since the only ways to get it THEN were these tedious I-am-a-monk-in-the-thirteenth-century methods...well, that was what I had. I taught myself sign language to a degree of proficiency that is spooky. I taught myself Braille to a Grade 1 1/2 level. I learned to use the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature so that I could use interlibrary loan systems to get old articles about celebrities since there was no internet log of all of them. This completion thing is why I have cupboards and cupboards of fabric that was on sale, shelves of food that was on sale, hundreds of carefully-labeled videos so I "have the whole thing".
I'm going to quote deannie and say, "I won't peg people to do this, but you should do it if you're dorky. Because... it makes you more dorky!"
I don't remember if I got tagged in this or just was going to do it, but either way, The Last Week Of School interfered.
1. Television/Fandom. Seriously--could I be a bigger dork? I have (and I know this is a smaller collection than some, even factoring in switches to DVD) over 420 tapes of things I've recorded off television. My oldest taped shows are 9 years old. I have, in their entirety, at least eight to twelve series on tape. Many others I ONLY don't have because I know someone to does and am thus lazy. I like to marathon my way through entire dead shows--for hours and hours at a time (something that was easier before my body started to object to being still for that long). I had a bag that was the Designated VCR Transportation Bag because it was the perfect size and I was the one who brought the VCR to cons for years. I have made or worn costumes from at least three different series. I am deeply sad that I ONLY have three of my favorite series on pro DVD (and one is still on its way) because, since the trend of putting them out occurred, I've not been flush enough to throw money at it). I've written for zines in three different fandoms. I edited a zine. I've written fanfic in five or six fandoms and beta'ed fic in at least twenty others (some of which I'd never seen the show for!). I've been in active, participatory fandom for over half my life, and have been a fan for over 2/3 of my life. I learned to be social in fandom (go figure!) and learned large chunks of my literary analysis skills and expository writing skills from chatting/writing about TV shows on lists and with others. I have all the tapes of stuff I've taped numbered so that the computer file with the list of what's on them (which has them listed by Roman numerals, though the tapes are labeled in Arabic numerals) so that my collection is searchable on the first 400+ tapes. I love picking apart a show I like. I love brainstorming fic. I love trouble-shooting fic that's been written into a corner. I love watching favorite shows with other fen and corrupting new fen with it.
2. Medical Information. In college, when I worked on campus at a word processing/copying center, I had the privilege of being the primary typist on a medical textbook called, Psycho-social Aspects of Medical Disorders which would explain the physiological system in question, explain how it could break down, define and give symptoms for all the chronic diseases (inherited or caught as infectious disease) that can disrupt that system. Before that, I used to watch Disease of the Week shows on television and rad Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and Reader's Digest every month, which inevitably had Disease of the Month stuff. I filed all of this in my fairly-impressive memory and know FAR more (and in FAR greater detail and accuracy of language) medial information than most laymen (similarly to how I know more Bible than many PREACHERS). I started fanfic_med to improve medical accuracy in fanfic (even if it's often...um...inaccurate...on TV itself).
3. Shakespeare. I'm not nearly as much of a dork here as folks like jennetj, who's seen EVERY play in the canon on stage, or wiliqueen who's BEEN IN something like a dozen of the plays and directed a couple and can talk and ad lib in Shakespearean/Elizabethan English comfortably, but amongst my colleagues, I am THE Shakespeare dork. I created the two Shakespeare courses (and course descriptions) for the entire Chicago Public School district. I have freshmen through seniors giggling and cackling at Shakespearean word play, sex jokes, and cultural jokes, and gasping at vicious insults and subtleties. I LOVE that I can do that. I love that there are a few dozen people who love Shakespeare because of me, who've been to see a play for the first time because of me, that I can SHARE this one, and spread the 400-year-old love on to the next generation because ultimately it's all about people and human nature, neither of which have changed in that time.
4. Random Trivia. When my family first got Trivial Pursuit, I stayed up almost all night reading over 1/3 of ALL the questions, just for fun. I have whole mental files of left-handed celebrities (Michael Landon, Bruce Boxleitner, Stephanie Zimbalist, Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Carey, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Julia Roberts, Marlee Matlin, Lisa Kudrow, Dean Butler, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Jerry Doyle, Richard Dreyfuss, Goldie Hawn, Emma Thompson, and on and on), of trivia about US presidents (how Teddy Roosevelt's boys used to toboggan down the White House stairs on cookie sheets from the kitchen, how McKinley was shot after giving his lucky red carnation to a girl in the crowd, all the Lincoln/Kennedy parallels, how the first First Family to have electricity in the White House left the lights on for days because everyone was too afraid to touch the switches and on and on). I have probably a decade's worth of Reader's Digest anecdotes in my head. I know (and carry a little book listing) episode titles for over a half dozen TV shows (see #1). The most freakish part is how well filed these things are in my head and what good fortune I have to be able to access them when needed and often expound at length (see #5).
5. Obsessive depth of study (aka: autistic tendencies). When I was in junior high, I discovered Morris Library at SIU campus, 2 miles down the road from my childhood home. Morris is one of The Largest Open-Stacks libraries in the COUNTRY. I found out doing a history paper that they had archival microfilm (no, boys and girls, not even microfiche: microFILM--reel-to-reel) of all the local newspaper issues back to The Beginning. I found out that they had a HUGE room of archived, bound copies of dozens of magazines and periodicals (including the TV Guide going back DECADES. I would BEG to be allowed to go there on a Saturday and spend 6-8 hours straight copying out descriptions of old eps of Bewitched from the microfilm and of old eps of Barnaby Jones from the old TV Guides--by hand, into spiral notebooks, with dates, airing times, titles where available (fans are, after all, born, not made). Today, of course, all that info is just available online somewhere--click of a button. But since the only ways to get it THEN were these tedious I-am-a-monk-in-the-thirteenth-century methods...well, that was what I had. I taught myself sign language to a degree of proficiency that is spooky. I taught myself Braille to a Grade 1 1/2 level. I learned to use the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature so that I could use interlibrary loan systems to get old articles about celebrities since there was no internet log of all of them. This completion thing is why I have cupboards and cupboards of fabric that was on sale, shelves of food that was on sale, hundreds of carefully-labeled videos so I "have the whole thing".
I'm going to quote deannie and say, "I won't peg people to do this, but you should do it if you're dorky. Because... it makes you more dorky!"