minicrisis

[kid_prufrock]

Shit--I don't really identify with any of these "top 10 habits of a geeky spouse." (via daharynI mean I don't think I would date anyone who thought learning Elvish* or Klingon was worth their while (much less that speaking it could be romantic in almost any context). It's clear that the person who chooses between cans and bottles of cola by price per unit

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

I think that list kind of sucks, actually. Tolkien is totally mainstream at this point, as are the Muppets. And I spend most of my time trying to retrieve lost possessions for people who are arguably geekier than me, so that one's clearly not working for me.

[crystalpyramid]

Or an obsessive maximizer. Arguments can be made about the extent to which those overlap.

[crystalpyramid]

But seriously, you don't know anyone like this? I thought we knew all the same people...

[q10]

eh. bottled soda is preferable for parties anyway, since people can get precisely the volume they want instead of having it pre-measured, and the large volume consumed in a short space of time means that the main benefit of cans is absent.

even if you think buying canned soda for parties is preferable (and depending on party structure, there are certainly some cases where it is), parties aren't mentioned in the soda can entry on the list, and i'm really, really not sure why being frugal about one's own groceries makes one a jerk. the geek they portray is somebody that's frugal about things where the personal utility cost of frugality is small, so they can afford to be non-frugal about things where the cost is larger, and who likes to give fun things to friends. this isn't a better way to do things than any of a number of other ways, but it doesn't strike me as especially jerk-ish or unreasonable.

[ursule]

It has been my experience that nobody at parties drinks soda from bottles, so if you buy the two-liter bottles you will be stuck with a liter and a half slowly going flat in your fridge.

[crystalpyramid]

But yeah, this and its complement about annoying habits of geeks really make the label feel oppressive, because it's so clearly written by someone who doesn't get it at all, lumping me in with a bunch of people I don't even like.

I mean, it kind of feels like when I observe that ccommack and mumbly_joe share a trait and generalize that all boys do whatever it is they both do.

[ursule]

I think it's implicitly assuming that geeks are boys. I mean, nobody assumes girls are unique and special catches just because they can make dinner.

[sildra]

And they even *contradict* themselves because they have our hypothetical geek pinching pennies when it comes to per-unit costs for soda at the grocery store but recklessly blowing hundreds of dollars on new toys and then *giving away* the old ones to friends blithely without seeing any need to even try to recoup their cost.

I totally know someone like that. But most of the other people I know are misers about nearly everything, so with him the unexpected/baffling thing isn't that he's miserly about groceries, it's that he never has any savings (because he spent it all on a new camera or Apple something or sound system). So despite having a really good job, he drives a sucky car and rents apartments with pest problems or leaks or ventilation problems, because he can't afford better.