I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  There is, unfortunately, a reason for that:

I have an infant at home.

For reasons that clearly only make sense in the female mind, the ESO would much rather I focus my energies when I’m home on helping her with the kid than with more important pursuits, such as furthering my campaign for global domination through blog.  Consequently, things are going to be a little lean around here for a little while.  That’s not to say I’ve given up blogging entirely, mind you, though, with the hit numbers I’m getting lately, I would not be insane to do so.  I mean, at this point, shutting this thing down would disappoint a whopping five people.  Why on God’s green earth would I dare to do that?

I will guarantee that, unless something truly catastrophic happens, I should be able to pull out at least one posting a week out of my ass.  Since I don’t get any revenue from people visiting here, if you only visit once a week, it won’t hurt my feelings.

In the meantime, here are some fun thoughts to pass the time:

• Linux Hater’s Blog is now my new favorite blog.  I’ve been using Ubuntu for almost two years now, and the Evolution of an Ubuntu User article nailed my experiences better than none other.
• Don’t work for people who think this sort of thing is a good idea.
• It’s official:  Obama has become the douche.  Waiting for confirmation on McCain becoming the turd sandwich.
• This is still the funniest and strangest music video I have ever seen.  Ever.

I’ve been putting this off just about long enough…

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed,
the lips acquire stains.
The stains become a warning.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
- Piter De Vries, Dune (Movie)

There are some things in life that are just meant to go together.  Peanut butter and jelly, prime rib and horseradish, Twinkies and bacon drippings - individually, each item is good, but when you put them together, the result is far greater than the sum of their parts.  No combination is this more true than nerds and caffeine.

Caffeine, of course, is a mild stimulant.  If the world was forced to make a choice between running without caffeine or running without oil, it would undoubtedly mean the end of human civilization as we know it.  The group that would suffer the most, though, would be the nerd.  Without caffeine, nerds are intelligent humans that have to go to bed at decent times.  With caffeine, nerds can engage in superhuman feats of brilliance, designing the structures that make modern civilization possible by day, then playing video games that allow them to pretend they’re breaking them apart at night.  Without caffeine, a weekend-long level grind becomes nearly impossible.

It’s true that there are other stimulants in the world.  The beauty of caffeine, though, is that, compared to other stimulants, it’s much less harmful in large quantities, it’s much easier to control and maintain dosage, and it is both cheap and plentiful.  For nerds, who are frequently both cheap and control-hungry, caffeine is the perfect stimulant, providing the control they need at a price they’re willing to afford.

When offering caffeine to a nerd, be sure to check with the nerd to find out how they prefer to have it administered.  Younger nerds will frequently gravitate towards energy drinks and soda to meet their needs.  Older nerds will lean towards coffee.  Generally speaking, the older the nerd, the more reactionary they will behave regarding the level of sugar with their caffeine.  This UserFriendly strip illustrates this point perfectly.

My first Car Lust posting has finally been approved and published.  Enjoy it - Chris Hafner didn’t edit much of it.

No, this one doesn’t have to do with the kid.

I’ve been accepted as a guest blogger for Amazon’s Car Lust Blog.  This means that the readership for my writings will go from a dozen or so people a day to more like thousands upon thousands of people a day.  Needless to say, I’m absolutely thrilled.

For today, and hopefully today only, this blog is going to suffer as a result.  No post beyond this for today, for I have to go cut my teeth on my new home.  I’m still going to have regular new content here, though, so don’t panic… and, yes, as my posts get approved and submitted at Car Lust, I’ll have links to them here, too.

Victory is mine!

Yep, I know - it’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here.  Much of that stems to the new child in the house; for some reason, having an infant in the house is not conducive towards any sort of coherent thought.  To help drive that point home, today’s blog is going to be about why I shouldn’t be allowed within a nautical mile of a kitchen.

Due to financial and logistical constraints, we’re eating out a lot less these days in the Colborne house.  This, of course, means we have to cook our meals; unfortunately, the ESO is mildly fearful of the kitchen, so I’m the one that does the bulk of the cooking.  Throw in that she’s technically supposed to be resting (something about pushing out a seven pound object through a 12 centimeter opening, and the process of that opening growing to be 12 centimeters in the first place), and you’ve got a set of circumstances that just about guarantees that I’m manning the kitchen, for better or worse.  This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.  I’m not a bad cook, as long as I stay within myself.  When I start getting desperately creative, though…

One of the gifts we received from the ESO’s parents was a giant bag of frozen teriyaki chicken.  On paper, this sound great - it’s a good excuse to engage in a little Hawaiian-style cuisine, which eventually must lead to the use of Spam in something.  I like Spam.  I even wrote an ill-advised poem about it when I was 13.  Unfortunately, the ESO neither enjoys teriyaki nor Spam, to say nothing of my spiced ham-themed poetry, so my dreams of homemade Spam musubi are dashed against the rocks like so many other ill-fated dreams.  Even so, though, there is a giant bag of teriyaki chicken sitting in the freezer, taking up valuable space.  So, I decided I would try to counter the teriyaki flavor with something else and thus salvage the free protein source.

At first, my experiments went fairly well.  I used Thai peanut sauce in one dish, which went well.  Putting it in curry in another dish was also non-objectionable; the coconut milk did a wonderful job of drowning out the worst of the teriyaki flavor.  Then I thought I would step it up a notch - I was going to use eggplant.  Just one problem:  The ESO doesn’t like eggplant.  It’s too squishy.

Strrrrrrrrrrike one!

No problem, I thought to myself.  I’ll just cut the eggplant into slices and fry it with the chicken - it’ll work out some of the teriyaki flavor and, with a little time, crispify the eggplant.  Of course, to make a crispy fried product, it frequently helps to have a batter around, which I didn’t…

Strrrrrrrrrrike two!

No worries.  It’s frying, it’s browning a little, things are going well.  Then, I get the idea that the frying process won’t get enough of the teriyaki out.  It’ll just make the eggplant taste like teriyaki.  That’s not a good thing.  I need to throw something else in there to counter the taste… something like… fish sauce.

Strrrrrrrrrrike three!  You’re outta here!

After about five minutes of letting the eggplant and teriyaki chicken stew in a brew of a 1/4 cup of fish sauce and a non-inconsequential amount of olive oil, I opened the lid to see what I had.  What I had possessed a rather familiar odor - an odor so familiar that, upon smelling it, the ESO remarked, “Huh… it smells like when I’m on the rag.”  Being the wonderful, kind man that I am, I agreed wholeheartedly.

Somehow, I still have functional reproductive organs.

I’d tell you how it tasted, but I wasn’t that brave - we just chucked the whole thing in the trash can, threw it out as fast as possible, then I ran down to Jack ‘N The Box and got some drive-thru.  It smelled better than what I was cooking.  Naturally, I remarked that we were going to have to “eat out” after that cooking fiasco.

Again, somehow, I still have functional reproductive organs.

For the record, the “Stuff Nerds Like” series isn’t over.  I have another one that I’m working on and, with any luck, will post tomorrow.  You’ve been warned.  We’re getting back on that train with gusto.  Besides, as long as I keep agreeing that my cooking smells like the ESO’s reproductive organs, I’m probably not going to be seeing them for a while, so I’m going to have nothing but time on my hands.

First, an aside - things are doing well enough here where I can get into limited blogging duty, at least for now.  Don’t be surprised if things are a little intermittent around here, though - much of this depends on what time I have left between helping out with the newborn and the ESO.  Don’t count on much.

I wasn’t sure when or where to put this one.  What I do know is that, thanks to the various nooks and crannies of nerd culture, we’re going to be taking a trip down Science Fiction lane a lot.  For now, let’s just introduce the basics:

As we’ve touched on earlier, nerds like things that blow up and things that, well, blow up, if you get my drift.  Most science fiction fulfills the former with aplomb - look up the Wikipedia page on the Death Star for confirmation.  Sometimes, there’s even some eye candy, which does a reasonable enough job of satisfying the need for things that blow up.  There is, however, one additional aspect in science fiction that ropes nerds in, an aspect that taps into their role playing side - the aspect of escapism.

Good science fiction is easy to escape into for nerds for a couple of reasons:

1. Nerds are almost always the heroes.  Even when they’re not the main hero, they at least serve very important roles as support, providing much needed savvy and knowledge to the hero when it’s needed most.  Capt. Spock fits this mold perfectly.
2. The science fiction universe, whatever that universe entails, is big - really, really big.  This is perfect for a nerd, for each bit of that universe is another random esoteric bit of knowledge to sponge up and disgorge upon the unwitting masses at random, inopportune moments.  These esoteric bits of knowledge can also be used to determine who is nerdier; the person with the most bits of knowledge, of course, wins.

So, in science fiction, nerds have an expansive universe in which their superior knowledge and ability to retain as much knowledge about that universe as possible would be a serious advantage - an advantage that, if one were to play their cards right, would lead to them getting the girl, even if she would turn out to be his sister or something.  Of course, the reason this need for escapism exists is because the real universe is nowhere near as kind - more often than not, the hero is a mindless windbag who wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, but just so happens to have just enough charisma to convince everyone around him to cover for his ass and save the day for him, all while he gets the glory and the green chicks and…

In future features, we’ll dig into some of the particulars, such as some popular sci-fi franchises and conventions.

I apologize for my absence around here - yesterday (Friday), the ESO finally gave birth to little Aiden Lukas Zayac - all 7 lbs, 3 oz of him.  For various personal reasons, I generally try to avoid having blatantly public pictures of my family (trying to keep the wall between the real world and the online one, if that makes any sense), but, if you know me, you know how to get pictures from me.

I’m probably taking the rest of the weekend off from blogging.  I’ll be back in limited duty starting on Monday.

It’s a well documented fact of life that white people enjoy most things Japan.  In fact, the following is also documented there:

Many white nerds are into anime, so being too into this can be seen as a negative by white people.

What is it about anime that fascinates nerds?  If you ask a nerd, they will give many thoughtful, compelling, and complicated reasons, many of which will focus on the intricate artwork, creative story lines, and incredible character development compared to American animation.  All of these reasons, however, are a front - like most things nerd, their enjoyment of anime is much simpler and easier to understand than they like to let on.  To understand why nerds enjoy anime, you need to understand what anime is always about:

1. Robots
2. Girls

That’s pretty much it.  Anime robots bring violence, which leads to things blowing up - nerds love when things blow up.  Girls, meanwhile lead to boobs and sex, and, well, who doesn’t love boobs or sex?  Best of all, since anime isn’t restricted by physical reality or American standards of decency, the robots and girls can be drawn to exquisite standards of impossible physical perfection and do pretty much anything that Japanese people can think of… and, believe me, Japanese people think of some really, really strange things for robots and girls to do together.

When discussing anime with nerds, it’s vitally important to remember a few basic rules:

1. If it’s on Cartoon Network, it’s not “good” anime.  Many of the same rules that apply to white people and Indie Music apply to nerds and anime.  The harder it is to get, the “better” it is.  Bonus points if it’s fan dubbed and only found at conventions.
2. Since anime is rather expensive, getting a nerd some anime that fills a hole in his or her collection is a gift that will be held in high esteem.
3. Be careful about hentai!  Different nerds have different tastes, and, depending on how the nerd feels about you, a gift of hentai may send the wrong signals.  Do not give a nerd any remotely erotic anime if you are in a gender that the nerd prefers to have sexual relations with unless you are planning to have sexual relations with that nerd. Failing to remember that will anger the nerd, who will then proceed to hold a lifelong grudge against you and start doing things like “accidentally” wiping your hard drive or replacing your household fuses with highly conductive materials.  Also, if a nerd asks if you’re interested in watching hentai with them and you’re a member of their preferred gender, assume they want to sleep with you and react accordingly.

Followup: Yes, I know - La Blue Girl is more about tentacles than robots.  The point still stands.

Nerds love free stuff.  There’s no denying it.  If you give a nerd something for free, it honestly doesn’t matter what it is, they will take it.  It could be a Sex & The City box set, it could be a bag of cow dung, it could even be a EGR valve for an ‘88 Yugo; they will take it and find something to do with it.  Nothing is too obscure for a nerd to take for free and keep around the house well beyond its shelf life.  A catastrophic side effect of this, of course, is that their living and working spaces begin to resemble a New York garbage scow.  There will be computer parts for computers that haven’t been made in 20 years, technical manuals that haven’t been relevant in 30, t-shirts that were fashionably unacceptable to wear at the conference they got them from 10 years ago, copies of OS/2, and so on.

Some basic rules of etiquette when dealing with nerds and free stuff:

• Never suggest to the nerd that they should get rid of any of the free stuff.  Most will take it in good humor, but it will only build up stubbornness and resistance to the idea that they should, in fact, get rid of any of that stuff.  The rest will start throwing the free stuff at you in fits of violent anger.
• If you give a nerd some free stuff, they will be indebted to you for a period of time directly proportional to the level of weirdness, obscurity, and uselessness of the item.  An OEM copy of Windows Vista, for example, might earn you a trip to the liquor store.  An OEM copy of Windows NT 3.1, on the other hand, may earn you a permanent, on-call designated driver, available 24/7/365.  Keep in mind, however, that this depends on what is already in the nerd’s collection - the older the nerd, the greater his or her collection, and the harder it is to impress or please the nerd.  Consequently, it’s best to give nerds weird and obscure items when they’re still young enough to appreciate them and lose some of them while moving into and out of college dorm rooms.  That said, older nerds, when impressed, can do far more useful things for you than the younger nerds.  You pay a higher price, but, if you need the goods, it’s worth it.

I’m taking a quick detour from my Stuff Nerds Like series today.  I’ll jump right back in tomorrow, though.  In the meantime, I had something vaguely similar to an epiphany:

Imagine if we taught teenagers about driving the same way we teach teenagers about sex.

With most things in life, parents can be quite specific, providing exacting advice, personal anecdotes, and anything else you can possibly think of to, so the theory goes, help their teenagers learn from their mistakes.  Sex, on the other hand, is almost always a different story, which got me thinking - how well would it work if we taught teenagers how to drive if we used the same methods we use to teach them about sex?

For example, you might have the religious folk:
Driving before car ownership is a sin!  Part of the experience of owning a car is learning how to drive it!  Read the manual!  Seat belts are against God’s will!  Stop playing with your keys or you’ll go blind!

Then, there’s the “safe driving” talk…
I want to talk to you about something… when I was young, I was with my first car, and I wasn’t a safe driver.  I ended up flying through the windshield, which is how I got these disfiguring scars on my face that you see today.  When you first drive, always make sure to use protection.  Always use a seat belt.

Of course, no discussion would be complete without actually describing what driving is, exactly…
When a man falls in love with a car, he wants to take it driving.  Driving, son, is when a man inserts his key into the ignition.  This should only be with a car you own, or at least a car that you plan on having a lasting relationship with.  Never, ever, drive your friends’ cars.  Nothing ruins a friendship faster than that.  Some people rent or lease cars, either for pleasure or to satisfy their driving needs… I’m not for that, but I know some people that have done it.  The cars are usually broken down and dirty.  I don’t recommend doing that.  Also, don’t get involved with convertibles… they’re all fun and games when the sun’s up, but the minute the weather turns sour, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.  I hope this advice serves you well.

At no point, however, would the parent ever mention how to actually drive a car. Consequently, would anyone be surprised if, given this sort of “information”, if the first thing that every teenager did upon trying to drive a car was turn the ignition (probably accidentally) and watch it lunge into a wall or a tree or something?  Would it be surprising if some teenagers never figured out how to properly drive a car?  It would take years of trial and error, going through many unpleasant experiences with many cars, chatting with friends about the mechanics, before most people would ever have what we could now consider a basic competency behind the wheel.  Heck, it would take weeks before most teenagers would figure out what the wheel does, or why it’s important to touch it from time to time.

Just something to think about.

Nerds love role playing. There are so many different kinds of role playing that Wikipedia, the encyclopedic holder of all information nerdy, that they have a multi-part section on the subject. They even put together really nerdy videos, like this one:

What is it about role playing that excites nerds so?  It’s all about escapism, a theme that will be replayed ad nauseum within fairly short order around here.  Nerds spend much of their lives wishing they were somewhere else doing something else, preferably somewhere where their abilities to memorize random bits of arcana and trivia will pay off.  Since that universe doesn’t really exist outside of a Jeopardy! set, nerds have to make one up.

In most cases, role playing for nerds either takes place in an imaginary future or an imaginary past, or at least an imaginary world with elements from either the past or the future.  Sometimes, just to complicate things a little, nerds will mix the two.  The end result, however, is always the same - a world where arcane, obscure knowledge reigns supreme, where any feat of strength can be easily overcome by a proportional feat of intelligence.  From there, the only question remaining is how immersing of an experience the nerd is looking for.  Role playing can be as consuming as dressing up in funny outfits, and as ordinary as sitting at a desk with five of their closest friends, rolling numbered geometrical shapes around, while scribbling on sheets of paper containing strange, inscrutable tables.

Categorically speaking, nerds engaged in role playing should never, under any circumstances, be approached in a way that is contrary to the customs and traditions of whatever world they think they’re belonging to at that moment.  Failing to respect this rule may result in mild violence, or at least a whiny talking to about how you are “no fun” and “unwilling to play along”. When addressing a nerd engaged in role play, it’s vitally important that you address the nerd as if he or she was convincingly successful in bringing their world “to life”.  This is a very similar dynamic to a certain group of white people and traveling - bursting a nerd’s illusion about their ability to bring an imaginary world to life will lead to a very unhappy nerd, along with all of the consequences inherent in such a change of emotional state.

For most people, beer is beer.  You take grain, hops, water, and yeast, you brew it, then you drink it.  For a certain group, of course, things are a little different.  Beer suddenly becomes a status symbol, a statement.  Drinking Budweiser says something about you.  So does drinking Flat Tire.  If you brew your own, well, you’re in a whole new ballpark of coolness right there.  For most people, putting that much thought into beer is a pointless exercise.  For most people, treating operating systems the way white snobs treat beer would also be a pointless exercise.

Nerds, needless to say, are not most people.

For nerds, the operating system of choice, more often than not, is Linux.  It may not be the operating system they boot their machines with, but, sure as the sunrise, most every self-respecting nerd will have a virtual machine that runs Linux or, more likely, have their computer(s) set to dual boot between Linux and Windows.  For nerds, Windows is a necessary evil - they don’t like it, but it’s what most games are run under.  Some nerds will spend an incredible amount of time getting their favorite games to run under Linux; those that do achieve a small slice of ur-Nerdiness that other nerds are obligated to feel supremely jealous of.

What is it that makes Linux special?  The answer they’ll give you is complex, focusing on how Linux is more secure than Windows, how Linux is “easier to use” than Windows, how Linux is “free as in speech”, and so on.  Under no circumstances should you ask a nerd what “free as in speech” means. The real answer, however, is much simpler - it’s because Linux is based on UNIX, an operating system that was the primary means of job security for nerds until Windows NT came along and made it possible for any idiot to become a mediocre sysadmin.  What made UNIX special was that it was almost incomprehensibly and fiendishly difficult to work on, requiring you to enter commands like the following to do anything useful:

[ 1] s/^[^A-Za-z]*/&\n/
[ 2] :loop
[ 3] /\n$/!{
[ 4] h
[ 5] x
[ 6] s/^[^\n]*\n(.).*/\1/
[ 7] y/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/
[ 8] x
[ 9] G
[10] s/\n.([A-Za-z]*[^A-Za-z]*)([^\n]*)\n(.)/\3\1\n\2/
[11] b loop
[12] }
[13] s/\n//

Right.  You can see how anything that requires someone to know how to do crap like that to do something as trivial as capitalizing the first letter in a word could be a great source of job security - as a UNIX admin, all you had to do was slam your hand on the keyboard from time to time and it’d look like you were doing work.  For all you knew, you probably were.  Then, Microsoft got it in their head that they could make a server-grade operating system, and, just like that, every nerd on the planet knew the jig was up.

Well, not quite every nerd… while most nerds were playing with UNIX at school or convincing their bosses that an expensive UNIX server was required to accomplish some seemingly trivial computer-related task, there were a few nerds trying to come up with another reason to keep UNIX in the server room.  Their goal:  Create a free UNIX, one that didn’t cost anybody a single dime to use.

They were successful, but the nerds made a fatal mistake - they forgot to get buy-in from important white people first.  What many nerds forget is that, in the end, important white people are always the ones that pay the bills.  This bugs nerds to no end, and will be the subject of future posts.

Meanwhile, another branch of nerds were working on the same thing.  Unlike the first group of nerds, they couched their efforts in terms of freedom from corporate manipulation, inventing terms like “open source” and “free as in speech”, which was necessary to get buy-in from important white people.  With the help of a rather precocious Finnish nerd, Linux was born.  It was free.  It had just enough of a social statement behind it for nerds to play against white people guilt to push it into the server room.  It wasn’t made by Microsoft, which is a big, nasty corporation - white people hate big, nasty corporations.  Most importantly, it was even more fiendishly difficult to administer than the original UNIX, at least at first.

There was just one problem - it’s really hard to show off how much of a nerd you are outside of a server room.  Thus, the quest to get Linux on the desktop began.

That quest began over ten years ago.  Since that time, Linux has only started to get usable enough for ordinary people to have a faint chance of figuring it out.  Meanwhile, another UNIX-based system, built on the efforts of the first group of nerds to create a free UNIX, is all the rage among trendy white people.  Real nerds (i.e. nerds that are not white people in disguise - since white people gravitate towards money, and since being a nerd was a rather lucrative title for a brief period in American history, there are many white people that chose a career other than law after art school) hate Apple due to their ability to make a user friendly version of UNIX.  If important white people actually figure out that it’s possible to run servers on their trendy white fruit-adorned products, nerds will be out of a job permanently, only to be replaced by much more socially adept liberal, left-leaning white hipsters with penchants for turtlenecks.

Just like a nerd’s knowledge and preference of Monty Python productions say something about the nerd, knowledge and preference of Linux distributions is also useful for sorting out how close a nerd is to ur-Nerdiness:

Ubuntu - Ubuntu is widely considered the “starter” Linux, something that those who are not familiar with Linux will cut their teeth on.  It’s relatively inoffensive, runs on most hardware, and is fairly easy to use.  It’s also the operating system used on the laptop that’s being used to write this very blog entry.  Claiming that you prefer Ubuntu will either earn you an understanding smile or a derisive jeer.  Either way, it will not earn you a seat to the next nerd D&D party.  In wine circles, declaring Ubuntu to be your favorite Linux distribution is akin to declaring that “Arbor Mist” is your favorite wine.

Fedora Core/CentOS/OpenSUSE - These three distributions are based on distributions that nerds run into at work; consequently, they’re fairly popular choices among nerds.  Generally, Fedora Core or CentOS are fairly safe bets; claiming to like OpenSUSE puts you in the middle of a political firestorm among nerds that you want as little as possible to do with, due to the corporate parent of OpenSUSE getting dangerously cuddly with certain large corporations.  In wine circles, declaring one of these to be your favorite distribution would be akin to declaring a common Paso Robles wine to be your favorite.

Gentoo/Slackware/Debian - These are three older distributions; older, in the case of Linux, means “pointlessly difficult to use”.  Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to feign competence with these distributions. You will be found out nearly instantly.  This would be the equivalent of claiming that your favorite wine is some well known old French vintage - you have to really know your stuff to have an intelligent conversation about it.

Xandros/Linspire - These distributions are forbidden!  Claiming that you enjoy these Linux distributions is like enjoying wine from Oklahoma.  That’s just not cool.

Following the Linux distribution/wine analogy, claiming that you don’t like Linux at all but instead prefer any flavor of BSD or Solaris is akin to walking into a wine party and declaring, “Oh, I don’t drink grape wine - I prefer mead.“  It’s a gutsy, daring, bold move that better be defensible, otherwise you’re just going to become the douche of the party.

Image of Tux found on Wikipedia.

No list of things that nerds like can begin without mentioning Monty Python.  Monty Python is to nerds what Arrested Development is to white people - it’s an introduction into their own culture.  It’s the first thing that many nerds pleasantly experienced with other nerds while also being something exclusionary that they could finally lord over everyone around them.  While everybody around them was making fun of them for not knowing the names of every NFL team, not knowing any rap beyond M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice, or not knowing how to dance, they probably didn’t have a way to get even until they discovered Monty Python.  Then, whenever their school chums would remark on how they didn’t know the difference between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans, they could reply with something about the Knights who say ‘Ni!’, or ask for a shrubbery in a high, nasally voice.  Of course, they’d still get their asses forcefed to them through a new hole in their esophagus, but at least they knew that, for once, they finally outwitted their tormentors, coming up with a secret font of cultural knowledge that their tormentors knew nothing about.

Of course, Monty Python has been around for several years; chances are, most nerds learned of Monty Python through their parents.  Consequently, over the years, nerds have needed to come up with new ways to weed out real nerds from people that happened to have nerdy parents.  The easiest way to sort out a real nerd from someone with an unfortunate background is to ask what Monty Python movies or episodes they have seen:

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - The person is either related to or has been in a relationship with someone that is a nerd.  The only way listing this movie is acceptable nerd cred is if the person can quote the entire movie verbatim.  Note that every nerd has seen this movie at least a dozen times.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian - The person may have nerdy tendencies, but could just be a white person in disguise.  Treat with caution and use follow-up questions.  Most nerds have seen this movie at least once, and quite a few will claim this is their favorite Monty Python movie.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life - If the person has seen this, they’ve at least been around a nerd long enough for the nerd to trust that they may have an off-beat sense of humor that isn’t easily offended by naked women on rollerskates or the reproductive habits of the Irish.  Generally speaking, if a nerd is showing this movie to you, it’s because he or she has identified you as one of their own.  Consequently, not liking this movie is frequently considered a great insult and will banish you from nerd circles permanently.  That said, most nerds will not claim this is their favorite Monty Python movie, especially as they get older, preferring something more thoughtful, like Life of Brian, or obscure, like one of the following:

Any Monty Python Compilation - This would include compilations like And Now for Something Completely Different or Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.  Even viewing any of these is a strong sign of nerdiness since few people under the age of 40 actually started watching Monty Python with their short sketches.  That said, many non-nerds will be able to list certain popular sketches from the compilations, such as the dead parrot sketch or the lumberjack; consequently, to prove nerd cred, it’s necessary to know a sketch that is a little more obscure.  That said, knowing a non-obvious sketch from the compilations will definitely earn you serious nerd points.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus - This is where things get somewhat interesting; though most nerds are familiar with Monty Python’s movies and enjoy them, actually owning Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a sign that you aren’t just a nerd, you’re a Monty Python nerd.  Though it’s vitally important to specialize in a specific field of nerdness in order to be an actual nerd, the more you specialize, the less you will be able to wander through nerd circles.  This is because, as nerds specialize, they become increasingly exclusionary, frequently trying to achieve an ultimate level of nerdiness that transcends all others; this allows them to not only be better than all non-nerds but also become superior to all nerds.  All other circles of nerds will frequently feel threatened by these ur-Nerds and will begin to shun them.  In the case of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, it’s universally acceptable in nerd circles to watch and appreciate the collection; owning and being able to quote verbatim more than 20% of the sketches, however, will immediately mark you as ascending into ur-Nerd status and render you suspect in non-Monty Python enjoying circles.  Worse yet, Monty Python nerds frequently overlap with theater people, which further taints and pollutes association with such types.

Any post-Monty Python production by Monty Python personnel - All nerds, even the non-Monty Python nerds, will be able to list and competently describe the plot of at least one non-Monty Python movie produced or acted in by Monty Python personnel, especially the works of Terry Gilliam.  Fairly common ones that nerds will be aware of is Brazil, or occasionally Time Bandits.  Mentioning Jabberwocky or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, however, is considered to be dangerously close to slipping into Film Festival territory, due to their poor box office receipts and poor reviews, which means that it’s easy to be confused for a White Person when mentioning them.

It’s probably been fairly obvious, but I’ve had some issues trying to figure out what to write about here.  Politics just aren’t cutting it for me - there are only so many ways to knock Obama, after all, or cringe about McCain.  So, I’ve been trying to broaden my horizons, reading different blogs like Stuff White People Like, and that’s when it hit me:

I’m not white!

It then hit me, slightly later, that I must have been horribly mistaken - I’m the whitest guy I know, after all.  However, none of the things that Stuff White People Like excited me; on the contrary, they were precisely the kinds of things I usually held against other people.  The people that liked that crap were precisely the kind of people that I spent some time being envious of before I realized that it’s okay to be a Nerd.

Then, something far more profound hit me… it was like a religious calling.

I must detail Stuff That Nerds Like.

Lord knows I’m certainly qualified for this role, or, at least, I think I am.  I’m certainly nerdy.  I’m excited about technology.  I have questionable social skills.  As proof of that, when talking to my mom about her new home in Oklahoma, she mentioned that there were rolling hills there.  I pointed out that I was already acquainted with midwestern hills, having been to Iowa and Nebraska.  She replied, “Oh, it’s much hillier than that - we’re even hillier than Missouri!”  Being a nerd with minimal social skills, I chose a completely inappropriate analogy, asking her (my mother), “Isn’t that like having bigger boobs than a 12-year old girl?”

Folks, I was made for this job.

Let’s get to work.

Okay, so it’s actually the 5th, Independence Day was yesterday, and the alien ship has finally been shot down.  Good job, Will Smith!

I kid.

So, what is the 4th of July like in the Colborne household?  It’s funny you should ask - it’s about as exciting as you would expect if you were to allow an extremely pregnant woman and a sysadmin to get together and plan a low-key 4th of July bash.  It involves barbecue, linguica, bockwurst, turkey burgers, and fruit.  I’ll admit, the fruit confused me as much as anyone, but the ESO insisted that there be something relatively protein-free at the festivities for those that, y’know, might want to load up on fructose instead of American Protein.  This sounded like the deranged wailing of a madwoman, myself, but what do I know?  Besides, the strawberries were rather tasty and served as a nice complement to the frankfurter, spicy linguica, and bockwurst I had earlier that day.  In the process, I learned about a new food group - apparently, there is more to food than complex carbohydrates and meat.  Huh!

The ESO’s mother, young teenage sister, and one of my friends arrived for the low-key barbecuing.  After some cooking and essening of the fleische, we then slowly (very slowly) migrated to Helm’s Deep, a.k.a. the Sparks Marina, to partake in further festivities, primarily focused upon observing bats and watching people at the Nugget blow up colorful bits of gunpowder.  This was then followed with a trip home and some well-earned sleep.

Now, I know what you’re thinking - how is it possible to condense the mind-tingling excitement of a low-key Independence Day barbecue into two paragraphs?  It takes effort - and time.  Only through mastery of the English language, such as the mastery you’re witnessing today, can a writer succinctly catalogue and describe the sort of excitement contained in those paragraphs, using brief, pithy prose.  Oh yes.  This is mastery, and I challenge anyone to a duel who suggests otherwise.

In other news, I’ll be announcing my own death by cutlass within the week.  Good times!

Meanwhile, a new favorite web site of mine - Keep Lahontan Brown!  Having spent my Independence Day at one former environmental disaster, the least I could do is glorify the existence of another nearby one.  Who doesn’t need more mercury in their drinking water?

It’s amazing what you learn while traipsing around the Internet - today, I learned about the Dunning-Kruger Effect:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think that they know more (or have more skill) than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less.

I actually have a lot of experience with both ends of this. For example, I am firmly convinced that, if push came to shove, I would be fairly decent in a fight, despite the fact that I am out of shape and haven’t won a fight in, oh, ever. But, in part because it’s been a while since I’ve been in a fight, I have a certain unjustified confidence that I could at least last more than the 0.8 seconds it would take for someone to square their fist against my jaw. Conversely, the more I learn about my career, the less I feel I actually know - I know enough about System Administration-type work to have a much better understanding of what I don’t know than I did when I first started, so I can more clearly see my ignorance on many aspects of that field.

So, where am I going with this? Glad you asked…

Actually, no I’m not.  I have no idea where I’m going with this.  I can normally find millions of stories where this very principle applies.  Not today, though.  Today seems to be a Dunning-Kruger Free Zone, and for that, I am deeply offended and mortified.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bunker to crawl into.  I hear they’re coming for Murphy’s Law next.

1. No more picking belly button lint out while she’s eating.
2. No more putting my feet on clean laundry on the couch.
3. No more eating fish heads at nice Thai restaurants.
4. No more swatting at the alarm clock, inadvertently turning it off in the process.
5. No more agreeing with her when she declares herself to be a “space cow”.
6. No more disagreeing with her when she declares herself to be a “space cow”.
7. No more mentioning the “space cow”.
8. No more ignoring the “space cow”.
9. No more pretending I can rap.
10. No more lists about things she wants me to stop doing while she’s sitting next to me.

On an entirely unrelated note, SpikeTV is so very weird.  So.  Very.  Weird.

That is all.