Does anyone actually use the term cyberspace any more? Or just us old geeks?
I admit it. I’m definitely a geek. All this travel stuff led from being a teenager in the 1980’s and expecting the nuclear warheads to drop on us at any moment. My mom’s 1960’s flashbacks and back to nature hippie ethics didn’t help. In 6th grade I got my first computer, a Commodore 64 with a tape drive and then in 7th grade I stopped reading dog stories when some kid told me I should read Riverworld which led to Tolkien, Heinlein, and every other geek genre I could get my hands on. Maybe some people mistook me for a ‘cool’ kid, but I knew that at night I would stay up until 3 a.m. reading space operas and end of the world apocalyptic stories. Yes, I’ve been hoping that civilization would crash since I was 13. Never mind all the fantasies that go with it.
Anyway, those fantasies led to me becoming a pretty damn good ‘man meets wild’ kind of survivalist. I can do just about anything with anything. The problem was though that the world just keeps keeping on, so I started testing myself in other ways, by say, becoming homeless and living in the northwest by choice. That led to doing some ‘rough travel’ overseas and of course, I kept playing with computers all along the way. Then I got interested in why civilization was such a bummer which led to an interesting but fairly worthless degree in Anthropology.. And of course, I kept the geek mentality through all of that, hell I even wrote a Sci-Fi novel, but only about ten other geeks read it.
So, here I am. A geek with a computer who managed to find a fairy tale wife who also believes in fairy tales (especially the one we live) and this Sunday, I just didn’t have the energy to go wander around in Turkey, like I’d planned on doing. I’m a little depressed because I’m starting to think that civilization as we know it…WILL SURVIVE. Shit.
What some would consider hope has me a little bit in despair, so I spent the day geeking out. Improving my SEO, link building, and once in a while going to Yahoo News just to see if things might fall apart after all…but it’s not looking good folks. This mighty old ship of human errors keeps continuing and seems to duck every potential death blow.
I did find this though: New Muslim Superhero Comic
. I’m slightly disturbed though that they are making him disabled though the story explains that. At first I thought it might be because people are scared of Muslims, unless they are disabled.
I was surprised to ask my students over the last few days what is more important, Love or Money and to have them ALL answer with no hesitation that money is more important. Shit! It’s not going to get any better with people thinking that.
I still know the answer is love, but with those kids coming of age, it’s not looking good for romantics, so I figured I better spend the day improving my chances of making enough money to get my wife the caravan of her dreams and a big dog to scare the greedy little fuckers all off when they come to rob us. (See, that’s a geek dream leaking out in an otherwise straight narrative.)
Of course, my day in cyberspace did lead me to some fun places. Ex officio underwear, geek gadgets, and a nice story of how money was invented and was never really real in the first place. Meanwhile the Turkish ice cream trucks wander up and down the streets, the politicians and business creeps keep taking advantage, and life goes on.
Frankly, I’m glad I’m a geek. My geekness, sci-fi, end of the world, technomad, survivalist, romantic mentality has led me to some places that are beyond anything I could have read about. And besides, I haven’t had to grow up. Lucky for me I married a woman who doesn’t seem like she will ever grow up either. It will be nice when she gets here so we can go out and play on Sundays together.
