The Geek wants out
by Ernest Cline


At first glance
I probably appear to be a somewhat ordinary,
somewhat average looking fellow.
Calm, harmless, at ease.

But this is by design.
You see, it is through decades of research and rigorous training that I have crafted this façade of normalcy.

And now, through intense concentration,
I am able to function in a social setting.
I can speak at length with educated people about
pertinent matters of public importance,
such as literature,
or the current political climate in Europe.

I am capable of conversing with you
without ever revealing that just underneath the surface
of this manufactured veneer
there hides an altogether different person.
A monster, some might say.
My alter-ego.
He is the opposite of the image I project.
He is the antithesis of Cool.
He is the LAST person you want to get trapped in a conversation with.

He is The Geek.
The obsessive science fiction movie watching,
comic book collecting,
Monty Python dialogue memorizing,
Dungeons and Dragons playing GEEK
that I struggle daily to keep hidden from the world.

But The Geek Wants Out.

He want to talk to you.
He wants to give you his doctoral dissertation on why
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
is the greatest fucking film of all time!

He wants to bitch slap you because
you’ve never seen Big Trouble in Little China.
What? Have you been living in a fucking cave?!

He wants to kick your ass in Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.
And he will.
Because he’s a fucking Geek.

And he wants his toys.
He wants the complete set
in mint condition,
still in the box.
He wants every item on the planet that is even remotely related to Ultraman.
Because Ultraman is Airwolf!

He could give a squirt of piss
about sports or politics or rhetoric.
Such things are of no consequence to him.
What matters is the release date of the next Lord of the Rings movie!

You see, The Geek can’t wait.
The Geek has no patience.
He wants what he wants when he wants it.
And all he wants is stupid shit!

He wants his own Tardis.
He wants his own light saber.
He wants to buy a DeLorean and he wants to drive it 88 miles per hour.

He wants movies.
He wants to see the Director’s Cut.
He wants the impossible to find Japanese bootleg with
6 minutes of never-before-seen footage.

He wants to watch Blade Runner. Again.
He wants to watch Brazil. Again.
He wants to watch A Clockwork Orange.
Again and Again!

But I deprive him of these things, as best I can,
until I can no longer ignore his voice
screaming in my head.

I am Jekyl. He is Hyde.
I am Bruce Banner. He is the Hulk.
Especially the Hulk from issues #272 to #378.

But no longer!
I am putting a stop to all this nerdy shit right now!
I’m an adult, for Christ’s sake!
And this body isn’t big enough for the both of us.
One of us has to go, and it’s gonna be him.
I banishing the Geek forever to the Phantom Zone,
just like in Superman II !
Because, in the end –
there can be only one.

When I was a kid
by Ernest Cline


When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears
with their tedious diatribes about how hard things used to be when they were growing up, what with walking twenty-five miles each way to school every morning, uphill, both ways, through year-round blizzards, carrying their younger siblings on their back
to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average, despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for .35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell
I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids
about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it.

But now that I've reached the ripe old age of 29…
I can't help but look around and notice
that the youth of today –
You've got it so fucking easy!
I mean, compared to my childhood,
you live in a goddamn Utopia!
And I hate to say it, but you kids today . . .
you don't know how good you've got it.

I mean, when I was a kid...

We didn't have the Internet.
If we wanted to know something,
we had to go to the goddamn library and look it up!
And there was no e-mail!
You had to actually WRITE somebody a letter,
with a PEN,
and then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the fucking mailbox. And it would take, like, a WEEK to get there.

And there were no MP3s or Napster!
If you wanted to steal music
you had to go down to the record store and shoplift it yourself!
Or you had to wait around all day and tape it off of the radio, and then the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and fuck it all up!

You wanna hear about hardship?

You couldn't just DOWNLOAD porn.
You had to bribe some homeless dude
to buy you a copy of Hustler from the 7-11.
It was either that or jack off to the lingerie section of the JC Penny catalog.
Those were your options!

And there was no call waiting! If you were on the phone and someone else called -
they got a BUSY SIGNAL!

And we didn't have Caller ID either!
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!
It could be your boss, a collection's agent, your mom, your drug dealer –
You didn't know!
You had to just pick it up and take your chances, mister!

And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games
with high-resolution 3-D graphics.
We had the Atari 2600!
With games like Space Invaders and Asteroids.
And the graphics sucked ass!
Your guy was just a square!
You had to use your imagination!
And there were no multiple levels or screens.
It was just ONE screen, forever,
and you could never win.
The game just kept getting harder and faster and until you died.
Just like LIFE!
Those video games built character, Sonny Jim!

And when you went to the movie theater –
there was no such thing as stadium seating!
All the seats were the same height.
If a tall guy sat in front of you, you were fucked!

And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only, like, 20 channels!
And there was no on-screen menu!
You had to use a little book called the TV Guide to find out what was on!

And there was no Cartoon Network!
You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning!

Do you see what the fuck I'm saying?!!
We had to wait all week, you spoiled little bastards!

That's exactly what I'm talking about.
The problem with you kids today is that you’ve got it too damn easy!
You're spoiled!

I swear to god, you wouldn’t last five minutes . . . back in 1987.