Geeking Out: By the Book
Not only is this week Speak Out With Your Geek Out, but Thursday on the internet means only one thing: It’s Indie Thursday, the day we celebrate independent bookstores. This week is a special Indie Thursday, because I have a guest post up today at Jenn’s Bookshelves, a kickass book blog. I figured why not spread the love further and talk about my love of books for Speak Out!
Being a Geek is just another way of saying you’re really, really into something. By that definition, I am a Geek about Books.
I started reading at a very young age and was one of those kids that made my poor mom read me not one bedtime story, but three, or four, or five. She’d usually fall asleep halfway through the middle of the second one and I’d have to wake her up, or finish the story myself. That’s how I learned.
These days, despite moving several times and knowing how heavy books are to haul around, I will buy almost any book on sight if I can afford it. I love books. I love the smell of a new book, the feel of cracking open a hardcover for the first time. I loved the look and feel of the “Little Golden Books” as a kid, I liked how they all lined up and matched even though the stories were so different. My first favorite book, I believe, was called The Pokey Little Puppy. I would read it over and over, even though I had it memorized.
When I started attending school, I checked out nearly every book in the library, and even got special permission to check out more books than was normally allowed because I would finish reading and return them so quickly. My school had an Accelerated Reader program to encourage students to read as many books as they could, especially the longer chapter books that were worth more points. I was always at the head of the race with the most points of my grade.
As I got older, I began to love textbooks. Even if I didn’t like doing the work, I liked the big, thick books. I like how they felt, how they looked, I liked exploring the stories that weren’t taught in class. I liked how clean the pages were and how the paper didn’t feel like the regular book paper, it was sleek and shiny.
I like owning books. I like looking at them on the shelf, I like reading them, I like thumbing through the pages. Even if I only read the book once, I can look at it and remember the story, remember the time when I read it and how happy it made me. I have a collection of books I haven’t read yet, too, that I like to choose from when I feel like I need to read something “different.” My own little library.
Without books, I’m not sure what my life would be like. Books got me through not having many friends as a kid by giving me other places and people to escape to. The Harry Potter series is responsible for most of my web design skill and many of my friends that I have now. John Green’s novels gave me another entire community of people to interact with online.
Books may not seem “geeky” to many people, but they’re the heart of many activities that are considered “geeky.” If you like books, you might also enjoy role playing - online role playing, like I mentioned in my previous post, is just a form of storytelling. You write your character’s story just like you might write a book, except you write with other people and other characters to create unique perspectives. Tabletop role playing relies heavily on books – books tell you which rules to follow, what monsters to fight, and how to create your character.
Many of your favorite geeky movies have tie-in books also, such as Star Wars and Star Trek. Books serve as guides for video games and travelers alike; they teach, enlighten, and inspire. Behind every geek is at least one good book.
Are you a book geek? Do you collect them by the hordes like I do, or do you just have one or two favorites that you keep close by? Do you just like regular books like novels, or do you collect super geeky books like role playing guides?
Leave a comment! Say hi! Lets geek out about BOOKS.
Read MoreGeeking Out: Online Roleplaying
As “Speak Out With Your Geek Out” week continues – you can read my previous post here - it seems only fitting to begin with my longest, most geeky hobby. Online roleplaying.
How It Happened
I started role playing online well over a decade ago, around the year 2000. I was in Middle School, and as anyone who has ever attended Middle School will tell you – it sucked. I was in the sixth grade, and we were doing this “Battle of the Books” thing and a friend of mine wasn’t allowed to read Harry Potter because of her religious practices, and so we swapped. I was instantly hooked.
As I mentioned in my first Geek Out post, I’ve been using the internet since way before many kids in my generation had a home computer. After I read Harry Potter and devoured the two sequels, I was bored. In the months before the fourth book was released, I spent my time writing out lists of things that appeared in the books in a single notebook. All of the spells, all of the sweets, all of the books. My own little lexicon. I had no idea I was setting myself up for a life-long hobby.
Eventually I found my way to the official Warner Brothers Harry Potter message boards, and stumbled across a few people pretending to be witches and wizards. They’d write up paragraphs describing themselves in the house common room for my favorite house, Slytherin1, and interact with each other. I thought this was pretty cool and watched for a long time before deciding to jump in. I called myself “Malanda Riddle,” deciding to play a twist that I hadn’t seen anyone else use yet – I was going to be a relative of the dark lord Voldemort. Back in those days, this was a new and exciting idea. To my knowledge I was the first person to try this concept on the WB boards. I didn’t know I was playing a “Mary Sue” character. In fact, I didn’t even know I was role playing.
Eventually I learned how to write better, how to create a better character. I figured out that what we were doing was called role playing, and even joined a different Harry Potter site with some friends, one that I would eventually take over and own. I even tried a few different genres with the same friends; high fantasy with elves, daring (and sometimes comedic) pirates on the high seas. Mostly I just stuck to Harry Potter.
Then and Now
These days, I’m still running the same site, with some of the same people from the very beginning. You can find me over at Vault 713, where we have added some structure since the old days. Mary Sue’s long gone, we now have a staff team dedicated to helping our players create characters that are interesting and fun so that they can explore the wizarding world. Instead of just wandering aimlessly, we follow the Harry Potter books one at a time. Right now, we’re on Order of the Phoenix.
I also started up Roleplay Hub this year, a place where role players of all walks of life and all styles – including tabletop or video game role playing – can come together and make friends. It’s not just a message board so much as a community of people ready to welcome you in with open arms. One Big Happy Geek Family.
Something that I’ve learned over the years is that you really have to have fun while you role play. A lot of role playing sites speak a lot of drama or other issues – online role playing is, interestingly, something that many different sorts of people are into. There are forums for younger children to play as wolves, horses, or bunnies. There are forums where tween girls can pretend they are Gossip Girl-type, diva teenagers. Forums where grown men can strategize wars, or younger boys can pretend they are famous wrestlers. But all of these share one common thread – they are all games. Games need to be fun. You can’t focus on the writing style or the goodness or badness of characters, you just have to enjoy yourself, whether you’re playing an elf, a human, a horse, or an alien from outer space. It’s all about the fun.
Get Your Geek On: Join an Online Role Play
No matter what your flavor of geek, there is an online role playing game for you. You don’t have to be good at writing or even know anything about role playing to get started – role playing is sort of like acting or writing a story. You just tell about what happened from your character’s perspective. If I was playing a girl named Emily who’s secretly an assassin, one of my posts might look something like this:
Emily quietly climbed up the ladder, waiting. She heard someone in the room above, and all she had to do was attack.
Then, someone else would come along and say that their character was the one up in the window, or that they climbed the ladder after Emily. It’s easy. It’s fun. You can play while you’re bored in the office, between essays, or from your smartphone while waiting for the bus. It’s Geek Casual.
If You’d Like to Participate:
- Check out sites like Roleplay Hub or RPG-Directory to find a forum to play on.
- Look for tags like #rpg or #roleplaying on Tumblr or Twitter.
- If you’re a Harry Potter type, come on over to Vault 713 - we’ll get you started!
- Leave a note in the comments of what you’d like to play, and let me find you a game!
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1 – For the curious, when I finally “received my letter” a decade later and registered for Pottermore, I was given the choice between Slytherin and Ravenclaw. I chose Slytherin.
Read MoreSpeak Out With Your Geek Out
I grew up in a House of Geek.
Some of my earliest memories involve watching Star Trek with my dad. I knew how to make the Vulcan Salute before I knew how to ride a bike. When they first introduced me to Garbanzo beans, he told me they were little Ferengi heads.
My mom is a geek in her own right. Sure, she thinks Star Trek isn’t very exciting and really doesn’t know anything about Star Wars; and okay, she can barely work her email some days, but she’s as geek as they come. This woman could kick your ass at Rummy, Scrabble, or almost any board game before you even score your first points. At the dinner table, she was the one who got in trouble for playing with her food and pushing it into shapes. Plus, she’s left handed.
My siblings were way older than me, so most of my memories as a kid involved playing by myself. I used to have an old Gargoyles board game that came with a movie you played while you played the game. Without anyone to play with, I figured out how to do it by myself. It was new and exciting every time.
In elementary school, I traded and sold Beanie Babies and Beanie Baby trading cards on the internet. Most kids my age were out learning to surf or skim. I was surfing the internet.
I remember one time my brother brought over his Nintendo. I was fascinated. Duck Hunt was the best game ever. Video games were cool.
Being a Geek is something that I never really thought twice about. Kind of like the eleventh doctor picks up an un-loved article of clothing and declares it instantly cool, I always thought being a Geek was cool. Star Trek was cool. The internet was cool.
Geeks get a lot of flack. Despite the fact that some of the coolest, most successful people recognized by our society are geeks – we’re still the bullied. The less popular. The ones who get invited last when someone’s parents insist they send everyone in the class an invitation.
This week – we’re taking it back. Geek isn’t something you should be afraid of, or bulled for, or unsure of. Geek is about being awesome. As one of my favorite (very nerdy) authors once said:
”Saying ‘I notice you’re a nerd’ is like saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan.”
Some pretty smart – and pretty geeky – people decided that this week should be dubbed Speak Out With Your Geek Out. A week where we all get together and get proud of our geek. So step right up, and wave that geek flag high.
I’ll be posting several times this week to share about my geeky hobbies and why I’m proud to be a geek. If you have a blog, I encourage you to do the same. Announce your geekdom on Twitter proudly. Wear that Lord of the Rings t-shirt out in public.
Go on. Get Geeky. You’re in good company.
Read MoreHow To Hurricane in 4 Easy Steps
I admit it. I’m going a little stir crazy.
It’s hard being away from home in a hurricane – not just because of worrying for my family and friends, but also because…well, I’ve been riding out storms since I was a kid. It’s weird not being there. Hurricanes, for all the Big and Scary they can be, can be fun.
Thankfully, we have the internet!
I present to you, Manda’s Digital Hurricane EXPERIENCE.
WATCH!
OBXCams.com has a lovely selection of webcams set up from up and down the Outer Banks that will stay on as long as they can throughout the storm. I personally am tuned in to the Ocracoke Airport Cam, watching the ocean get stirred up already. I’ve seen those waves in person, and they are awesome in the truest sense of the word.
LISTEN!
Nothing like an eclectic variety of music paired with real time calm storm updates from locals riding out Irene on Ocracoke Island. Certainly beats listening to the fire and brimstone and smooth jazz of the weather channel, right? Tune in to Ocracoke Island’s own WOVV FM - live! Online! They will broadcast as long as they can with their generator – enjoy!
FOLLOW!
Are you a twitterer? Plenty of folks back home are riding out the storm and will be tweeting as they can. I suggest keeping an eye on my parents, @reelbuzz and @mommarific, friend and bookstore owner @BooksToBeRed, of course @WOVVFM. You can also follow @jasummerell, who’s always on top of things out in the Raleigh area, and @DinahMoeHumm, who’s in Texas but an islander at heart.
TRACK!
Tracking hurricanes is neat. You can see where it’s going and where it’s been. Google “Hurricane Tracking Map” and print one out, grab some colored pencils/pens, and start plotting out the coordinates. The best place to get Hurricane information is always NOAA.gov - they update every three hours with new coordinates and wind speeds and a new graphic to show you where the beast is headed.
Hurricanes can be scary, but like blizzards or any other “large” storm, the best thing to do is bunker down indoors with a good book, stock up on water, and wait it out. Hopefully those of you not at the beach can check out some of these ways to get the real “hurricane experience,” and those of you back home stay dry as long as you can! We’ll see you on the other side!
Read MoreDue East
I grew up with hurricanes.
I remember when we first moved to the Outer Banks in 1995, Hurricane Felix hit. I was terrified that my parents didn’t want to leave (despite us moving in only days/weeks before, if my memory serves me) because hurricanes were big and bad. The phrase I should have been using was great and terrible or overwhelming beauty.
We went out on the beach in the middle of the storm. According to Wikipedia, it was a Category 4 that never made landfall. All I remember are the huge waves that towered over my head (from a distance, we weren’t swimming), being in awe of the newscasters making a big deal out of what seemed to be so pretty, and picking up dozens of giant conch shells like the ones you see in tourist shops – only these were fresh, washed up on shore by the storm.
After it was all over, we drove around to survey the “damage” – there was none. Some houses were missing bits of siding, I think I remember seeing a fence on a tennis court that had been bent a little, no doubt from something flying into it. The rest of the island was fine. The weather was beautiful. The sky was blue. The wrath of the storm lasted…maybe half a day, maybe a day. And then it was paradise.
That’s how they all were. The eerie calm before the storm, the photography of different buildings boarded up, the pounding wind and rain, and then the beauty that followed. Somewhere, my parents have photos of me standing outdoors in a raincoat in nearly every storm we weathered. Most of them are funny – they might involve me clinging to a car and pretending to be blown away. In several I’m wearing my pajamas, grinning. It was always fun and happy.
We left only once – maybe twice, it’s hard to remember – and while it was a fun “vacation,” we got stuck in tornadoes and flooding in the area we’d evacuated to. The islands were fine. From then on, we stayed. It was never as bad as the TV made it out to be.
And then came Isabel.
Hurricane Isabel was one of those late-in-the-year storms. The bad ones, when the weather systems near the coast are getting ready to batter us with nor’easters for the rest of the winter. It was a Category 5, the worst a storm can get. It died down before it hit us, but carried with it a huge wall of water and wind. It was the first time in nearly a decade that I’d actually been scared of a Hurricane.
Our power was in and out. My dad had backed his Jeep Cherokee up to the house and ran this special generator plug-in “thingy” inside that ran off the car battery when the car was running and let us boot up a lamp, or a laptop, or the microwave if we really needed it but-try-not-to-use-it-just-in-case. The first sign of trouble was when my then-boyfriend called to ask how I’d weathered the tornado.
“Tornado?” I asked. I laughed at him. Up until that point we’d been having fun. When the power was on, I was online chatting with friends and working on website stuff, playing games. When it wasn’t, the side of the house that didn’t have shudders on it was bright enough for me to read.
He’d seen my street on the news from his dad’s house up in Virginia. A tornado had gone right down it not 10 minutes before. The wind was so loud outside that I’d heard nothing.
I ran outside and looked, sure enough: the brick wall around the pool at the condo complex up the hill was completely battered and all over the road. I’d never seen a tornado, and to this day I remain terrified of them – but there it was, that close. Those bricks could have been our own brick house. I wasn’t sure if anyone was around for miles, but the wind was blowing so hard I could barely walk outside.
That night was the longest one I can remember in my entire life. The power stayed out. I slept in my parents room to avoid listening to the wind battering against the shudder on my bedroom, which was situated to the north east side of the house; the side that got the most wind. It didn’t do much good. The night was bitch black, and all you could hear was the howling of the wind. The occasional zzzzzzt of salt fizzing on the powerlines. Thunks and thuds and whumps as bits of siding and sand and whatever else hit the side of our house and the houses around us. I thought the night would never end. I was certain I wasn’t going to wake up alive in the morning.
The power stayed out for days. When we woke up to the beautiful, sunny day the next morning, we were quarantined to our house. They didn’t recommend anyone leaving. We had no idea what that meant. Were we the only house left on the island? Our neighborhood looked fine, but what about beyond that? All I could go on were photos from the internet that had already been uploaded to the weather sites. The beach road torn into bits not far from where I lived. Hatteras had a new inlet because the ocean had ripped right through the narrow strip of sand that was considered “island.”
Once we finally left the house, it turned out that the bypass, the main road was completely flooded near our house. This was why we were “quarantined” – there was no way to get out. The back roads were flooded. The main road was flooded. Unless you had a kayak and felt like hauling it down to the road, you weren’t going anywhere. Not like there was anywhere to go anyway – everything was closed.
Eventually, the water retreated. I visited with a friend and showered at her house for a few days while our power remained out, seemingly the only cluster that hadn’t been turned back on due to damage. We went back to school. Everything went back to normal.
It’s hard watching a storm unfold from a thousand miles away. Despite all those years of having fun, having friends over during hurricanes for slumber parties, taking silly photos – there’s a part of me that, while far away, can only remember Isabel, not all the countless storms that went by without so much as a nod.
People are busy. It’s a time for boarding up, helping tourists get off the island, time for tying down and stocking up. There’s no time to chit chat – understandably. It’s a busy time. I get that.
But that doesn’t make it any easier to watch the countless news reports that I mocked so much growing up, to see varied reports on how bad the storm will be. Back home, you just board up and weather it out and everything’s fine. Up here, everyone asks me about my family. How they’ll be doing. Are they going to be okay. It’s hard not to worry a little bit.
But you know what? Jim Cantore can suck it. Everyone’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.
And if it’s not, the next day everything will still be gorgeous and beautiful as if it’s the most wonderful day the Earth has ever seen, and somehow that’s alright with me.
Read MoreGleeking Out
So. Over the weekend. Glee 3D Movie Concert Experience Show. Or whatever the title is. It was Glee. It was in a movie theatre. I wore nerdy glasses and forgot my contacts.
It was awesome.
Let me be the first to say that I don’t ordinarily buy into the whole “CONCERT MOVIE LIMITED ENGAGEMENT” gimmick. Nor do I buy into the 3D gimmick. Too much exposure to 3D gives me massive headaches. It’s also usually pointless. This was not the case.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the Glee 3D Experiencaganzapalooza has completely turned around my opinions on 3D movies. I loved it. It was great. I wanted more. I was sad for it to end. No headaches.
I wasn’t really expecting much going in, but I did know several things:
1. They filmed some “behind the scenes” stuff, so it wouldn’t just be concert.
2. It would basically be the same tour that we’d neglected to buy tickets for before it sold out.
3. There would be boobs in 3D.1
When the show started, I was skeptical. I’ll be honest. The start you off by showing you a couple of clips of excited fans talking about what Glee meant to them. This was not in 3D. It was also not exciting, nor was it set to music, but I appreciated the effort. This carried on through the whole show between scenes – which was nice, but ultimately we would have rather seen a full concert that included the banter we knew was in the live show rather than the clips in between.
As for the 3D Effect - This was, possibly, the best use of the 3D technology I have seen yet. We were the only people in the theater aside from 2 people sitting a few rows behind us, and the 3D crowd scenes actually made it seem like we were in a stadium full of people. The performers were right there, up in your face, and seemed oddly more real than watching them on a flat 2D screen. The entire thing was brought to life – and without all the computer animation that can make me motion sick or give me headaches, it just seemed like were there, at a concert. There were times that I completely forgot it was in 3D.
The whole thing was absolutely wonderful, and I was surprised to see how much I also enjoyed the mini-stories of the fans in between. It did take away from the concert experience, but watching the clips – a dwarf girl (her own words, not mine!) getting elected prom queen, a gay teen looking to Kurt for support, a girl with Aspergers who made friends because of the show. And then there was the audience – the cameras kept panning around to different people; big people, small people, black people, white people, dads jumping around singing along, moms crying happily, and kids being absolutely thrilled to death that their favorite TV characters weren’t just characters – they were here and real and oh my god Puck’s mohawk in 3D.
It’s funny, I’ve never felt so proud, so impressed by a cast of characters from a television show. Glee is by no means my favorite show of all time, nor do I think they are all the best actors of all time – but these kids stepped it up and recorded music. Learned dance moves. Did this week by week for the TV show, and then turned around and spent their summer performing for fans across the globe. You can tell from the film – and from comments of fans who saw the show live – that they really, truly enjoy what they’re doing. They enjoy spending time with each other. They’re having fun, and it shows, and does remarkable things for their performance.
I had the privilege of meeting Darren Criss last summer. I was at a Harry Potter conference – Infinitus, for those who have been here awhile – and he was with the rest of the StarKid crew (give or take a few people) at their booth in the Vendor Hall. They weren’t signing autographs or anything, that was being saved for the autograph session the next day. But they were just sitting there, chilling, selling merch. So we said hi.
It warms my heart to see someone like him – so genuinely passionate about art and music and just an all around nice guy – go to where he is now. Sure, girls have been swooning over him since long before Glee came along2, but he’s really come a long way. His performance in the film is phenomenal.
All in all, it was worth the money. Cheaper than a ticket to the actual show and the 3D made it feel more real than just watching it on a screen. I’m not one of those drooling fangirls or people who ships things or someone who has cut outs of Mike Chang’s Abs3 on my wall, but I do love Glee. I love what it stands for. I love that the underdog is king, I love that everyone is given a chance to shine. This is 2011, and a show about misfits having singalongs is a hit show on primetime television. Tell that to the guys that wrote In The Heat of the Night. See what they have to say about that.
I’m looking forward to Season 3. I’m not going to freak out over who’s dating who or threaten to stop watching the show because Chord Overstreet is gone4, but I’m going to enjoy it. That’s the whole point of the show – enjoy it, enjoy life, enjoy friends. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
And, er, I guess – Don’t Stop Believin’.
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1. Dudes, seriously, take your girlfriends. Take your girlfriends. There’s a three minute clip in the middle that will make it entirely worth the $50 it costs to see a 3D movie and get popcorn and soda and year-old Reese’s Pieces and what not. Google it if you don’t believe me.
2. Nick actually professed to me while watching the Warblers perform exactly how handsome Darren Criss is. I had no argument.
3. Despite being promised in trailers that there would be MIKE CHANGS ABS IN 3D, there were not, in fact, Mike Chang’s Abs in 3D. This was a sore disappointment.
4. Nick did not know that he wasn’t going to be on the show anymore until I mentioned it halfway through the concert-movie-experience-thing. It was kind of like “Oh, shit? You didn’t know?” Way to drop a bomb, Manda. Eegh. Ah well. I didn’t like Sam anyway.
Read MoreCoupon(rific) – Getting Coupons
Welcome to the first installment of Coupon(rific), in which I, Manda, share the joys and excitement of coupons with you. I know, doesn’t sound very exciting. Like I mentioned before, though, I dig it. I love couponing. It’s awesome. I love ringing up a $30+ order at the register and dropping it down to $4. It feels great.
So today, to get you started, we’re going to be looking at where to get coupons. Why start there? Because you can’t use them until you have them, and it’ll be easier to help you find some awesome deals once you’ve got something to work with. Ready? Lets get started. Get your scissors out.
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