geekery and the postmodern geek

When I went off to LB, I left almost all my geekery behind. After all, there was no L5R community there, no decent Magic: the Gathering one during the first few years of college, and definitely no specialty toy stores to sate my hunger for Transformers (to be fair, there was what looked like a specialty store near the Math building, but I think it only dealt with Gunpla and Zoids). The only geekery I was able to bring with me was what was at the time an addiction with DotA, which I was able to spread to my all-male dormmates. Probably the reason why I went into hardcore drinking sprees, dirty dancing (but only during the freshman year) and seasonal (read: in between semesters) emo shit about the Diaspora of it all. Sure, there was a time a few dormmates and I returned to old-school favorites Starcraft and Diablo 3, and that brief period wherein I dipped back into Magic: the Gathering (I played a format called Vintage, which very few people in the area could play since it often required a mix of powerful cards both old and new), but that was basically it.

Now I'm back, and a lot of things have changed. For one thing, the L5R community is, well, a bit more serious and, should I say, "hostile" than what I was used to when Hobby Haven, our local hobby shop in Katipunan, was around (RIP, HH). I'm starting to get to know quite a few people in the toy collector business, which is always a good thing because you will always need contacts to find the harder-to-find stuff at decent (read: not scalped) prices. Somehow, I feel the need to insert myself back into the communities I left behind when I did my five years in the mountains; these, after all, are made up of some very good friends, and friends are a resource that should never be wasted. Trying to get myself back to playing competitive L5R, and I hang around the toy shops in Greenhills when I can (read: when I have money and time to spend).

Going back to the old motions of talking about deck types and card choices over a few shots of leftover The Bar, or helping a friend transform a toy he bought cheap but without the instruction manual, I feel that I'm recovering something that I buried deep inside myself when I went and became the hyperactive, intellectually masturbating blabbermouth I was when I was in LB. It's as if there's an entire side of me that can only frolic amongst the tables of a hobby shop and the display cabinets of a toy store for so long before he hides again. Perhaps keeping it repressed for the most part for quite a long time has been the reason why I write this now.

The modern (or might I say, postmodern?) geek, after all, is a far cry from the stereotype. Today, most geeks live lives too normal for the now old-fashioned term "basement dweller". As with everything, though, there still a few of them, but nowadays they're more the exception than the norm. Today's geek is an honor student who plays basketball, a personal trainer, a professional comedian. Heck, even some of the salespeople in department store toy aisles, whose jobs are to spout spiels about how nice this action figure would look on your shelf, or how nice a gift it would make, will maintain a small collection of Transformers: the Movie figures at home (it never hurts to ask them). Simply put, they're just your everyday member of society who, as Neal Stephenson puts it, just happens to "geek out" when they meet a kindred soul. Thus the recent phenomenon of a "coolness" factor that is not associated with geekery.

This is the age of multi-everything (-tasking, -media, etc.) and fragmentation, after all. Kudos to you, then, who have enough brain power to juggle more than one world--heck, more than one universe, in your mind. To actually quote Stephenson: "This is how knowledge works today, and it’s how it’s going to work in the future: no more Heinleinian polymaths; instead, a web of geeks, each of whom knows a lot about something." And in the end, "We're all geeks now."

*stops this blabbering to watch moar Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann*

On Big Dipping, and on not voting

Recurring rant: I miss the days when Multiply was THE network. It prompted people to actually try and write stuff, and try to make their lives more exciting and interesting to read. Facebook, in all its multimedia-ness and gaming apps, is just too lazy for me sometimes. At least I can get some consolation in the fact that I see quite a few people returning to good old blogging, whether in the Blogspot (I don't think mine catches the auto-update feature of my Multiply blog anymore) or in the Wordpress. That's a good thing, right?

Tagged along with Biboy and his officemate to the opening of The Big Dip Diner last Saturday, mainly because of the lure of alcohol at p21 a bottle, which always sounds good if you haven't had a good drink in a long time, even if you're dragging along a huge plastic bag containing a huge-ass Megatron toy to the place. Was pleasantly surprised when I found both old and new friends amidst all the booze (HANNAH, ASAN NA YUNG PICS? JEJEJE!). All of it reminded me of a time when I was at LB Square at least twice a week, drinking myself wasted along with other freshman and sophomore pasaways. It also told me that if I wanted to be comfortable in the metro again, I'd have to start socializing again, big time. I mean, LB as fun, but I don't want to be stuck in that mindset forever. And Ateneo was never a friendly environment for socializing IMO, what with the average batch equaling the total number of students in your standard learning center. Imagine my surprise, then, when I learn that most of the people there at the time were Ateneans of different batches in the place.

Somewhere along this entry, you might an expect me to say something about the elections, since they're the obvious topic to talk about. But I'm not going to say anything, because I don't believe I have the right to. Because I DIDN'T VOTE. To cut a long story short, I was pretty busy going back and forth to LB during the registration period, and I stupidly banked on the rumors of a COMELEC extension that never materialized in our city hall. Ergo, no vote, and no rant about the results. The only thing that pisses me off more than being more than a civilian than a citizen at the time (watch Starship Troopers to get the joke) is when people talk about "could haves".

Sample comment on FB: "I didn't register, but if I did, I would have voted (insert name here)"

Fact of the matter is, you didn't register, so nothing you say will make your intent to vote count, idiot. It's a lot like what Ma'am Espinosa, our World Literature professor, would say: "If you didn't finish the book down to the last page, please leave. You have no right to participate in any discussion, since you didn't finish the book anyway."