Now viewing: Modern Geek
Wait…I Only “Borrowed” That Game?
In 1987 three very important things happened in my life:
1) I turned nine years old—a great age to be, I believed, as it was the first time I’d ever been that old and it was a year older than eight.
2) I kissed a girl for the very first time. In the lunch line of the school cafeteria. Her name was Shauna. She was almost 11. And, for the record, she kissed me—a precedent that, sadly, would not last.
3) My mother bought me a copy of The Legend of Zelda.
Of those three things, only one has endured: Zelda. (Last I heard Shauna was living out west somewhere raising alpaca…no, seriously!) Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I still own my iconic piece of gaming history. The golden cartridge is faded, discolored, scratched and chipped. It spends its life in a sweltering, stuffy storage building, seeing the light of day only twice a year: when I come annually to scavenge for Christmas decorations and again a few weeks later when I come to put them back.
The Nintendo has been broken for years. Frankly, the Zelda cartridge serves no purpose other than to remind me of those heady days of my youth when video games had learning curves harsher than the price tag on a Ferrari. Those days when side-scrolling was just the way things were done. Those days when you paid for a game and, by paying for it, owned it. Dive deeper…
Comments: Comments Off on Wait…I Only “Borrowed” That Game? | Tags: Legend of Zelda, Modern Geek, Steam, video game law
MG: RAID 0 Turns Me On
Modern Geek Chronicles:
RAID 0 Turns Me On
Yeah. That’s right. I said it.
It’s been a long time since I had a serious computer. Too long. For about five years now I’ve been living as the Geek equivalent of a Rwandan refugee. Getting by with one Best Buy, eco-friendly, sans-balls laptop after another. No real tower of my own to call my base of operations. All my computers came pre-built. Quaint little mass produced whores that I, shamefully, let into my house.
I tried not to blame myself. Times were tough and I couldn’t afford the good stuff. Yeah, I might snag a decent hard drive here or there. Maybe throw in some mid-grade ram when I could. But, ultimately, it was all just the equivalent of dressing up your cousin from West Virginia, taking her to the prom and weeping softly—the both of you—as you made out in the gymnasium bathroom at end of the night.
(Don’t act like that was just me.)
But no more.
This time, like a good geek, I’m building the electronic prom date of my dreams Dive deeper…
Comments: 2 | Tags: Geek, Modern Geek, Raid 0
Games/Comics/the Modern Geek
The Modern Geek Chronicles:
What I Learned from Video Games & Comics
I saw a writing prompt on a certain website–which shall remain nameless because I’ve got a few bones to pick with them–that posed the question: What have we learned from video games & comic books?
Well, here’s what I have to say about that:
Asking what the modern geek has learned from video games and comic books is like asking what the A-Team learned from having plan. In the realm of Geek, video games and comic books are the whole reason for uprooting our wife and son and heading to Arrakis.
Modern Geek Rule #1: “The Geek must flow!”
I can still remember waking up on that fateful Christmas morning long, long ago, a morning drenched in the swarthy scent of Nintendo Entertainment System. A morning of sore thumbs and blurred vision and my mother yelling that I was on my way to becoming a zombie. Decades later I’m a poet and a fiction writer, but still no closer to zombiedom.
Modern Geek Rule # 211: Dammit, Ma!
When I was nine years old the Silver Surfer showed up in the laundry room of my aunt’s house Dive deeper…
Comments: 1 | Tags: A-Team, Arrakis, comic books, comics, Dune, Modern Geek, video games
Let’s Make a Geek
The Modern Geek Chronicles:
Breed(ing) Geek
As I was having steaks with a very good friend and her precious geekling a few days ago I got to thinking: How does one raise a geek?
On the surface, it seems like a simple question. After all, as geeks ourselves, we know how to care for ourselves and so, intuitively, we assume that the raising of a geek is just a matter of transferring the means and methods of our own biological requirements onto them. In other words:
Feed your geek. (Soylent Green on Tuesdays)
Water your geek. (Brawndo’s got electrolytes)
Provide an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere at an optimal temperature of 25 C. (sunlight optional)
Follow these steps and your geekling will grow like the mighty oak! Right?
Hell no, actually.
Food, water and shelter do not a geek make Dive deeper…
Comments: 6 | Tags: Breeding Geek, Geekling, Modern Geek