.: X_M i a__L y n a r - A e v a l i n_X:.
"If all their [deaths] brought to our school is {>sadness<}
then they will have died in [vain.]
But if, by passing on, they bring everyone in this {>school<}
closer together as a whole [family,]
as one group of {>friends<}
instead of several groups
...then they will have left a real [mark]"
-Mia Lynar-Aevalin, Internal Illness
"If all their [deaths] brought to our school is {>sadness<}
then they will have died in [vain.]
But if, by passing on, they bring everyone in this {>school<}
closer together as a whole [family,]
as one group of {>friends<}
instead of several groups
...then they will have left a real [mark]"
-Mia Lynar-Aevalin, Internal Illness
It has recently been brought to my attention that being a nerd has, somehow, in the past few years, become the popular thing to do. Sure, I'm all good and well that being intelligent is popular, but unfortunately, most people aren't intelligent enough to be nerds. So, as a result, the definition of nerd has changed from "one who is intelligent, and thus obsessed with intelligent subjects" to "anyone who wants to be cool and say they're smrt."
Oh, whoops, did I jsut spell "smart" wrong? I rest my case.
This thoguht struck me today as I was looking for music to put on my nerd-playlist, and found very little to my liking. Would you believe that I found at least five sites that named Code Monkey as one of the top five nerdom songs of all time? Come on, now! If you're that big of a Jonathan Coulton fan, you could at least choose one of his songs that's actually about nerdy material, like Bacteria, or DNA. I also found a great deal of songs about Star Wars, Star Trek, and, of course, the infamous WoW.
There. Just there, when you read that, you were immediately separated into a group of either "true nerd" or "wannabe nerd." If you groaned when you read "WoW" and recalled all those songs about that damn game, you are a true nerd. Well. Probably. If you said "What's wrong with WoW? That makes you a nerd" then you are a dumbass. I am about to inform you what is wrong with WoW.
The difference between nerds and people who play video games is time. Video games are all good and well. Yes. I enjoy the occasional Final Fantasy game, some old-school Mario, Megaman, or Zelda--or perhaps Starcratf or Warcraft, but I don't think those things make me a nerd. The people who sit on their asses all day and play WoW because they have no social skills, no life, and no intelligence, are the ones who call themselves nerds because no other group wants them, and they figure the nerds aren't bold enough to refuse admission to anyone.
Well, that's the end of the line, as far as I'm concerned. Get off the bandwagon. Stop the bus right here and now, and take your asses (and your laptops) off. If you were a nerd you wouldn't have the time to be addicted to WoW, because you'd be too busy solving equations or reading classic literature--or writing sonnets in Iambic Pentameter. that is the defining characteristic of being a nerd. Not playing video games. Not being a level 90 in WoW and having 5000 gold. If you were a nerd you'd be more excited about having synthesized a metal alloy, derived a mathematical formula from scratch, or having finished your most recent play script.
Everyone plays WoW--even the jocks--and last time I checked, nerds and jocks were contradictory terms.The only game that ever really defined nerdom was D&D. If you don't know what D&D stands for, or have never played it then you are most certainly not a nerd. The reason for D&D being a nerd game probably has something to do with the fact that it actually requires intelligence to do. Most of the people who sit around rolling dice have such mechanical brains that they can do all the math required for initiative rolls in their head, as well as recall all their stats, their hitpoints, their allies hitpoints, their enemies hitpoints, and their exact position in the grid of the game.
So what gives me the right to claim the title of nerd?
Well, a lot.
If the fact that I have the highest grade in my AP Physics class, got a higher score on my final than our Valedictorian, or that my converse are covered with mathematical formulas, and random terms form quantum physics, just because they're fun, doesn't define it well enough for you, try these ones on:
My summer jobs consist entirely of working in chemistry labs.
Not only have I participated in D&Ds, I've played the DM.
I could tell you the exact proportions for the oxidation of zinc reaction, what to put in it to make the flames purple, write out the equation, and explain what was happening. On that note, I also have access to all the chemicals required to do this (zinc powder, ammonium chloride, ammonium nitrate, and iodine).
My AP Physics teacher admitted that I out-nerded him, merely by have a song on my ipod.
When I don't have enough physics homework to last through the weekend I complain to my parents.
My father and I have in-depth discussions about mechanics, and sometimes theoretical physics over beakfast.
My entire family can quote serieses of books (novel idea, huh? reading, rather than watching movies?)
I become fascinated by every-day things, like paper curling up in humidity, and can't stop thinking about them until I've figured out the exact reason for things acting the way they do.
I read Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku.
The only webcomic I recognize is xkcd.
If you're still skeptical about my nerdiness then I'm not even going to bother. Instead all move on (or perhaps, back) to my previous topic of nerdy music. As I had stated before, I became frustrated when looking for nerdy music, and finding very little fitting my definition of it. What I didn't say was what my definition of nerdy music was.
I believe that for anything (song, joke, comic, whatever) to be nerdy, it has to have material in it that you cannot understand unless you are a nerd. Allow me to provide a few simple examples:
Right hand rule comic
... yeah
Then there are the songs. Everyone puts up stuff like DOTA, and friggin Code Monkey, I even saw Revenge of the Nerds as a #1 nerdy song, once. If you've ever heard it, about the only nerdy part about it is that it says "lambda" a few times. I'm willing to bet that the guy who said it was #1 doesn't even know what a lambda looks like. Or what's it's used for. Or what nu is. Muaha, got you there, suckers. And you thought you followed me.
So yeah. It's a pretty crappy song. If you want a nerdy song, you have to find a nerd who writes songs. unfortunately, there aren't many around. Yes, I'll have to count Jonathan Coulton as one, on account of some of his expressly nerdy songs--of which Code Monkey is not one. So here's my top three nerdy songs:
3. DNA by Jonathan Coulton
2. New Math by Tom Lehrer
1. The Elements by Tom Lehrer
Now, the real test to see if you are a nerd is in the above songs. I haven't bothered listening too much to DNA very closely, but there's some fun times in there. But, you know you're a nerd if you actually know how to use base eight in the second song, and you can pick out which elements are missing in the #1 song....
