Political Crack

Revenge of the Nerds

Amanda, via the Crack Den. Go read and come back.

I’m readingthis book right now, because it’s summer and I need some entertaining brain candy, and it’s very entertaining. It’s also very blatant wish-fulfillment: Every SCA-joining war-reenacting hobbyist in the entire world lives to see the day that all the skills that lead the “mainstream” to regard them as eccentric at best and weird-ass at worst will be the saving of them and the entire universe. In this scenario, you’re a CPA who likes to play the piano in your spare time? You’re fucked. You wrangle horses and spend your weekends making chainmail? Take me now, Lord Humongous.

It is nothing more than the cosmic equivalent of “wait till your dad gets home.” Wait till the apocalypse comes. You mock me for my archery skills and my insistence on learning how to fight with a broadsword NOW, you motherfuckers, wait until me and my BIG ASS BEAR HELMET are the only things standing between you and destruction at the hands of insane cannibals! (This book is really incredibly awesome.) You may have said all that time memorizing certain parts of the Little House on the Prairie books was nerdy when I was a child (it was, it didn’t stop me, thank you Laura Ingalls Wilder) but wait until you need to know how to build a log house or keep grain from spoiling or make candy by drizzling maple syrup in the snow! THEN who will you turn to? Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don’t think so! You’ll turn to ME! Me, the mounted archer who can carve book bindings out of hides I tanned myself and thus record our glorious deeds! The End Times scenario plays into that perfectly. Remember all those assholes out there hawking Y2K survival shit with the assurance of the inherently deranged? Wait until the meltdown when you have to make a wood fire and cook your own snare-caught rabbit, fuckers, then you’ll be laughing!

In this world, I’m a nerd. If the world explodes, though, then I’ll be a fucking KING, and you’ll all have to depend on me. Bow down to me. Listen to me.

This is, of course, a couple critical steps removed from, yet still related to, the fuckwads who liked it on some sick visceral level when 9/11 happened, because it validated their psycho neediness. A disaster for others was an opportunity for them, an opportunity to show off how beautifully RIGHT they were to hate and fear. They’ve got copies of Soldier of Fortune and boxes of ammo gathering dust in Mom’s root cellar, and guns they barely know how to use, but when the Islamofascist revolution comes, then you’ll see, and you’ll be begging for a place behind their walls of protection. Jesus save me from people who need to make shit up in order to get out of bed, but really, it’s not that hard to figure out. They’ve convinced themselves they’re marginalized, and that their very marginalization makes them right. You see this on every reality show ever made, the guy who’s all “Bein’ a ginormous assmunch is my personality, and if you can’t handle that, that’s yer problem.”

My grandparents had a full-on garden and I loved to help with the harvesting of it. I had the biggest crush ever on Almanzo Wilder when I was ten, and a powerful wish to live deep in the past. I still think I’d make a pretty okay Edwardian, with the hats and all. However, should we all magically revert to steam power or prehistoric times, the urge to yell “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO” will very quickly take a back seat to whatever will get me one of the last surviving bottles of scotch on the planet. Maybe I should train the ferrets to hunt, just in case.

A.

14 thoughts on “Revenge of the Nerds”

  1. “Lord Humongous”
    “ginormous assmunch”
    This is why I’m proud to be a part of this team.
    And what book is that, anyway? Linky no worky.

  3. Hey, I started taking two-handed medieval longsword classes a few years ago! Granted, I didn’t keep on, because they were no namby-pamby ‘just make it look good’ group (which is great, ’cause I really wanted to learn)- they were out for landing serious hits…even in practice! Yes, it was just using their hickory wasters (full-size wooden replicas, mine is 42″ and I am 5’4″), but damn, those things can harm! As I am fairly computer dependent for my every-two-weeks-paycheck, sustaining a broken hand in play would not, erm, ‘play’, so I sadly bowed out. I loved swinging the sword around and learning the moves. Perhaps if I were a trust-fund gal who didn’t need to pull down an income I would have stayed w/it. I love swords and swordplay. I have my waster still, and when I have the cleared space for it, I run thru the faintly recalled positions. I did fencing class a while before that, loved it, too. It was more agreeable to my professional responsibilities. I should get back into that. Something about a blade…hmmmmm!
    😉 Elspeth

  4. I got yer full-size wood right here, Elspeth.
    Great post, Athenae. Never joined the SCA myself (though I was a fanatical D&D player for a few years) so I’ll probably be one of the first to go when it all goes wrong.

  6. A., the trick won’t be to teach the ferrets to hunt, they will do that anyway. The trick will be to teach them to bring the prey back to you for the stew pot. Of course stewed rats are an acquired taste. And, you will be stuck with having to turn to me to make a fire – SEE I TOLD YOU SO!

  9. Come the revolution and I’m the commissar, bitches best not be messing with me and my husband’s gilded scabbard (which I can hardly lift, but whatever, watch out!) and those swords I made in 11th grade in Medieval Stage Combat out of plywood, foam and duct tape!!!

  11. Hey, man, I was in the SCA hardcore for about 10 years (I went to eight Pennsics and *bahoo* it’s going onright *snif*now and I’m not there!!). Some of us just do this stuff because we think it’s fun and we’re big fucking nerds and we like to let our freak flags fly. Phear my ginormous-ass freak flag, bitchez.

  12. so, if you haven’t read ’em yet, read the 1632 series of books — I think it’s up to five in hardcover now plus a magazine called the Grantville Gazette.
    wanna talk about gettin’ your geek on, Flint transported a mining town from West Virginia, circa April 2000, straight back into the middle of the Thirty Years’ War in what would eventually become Germany.

  13. A guy I went to high school with succumbed to wide-eyed Y2K fever, and filled a large part of his garage with stockpiles of bottled water, diapers, gasoline, etc. For months afterward he was more reclusive and chagrined as his cognitive dissonance settled out.
    The amusing part to me was that he was a student in an unconventional graduate program describing itself as… “Future Studies”.

  14. Elspeth, I so envy you the longsword classes. I’d be all over that if it were available near me. The only reason I never did the SCA thing was that I can’t sew worth a damn, so outfitting myself the way I imagine myself would have cost me far too much.
    That said, I have a friend who outfitted herself in a full-on recreation of Eowyn’s kit for the Battle of the Pellenor Fields. Including chainmail she made herself. It was drop-dead gorgeous, and my lust for it knows no bounds.
    As for the end times, I really, really hope they come so I can Nelson Muntz the fundies who get left behind.

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