Geeks

[My email is broken. If you emailed me at any time on Wednesday then please resend. My ISP sucks.]

I got called a geek today.

I resent that. I might work with computers but I'm not a geek in the slightest. I dislike computers, have no interest in them and have very limited knowledge of anything outside my immediate requirements for my job.

A bus driver isn't branded as an engine-obsessed petrol head, a writer isn't quizzed on the inner workings of the printing press - and I'm fairly sure a window cleaner doesn't receive the comment 'oh, you're in windows? I've got some at home. In fact one's a bit cracked - fancy coming round and doing some glazing?'

Not that I have anything against geeks, just that I'm not one.

(I do realise that claiming I'm not a geek on a blog is a bit ironic in an Alanis Morrisette way, but you're reading it so I figure that makes us even, right?)

Anyway, talking of geeks just reminded me of some of the people I have worked with - geeks with a capital eek. The specific incident that springs to mind was while watching the Michael Crichton film 'Sphere'*

I love Michael Crichton films (and probably his books too, could I be arsed to read one of them). They're so wonderfully predictable. A new technology is invented, exploited for profit, tries to take over the world, hero comes up with ridiculously simple solution somewhere near the end, moralise, moralise, fade to black.

It must be great fun in the Crichton household. I bet his wife almost dreads reading the paper:

"What's that love?"
"Well it says here that they're creating rice with the properties of teflon so it never sticks to the frying pan"
"Hmmm," says Michael, stroking the beard-like growth on his chin, "genetically altered plants bred for profit, escape and take over the world, only....only....it turns out saltwater kills them all along. Where's my typewriter?"
"That was Day of The Triffids, dear. Well the rubbish hollywood film version anyway."
"Hmmm," *beard stroke, beard stroke*, "but what if we make them PREHISTORIC genetically altered plants!?! They could be encoded on an asteroid that...."
"Shut up dear."
"Yes love."

Anyway, I digress (I talk like this in real life too, especially when drunk when I go off on so many tangents I get lost in the middle of a story), the film Sphere - which is utter, utter shite. You'll never get that time back y'know. Never.

I went to see it in the cinema when it came out. A group of us from work decided to go see something one night and it was pretty much the only thing starting at the time we arrived. I was sat with the geeks, and two things irked them the most:

1) Ms Stone enters the time-travelling 'craft' under the sea and plays with a futuristic looking computer that lists its log entries in the format dd/mm/yy. Sharon herself puzzles as to what century the craft could be from.

Cue geek alarm going off next to me: firstly, even fucking Windows 95 held the date as four digits to exactly prevent that issue. You may remember it, it was a trifling little thing nobody mentioned called THE MILLENNIUM BUG. You'd also feel that something that can travel in time over multiple centuries might just, y'know, find the 23rd August 56 cropping up more than once.

I cannot lie, there was foaming at the mouth.

2) Samuel L Jackson enters the cunningly named 'Sphere' and becomes a raving nutjob - but only when he's asleep. The rest of the crew, on finding a strange signal translate it (being super mathematicians and all that) as 'Hello, my name is Jerry' and believe they are talking to the alien thing in the ship.

*several deeply boring scenes later*

Samuel loses the plot at one point when someone keeps trying to talk to 'Jerry' by exclaiming 'My name is HARRY!' I forget what happens after this, I think my synapses melted.

Anyway, as about three of my colleagues pointed out there and then amid much laughter, if his name was Harry, then the message was 'Jallo, my nema is Harry'.

My colleagues adopted the word 'Jallo' and used it in place of 'Hello' from then on.

For.

Six.

Months.

Now that, my friends, is being a geek.


*Samuel, Dustin, hang your heads in shame. Shame I tells ye! And Sharon love, good work, one of your best performances yet....