Dorkiness

[queerbychoice]

Who else is adding a disinterests list to their LiveJournal userinfo page now that a standardized hack for it exists? I figure if I get to look at enough other people's lists, I'll eventually come up with a full 150 disinterests to put on my own list. So more of you need to go create one.

Also, I'm insulted that no one has tagged me for the Dork Meme. Actually, the reason no one has tagged me may have a lot to do with the fact that I don't think anyone I know has done the Dork Meme. But I'm going to do it anyway.

"List 5 reasons why you are a dork. And make them good reasons. Justify them. Explain them. Be loud and proud about how big of a dork you are! Then pick the 5 biggest dorks you know and have them do the meme."

1. Of the Top 250 Movies of all Time as voted by IMDB users, I've only seen five. The ones I've seen were the original three Star Wars movies, The Wizard of Oz, and Back to the Future. And I only saw the three Star Wars ones because it was impossible not to see them when my mother and brother kept watching them in the living room several hundred times in a row. I mean, the other two weren't really my idea to see either, but at least I wasn't actively trying to avoid them like I was trying to avoid the Star Wars ones.

2. However, I've seen - intentionally - every TV episode of every Star Trek series ever made.

3. Of the College Board's 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers (which is an annoyingly sexist and racist list, but I couldn't find any non-sexist non-racist version of the "canon" without creating one myself, which would defeat the purpose of referring to it for the meme's sake), I've read 61, plus I own an additional 4 that I haven't yet read but am planning to read, plus there are 9 others where I haven't read the book named but I have read other books by the same author. This is far too high a number for me to be anything but a dork.

4. If I were ordered to Get Some Exercise, my exercise of choice would be roller skating. Anyone over the age of ten who would choose this is a certified dork.

5. The last time I had a crush on anyone I didn't meet online, or who lived within 300 miles of me, was about six years ago. Enough said.

Top 5 Dorks I Know:
(in alphabetical order, and as determined via the highly scientific method of searching for everyone I know who lists dorks, dorkiness, geeks, geekiness, nerds, nerdiness, James Joyce, math, RPGs, Star Trek, or William Shakespeare in their LiveJournal interests, and then looking at their full interests lists to sort out whose seemed dorkiest)

aesiron
becksterminator
gamesiplay
heron61
seifaiden

Comments

[seifaiden.livejournal.com]

While flattered, I have already completed the dork meme. However, just for you, I will post a few new ones, since dorky interests are something I am not capable of running out of and I am always delighted to talk about them at length.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

Assuming I counted right, which I probably didn't, as it's the middle of the night, I've seen 52 of those movies. At least ten of those I saw in or for school.

Of the books, I've read ten, which is pretty sad. Six of those were for school.

I don't exactly know what to make of that, but there it is.

[beraht.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think.

[nouveau-prole.livejournal.com]

I surprised myself, found I'd read 15 books/plays on the college list, which included my fav novel "Heart of Darkness" and play "Waiting for Godot". Perhaps I'll make a student yet?
I must create a pleb's reading list. Will get back to you with it.

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

What? How dare you not include me in that top five. Forget Star Trek, I've seen every episode of Thundercats. I have action figures enacting Godzilla vs. Aliens in my room, I retain more Simpson's lore than information about my own life, I know and regularly speak to more than one person who can recite the full name of every Green Lantern there ever was, I've put hundreds of hours into my Disgaea save...good lord, my first spoken word was Nintendo.

That's it, we're not friends anymore. I'm taking half your stuff and leaving.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Haha! I love your criteria for dorkiness. And I am entirely flattered.

I'm so glad, also, that there is someone else in the world who is not ashamed of not having seen a lot of movies.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

Who else is adding a disinterests list to their LiveJournal userinfo page now that a standardized hack for it exists?

I'm not sure I like the fact that it would be the first list that appears on the userinfo page, ahead of one's interests, lj friends and communities, which tend to define one in a somewhat more positive manner. But then I don't see why I, of all people, should be objecting to defining oneself in terms of what one is not.

3. Of the College Board's 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers ... I've read 61, plus I own an additional 4 that I haven't yet read but am planning to read, plus there are 9 others where I haven't read the book named but I have read other books by the same author.

I seem to have read a horrifying number of them. But what is perhaps more interesting is that, of these, I had read most of them before I was 13 or 14. (I must've been absolutely nuts, but never mind.) After that, the rate at which I read books on that list dipped drastically, to the point that the only reason I read any of the books on the list was when it was required reading on some course or other. Although it is very true that I simply don't have the time or energy now to keep up with my previously furious rate of reading, the reason for that particular trend was that an overwhelming majority of the books I voluntarily read simply aren't on that list.

[xkcd.livejournal.com]

1. That's far too few. I'm scrolling down the list and I'm amazed.

2. I could only think of one disinterest to list right now, and it's 'excessively negative people'. Bonus points if you can get the reference.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Wah, how did I forget that? I must have blocked it out from te sheer trauma of not getting to be tagged!

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

It's also an Americentric list, which might be part of the reason you haven't read more of them. Do let me know when you compike your reading list.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

No bonus points for me, then!

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

But why would Your Dorkiness want half of my stuff if it's going to be insufficiently dorky for you?

I think what this means is that you need to lengthen your LJ interests list. It was too short to adequately prove your dorkiness in my eyes.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

When I first graduated from high school, I'd read 26 of the books, but 22 of them were for school. This means we read identical numbers of the books in our free time, so I think what I make of this is that your school really let you down.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

You must have been the best-read 13 or 14 ear old ever.

When I was 14 I'd read only 12 of the books, and 10 of them were for school. By the end of high school I'd read 26 of them, but 22 of them were for school. Most of the books I read on my own are ones I read later - in large part because my middle school and high school had piled so much homework on me that I had no time left to read anything for pleasure, whereas when I was in college I did have time, and after I graduated I also had time.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could do a "disinterests" list. There are far more than 150 things I passionately like to complain about. That said, I am oddly proud that after nearly four years, I continue to be the only person on LJ interested in Lobachevskian geometry.

[xkcd.livejournal.com]

Calvin makes a list of things he hates. Hobbes suggests "what about 'excessively negative people'?" Calvin says "Yeah! That's a good one!".

*pause*

Calvin: "Wait a minute."

[xkcd.livejournal.com]

Do you spend more time disliking things than liking things?

What's Lobachevskian geometry?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Well, if you seriously can't think of anything else to dislike, I'd have to be concerned by your severe lack of any apparent opinions. Bush? The war in Iraq? Racism? Sexism? Genocide? The world isn't really lacking things to dislike, and advcating failing to notice any of them doesn't seem like a great solution.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

To some extent I think this is true, though I am very passionate about the things I love. But I tend to find the negative in things more often, which is why I'm a humorless bore.

In general Lobachevskian geometry is a non-Euclidean form of geometry which rejects the idea of the parallel postulate, which, consequently, throws off the entire logic of the system. I am a Lit major and math-stupid, so I can't explain it like a good mathematician could, but it's kind of like someone deciding that the whole round thing doesn't work for them and we'd all be better off with square wheels. But I'm a sucker for lost causes.

[spee.livejournal.com]

I've read 43 of the books on the list -- is that decent? It makes me feel guilty that I haven't read more!

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I suspect you're on the high end, definitely. I can't believe I've read more than half of them. It seems like that should be impossible unless my teachers were referring specifically to that particular list when they designed their syllabi. Maybe they were. I don't know.

[zdamiana.livejournal.com]

Disinterests are very different from dislikes, though it seems that you (and others) are using the disinterests category to list things you particularly dislike, rather than things you happen not to care about at all. I would wager that you are quite interested in homophobia, carving up babies' sex organs, and torture (to name just a few from your list), though you are interested in them in the sense that you strongly dislike them. Things that belong in a "disinterests" list are the sorts of things you may see in other people's interests lists, and think to yourself, "hm... I couldn't care less about [for instance] washing machine repair."

I went to the IMDB list, and have seen all but 26 of the top 100 movies, and have seen all but 78 of the remaining 150. I think I'll at least have to try to see the rest of the top 100 movies, and a lot of the movies on the rest of the list look quite good, too. I think I have a lot of Igmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick movies to see. Apparently my father neglected those when he (a huge movie buff) gave me my "movie education."

I've only read 20 of the books on the great books list, and 11 of those were read for school, so I imagine you'll believe that my schools were highly negligent in that respect, though I think my teachers may have just been better about exposing us to literature that was off the beaten path, and perhaps came from a more diverse selection of authors. There are about three more on the list that I have started, but not ever finished, and one on the list that I own, and am planning to read, but haven't started.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Well, LiveJournal's own Interests category is called "Interests," yet the instructions above the box you type them in tell you to word all your "interests" so that they fit logically into the sentence, "I like _____." So I think the two terms have become irreparably blended. Maybe my dislikes could be considered disinterests in the sense that I'm not interested in reading the LiveJournals of people who carve up babies' sex organs for a living. Or at least I'm not interested in having those people on my friends' list. I might be very interested in reading through their entries for an hour or two one day, but after that I'd want to leave and not go near them anymore.

Literature off the beaten path is good. My schools did not much go in for it, and when they did make some efforts at it, they tended unfortunately to choose rather mediocre literature that was off the beaten path, thus giving the mistaken impression that all literature off the beaten path was mediocre. I've been trying to fill in these gaps in my reading ever since.

[xkcd.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I have plenty of things to dislike. I'm just being facetious.

[xkcd.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I'd never heard that name for it.

A real-life example would be the geometry you have to use to navigate the surface of the Earth. Start parallel lines on the surface of a sphere and make them straight and they'll eventually hit.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

You must have been the best-read 13 or 14 ear old ever.

No - just a very bored and easily distracted one. Some of them I read as a wager with my English teacher, who didn't believe I could - or would - get through unabridged versions of the books.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

It surprises me that Lobachevsky isn't better known - or more derided - after Tom Lehrer's field day with his good name...

[lilerthkwake.livejournal.com]

You crack me up.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Drive-by comment--I'm really amused by how many dislikes we have in common. :)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Wow, I think I need to steal the rest of yours, too! Sacramento housing prices, not having health insurance, the phrase "i'd hit that" . . . and several dozen more of them at least . . .

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Oh, by all means--I totally lifted several from yours.

This is proving to be a good way to let off some steam...

[kandelschwartz.livejournal.com]

Guess again.

17 people list hyperbolic geometry as an interest, as do three communities. You're just the only one to use that name.

Also, it's not a matter of rejecting a postulate, but rather assigning a property (like sectional curvature of -1) that messes with other things, such as the number of unique lines passing through a point not on your initial line. It just seems that way because of how your geodesics in Euclidean space happen to be straight lines.

It's not a lost cause by any stretch. It's just something you don't normally learn as an undergraduate.

I could be totally wrong on this, though. I'm fairly new to differential geometry.

[xkcd.livejournal.com]

You replied to the wrong comment, leaving me fairly confused. You might want to repost.