The world has lost another great nerd. David Lance Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons has passed away and I’m sure he would have wanted his obituary to claim that he failed to make his saving throw against cancer (well, maybe not). Having lost Gary Gygax last year, I couldn’t help but feel a flood of D&D memories spewing into my brain like the acid attack from an Elemental Drake. I’m pretty sure I got my D&D books around 1981, the same year I got my TRS-80 computer, an Atari 2600 and a Darth Vader helmet case for all of my Star Wars action figures. It was a banner nerd year.

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Some low-impact Googling will reveal to you that the word “geek” is derived from the old German word “geck,” which meant “fool.” You probably already know that if you are a geck or were alive in the 16th century, when it was first uttered by mouths. Four hundred years later, the word was modded and attached to circus freaks, particularly those of the “bite the heads off chickens and snakes” variety. It was only later that the label was attached to sweaty computer users resembling Real Genius extras. But was this really the appropriate nomenclature? After all, early hackers were solitary creatures who certainly didn’t perform disturbing acts for public consumption. They were shy, solitary creatures that feared interpersonal interaction and light.

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Dancing With the Woz

I had never seen an episode of “Dancing With the Stars” before a week ago, mainly because I have a sensitive gag reflex. I ONLY watched because of Steve Wozniak and I was unsarcastically hoping that he would do a Segway grind across the judges table. Instead, he used his feet on the floor. And he friggin’ WENT FOR IT. Was he the greatest dancer? No. But I really enjoyed watching him. He’s just a big bearded pile of hugs. I was happy. That is, until douchey judge Bruno Tonioli, who had apparently taken some kind of mouth-laxative shortly before, opened it to make words.

“It was like watching a Teletubby going mad in a gay pride parade.” Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Tonioli has actually seen that happen, I’ve worked in television long enough to know that this wasn’t improvised. He’d obviously been holding onto that gem and just clenching his fists together the whole show, waiting to blurt it out so that people would say, “Aha! How clever you are, Sir!” But it wasn’t clever. “Clever” would presuppose some kind of creative mechanism at play. What happened was, they had a fat guy on their show and they called him fat. End of story. As challenging as punching a baby. Would it have been acceptable to call Heather Mills a decorative pogo stick?

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At CES this year I met some really nice folks from North Carolina who happen to work at The Escapist, a fine digital gamers’ magazine that also ends in “-ist.” Some other stuff happened and now I’m going to be writing for them twice a month under the heading, “Geek Salad.” My first article has just gone up and is looking for love. Surely there’s room in your heart?

THE TWITTER BUG

Welcome to my inaugural Escapist article, y’all! (I only write Southern, but don’t worry, it’s rare) My first offering was going to be an in-depth etymological deconstruction of the word “geek.” I was excited. I was inspired. I was already about a third of the way through it…and then last Friday happened. I got an email from someone who frequents my site, nerdist.com. Then another. Then another. Pretty soon a lot. They all said the same thing: “I can’t seem to access any of your pages.”

That’s what you want to hear. Sure enough, when I went to my home page EVERY link returned a server-side 404. Sweet! Currently, I’m running a theme called “Thesis” with Wordpress 2.7.1 on a shared Linux hosting account using MYSQL with Hostway. As you know, the most distressing thing about a problem like this is that with so many elements at play, it’s like having a massive math problem in front of you and a minus sign spontaneously disappears somewhere collapsing the entire formula and you don’t know where or why. The poison could be anywhere.

Continue reading at The Escapist–>