Geekery

I've been on Mental Floss most of the day raising my Geek Quotient. I cannot get enough of that site and magazine. They have the most fascinating stuff, most of it probably not really useful to me in day-to-day life, but all of it terribly, terribly satisfying to me somehow. Every drop of new knowing I have helps me understand the world and my place in it a little better, helps me maintain my sense of wonder in the face of the badness and darkness that crowds in all too often around us.

Put me in any situation where I can learn, and I'm happy. I'm like a nesting raven, picking up the shiny bits of knowledge to tuck into my well-feathered nest. They can be any old thing, truly valuable diamonds or just fancy shards of mercury glass, really. I've even managed to turn some situations that were decidedly not fun (getting fingerprinted so I could be employed as a teacher, having various surgical procedures done) into things I could tolerate by forcing my mind into knowledge-gathering mode. You see, I can deal with just about any-damn-thing if I can get away from the nasty real of it and start looking at it like an exercise in expanding my universe.

I'm looking for a like-minded mate, a geek guy who can enjoy the quirks of this world and find treasure everywhere. I'd love to have somebody like the character Marshall from USA's show In Plain Sight (see the photo at the top, as so wonderfully and gently played by Fred Weller). He's just geekalicious, a person who enjoys knowing everything, has a sense of humor, is strong, honest, and sweet to boot. (Of course, he's fictional. I think we all know "Marshalls" aren't really running around out there free-range. I guess he can be filed under Imaginary in the GEMINI acronym....)

This proposed guy can be from any tribe of geekdom; I don't care if he spends his moments engrossed in Viking literature, doing complicated things with the computer, or watching DW reruns. As long as he loves and longs to know, this is what matters most. This is the heart of all things geek, what every one of us knows is the secret joy of our obsession.

In the meantime, I will continue to read my National Geographic and Mental Floss, enjoy the tweets from the Smithsonian branches and the National Archives (oh, I could have just LIVED in those museums for the rest of my days....), chase electronic rabbits, pursue odd hobbies, and accumulate the unusual objects and knowledge that make my silly little heart go pitter-patter.