Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds (part 7)

HABITS & PREFERENCES
Like the elastic waistband of a cheap pair of jeans, the unwelcome glimpse of a well-worn beige bra strap or the explosion of pockets on an outdoorsy vest worn indoors, there are certain telltale signs that characterise Nerds of all professions. These habits give away what could be a deceptively normal person to a full-blown Nerd who is best avoided in the private or group milieu.

Foreign Beer
This preference can be found across the full spectrum of Nerds, such as Tinkerers, Animators and so on. In a group setting the Nerd will eschew the accepted practice of buying rounds, and insist upon spending $16 on a small bottle of dark beer. This will have the disagreeable effect of drawing attention to him while at the same time creating conversation, a difficult social grace for many Nerds.

After the beer is consumed over a period of several hours, it is proclaimed 'not as nice as the one I had in Český Krumlov' then the empty bottle secretly stashed in the folds of a large black duffle or army greatcoat. This is later displayed in the home alongside other obscure beers and tipples, and brought out proudly at social events (World of Warcraft nights) with their fellow Nerds.

Games
There is nothing the Nerd loves more than games. Originally invented for married couples to pass time after they had run out of conversation, games quickly caught on in the Nerd community as a way to pass time with people with whom the conversation never started.

Early Nerds would enjoy long games of Dungeons & Dragons, a role-playing game of the ‘70s. In later years, this was replaced by online versions such as Doom or Tomb Raider, and a host of virtual worlds too numerous to mention here. Some Nerds love these games so much they will give up anything: entire weekends, opportunities to meet up with the opposite sex or long sunny days to play games with their colleagues – either in a darkened Internet café or in a networked room at home. Regardless of location, the Nerd will sit in back-to-back from his friends, and operate in complete silence. Some of his happiest hours are spent is this manner.

Quotation
The quotation of lengthy tracts of dialogue is an instinct common to many Nerds, and is a tradition that dates back as far as the mediaeval European minstrels, the ancient Greek epic poets or even the Griots of West Africa. The memory needed to remember such lengthy stories is an astonishing trait, and in pre-literate times these storytelling talents were passed down through generations. Many a winter's evening passed around campfires and stone hearths, where fantastic tales of adventure and romance were told night after night to a captive audience. It is perhaps a sign of our times that upon recitation of the 'Dead Parrot' sketch or the 'He's not the Messiah' scene, the modern audience will wish only for an unexpected diversion or a hasty escape. It is a subject worthy of further study. See below for the most extreme form of this behaviour:

Monty Python
Many Nerds are inappropriate quoters of Monty Python sketches. While one could go so far as to say there is no such thing as an ‘appropriate’ quoter of Monty Python, there are sometimes moments in life that cry out for the singing of the Lumberjack Song (when travelling through Canada, for example) or a muttered reference to the ‘Cheese Shop’ sketch (while consuming a runny Camembert). However Nerds are not satisfied with confining this habit to the odd frolicsome moment, and are so fond of quoting Monty Python that the meaning and humour of the original dialogue is generally lost.

This love of Monty Python reaches its full expression in the university years, a time of freedom and expression for many up-and-coming Nerds. After casting off the shackles of secondary school (when many a spotted youth was tormented by his more short-sighted contemporaries) he can at last give full vent to his feelings of alienation through joining groups with names like ‘Friends Of Unnatural Llamas’. Much loud quotation will ensue. This habit can be seen in almost all of the listed species with the surprising exception of Cinema Theorist Nerds. This genus considers the practice of quoting Truffaut or Bergman – in their original languages – and with camera angles acted out – a far more satisfying occupation.

This concludes the series ‘Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds’. I hope this helps you to enjoy sighting and identifying these unfashionable beings. If perhaps not moved to extend the hand of friendship, hopefully my guide will help you to understand a little more, and to sympathise with these sometimes elusive, strangely beautiful creatures.

Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds (part 6)

CINEMA THEORIST
This very pale, unhealthy species spends a great deal of time inside a darkened movie theatre, in video stores, online downloading movies, ordering movies, watching movies and in friends’ houses doing all of the above. Like the IT Professional and the Animator, the Cinema Theorist Nerd subsists entirely on a diet of Curly-Wurly’s, dry Nutri-Grain, pineapple lollies and Diet Coke. This sustains them through the long, clammy hours of cinemagoing.

Unlike many other Nerd species there is an equal male/female split, and all kinds of Cinema Theorists can be found in schools, TAFEs and film schools, where they collaborate on a number of short film projects. At the apex of this Nerd pyramid sits the University Cinema Theorist. Despite their moniker, it is not their life’s work to create films, rather to obsessively devour them whole. In this self-constructed ivory tower they debate, construct, deconstruct, analyse and disparage their favourite filmmakers, from Kubrick to Kurosawa.

The Cinema Theorist may occasionally deign to attend such populist pap as Indiana Jones or Star Wars (if only to utter hollow chuckles throughout), but what they really live for is to appreciate films that no-one has ever heard of, or indeed would want to. Thus in conversation with this vexing Nerd, the average cinema-lover will find themselves shanghaied into a discussion about good films that somehow becomes an eyebrow-flicking contest about Fassbinder’s little-known shorts or Corman’s never before seen snuff films. It is unknown whether the name for the short film festival Flickerfest originated from this Nerd technique.

Their insistence upon demonstrating filmic knowledge is the key to understanding the Cinema Theorist. The most obvious example of this is the knowing laugh uttered at film festivals and the like. This irksome cry is not made to express genuine enjoyment or recognition but to convey clearly to the surrounding cinemagoers that the Cinema Theorist knows exactly what is going on and understands the filmic allusion. With the issue of noisy mobile phones in cinemas, it is surprising that more is not made of this disruptive habit.

The Cinema Theorist is so immersed in the make-believe world of cinema that they have lost track of much of reality (some may say the inspiration for many a feature film), and have trouble walking down a road without adding a swagger and an internal soundtrack, or leaving a room without saying ‘exit screen right’. The most extreme of these examples is the Tarantino Nerd, detailed below.

Tarantino
A subspecies of the Cinema Theorist is the Quentin Tarantino Nerd (the director himself a Nerd of international status). As well as studying his oeuvre late into the night, Tarantino Nerds have also devoted their lives to studying whatever it is the director studied as a Lesser Spotted Video Store Nerd: blaxpoitation, Hong Kong cinema, horror, action genres and so on.

Their enjoyment of film, and indeed their lives have become ensnared in a self-referential spiral, where they struggle to maintain their grip on what is original, remake, inspired by or just plain ripped off a minor Vietnamese exploitation flick that not even the Vietnamese are aware of. While Tarantino is considered a master of borrowing from obscure films to create something fresh, the Tarantino Nerd will battle to keep even one original thought in their heads. It is their deepest desire to pen a script as influential as Reservoir Dogs, and they may spend hours verbally art directing, casting, producing and storyboarding this Work of Art – the actual writing of the script is postponed until a future, unspecified date.

The Tarantino Nerd also takes great pleasure in quoting large tracts of dialogue from Tarantino's movies, often in place of regular conversation (refer to the ‘Quotation’ section under ‘Habits & Preferences’). An example is as follows, with two Tarantino Nerds at lunch:

Nerd 1 (pointing to his sandwich): Mmm-mmmm. That is a tasty burger. You mind if I have some of your tasty beverage to wash this down?

Nerd 2: What?

Nerd 1: (suddenly and explosively): What country are you from? ‘What’ ain't no country I've ever heard of. They speak English in What?

Nerd 2: Ah hah hahahahahah. That’s the best bit…and then the other guy’s all like ‘go ahead’ and then he’s all ‘arrggh’ and then he…

Nerd 1: Oh yeah…. and then just fucks those white kids up…

Nerd 2: K-pow! And Vincent’s all…

Nerd 1: …yeah…

(Nerd 3 walks in jauntily)

Nerd 3: What you doin’ you white-ass Korean nigga muthafuckas!

etc etc

This freeflowing vernacular allows normally weedy, fearful gentlemen to feel they can insert racist, homophobic or misogynist statements or words like ‘cunt’ and ‘bitches’ into everyday conversation without condemnation. Anyone else in the room won’t get a word in until this dialogue has run its course, which normally takes up to three days or more. It’s usually best at this stage to either exit the room or change career.


*Stay tuned for the final installment in ‘Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds’ with ‘Habits & Preferences’.

Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds (part 5)

THE TINKERER
This bearded species is most at ease when tinkering about in a back shed, fossicking in the rusty tools section of trash n’ treasure markets or re-enacting the American Civil War.

While readers may read this overview and think: ‘why, that is just most people’s Dad’, it is important to distinguish between an everyday patriarch and the full-blown DIY version, a Nerd for whom all peculiarities of his species must be expressed for him to qualify. For example, a Dad may own a back shed and may even use it to store eskys, bent nails, deflated Sherrins and other implementata of fatherhood, but to the Tinkerer the back shed is a well-oiled extension of his ego; the means by which he articulates the deepest passions of his id to create fantastic apparatus of no discernable use to anyone.

This Nerd lives to mess around with that which rarely needs messing around with in the first place. This can be as trivial as creating a stand for his model Spitfires, to constructing a ‘temple’ for his barbeque; an outdoor area for him and his friends to neatly prepare and cook an assortment of meats with all utensils at hand, all workbenches at the right height, party lights, speakers, padded seating and tiled roof. At said gatherings, and in keeping with his ‘everything home made’ philosophy, the Tinkerer will proudly serve a bottle of his latest home brew. This will start a vigorous debate amongst the assembled Nerds, all of whom will claim to have made a stronger brew when studying engineering at University (a nostalgic time for the Tinkerer).

Like the IT Professional the Tinkerer is devoted to technology, but that of a different, gentler age. The steam engine holds an uncommon pull to this Nerd, a technology that spans the ship, the locomotive, the tractor, or turbines and power stations in general. The sight of a well-oiled steam engine is soothing to this elderly Nerd, and he will travel long distances to attend steam engine festivals, a happy occasion when he can roll up his dusty sleeves and talk knowledgably with others of his ilk.

Enterprize
The author was fortunate to spend a number of months viewing the Tinkerer species up close while volunteering on the Enterprize, a tall ship run by a crack team of handy Nerds. This milieu combines two of the great loves of the Tinkerer: a complicated mechanism constructed entirely of recycled woods, hemp, pitch and tallow requiring a high level of daily maintenance, and explicit historical detail.

The strict onboard hierarchy ensured that from the General Hands to the Master of the ship, all commands were obeyed. Specific protocols were required in day-to-day operations of the Enterprize, including old-timey orders such as ‘helms a-lee’, ‘hard a starboard’ and ‘scandalise the main’, words like ‘fo’c’stl’e’, ‘mizzen’ and ‘futtocks’ and even superstitions, such as the inadvisability of inviting a woman on board. This intoxicating environment would occasionally go to the Tall Ship Tinkerer’s head, and some would even go so far as to bark ‘get down them stairs and make them sandwiches’.

Unlike Alexander the Great’s continental campaigning or Henry VIII’s ribald antics, Melbourne’s early founders are not known for their thrilling escapades and saucy bedtime heroics. But, just as the French Horn Player is perversely enticed to an unpopular shape, so the Tinkerer of the Enterprize is drawn to this lesser-known period of Australia’s history. This eager Nerd was sometimes disappointed to lose his audience with the phrase ‘semi-trailer of the seas’; faces would fall when younger members of the public learned that no piracy, swordplay nor buccaneering took place on its well-scrubbed decks. Regardless of this, the Tall Ship Tinkerer was undeterred. Special dress-up days were arranged, and tired phrases of derring-do were uttered to general glee. Thus the Tinkerer species is a close relation of historical re-enactment species, including members of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

While teamwork was a vital part of life on the Enterprize, so was individual pride in one’s work. It was noted that as some Tinkerers were generous with information and advice, others would jealously guard their patch, be it improving the brasswork on the ship’s compass to furling a sail quickly in high seas. Any clumsy attempt by a novice Hand to do the same would be treated by such Tinkerers with anything from exasperated concern to undisguised belligerence. In such cases it was indeed more prudent to descend to the galley and prepare the lunchtime refreshments.

A final note on the Enterprize –while the name of the vessel is almost identical to that of the starship in the well-known Nerd touchstone Star Trek: The Next Generation, albeit with a minor change in spelling, this is pure serendipity; a joyful coincidence of Nerdy proportions. The name of the replica ship relates to the actual tops’l schooner first piloted by John Fawkner from Launceston across Bass Strait to found the city of Melbourne. It is a sign of the exacting research and dedication of the author to be acquainted with such facts.

Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds (part 4)

GOTHS
To the casual observer, the Goth seems to be an interesting person with a unique sense of style. But despite surface appearances, these Nerds are amongst the least cool people in the modern world.

The Goths of old would be busily engaged in sewing their own waistcoats and bodices, reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, shuffling to Bauhaus and picnicking in cemeteries and other morbid locations. This model has since transformed to encompass other subgenres of the species. Goths in 2009 may be just as likely to buy their clothes ready-made from Dangerfield, devour the oeuvre of Anne Rice, attend an Evanescence concert with their 10-year-old sister or hang out under the clocks at Flinders Street Station. In extreme cases of this altered landscape, this may even spill over into the reviled subgenus Emo, although it is not recommended these similarities ever be pointed out to the modern-day Goth.

Like all Nerds, Goths exult in their difference from the mainstream, and will simultaneously draw attention to him/herself while repelling it at the same time. In this way, the Goth is truly ‘misunderstood’. But unlike most Nerds outlined in this Field Guide, the proliferation of female Goths is high. As a species marked by no definite philosophy, what unites all Goths is a love of aesthetics and form. In this light, the opportunities for assembling elaborate petticoats and stockings, corsetry, makeup and hairstyles has proved irresistible for many a female Nerd.

As much has been written and photographed about the Goth species, it is not necessary to go into further detail regarding their appearance. What is most striking is the height/weight ratio of many female Goths to their mate. It is not uncommon to see a tall, voluptuous woman, magnificently arrayed in velvet, silk and shining latex squiring a small, ferrety, caped gentleman about town. The evolutionary sense this makes is ambiguous, although the abundance of such couplings suggests that this approach is proving successful. It is rare to see a Goth on their own, and if not in a couple they travel in a group known as a ‘piteousness’.

The thematic union of death, sex and lace ruffles is a powerful lure to the Goth, and all enjoy the vampire genre above all others. They will eagerly devour any comic, TV show, movie or band with vampires as its central theme, which spans anything from the ordinary (Blade) to the sublime (Buffy: The Vampire Slayer). The other genre beloved of Goths is sci-fi, which can go anywhere from the output of Philip K. Dick to TV shows Dr Who, Babylon 5 and Star Trek, the movie Star Wars, the TV show Star Wars, the animated TV show of same and so on. The squabbles associated with the definitions of the above are too convoluted to list here.

The glue that holds together the Goth’s twin loves of vampires and sci-fi is fanfic. It will astonish many readers to discover that while some people struggle to fill an A4 page with their thoughts, Goth Nerds are capable of writing several hundred thousand words a month. Rather than going towards a hard-earned PhD or their definitive magnum opus, their talents are spent (often in addition to writing said PhD or magnum opus – the Nerd output is extraordinary) on writing reams of fanfic; stories about their favourite fictional situations in which the Goth writes about what ‘should’ have happened.

This fanfic is then uploaded to the Internet, where, rather like the List of the Birdwatcher or the Mac forum of the Graphic Designer, other Nerds fall upon it with cries of joy. Endless discussions are then held as to whether or not the fanfic is ‘canon’, if the writer is a ‘slasher’ (author of slash, or gay fiction) or if the ‘shipping’ in the text (a shipper being the creator of an unlikely pairing in the original text) is an insult to the text’s creator. Weeks may pass. It is speculated that such fruitless endeavour binds Goths to their fantasy environment, allowing them retreat into the alternate world cherished by all species of Nerds.


GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Similar to the Goth, the Graphic Designer holds a respected position on the international hierarchy of coolness. However the Graphic Designer is a whole-hearted Nerd who hides their inclinations behind a bulging bookcase of art & design books, groovy spectacle frames and retro transport such as scooters, lowriders or Vespas.

Heroic works of art, symphonies or great literature are but dust in the wind to the Graphic Designer; it is in the font that they find the truest expression of truth and beauty. While the layperson may see the font merely as a method of conveying what they actually wish to communicate, to the Graphic Designer the font is the message itself. This must be kept in mind when approaching this species for the first time. Many unskilled newcomers have erred on first contact with this fastidious Nerd, in presenting an apparently innocuous document in a serif typeface. This is anathema to the Graphic Designer.

This Nerd will also flinch at the sight of Comic Sans, Brush Script, Mistral – indeed any font that attempts to convey handwriting racing frivolously across the page; fonts are a serious business. With the added insult of ClipArt, a presentation in PowerPoint featuring ‘creative’ dissolves, in fact any product from the Microsoft Office suite will cause any Graphic Designer worth their hand screen-printed obi to lie on the floor twitching with their eyes rolled back in their head.

Graphic Designers have a broad-ranging taste in films and can be seen enjoying the creative output of Judd Apatow as much as that of Kieślowski. There is one film however held up above all others, and that is Helvetica: The Movie. To the mainstream audience this topic would conceivably cover the 5, perhaps 10-minute slot before a feature film, a time perhaps best spent purchasing a choc-top or visiting the Ladies Room. This film somehow manages to extend this idea to feature documentary status, where the ‘personalities behind the typefaces’ are interviewed. At its premiere in Melbourne, Helvetica: The Movie was greeted by the assembled Nerds with hushed awe.

It is the dearest wish of the Graphic Designer to one day own an Eames chair. While it is possible to purchase an imitation chair for a reasonable price, this concept does not wash with this species of Nerd; it is the Eames chair or nothing. Some wistful Nerds have spent US$300 in buying the miniature version of the same model, an amount they think reasonable for the chance to place it next to their Macs and look meaningfully at their peers.

In the space given it is not possible to fully explain the love affair of the Graphic Designer with their Mac; needless to say it would be best to wipe down the mouse, keyboard and 30-inch screen of the device before use. They spend most of the day by its side, preferring to eat lunch in its presence, sneeze, cough and otherwise bask in its simple beauty. While the well-known Apple commercial features two diametrically opposed species (the IT Professional and the Graphic Designer), the true meaning of the ad is lost by marketing gurus and researchers of Gen Y demographics everywhere: while they look different, they are both Nerds.

Boo’s Field Guide to Nerds (part 3)

IT PROFESSIONAL
The IT Professional is so closely related to the 3D Animator that it is often presumed the two are the same species. Also characterised by poor eyesight and non-existent social skills, these Nerds are as irresistibly drawn towards glowing computer screens, dusty motherboards and long pages of code as Environmentalist Nerds are drawn to organic food outlets.

Popular wisdom dictates that the IT Professional is the crème-de-la-crème of all Nerds. When two women grasp for a suitable insult for a single man in his 30s, one will often add the caveat ‘…and he works in IT’. The other woman will need no further explanation. Despite this common prejudice against him the IT Professional is an optimist, and is a regular fixture on the online and speed dating scene. Research has not been completed on the ratio of IT Professionals to regular jobs in this milieu, but early figures show that this ratio is high.

The BBC sitcom The IT Crowd is a sentimental portrayal of the species, and should be considered as an introduction only. Although highly detailed with regard to props and costume, this show depicts the IT Professional with a ready wit and charming demeanour – two traits not often associated with the profession. While IT Professionals are adept at programming languages such as Java, C++ and Perl, the nuances of the English language are often lost on this unique species. It is at times best for them to communicate in the vernacular of code and mathematics, the mode in which they feel the most comfortable. Some IT Professionals take this idea to its logical conclusion by removing the front-end, or user-friendly interface of their computer to type code directly into the machine’s heart. To other Nerds, this is an affecting sight.

One area of communication at which the IT Professional does excel is that of games (see the later ‘Habits and Preferences’ section). When not toiling on his indeterminate work tasks or shyly approaching virtual women in a non-threatening environment, IT Professional plays games (otherwise known as Gaming, a subtle, but important distinction to this species of Nerd). Rather than playing traditional games of dice, cards or chess, in keeping with his respect for technology the IT Professional prefers the online gaming world, where role-playing, first-person shooter and real-time strategy games are enjoyed late into the night.

In appearance, the IT Professional is easily identified as one of two extremes:

1. Slight and Weedy
2. Tall and Massive

With some minor variants eg Gangling and Knock-kneed or Squat and Hirsute. It is suggested that his sedentary lifestyle and unwholesome diet has led to this clear split in form, although some radical theorists put forward that as the IT Professional is already genetically disposed to one or the other, his entry into the field of IT is somehow inevitable. Unlike other predominantly Caucasian Nerd species such as the Birdwatcher or Tinkerer, the IT Professional hails from all continents of the globe and comes in all colours of the rainbow.

The IT Professional scorns the straightforward simplicity and all-in-one design of the Mac, and concerns himself only with the PC platform. This gives him the chance to configure the back-end of his computer to track NASA communications, eavesdrop on shipping movements or program his mobile phone to ‘talk’ to his microwave and heat the evening’s frozen meal. He is most content when surrounded by not one but many unsightly grey monitors and whirring towers and will dedicate rooms of his department to ceiling-height servers with flashing lights. Rather than organise his equipment to fit around himself and his activities, he is happy to wedge himself behind this apparatus, and as a result is often hard to locate.

It is interesting to note that despite all the literature written by and about the IT Professional, no-one knows what a person working in IT actually does. Despite encompassing fields as broad as programming, working on the help desk, computer science and software engineering, to the layperson these could all be in fact the same thing. While the Birdwatching Nerd is eager to share his knowledge with the uninitiated, the IT Professional enjoys this division from his contemporaries, and secretly rejoices in the frequent eye-rolling and tsking from his family when he is unable to respond to the polite inquiry ‘what do you do’.

In this way he is perhaps the most elusive of all Nerd species, despite his broad distribution. It is the lifelong desire of the IT Professional that this knowledge of his species never be brought to light.


FRENCH HORN PLAYERS
The issue of French Horn Players has already been covered on this blog in detail, so it is not necessary to delve much further into this topic. Needless to say, these rugged individualists can retain strong nerdy characteristics from the amateur player up to the professional.

Although the rare anomaly exists (as demonstrated here by John Entwistle), the sight of a person clutching a French Horn is intrinsically funny to the non-French Horn player. Thus this instrument will always exert a strong pull to Nerds the world over, and should be discouraged by parents early on should they wish their offspring to have any normal kind of adolescence.

The French Horn Player is closely related to players of the bassoon, oboe, euphonium and other awkwardly-shaped instruments. Tuba Players are sorted into their own subspecies owing to the ridiculous noises emitted by the instrument, the extreme inelegance and impracticality of the case as well as the strong connotations with Neighbours alumnus ‘Harold Bishop’.