Archive for October, 2009

The first question, of course, is what is WoW? With over 11 million players worldwide, most people already know that answer, at least enough to say that it is an online video game also known as World of Warcraft.

More specifically, WoW is an MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role playing game. This means that not only are you playing online as your own character, but you are playing with everyone else’s character too, almost like an interactive chat room with depictions of yourself that can go off and kill things after you’ve had that meaningful conversation.

Created by Blizzard Entertainment, WoW was not a new idea in scope or setting, following the Warcraft series of games that first began in 1994 with Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

Going the MMO route, however, was new as the previous Warcraft games were all RTS format or real time strategy.
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We all know the jobs out there that are the geek dream, such as being a game tester, or a comic book artist, or an intern for X-Play. But if we’re being realistic with ourselves, we know that those jobs are not easy to come by. Most of them, most of the ‘geek dream jobs’ are nearly impossible to break into.

However, that does not mean that we have to content ourselves with being sales or customer service reps in those awful giant call centers. There are geek jobs for the rest of us that can be just as rewarding as the dream.
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Tattooing has been around almost as long as human beings, seen in many cultures throughout history for many varying reasons, usually for personal, cultural, or spiritual expression or identification.

In the previous century there was a time when tattooing was seen as something only for the hardcore, scary people like bikers and gang members, or sailors who got drunk one night on leave. In Japan it is still generally thought of as a sign that you are part of the yakuza, the native gangsters.

But these days nearly everyone you run across could potentially have at least one tattoo, even if that one is merely a typical ‘tramp stamp’ on the lower back.

The average person might only have something small and simple, like Woodstock on their hip or a flower on their ankle, but even the unexpected person might surprise you with a slew of tattoos hidden beneath their clothing.

Tattoos with a geeky origin are more common these days than you might realize. All three of mine fall under that category.
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I am a geek. That has already been established purely by the existence of this blog. I am also very typical of the American woman my age. Middle class, over-educated, under-appreciated, with a husband, a cat, and a lot of bills to pay. I believe that my current financial position of getting by paycheck to paycheck is in part the fault of my geek status.

Allow me to explain.

I attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. This was the most expensive of the schools I looked at toward the end of high school, but it was the one I had to go to, no compromise, because of what it offered. My first year of schooling was $28,000. By the time I graduated the yearly tuition had increased to $38,000. That’s a $10,000 increase in four years. Frightening, right?
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If you don’t know what fanfiction is…

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

Just kidding. I have to explain the definition of fanfiction to a lot of people whenever I discuss my hobbies, so I know that it is not quite the household name that I often think it is.

Fanfiction is really for a specific group of people, and while some others outside the practice of writing it know of its existence, many still do not.

Fanfiction is stories about characters or settings written by fans of an already existing fictional work, rather than by the true creator.

This can be of a book, movie, TV series, anything, really, as long as it is written by a fan, not the author, and normally would never be published as it would not have the permission or backing of the original work.

The usual example I give is this. Say you like Harry Potter. You decide you want to write a story for fun, or maybe for some friends to read, involving Harry’s parents when they were younger, because the actual books don’t cover much of that. The story you write would be fanfiction. Read the rest of this entry »

The Movie

It all began in 1994 when James Spader was still hot and especially cute playing a good boy geek for the first time in his life, and Kurt Russell was still one of the go-to men for action flicks (other than being absolutely amazing in Tarantino’s Death Proof not too long ago). It was the first look we had at the universe of possibilities that would be Stargate. The movie was phenomenal, a unique sci fi story with enough possibilities to create over a decade of follow-ups.
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