We're all dorks here

Every once in a while I just have to post one of these catch-up entries that don't have a lot of deep content, but have stuff I want to remember. So, here's another one.

• Not only did some of my students recognise my costume right off the bat, they all generally thought it was really cool. Karla, one of my brighter B students, grilled me over where I got all the components (leather tanktop, jeans and longcoat: Spiegel; combat boots: Army surplus; wraparound sunglasses: Afterthoughts, for $7) and said she wants to go as Trinity next year.



• On the way home after class, the student bus driver recognised my costume too, complimented me and asked if I was getting together with other people in Matrix costumes. It was a nice shift from all the evil looks I got from people who I assume were animal-rights dorks. :P



• Tonight I went to The Mill for the weekly Science Fiction League of Iowa Students meeting, like I'd told Hanah I was going to do. (Acronym it, say it out loud, groan at the pun.) There were about eight other people there, all guys. Evidently there are indeed female members -- among them Catherine Schaff-Stump, a doctoral student on the Cosplay ML with whom I corresponded briefly before moving up here, then fell out of contact with shortly after my arrival -- but they don't show up much. It's terribly amusing observing stereotypical male geeks making contact with a new female geek; they tend to assume "Okay, we need to let her in on what we're up to gently, so that she doesn't get all weirded out and run away." They get so surprised when they realise that the female geek in question is in fact quite possibly geekier than they are.
  
  Example:
  
  JOSH (co-president): You came in just as we were talking about this book.
  SCOTT (random guy): Here, take a look at this. Do you know about roleplaying games?
  (SCOTT hands me a copy of All Flesh Must Be Eaten.)
  ME: Oh, yeah, I know this one! One of my friends has a short story in the anthology they just put out, The Book of All Flesh.
  (I set the book down on the table. SCOTT's eyes open a bit wider, and he takes the book back.)
  OTHER JOSH (other co-president): (dissolves in laughter) So if it's the book of all flesh, does that mean it must be eaten?
  ME: Only if you're a zombie.
  
  They seem like pretty cool guys, even if I didn't really strike an immediate chord with any of them. There was the expected amount of bemused shock -- the "Who is this person in sexy clothing and why is she in the same room as us?" reaction that I got at Project A-Kon while I was walking around in my plugsuit and expressed pleasure at seeing someone in a Ninja Burger T-shirt, to which the aforementioned someone said "I never imagined anyone dressed like that would be impressed by a Ninja Burger T-shirt!" -- but, you know, we're all dorks here.
  
  After the meeting, I walked over to Dan the Elder's to show off my costume as I'd promised, and as it happened, Scott was going the same way. So, we struck up a conversation as we hiked along -- it was about a half-hour jaunt. Primary topics, in roughly chronological order: our respective spheres of geekery; writing; military stuff; Heinlein; Babylon 5; gaming. Scott wants to buy a copy of The Children of Cthulhu when it comes out and have me autograph it. Anyway, as it turned out, Dan wasn't home, so I walked back to the bus stop and went back to Mayflower. It was pleasant not to have to make the entire trip in silence, though.



• As a side note, The Children of Cthulhu is presently ranked at 753,729 on Amazon's website. I look forward to seeing that number drop as time goes on.



• Even though I didn't meet any amazingly shiny brains -- no one especially Bearlike or Colinlike or Marklike or Hanahlike -- I really enjoyed that meeting, and it has knocked me thoroughly out of that blue funk I was in a few days ago. I'd been feeling kind of blah after going to Rocky Horror the other night; I think it was a general sense of not really having any serious synergy with any people or groups up here. My roommates and officemates are friendly and good people, but we don't have much in common other than shared living space or career plans. Dan is fun to hang out with, but he has this North Midwestern thing (at least I guess it's a North Midwestern thing; he's alluded as much) of playing his cards very close to the chest, and I'm much more used to this Chris/Bear/Mouse/Donna/Hanah/Slave/Josh/Rex/James/Colin -- oh, fuck it, just call it Houston -- dynamic of everyone being really exuberant and flirty and throwaway with their emotional content. He's fun, but he's a little too cool for the room, which prompted the following remark:
  
  ME: Lately I've been keeping my life pleasantly drama-free by making it a sitcom.
  
  It was later determined that the sitcom in question is probably Frasier.
  
  Anyway, that sense of disconnection just had me feeling really unpleasant, and I was seriously lonely for a couple of days. Talking to friends back home and in Dallas helped while I was doing that, but then I'd just go blah again about a half-hour later. I'm pleased to say that this particular down-cycle was quite short-lived.



• Some of the bummedness likely stems from this whole Mark-separation thing: one of my shiny brains is gone. I noticed this tonight while I was mulling over my two latest creative projects: a new (and already half-completed!) music video using footage from FLCL (aka "Furi-Kuri"), and a short story intended for the Del Rey Online Writing Workshop's November challenge -- writing a short story based on song lyrics. Both stem from the song I mentioned on the day of the split -- "Laid" by James. The video is weird; the short is weirder. The first scene exploded from my head rather Athena-like, and now I'm stepping back and trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with the damn thing.

( You can read it if you like. )