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The Geek Wants Out by Ernest Cline

At first glance
I probably appear to be a somewhat ordinary,
somewhat average looking fellow.
Calm, harmless, at ease.

But this is by design.
You see, it is through decades of research and rigorous training that I have crafted this façade of normalcy.

And now, through intense concentration,
I am able to function in a social setting.
I can speak at length with educated people about
pertinent matters of public importance,
such as literature,
or the current political climate in Europe.

I am capable of conversing with you
without ever revealing that just underneath the surface
of this manufactured veneer
there hides an altogether different person.
A monster, some might say.
My alter-ego.
He is the opposite of the image I project.
He is the antithesis of Cool.
He is the LAST person you want to get trapped in a conversation with.

He is The Geek.
The obsessive science fiction movie watching,
comic book collecting,
Monty Python dialogue memorizing,
Dungeons and Dragons playing GEEK
that I struggle daily to keep hidden from the world.

But The Geek Wants Out.

He want to talk to you.
He wants to give you his doctoral dissertation on why
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
is the greatest fucking film of all time!

He wants to bitch slap you because
you’ve never seen Big Trouble in Little China.
What? Have you been living in a fucking cave?!

He wants to kick your ass in Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.
And he will.
Because he’s a fucking Geek.

And he wants his toys.
He wants the complete set
in mint condition,
still in the box.
He wants every item on the planet that is even remotely related to Ultraman.
Because Ultraman is Airwolf!

He could give a squirt of piss
about sports or politics or rhetoric.
Such things are of no consequence to him.
What matters is the release date of the next Lord of the Rings movie!

You see, The Geek can’t wait.
The Geek has no patience.
He wants what he wants when he wants it.
And all he wants is stupid shit!

He wants his own Tardis.
He wants his own light saber.
He wants to buy a DeLorean and he wants to drive it 88 miles per hour.

He wants movies.
He wants to see the Director’s Cut.
He wants the impossible to find Japanese bootleg with
6 minutes of never-before-seen footage.

He wants to watch Blade Runner. Again.
He wants to watch Brazil. Again.
He wants to watch A Clockwork Orange.
Again and Again!

But I deprive him of these things, as best I can,
until I can no longer ignore his voice
screaming in my head.

I am Jekyl. He is Hyde.
I am Bruce Banner. He is the Hulk.
Especially the Hulk from issues #272 to #378.

But no longer!
I am putting a stop to all this nerdy shit right now!
I’m an adult, for Christ’s sake!
And this body isn’t big enough for the both of us.
One of us has to go, and it’s gonna be him.
I banishing the Geek forever to the Phantom Zone,
just like in Superman II !
Because, in the end –
there can be only one.

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Nerd Porn Auteur by Ernest Cline

I've noticed that there don't seem to be any porno movies
that are made for guys like me.

All the porn I've come across
was targeted at beer-swilling sports bar dwelling alpha-males
Men who like their women stupid and submissive
Men who can only get it up for monosyllabic cock-hungry nymphos
with gargantuan breasts and a three-word vocabulary

Adult films are populated with these collagen-injected
liposuctioned women
Many of whom have resorted to surgery and self-mutilation
in an attempt to look the way they have been told to look.

These aren't real women. They're objects.
And these movies aren't erotic. They're pathetic.
These vacuum-headed fuck bunnies don't turn me on.
They disgust me.
And it's not that I'm against pornography.
I mean, I'm a guy. And guys need porn.
Fact.
"Like a preacher needs pain, like a needle needs a vein,"
Guys need porn.

But I don't wanna watch this misogynist he-man woman-hater porn.
I want porno movies that are made with guys like me in mind:
Guys who know that the sexiest thing in the world
is a woman who is smarter than you are.

You can have the whole cheerleading squad,
I want the girl in the tweed skirt and the horn-rimmed glasses:
Betty Finnebowski, the valedictorian.
Oh yes.
First I want to copy her Trig homework,
and then I want to make mad, passionate lover to her
for hours and hours
until she reluctantly asks if we can stop
because she doesn't want to miss Battlestar Galactica.
Suma cum laude, baby!
That is what I call erotic.

But do you ever see that kind of a woman in a contemporary adult film?
No.
Which is why I'm going to start writing and directing Geek Porno.
I shall be the quintessential Nerd Porn Auteur.
And the women in my porno movies will be the kind
that drive nerds like me mad with desire.

I'm talking about the girls that used to fuck up
the grading curve.
The girls in the Latin Club and the National Honor Society.
Chicks with weird clothes, braces, four eyes, and 4.0 GPAs.
Brainy articulate bookworms, with MENSA cards in their purses
and chips on their shoulders.

My porn starlets will come in all shapes and sizes.
My porn starlets will be too busy working on their PhD to go to the gym.

In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.

Buy stock in some hand cream companies
because there is about to be a major shortage.

And I'm not just talking about straight porn. Oh no.
There should be fuck films for my nerd brethren
of all sexual orientations.
Gay nerd porn flicks with titles like "Dungeons and Drag-queens."

This idea is a fucking gold mine.
I am gonna make millions,
because this country is full of database programmers
and electronics engineers
and they aren't getting the loving they so desperately need.
And you can help . . .

If you're an intelligent woman is interested in breaking into the adult film industry,
and if you can tell me the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet,
then you are hired.

It doesn't matter if you think you're overweight or unattractive.
It doesn't matter if you don't think you're beautiful.
You are beautiful. . .
And I will make you a star.

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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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What The Doctor Said by Raymond Carver

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

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Happiness Epidemic by David Hernandez

WIthout any warning, the disease
sweeps across the country
like a traveling circus.

People who were once blue,
who slouched from carrying
a bag of misery over one shoulder

are now clinically cheerful.
Symptoms include kind gestures,
a bouncy stride, a smile

bigger than a slice of canteloupe.
You pray that you will be infected,
hope a happy germ invades your body

and multiplies, spreading merriment
to all your major organs
like door-to-door Christmas carolers

until the virus finally reaches your heart:
that red house at the end of the block
where your deepest wishes reside,

where a dog howls behind a gate
every time that sorrow
pulls his hearse up the driveway.