Acceptable Losses

August 28th, 2003 Posted in 2003

Hey, I just now noticed I’ve got comments on my entries. That’s rocking. Of course, many of them seem to just say “Your life is so boring and I hate you.” Yeah, thanks. I already knew that, Inspector Newsflash. Still, I’ll make a point to responding to any of the three people who read this who take the time to post a response. My apologies for neglecting them as long as I have.

Anyway, onto my post. I read recently about people camping out in stores waiting to buy their copy of the new Two Towers DVD at precisely midnight, when it went on sale. This strikes me as at best, needlessly excessive, and at worse, evidence that you’ve made some poor life choices up until this point. I’m as excited as anyone about The Two Towers—it rules. But come one, hundreds of thousands of copies will be available at every store imaginable the very next day; the need to stay up all night waiting for and watching a film you’ve already seen before strikes me as a bad page choice on the choose-your-own-adventure we call life.

I freely admit that I’m a geek. But there’s a level of geekiness in myself that I’m prepared to accept—it’s like if I was the President and geeky things were civilian casualties. I would consider extended versions of Tolkien movies acceptable losses. Also women and children. I will buy the extended version of The Two Towers and slop it up like spaghetti from the kitchen-vagina of Heaven. That’s not the point.

No, my problem isn’t with liking geeky things—and let’s be honest, if all of us didn’t like at least a few geeky things, would you even be reading a blog about Lord of the Rings DVDs online?—but with how much you’re willing to like them. If you own The Matrix, you’re simply enjoying an acceptably geeky thing. If you own The Matrix behind-the-scenes video, The Animatrix and Enter the Matrix, it’s possible you’ve lost a small amount of self respect. If you own a plaster bust of Morpheus:

…then, yes, you’ve crossed that invisible line, and in doing so have lost unspeakably vast amounts of dignity (and blood, if I catch you talking to it). If you own an Official Trinity Penis Clinger:

…then you—well, actually, that’s kind of funny. Wow, she really looks like a lesbian there, doesn’t she? I’d walk around with it on my cock all day, and if anyone asked, I’d just say I fell groin-first into my daughter’s Constant Craving KD Lang Goth playset. Heh heh—man.

Wait, I seem to have strayed off-point.

I guess all I’m saying is, if you want to buy the Two Towers Extended Edition, that’s acceptably geeky, and you wont be alone. If you want to watch all 14 hours of the DVD extras in one sitting, you’ve probably gone outside the bounds of acceptable geekiness by a little. And if you show up at my apartment at 8:00pm dressed like Legolas, and try to convince me to go stand in line for four hours to buy the DVD for a movie I’ve already seen, that will be available tomorrow without waiting, then yes, you’ve lost touch with reality. At that point, Legolas will be able to discover the depths of his heightened elf perception firsthand, since I’ll be slamming the door in his face without warning, then chucking cutlery at his kneecaps through the mailslot untill he goes away.