Nerdhood

Yes, I intend to talk about candy. I like Nerds. I can eat boxes and boxes of them. Especially the grape ones. They're even better than poprocks and Jolly Ranchers. Put together. Of course, they can't compete with a king-sized Butterfinger, but Nerds are still really delicious.

Alright, I'm not really going to talk about candy. I'm going to talk about the real thing. Nerds. They live among us. Sometimes, they are us (Sounds like an opening for a thriller novel; eat your heart out, Sue Grafton, because N Is for Nerds!).

I, and some of you may not agree with this (though it ought not be so difficult to accept), have been accused time after time after time of consorting with and actually being a part of such intellectual rabble. I find such  nomenclature to be somewhat offensive, simply because of the negative connotations interwoven with the "n" word (thufferin' thuccotash, you know which "n" word I mean; don't try to make a joke out of it, you rapthcallionth).

Anyway, because I sense that there is a great preponderance of misconstrued categorizations of me and what it is exactly that I am and what genre of people I blend with best, not to mention the true definition of nerdhood, I felt that I ought to clarify once and for all that I, gentlepersons, am not, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, a nerd.

Yes, you are, Jeff, scream the nerd groupies. You are a nerd just like us. Woooooo-hoooooo!

No, I'm nothing like you! Stop it! I don't even wear Aqua-man underwear. And I've never read the dictionary for fun.

Doesn't matter, you are one of us. Accept it!

Prove it!

Alright, we will.

Question #1: Do you watch The Big Bang Theory every Thursday night at seven o' clock mountain standard time?
Answer: Yes.

Question #2: Do you get somewhere between 85.463-95.122 % of the jokes?
Answer: Sure.

Question #3: When you watch Jeopardy, do you answer more questions than the winner?
Answer: Sometimes.

Question #4: Do you enjoy playing Scrabble, even when you have to play against yourself?
Answer: Sure, I guess so.

Question #5: How many books do you own?
Answer: 778 give or take 9 or 10. Approximately. I can say that with about 97% confidence with a 1.5% margin of error.

Question #6: What are the last five books you read?
Answer: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Elder Edda: Poems of the Vikings translated by Patricia Terry, The Plague by Albert Camus, and, hmm, let's see...ah, that's right, Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot.

Question #7: What is a Fibonacci sequence?
Answer: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21

Question #8: What, in German, did Martin Luther say at the Diet of Worms?
Answer: Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott hilf mir. Amen.

Question #9: What is the flight velocity of two African sparrows?
Answer: I'm not sure; Monty Python never said.

Question #10: Can you chat with your friends on Facebook without making a literary allusion or quoting William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, or John Milton, among others?
Answer: I could. I just don't want to.

Question #11: Are you a nerd?
Answer: I am...d---. But...d---. I could...d---. I am a nerd. (sniff)

Question #12: How do feel now?
Answer: Well, I think I'm through the denial stage. Once I get done being angry about this whole mess of shenanigans, I'll probably try to bargain my way out of it. In the meantime...hey, is that Bill Shakespeare over there? (from Chris Farley). Ah, "we few, we happy few..." (from Henry V).