Mehitabel - earwormed is a great word! Is it yours?
Another Doper experience: reading the dictionary or an encyclopedia for fun.
Let’s see…
The ability to quote Monty Python ad nauseum
Check. But I refrain most of the time in order to save my friendships.
At least a passing familiarity with Star Trek, Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide.
Check on the first two. Never read/seen HG.
At least one viewing of the Princess Bride.
Check. I own the DVD.
More likely than the average person to have seen South Park (the movie)
Check. Multiple times. I think this may be around the house as well.
Have probably read LotR or at least the Hobbit
Check. Read the Hobbit, FOR & got halfway through TTT before I couldn’t take it anymore. love the movies, tho!
Grew up listening to Dr. Demento (or other access to offbeat musical genres).
Check. I have one of the 2-disc anniversary sets at home but I never listen to them anymore. Just can’t stand to part with them. I also had an affinity for Weird Al back in the day.
Note to OP:
Please make sure this information is kept confidential. If the NAACP ever found out about my proclivities, they’d take away my Black Card[sup]TM[/sup]. I’m already on their “watch list” for marrying a white guy.
Oh, yeah, I always used to read the encylopedia as a child. I still do sometimes. My son had to look up Johnny Appleseed for school, and when he was done, I sat and leafed through the “A” encylopedia for about 30 minutes.
Reading the encyclopedia for fun – check. (We had this great funky set from the 1920s when I was growing up that I found endlessly fascinating.)
Reading the dictionary for fun – well, only during the course of the workday. You have an unabridged open on your desk at all times too, right?
I hadn’t heard this one from other Dopers, but it’s only the sort of thing a Doper would brag about. 
I am guilty of this, although if cable TV and video games had been around back then it might never have happened.
We had my Dad’s Encyclopedia from 1944 (I was born in '62). I’m still wondering who won that big war that was going on.
Say no more!
More than passing, although when it comes to post-TOS Trek, that familiarity has bred quite a lot of contempt.
I think you can add Pratchett to the list, too. Also I’d say dopers are more likely to know who Neil Gaiman is.
I know large portions of it by heart, as do most Israelis.
Seen it. Liked it.
Both, several times.
“Dr. Demento?”
- The ability to quote Monty Python ad nauseum
Yes, Mrs. S. C. U. M.
- At least a passing familiarity with Star Trek, Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide.
All three, and I try to be a peacemaker when fans clash.
- At least one viewing of the Princess Bride.
One, but in bits and pieces. Didn’t appreciate it until I read about it in detail here.
- More likely than the average person to have seen South Park (the movie)
And the series…
- Have probably read LotR or at least the Hobbit
Years ago, as a child for both.
- Grew up listening to Dr. Demento (or other access to offbeat musical genres).
I had a cousin who collected “weird” songs. I liked them, then I became a Rush fan, and that should be another category…
Another Doper experience: reading the dictionary or an encyclopedia for fun.
I was picked on as a kid for this. My mother told it to everyone, and people got sick of hearing it, so that didn’t help me. Come to think of it, because I remembered what I had read, I often corrected people when they got the facts wrong, and I wasn’t too tactful about it. Another category?
How about: people with enough free time on their hands to come here?
Oh, yeah. I learned there was no Santa Claus by looking up the entry for Santa Claus in the 1967 edition of Collier’s Encyclopedia. I spent many a happy hour browsing through those big black volumes with the red trim and gold lettering. And in high school I spent hours and hours putting together my own Proto-IndoEuropean lexicon from the etymological entries in the dictionary. I can still amuse myself for extended periods by reading for pleasure what are supposed to be “reference” books.
[chris griffin]
“Get out of my head!”
[/chris griffiin]
The ability to quote Monty Python ad nauseum
- well, not ad nauseam, but I fart in your general direction.
At least a passing familiarity with Star Trek, Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide - I’ve seen the ST series and some of the ST movies. I’d be terribly out of place at a ST convention… and I read HG in the 1980s. I’ve never seen Star Wars, though. No interest.
At least one viewing of the Princess Bride - I don’t know if I’ve seen this or not. If I did, it must not have made an impression.
More likely than the average person to have seen South Park (the movie) - Yes, saw it at the theater. Just once.
Have probably read LotR or at least the Hobbit - No, I have no idea about this franchise.
Grew up listening to Dr. Demento (or other access to offbeat musical genres) - I’ve heard his show maybe a dozen times, but not in 25 years.
Another Doper experience: reading the dictionary or an encyclopedia for fun - A long, long time ago I read much of The Book Of Knowledge, which was 20 years old when I researched school projects with it in the mid-'60s.
Obsessive/compulsive in relation to spelling and grammar - I don’t know about obsessive or compulsive, but these are both very important to me.
Love to stand apart from the crowd while feeling included! - OK, we can have a group hug, but you guys stand over there!
- The ability to quote Monty Python ad nauseum Yep
- At least a passing familiarity with Star Trek, Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide. Yep Yep Yep
- At least one viewing of the Princess Bride. Yep
- More likely than the average person to have seen South Park (the movie) Yep
- Have probably read LotR or at least the Hobbit ** Yep Yep**
- Grew up listening to Dr. Demento (or other access to offbeat musical genres). Yep Yep
Wow, you nailed me with every word.
Hitchhiker’s, Python, Trek, Princess Bride, spelling obsession, check.
Star Wars? Ehh, small check.
Tolkein? Nope. On my to-do list, though.
South Park: Seen some episodes, but not the movie.
Never got to hear the Dr. Demento show, but my life was changed (ruined?) at an early age when my dad brought home a pair of Spike Jones Greatest Hits LPs.
Maybe what we need is the Doper version of the Geek Code.
Maybe this is a false impression skewed by certain people with these interests or obsessions, spending much more time referencing these interests than everyone else? Especially if these interests really were very formative. Some people get stuck in ruts and don’t grow beyond certain things that affected them strongly when they were younger. And some people who may have been (or perhaps still are) somewhat culturally sheltered, feel like they are finally making human connections on the Internet, ruminating with others over Tolkein and Star Wars. Of course, once someone starts trying to group everyone together, people like myself get crabby and have to point out their differences.
When I was a teenager I loved Python, I liked Hitchhiker’s, and loved Star Wars. I got into Trek as an adult but I gave up on Enterprise long ago. I don’t understand why so many people however are obsessed with Princess Bride and Tolkein. And some of these things, while part of my childhood, I’ve left behind, in the same way that people I know left behind music like Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew when they became adults. I’ve barely seen any episodes of South Park much less the movie (I’m more of a Ren & Stimpy, and then Adult Swim person). I might have listened to Dr. Demento as a kid but got into weird music on my own and with friends. Spelling and grammar, well, I was an editor/copy writer for years, but I try not to obsess over the failings of grammar on message boards.
I hope that wasn’t a dis towards Jaws. The Princess Bride is a great movie. That’s no reason to put down the finest movie ever made by man or woman.
“He’s a big smart fish… he’s goin’ under the boat!”
“Taxidermee man gonna have a heart attack when he sees what I brung 'im.”
“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow legged wimmin’”
“It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.”
“It’s a beautiful day, the beaches are open… Amity, as you know, means freindship.”
“Love to prove that wouldn’t you? Get your picture in the National Geographic!”
and, of course,
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
I don’t think he was dissing Jaws, just joking. Anyway, I don’t see Jaws as part of the formative Doper experience, although it was definitely part of my formative experience. I still have a small phobia of open water from that damned movie.
Yes. When it was on PBS, a friend and I would call each other at 9:59, watch the show together, critique it, say good night. Until 9:59 the next night. And now, LilMiss can quote many skits and large portions of The Holy Grail.
Only the original Star Trek. With…Cap…tain…Kir…k running the roost. Have seen a few of the ST movies also. Read the Hitchhiker’s Guide in junior high. Meh.
Own it. Have watched it way too many times. “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says different is selling you something” is oft said in my house. I think LilMiss watched this movie more than most of the typical Disney dreck when she was younger.
Nope. Never saw the movie or the show. However, I do like Trey Parker and and Matt Stone.
Nope. Okay. The Hobbit, yes. Not LoTR though.
YES!
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy”
“Dead puppies aren’t much fun. They don’t come when you call, They don’t chase squirrels at all…Dead puppies aren’t much fun”
and lest we forget
“Pencil neck geek, grit eatin’ freak,
scum suckin’, pea head with a lousy physique.
He’s a one man, no gut, loosing streak.
Nothin’ but a pencil neck geek.” 
I guess I DO belong here!
No
Nope
No
Nope
No
Nope
However, I am a spelling and grammar Nazi. Maybe that’s my common thread with everyone on here. If not, I guess I’ll just be an outcast. Oh wait, there’s one, a lot of Dopers have said they were outcasts growing up. And of course, we can’t forget that genius IQ that we all have.
-I’ve seen MP flicks, but can only quote from a couple scenes. The humor grinds on me after a while. I love the scene with the cart full of dead bodies.
-Passing familiarity with all three. 
- I can quote endlessly form The PB. But I don’t know why. I guess I like the movie, but I can’t figure out what I like about it…
-Seen the movie. Laughed like hell but the Satan/Sadam thing was tedious.
-Tried to read the Ring series. Couldn’t do it. Just isn’t in a writing style that I find attractive. The movies were grand, though.
-Dr. Who? I grew up listeneing to Weird Al.
-I’m a grammar fiend, too. I know ‘wrong’ when I see it, but I don’t know the corresponding rule to the point where I feel comfortable calling someone on it…
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
On the money for me…and while I don’t obsess about spelling, bad grammar from people who should know better *kills * me. (For example, our Communications Director).