I was at a talk the other day by 2 editors of the Onion. Both of them self-identified as geeks, and an audience member asked them what their favorite bits of geek culture were. The one guy cited his tardis kechain, and the other a friend’s Star Trek chess set. It got me to thinking about what was my favorite geek/nerd possession, and was somewhat dismayed that I could not identify a single one. I guess I’m a geek-lite, because I generally get and appreciate a good many geek references, and was a big fan of the Buffyverse/ST/MP/etc., and my son has a vast store of ST/D&D/SF/etc books and paraphrenalia.
So what is your favorite personal’y owned bit of geek culture?
Just to participate, I guess I’ll say the original Enterprise light-up christmas tree ornament. It is my son’s, but it is prominently hung on our family christmas tree every year.
I have several slide rules, which I bought at bargain prices at the time when pocket calculators became affordable, so that slide rules could no longer compete. Is that geeky enough? (even if it’s not really a Cafe Society type of geekiness).
I have a shuttlecraft Christmas ornament. When you push the button it says, in Spock’s voice: “Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy holidays. Live long and prosper.”
We actually haven’t put it on the tree in a few years, because our lights blink, and it doesn’t work with blinky lights.
My Transformers The Movie soundtrack CD that I bought in 2000.
I stumbled across it in a Media Play of all places and the amount of dust on it made me think it had been sitting in a warehouse for years before someone hauled it to a store and tried to sell it.
I guess I might be able to list that as I sit here in my office, I am facing 2 lava lamps, a set of chattering teeth, and a couple of pink-pearl-eraser-and-pushpin-pigs-ala-Work is Hell. But I think that is all more tacky than really geeky.
That’s all I got, and for some strange reason, it makes me kinda sad.
My son’s Enterprise does not talk, but it plugs into a light socket and has a flashing light on the main disc section, and colored lights on the nacelles. Hard to imagine the x-mas decor that something that beautiful would not complement!
Me, too, including the one I bought in the pre-calculator era, with carrying case and my intials in a brass strip.
But my geekiest slide rule is one I found that I’ve never seen another like. There are plenty of circular slide rules made by joining the ends of the scales. But since the radii of the scales are different, the resolution isn’t the same. What you really need is a cylindrical slide rule.
I have one of these. It doubles as a pencil holder.
(I know that the super-accurate slide rules of the 19th cebntury are in the form of big cylinders. There’s one in the Capitol Building in Washington DC – it had been used to design the building. There’s one in the Math department office at MIT, and I think the Boston Museum of Science has one. But these are essentially “folded” slide rules, not rules in which the scale joins onto itself on the other side. The scales run along the length of these “barrel rules”, not circumferentially, as in my cylindrical slide rule.)
Great Ghu, picking a favorite is hard! Is it the autographed photo of me and Erin Grey? My framed Once More, With Feeling poster? The catapult watch? The signed First Edition of Ringworld(the one with the mistakes in it)? The complete set of Buffy Christmas ornaments? It’s so hard to choose!
I am in the process of shopping for a Jericho pistol, just because Spike Spiegel has one. When I get it, that will be my favorite geek possession. In the meantime, it would have to be my FF VII-style Buster Sword. As a sword, it’s junk; but as a piece of FF VII geekiana it is peerless.
I have an animation cel from the Tiny Toon Adventures video of Particle Man. I don’t know if that’s my favorite or my geekiest, but it’s certainly my rarest.
Swords are some of the coolest geekiana one can have IMO. In addition to the Heron Mark, I’ve also got Blade’s Sword of the Daywalker, and when I have more money to blow on cool but ultimately non-functional decoration, I intend to find a Master Sword.
