2003-04-28 - 4:53 p.m. Why I like Superheros (really long) I have lots of secrets. I would like to talk about one. Because I think that its time to start talking about things like this. I am a dork. You wouldn�t know it immediately looking at me. I don�t dress like a dork, typically, and I don�t have the social inadequacies that are typically stapled to dorks, and I played sports. I was the Captain of our schools Swim Team. What is a Dork? Well, it usually speaks to the likes and dislikes of a person. Their preferences. Thus Jocks play sports. Whores play the skin flute. Etc�. Well what I consider a dork to be is someone who couldn�t quite make it out of his or her childhood. Thus, a dork is mostly someone who still does something they did when they were a kid, but shouldn�t do anymore. It also refers to a level of intelligence. Typically dorks are fairly intelligent. They aren�t nerds, who are super smart, but social inept, rather they tend to wear clothes that they think are cool; and no one else. Take for example myself. In high School, I never work nice clothes that brought the girls swooning, but typical jeans and a T-shirt or a button down shirt. Nerd wore sweatpants, or smocks, or overalls. My T-shirt underneath my shirt had something stupid on it, like a soccer ball or a picture of Calvin and Hobbs or a Gigantic Ferret. A dork wears a giant Ferret shirt because its funny. A cool kid might think its funny, but would never wear it. The dork is the wild card in the dating game. Music kids get music band geeks dating pool in high school. Goth Kids get that whole sado-mass circle. Jocks get the hot cheerleader girls and the popular girls. Dorks are almost always guys. This is because of what we like, which I will get to. There are some girls who are dorks too, but its like an engineering school. 80/20 This means that we have to find a group of girls to date that 1) Are dumb enough to date us 2) They can�t be too cool 3) They can�t be too talented Now typically I find that dork group don�t form, or form from sub-groups of nerds and music kids. The girls that dorks want to get are girls who want to do well at school. They need to be smart, so that they aren�t too into the being cool scene, but they can�t be music band geeks, cause then dorks aren�t talented enough to hold their interest. I would recommend religious groups, sporty girls, or hack theater productions. See band geeks do theater, but a low-brow production is a turn off and all types come out, and these are the non-talented girls you dorks seek. Cross Country girls are also a great target cause that�s not a cool sport, but she�ll probably be in great shape with a decent amount of self-esteem. I recommend staying away from the girls with low self-esteem, because if you break up with them, its going to hurt so much. Be friends with them, and then if they turn around; then you can date. Don�t go into a relationship with the idea of being the superior. Girls don�t deserve that. Also unstable people cause more trouble later if you get romantically attached. HS and College are screwed up enough as it is. I know where I was going, but don�t know why I went there. Part II Dorks are self-aware. We know that we aren�t cool, and for that reason, there is something to be said about us. We don�t want to be cool. We like being funny and smart, but realize that it�s important to understand the people around you. Listen, we aren�t going to be cool, but its not like we don�t know what makes people cool. This being said, what truly makes a dork a dork are the following things. Trading Cards, Television, Movies, Video Games, Board Games, Water Guns, Role Playing Games, Comic Books, Science Fiction, and other such things that kids do. If you see you 11 year old cousin reading a X-men Comic book, that�s cool. If you see you 35 year old uncle reading the Amazing Spiderman, now that�s pushing the levels of cool. In High School, my friends and I played with waterguns. This isn�t because I thought it was cool and because it would get me chicks, but rather, because it was really fun. We would hide outside a friend�s house when he wouldn�t go out with us cause he was with a girl, or so on, and then when he can out we would drench him and drive away as fast as we could. Even as you read this its not something cool. Might sound fun, but not cool. I was never worried about being cool. Neither were most of my friends. You could tell by there reaction. Either 1) They would be wet and angry and try to attack you 2) They would think its funny and then want revenge 3) They would be really embarrassed The next thing I did was read comic books a little too long. I bought them until I was 17. The cutoff date was like 15 I think. I was really embarrassed about this. I never even let my friends know. Until recently. Now that I am 24. You see I read them because my world lacked heroes. I got into Wolverine. Wolverine, who people know now much better due to the movie, was my favorite because of what he was. I rarely get angry and had a problem expressing emotion. Wolverine was a character who did get angry. His comic book personality was a person who was unsure of his past. Wolverine was a loner who made his way through the world and protected people from evil and the unknown. I respect him so much because his powers were to take pain, damage, and attacks from almost anything. He would heal all wounds. His comic often had him protecting younger people and I saw this guy as a true hero, but not like superman. Superman never really got hurt. He just always did the right thing. Wolverine always got hurt, and burned, and shot. But he always got back up. No matter what. Wolverine, despite what anyone did to him, always got back up. He was very honest, but also very dark. Wolverine was angry sometimes because he was confused and without knowing who he really was, he only had his conscious and his morals to guide him. He would stumble, and screw up, and sometimes get angry enough to kill, but he always did it to protect people and help people. Being an adopted only child, on a street of bullies, growing up I related to Wolverine right away. When I was nine or ten I would get beat up almost every day. I was the only boy in my neighborhood and had few friends at that point. However, because of the comic, I always believed that things were going to be fine. I always got back up. Being adopted isn�t something that�s easy to deal with, and though my parents did a good job, a hero going through the same missing past that I did, and also being accepted into the group and family he current belong to helped my development too. That was when I was in grade school. When we develop and need heroes. However since this picture book was very important to me, I wasn�t sure when I should stop reading. I guess its like the point in your life when you decided to put your stuffed animals away. Those little furry things that have been with you for your entire childhood, and now you have to put them away. When do we do that? Douglas once said that he like the idea of superman because he wanted to believe that there was someone in the world that did the right thing. Superman is the dream of a person who fights for good, just because it�s good, and expects nothing in return. I have always compared superman with God. He is someone who is always there and always able to hear you, and will help you no matter who you are. He doesn�t do evil things. He is invulnerable, and always saves the Day. Plus he can fly, and things that fly have a feeling of transcendence. Wolverine, to me, is a glorified self-image. He is not perfect, stumble and falls, and he struggles with his humanity and his past. Wolverine is more real than superman because he gets hurt, suffers, and fails. Most of all he does this alone. I have always felt alone. This character is able to make me feel as if I was not the only one who was stumbling through life. The reason this all came to mind is that the second X-men movie comes out Friday, and I am very excited. Then I thought, man, its so dorky to like the X-men. That�s not really cool that I am getting all jazzed up for it. But it doesn�t really matter if its cool. I just like it. And I think that despite all judgement that may be past, in the end, it shouldn�t matter to me whether or not it�s perceived as cool. But then again. I just spend three pages justifying it. Clever Gump. | |||||||||||
