Category: Geeks Anonymous
Last article published: 29 July 2019
This is the 45th post under this label
Hi, I'm Siskoid and I'm a Geek. "Hi, Siskoid." As you might remember from past sessions, friends, there was a time in my life when I would set up thought experiments and mnemonic exercises based on geek topics. The Mutant School thing from when I was a teenager was particularly egregious. But I recently found evidence of such behavior that takes us into and past the college years, a document dated 05/93 to 05/96 and contains just over 4½ pages, the first of which I present for your amusement or astonishment.
Basically, this is what I used to do. Whenever I would buy and read a comic with a different TITLE (and the mid-90s were a peak in my comic book collecting), I would mark it down and on the same line, set down who the main character of the book was (or if they appeared earlier on the list, a villain or supporting cast member). This character was, for all intents and purposes, on the Beyonder Planet from Marvel's Secret Wars, brought there by a powerful entity (it was me, I admit it), and forced to live in that assembled community. As a mnemonic trick, I would then try to remember each book and each character, lulling myself to sleep with the exercise.
Just from the uniformity of the script and which pens I was using, the first 2½ pages are really a re-transcription, probably from memory (like, there's no way I read 4 Cerebus phone books in a row like that, or just look at the way Bravura titles are listed together), and perhaps a simplification. Because I also remember making this a lot more complex, with each book providing not just a hero, but also a villain and a patch of environment. At a guess, I would say one column or another ran out (too many books taking place in Gotham, for example, or with a previously named hero or villain), so the redress streamlined the process and thus the memory game. I suppose this is also interesting as a document of what I was reading in this specific era, which shows a wide variety of publishers, not just the Big Two. Eventually, there are too many things on the list to work as a mnemonic trick.
But see, I never really stopped doing this kind of thing. In the 2000s, I was doing it with my DVD collection, again until it got unmanageable. These days, I will still imagine a Beyonder's World that has THIS WEEK's crop of movies (from the Geekly Roundup), throwing protagonists, antagonists, and environments together for a limited engagement. In both cases, I wonder what kind of world they would build, who would act as leader, how would a battle between them shake out? And then I doze off.
Secret Wars was a formative book for me, and it continues to haunt my dreams. I fool around with it in other ways too. Like trying to remember who was on the planet, then replacing each with a DC counterpart, if possible the character they were amalgamated with, and then replaying key scenes. I don't deny I have a problem. That's why I come to Geeks Anonymous. To find like-minded people and share.
Last article published: 29 July 2019
This is the 45th post under this label
Just from the uniformity of the script and which pens I was using, the first 2½ pages are really a re-transcription, probably from memory (like, there's no way I read 4 Cerebus phone books in a row like that, or just look at the way Bravura titles are listed together), and perhaps a simplification. Because I also remember making this a lot more complex, with each book providing not just a hero, but also a villain and a patch of environment. At a guess, I would say one column or another ran out (too many books taking place in Gotham, for example, or with a previously named hero or villain), so the redress streamlined the process and thus the memory game. I suppose this is also interesting as a document of what I was reading in this specific era, which shows a wide variety of publishers, not just the Big Two. Eventually, there are too many things on the list to work as a mnemonic trick.
But see, I never really stopped doing this kind of thing. In the 2000s, I was doing it with my DVD collection, again until it got unmanageable. These days, I will still imagine a Beyonder's World that has THIS WEEK's crop of movies (from the Geekly Roundup), throwing protagonists, antagonists, and environments together for a limited engagement. In both cases, I wonder what kind of world they would build, who would act as leader, how would a battle between them shake out? And then I doze off.
Secret Wars was a formative book for me, and it continues to haunt my dreams. I fool around with it in other ways too. Like trying to remember who was on the planet, then replacing each with a DC counterpart, if possible the character they were amalgamated with, and then replaying key scenes. I don't deny I have a problem. That's why I come to Geeks Anonymous. To find like-minded people and share.
Comments
I am so glad that I was not the only person who did things like that.
I had several lists going, though it my case it was long before the advent of the internet.
One was an elaborate set of tables and graphs where I tracked all the results of every fan-determined Legion of Superheroes election, illustrating the rise and fall of the characters' popularity through the decades. I guess that makes me a geek, too.
My favourite at the moment is using the 2014 Doctor Who Magazine survey to trace my steps from the worst-rated story to the best. 59th best? The Androids of Tara, 40 steps, leading nicely to The Ambassadors of Death, 70 steps. Yes, I remember the entire list...
As this is under the Geeks Anonymous label, we do offer anonymity as a service.