Dear Roommate, I'm Sorry

I recently read an article on wired.com entitled, "10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse," and realized that I am not the girl that lives with my roommate like I once thought, but rather, I am my roommate's dorky husband. Not dorky in the Babylon 5, Trekkie kind of way, but in a pop culture-obsessed art majory way. Dear Roomie, I'm sorry for the following trangressions...

1. Punning. I'm actually not as bad as making puns as I am at explaining jokes. And adding the little drum roll and cymbal crash afterward. Hey, I'll stop when said roommate buys a drum set and does the buh-dum-chhh for me. Best recently heard pun: Get thee to a punnery! Get it? Cause it's like nunnery...you know, from Hamlet, but with the word pun! This has become counterproductive. Moving on...

2. Using "frak" or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words. Well, I'm not into Star Trek, but damn, I'm into Liz Lemon, and as a consequence, I say "blerg." A lot. I also once had brief contact with a raving abbreviator and haven't been able to stop since. TNABD, SCUBA. (Totally not a big deal, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Thanks, Cory.) My latest is SML- for those of you who are biblically-inclined, that's smite my life.

3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays. We usually only do this for birthdays, and Roommate totally topped me this year, so...doesn't count. Well, yeah we do have a sparkly Christmas tree that's still in our living room and yes, we made dozens of paper snowflakes, but that doesn't prove anything...except maybe that Al Gore hates us for using so much paper.

4. Dissecting movies. See post on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight.

5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to "normal" places. NASCAR is the second most popular professional sport in terms of television ratings in the U.S., so I will wear my NASCAR shirts wherever I want. Plus, I got my Uncle Jessie t-shirt from Roommate, so I am off the hook (unless Stacy and Clinton decide to track me down).

6. Requiring extra room in the house for geeky things. I'm essentially an art major, and unfortunately, this does not mean our apartment walls are peppered with my great art. However, it does mean that 10% of the square footage of our place is filled with things bought at Blick's Art Supply.

7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids. Well, neither of us have children that I'm aware of. However, I have never had an easy time explaining our Sting poster to visitors (he's dressed up like Shakespeare and it says "READ" at the bottom)...ooh, or the obscenely large Titanic poster.

8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in process. We're more pop culture nerds than we are sci-fi nerds, and as far as I'm concerned, the only purpose Roommate's laptop serves is to imdb characters from Lifetime movies. Steve Zahn + Brink's older brother in So Weird + lady from Big + Kristen Stewart + Dr. Greene's daughter from ER = masterpiece.

9. Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers. We've both gotten so much better at this. Mostly because everything's online now. And also because we've both adopted the notion that television was much better when we were thirteen (in a roundabout way to avoid change and thinking about the future). Result: Netflixing every season of Felicity.

10. Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends. I'm pretty sure that if the 7 deadly sins had been named with me in mind, this one would have been stuck in there. (If you're wondering, it would have taken the place of pride, because of the many gifts and talents I've been blessed with, humility is the greatest). Roommate, I'd like to apologize for the fact that our floor is now covered in the remnants of shells and cheese and tampon boxes for my latest class project. I'd also like to apologize for that time when I was working with all the little squares that were everywhere for days and days, OH, and the colored paper. Dear Lord, the colored paper. Do you ever consider setting our place on fire?

Roommate, I sure hope you can accept my apology. I mean, I've accepted that you like to dress up your dog, take pictures of him, and put them up by your desk. And you've grown accustomed to how I make a dirty joke out of everything, including the birthday card you received from your parents. Oh my god, you're going to kill me in my sleep, aren't you? Or at least chop off my hair like in The Brady Bunch Movie? I think I'm going to take the fire extinguisher and my X-Acto knife with me to bed tonight.

http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/03/10-annoying-hab.html