{"id":417,"date":"2011-06-22T08:54:37","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T14:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/50.87.217.193\/blog\/nerds-in-paradise"},"modified":"2021-04-04T00:17:34","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T06:17:34","slug":"nerds-in-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/nerds-in-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Nerds in Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've just spent 4 hours with a theater packed with LOTR nerds – at the "one night only" screening of Lord of the Rings<\/a> – The Two Towers – Extended Version. The delight in the room was palpable, as if we were all boarding the same rocketship<\/a> that would take us on a 3.9 hour tour… (Hey wait! Wasn't that Gilligan's Isle?)<\/p>\n

People were taking photos of each other and uploading to Facebook<\/a>, shouting out the answers to the pre-show LOTR trivia flashing on the screen, and happily trundling up to their seats with extra-large bags of popcorn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They earnestly discussed the fact that we were all nerds, and I started thinking about how the word "Nerd" has changed over the decades.<\/p>\n

If you look up Nerd in the dictionary, it says:
1. a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person.
2. an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd. <\/p>\n

However I think we need to come up with a third description of the word:<\/p>\n

3. a brilliant but socially quirky person, totally obsessed with an eccentric or obscure hobby, who delights in gathering with like-minded individuals. Often has an offbeat sense of style<\/a> and could care less what anyone else thinks.<\/p>\n

Think "Big Bang Theory", Comic-Con in San Diego, Star Trek conventions<\/a>…. and Quilt Festivals<\/a>!<\/p>\n

I mean – really – we make our own tiaras<\/a> and then get together to parade our creations through the aisles of quilt shows. We make matching patchwork outfits and go on quilting bus tours together. We see a quilt made out of a certain group of fabrics,<\/a> and can't sleep until we have every single exact fabric in our sweaty little hands.<\/p>\n

Nerds used to have thick glasses, pocket protectors and slide rules. Now nerds are cool – maybe still with thick glasses but they are tiger striped or studded with rhinestones. Nerds ride scooters<\/a>, driver Mini-Coopers, hunch over their iPads in coffee houses,<\/a> collect "stuff" from the various decades<\/a> of the last century, and have secret intellectual online pursuits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nerds also cluster together and get absolutely giddy and hilariously frenzied when discussing their hobby of choice.<\/p>\n

I also found this in the Thesaurus:
"A geek is any smart person with an obsessive interest, a nerd is the same but also lacks social grace, and a dweeb is a mega-nerd." <\/p>\n

So I admit it. I am a quilting dweeb<\/a>, a fabric fool, a needle-turn nerd, a design dork, and an embellishment geek.<\/p>\n

The photo below is from the Pan-Asian festival<\/a> parade last week, which took 3 hours to snake down the main drag in Waikiki, and had lots of hometown Hawaiian parade moments like ladies strolling in ornate kimonos<\/a>, young men demonstrating judo on the street, hula girls and Tahitian dancers<\/a>, and in this image we have Miss Hawaii<\/a> International with her own lovely tiara, waving from the back seat of a vintage Mustang<\/a> convertible.<\/p>\n

Feel free to share your own profound thoughts about Nerds!<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Summer Solstice<\/a> – and may all your nerdy pursuits bring you Fat Quarters<\/a> of happiness.
<\/span><\/p>\n

\"MissHawaii1_W\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

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I've just spent 4 hours with a theater packed with LOTR nerds – at the "one night only" screening of Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers – Extended Version. The delight in the room was palpable, as if … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equilter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}