Yeah, I'm A Big Geek, But...

Okay, so I've now been on the computer for six hours or thereabouts. The laundry isn't done, and the carpet hasn't been vacuumed...but I've figured out yet another reason I love the Internet.

Apart from the other things about it that I love--access to people and experiences you never would have known otherwise, the easy shopping, the deliciously time-wasting games, the egalitarianism of blogging (no one could have ever made me believe that a Chicago Tribune columnist would ever be interested in my life, let alone TWO), and always always having something to read--another reason I love the Internet is that it's incredibly easy to range far afield of whatever it was you were originally doing.

I started out looking for information as to whether they'd ever found out what happened to Joseph Pichler. (I was watching CourtTV, and Psychic Detectives was talking about someone disappearing, and I thought "I wonder if they ever found out what happened to that kid from 'Children on Their Birthdays'".)From Joseph Pichler, I found my way to his Wikipedia entry. (There's a lot of bad to be said about Wikipedia, but as long as you take it largely with a grain of salt, it's one of the most interesting starting-points you can find for rambling conceptual foraging trips.)

From his Wikipedia entry, I went to "Category: Disappeared People". I checked out a few names at random and a few that I recognized; the Beaumont children, Duke of Norfolk, Etan Patz. After editing the Etan Patz entry, I went to "Category: Kidnapped Children", with minor detours to Myra Hindley and Peter Sutcliffe; back at "Category: Kidnapped Children", I clicked on Child Focus, then Marc Dutroux, then "Category: Murderers of Children" (yeah, I know--ewwww) and then "Category: Moral Panics". That sounded like fun...

And I was right. I knew I was going to find "Wardrobe Malfunction", of course; and the Muhammad cartoon debate...but I didn't even know what "raggare" were. Or the "Glock 3"--check out the postscript about the original creator of "Glock 3"! I'd never heard of a "Teddy Boy", nor did I know anything about "video nasties" or the "comics code"; nor was I aware that Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" had apparently caused such consternation (other than among spelling advocates and people with good taste in music). I didn't know about "Nevada-tan", but clicking on that link led me to "hikikomori", "chibi", and "tentacle rape"...I stopped there, because frankly I was a little further afield at that point than even I would care to go.

I don't know if any of you have ever had a conversation where you stop at some point, look at the other person, and say "HOW did we get here?" And then the two of you try to trace your way back through the conversation, piece by piece, concept by concept, til you get back to the beginning. They're a great deal of fun; in fact, those conversations are one of the ways I judge the vitality of a friendship or relationship. I have them with Firefly, and Debbi, and occasionally Cowgirl. JP and I had a lot of them; predictably, I've never had one with LJ. What I've been doing here seems like the solo equivalent of one of those conversations; I feel geeky while doing it, and I have an uncomfortable twinge as I click; the links I follow probably tell a lot about me (not much of it positive!)--but then afterwards I feel like my brain has stretched a little bit, and that's something that happens WAY too seldom lately.

I get the following question a lot in my life: "How did you know that?" My friends and some of my family are always surprised by my collection of random knowledge; things I've picked up along the way, which I'm not afraid to throw into a conversation when the subject comes up. Between my war-chest of useless factoids and my extensive vocabulary, people think I'm very smart, but I don't think that's the case. To me, being smart means having skills you can actually DO something with. All this knowledge makes me fit for late-night college conversations over pizza, and random flights of speculation on a boring day at the office. It doesn't make my life any easier; I don't make any more money because of it. The only possible way it could ever help me would be in my writing, and of course you've all seen how much of that I'm doing lately. It's gotten to the point that I really hope there's such a thing as reincarnation; maybe all these so-called brains I've got will do me more good in the next life than they're doing me in this one.

But even if it only gives people the false impression that I'm some kind of brainiac, I still enjoy these mental road-trips, these forays over the terrain of human experience and history. That, to me, is the best part of the Internet--what would take days and weeks and months in the dusty air of a giant library can now be done at home, with a cat at my feet and a Pepsi at my side, at midnight on a Saturday while wearing ripped pajamas.