Column: The Geek Beat

I’ve been giving students at USU an uncensored look into my twisted-by-too-much-TV mind every week for the last year. I feel that I’ve grown closer to you guys. It’s like everyone is my friend, or some kind of pet.

Seeing as how most of you would be willing to take a bullet for me, I think it’s time I come clean. I don’t have kung-fu action grip. I’m not even sure what that means. I just know that I really want it.

Wow, that felt really good. I think I’m just going to lay everything I’ve been hiding from you guys out on the line.

I have no idea how my alarm clock works. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but to a geek it’s extremely hard to admit we don’t know how something works. I also have no idea how DNA resequencing works, but if some homeless guy came up to me on the street and wanted to talk about resequencing DNA, I’d stand there and nod and try to convince him that I understand as much as he does.

Sometimes when I’m running and I lean into a turn, I pretend I’m a fighter jet.

I once beat a kid up that I really shouldn’t have. In my defense, he was really being a jerk and had been as long as I’d known him. He really had it coming to him. But still, we were in church.

Sometimes I take things that shouldn’t be taken seriously way too seriously. Like there was this one episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger” that really got to me. I cried like a baby.

Until I got married, I often found myself attracted to animated women. Not to the point that it’s creepy, I can just appreciate the fact that Poison Ivy, Mulan and Ms. Pacman were well drawn and pleasantly proportioned. Don’t judge me ladies, I bet dollars to donuts the man in your life has a favorite ‘toon too.

The Pegasus at the start of all the TriStar movies used to scare me to the point that I would have to leave the room.

I know this sounds stupid, being afraid of something that not only preceeds perhaps the greatest film of all time – “Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw” – but isn’t even real.

Allow me to defend myself.

First off, a lot of people are afraid of things that aren’t real, like aliens, werewolves and people from North Dakota.

Second, I know where this fear comes from. It’s a sub-fear of a phobia I have of pretty much everything with wings.

Unlike most people with an irrational fear toward birds, mine has nothing to do with Alfred Hitchcock or a bad childhood experience at a picnic in a seagull-infested area. This fear, like every other event in my life, stems from an arcade.

Do any of you remember the game Joust? The one where you fly around on an ostrich trying to knock bad guys off the backs of giant vultures? When I first saw that game, I remember that I had learned – from Big Bird no less – that ostriches can’t fly.

So I, as a 4-year-old, wrote to the makers of this game to let them know how things were. They, being mature adults, wrote me back telling me that if I didn’t keep my yap shut, they would send their vulture to my house to peck my eyes out.

So, I’ve been scared of everything with wings ever since. I can’t fly in a plane, be around bats or watch little kids swim.

Still, I’m glad I’ve been able to talk to you guys about this. It’s been way more productive than talking to my action figures.

I feel like I’ve made a major breakthrough. I feel like a burden has been lifted. I feel hungry. I’m gonna go eat some turkey.

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is a junior majoring in computer science and is currently

staring very nervously at a plate of buffalo wings.

Comments can be sent to

steveshinney@cc.usu.edu.