drop down, reverse direction, increase speed

I told my wife, "You know, I haven't gotten past the first screen of Space Invaders in at least 20 years. I think I need to practice more." I thought for a second. "Train for it, I guess, is what I'm saying."

She looked at me. "Train for what?"

"Oh, um." I said, "you know, just to get better."

"Because?"

"Because I haven't gotten past the first screen in 20 years."

I have this Space Invaders T-shirt that I wear from time to time.

I don't wear it as often as I'd like, because it's filled with errors, like the score is all wrong for the number of invaders that have been shot, the shots in progress are all wrong, and … well, look, it's just nerd shit, I guess. It's still a cool shirt, and normal people can't see anything obviously wrong with it.

I had it on yesterday, when Anne and I went to the grocery store to pick stuff up for dinner, and the girl at the register commented on how much she loved to play the game when she was a kid.

Anne, Nolan, and Ryan have all told me that I should just keep my geek to myself in certain situations, but sometimes (read: all the time) I can't help myself. This was one of those times.

"Oh, yeah, I love this game," I said. "And I saw this T-shirt at Threadless.com earlier today that – " this is when she totally glazed over and got really interested in scanning our items.

"She's tuned you out! Shut up!" My brain screamed at me. Anne, polite to a fault, gently squeezed my arm.

I ignored them both. "It was so cool. It was one of these little guys," I pointed to one of the invaders on my shirt, "standing in front of several rows of these other little guys," I pointed to other invaders on my shirt as Anne tightened her grip, "and it was like he was a general, showing them the battle plan, which was a little dotted line going in this kind of 'move to the side and then drop down' direction!"

She and Anne shared a look. I couldn't tell who was more sympathetic to the other, but the message passed was clear: I am so sorry.

She totaled up our order, Anne paid her, and we walked out of the store. As the door closed behind us, I think I heard a loudspeaker say, "Clean up on register 5 … someone got Geek all over the place."

For the record, here's the shirt I was describing, which you can purchase from Threadless:

A Simple Plan - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

I know, right? Awesome.

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68 thoughts on “drop down, reverse direction, increase speed”

  1. Wil, my apologies this is off-topic, but my gf & I were checking out Lord of the Rings Online MMORPG last night, and she found an NPC character in game called Wil Wheatley (yes, spelled Wil), if you already knew this, sorry for bugging you, but just had to mention it just in case. 😀

  2. People shouldn’t reference geek things if they’re not prepared to KEEP talking about it!
    Also, I had have to mention this, but my gf & I were checking out Lord of the Rings Online MMORPG trial last night, and she found an NPC character in game called Wil Wheatley (yes, spelled Wil). Sorry if you were already aware 🙂

  3. Soon there will be no-one left but geeks and we will be able to converse freely with those of our own kind.
    The Geek shall inherit the Earth (and there will be much rejoicing).
    OT: whats up with the ‘sign in using your google account’ thing, its displaying my URL ID string all over the place. That can’t be good. I had to go and get myself a typepad account.

  6. I teach 8th grade here in the Great White North (we call it, grade 8) – here’s a question from my last math test.
    Using the formula D=9.8/2*t(sq), calculate how long it would take a wind resistent Battlestar Galactica calendar to fall 396.9 metres if it was dropped from a Viper that was flying through the clouds after finding earth (too geeky?).
    I worry sometimes about my influence on young unformed minds. By the way, I bought that t-shirt before seeing today on your blog, Wil. I’m going to shower some geek off now.

  8. Wil, thanks to you I now have a TypePad account for the sole reason to post completely unnecessary comments on your blog. I’ve been a reader of yours for a while now, but this story has given me the impetus to finally say that you really crack my shit up. Brilliant writing!

  10. Haha, bless your darling dorky soul. That tshirt is awesome, though we had no video games back in East Germany. Have you seen the one of Grandpa Cassette (http://www.threadless.com/submission/161321/Grandpa_Cassette)? (for that matter, I didn’t have a walkman till after the wall went down!).
    Though my favourite is probably the communist party, for obvious reasons. 😀
    I see a few people running around in threadless tshirts, and we always dork at each other, like pointing and grinning and saying “THREADLESS!” Nothing like a bit of geek spillage.

  11. Damn you and Boing-Boing all to hell Wheaton! I saw that tee on Threadless’s newsletter the other day and resolved to pick it up once my paycheck hit my bank account. Now I have to bakrupt myself to grab it now before the rest of the geek army descends on the site and clears it out!

  13. Hah! I have to mention that I received Animal Crossing for the Wii for Christmas, and my husband decided to play some. In case you aren’t aware, in the game you can design your own clothing (well, you make a pixelated design to go on a T-shirt.) He went out of his way to perfectly copy the Space Invaders dudes, one to each side of a shirt, just so his little character could be super nerdy. It looks awesome, BTW.

  15. If I kept my mouth shut every time I might utter something geeky and embarrass my friends or family… well, I might as well take a vow of silence.
    I will say, when I saw the Futurama episode that featured that line, I nearly died of laughter… and everyone else in the room looked at me like I was fit for the asylum!

  16. Going 2 GDC? Wanna be part of feature film documentary about videogames? Let them know:
    For those of you that might be interested, I’m posting this tweet that I recieved today.
    Over the years, I didn’t get into video games nearly as much as my friends did, but perhaps someone here might find this of interest. Besides, making a visit California is always fun.

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