Tag: Michael Wesley Smith

“Hi, I’m Giles and recently my family and I moved to a new town called Sunset Cove. It’s been an experience and here’s my guide to moving.

PACKING

Everyone when moving hates packing. But it’s a great chance to throw out all that junk that you’ve accumulated over the years. All the rotten apple cores under your bed, the fluffy pink g-strings you stole off your neighbour, your old love letters and anything else that you might not want seen when it’s unpacked at the other end.

Sometimes I just go wild and chuck away everything – it saves a lot of time.

When packing remember anything that’s old, fragile or breakable should be marked with a “fragile” sticker. We used lots of these on the box we packed my Grampa in. He’s getting old now and we have to take precautions.

He loves getting into his box and being packed in with all the foam balls or scrunched newspapers. He say’s he feels like a present especially when he’s unwrapped at the other end.

TRAVELLING

Some people don’t move very far. We had a neighbour once who bought the house two doors down from her. 10 paces and she was at her new house! That’s hardly moving if you ask me.

But some familes move miles away – even countries away!

When we moved to Sunset Cove it was only about 550 miles from our last town of Townsville. So after we’d packed up all our personal belongings and the moving company had taken all our boxes, we chucked Grampa on the roof and headed out.

I wasn’t looking forward to it. Mum had insisted that Sunset Cove was like Paradise and that it would be good for my complexion to see some sunshine. But a beach is no place for a geek.

To pass the time in the car I read a book I’d picked up at our last stop “100 reasons why not to live in Sunset Cove”. Feeling this was a little pessimistic I decided to play eye spy with Grampa. The problem with playing this game with Grampa is that he’s inside a box and there’s very little in there to “spy” – so after 10 minutes of guessing what might be inside his box I gave up.

Ok. The shower? Not for the smart kids. Geeks are intelligent enough to know that the shower strips your body of essential oils and nutrients. Your hair isn’t healthy until you can maintain that robust still-wet look all the time!

Now, I’m not advocating that you never bathe. I’m just gently suggesting that your mother will throw you into the shower in disgust at just the right time. Like Norman Bates always said, “mummy knows best.”

Anyway, geeks adhere to the pheremone theory, and if you wash off all of your stink, how are the popular girls going to smell how much they like you.

Next.

Socks. Most of your body heat escapes through your ears and toes, so its socks, socks, socks all around! Socks are a valuable asset when disguising the blackened pallor of your unwashed feet. And when shopping for anything this important, it pays to know that bigger is always better.

Don’t let your small geekly stature fool you. You need the biggest socks of all. If they don’t climb halfway up your thighs when fully extended, they are not warm enough to protect you from the sweltering summer heat.

Pants and suspenders have already been covered above. Underwear. Well, I must say that I am not the expert in this department, but I’ve heard that the cheaper pairs tear more easily, and as we all know, lime green looks good on anyone.

Shirts present an interesting quandary. Typically, the best geeks have always worn the button down shirts that their mother bought for them five years ago. But for some strange reason, this look has been assimilated into a new social genre: geek sheik. Does the modern day choose to acknowledge his geekly roots and dress the part, or does he choose not to participate in modern geek fashion, not to sell out, not to allow everything special about the geek become flattened out to the norm?

As you can see, I’m quite passionate about this issue.

I prefer to go “geek casual.” This is a geeks euphemism for the fact that I still let my mom dress me. This is the peak of geekly goodness. I am geeko supremo! Do not steal my thunder.

Glasses. These are a very important part of the geek ensemble. Please note: you do not want your glasses to have the correct prescription, as this would eliminate your cause for squinting and craning your neck, thus creating a serious risk that your hidden good looks might find their way to the light of day. This is a geek no-no.

For those whose glasses have the correct prescription, a good trick is to break them. Breaking the lens is quite effective, but it is also possible to break the frame and tape it back together in such a way that the lenses do not sit right and thus no longer match your eyesight. Added bonus: as the lens remains in tact, meddling mothers will not insist that you need a new pair of glasses right away. This is the thinking man’s solution.

That’s all I have to say for today, as I still need to translate Homer’s Iliad from ancient Greek to modern Samarian.

One final note: why laugh when you can cackle?

Thank you. Now let the revolution commence!

Geekously yours,
Giles..

“Hi, I’m Giles Gordon – supposed “Geek” of Sunset Cove and the world. Here’s my guide to being the ultimate geek…

Hello! Giles here! Have you ever noticed how perfectly your name rhymes with beguiles? Or made muscular diagrams to explain why your mother’s nose wiggles when she shouts at you? Perhaps you have trained your voice perfectly to crack only when making public speeches and proclamations of servitude to girls named Octavia. No? Aww, come on! I’m trying to show you how you how very similar we are!

Alright! Well….whether you admit it or not, hidden deep inside of you, screaming and asthmatically panting to get out, is a little critter I like to call “your inner geek.”

Inner Geek is a hearty fellow. He may be a scrawny weakling, but he’s a strong little guy, with narrow buns of steel and a mouth to match. Just when you think you’ve got him under control, he overtakes you, and, before you can say ‘ailurophilia,’ Inner Geek forces you to mention complex number theory on your first date with that blond girl from the volleyball team.

What can you do to fight the little freak?

No, no, you’re not getting the point. What I’m trying to teach you is that you don’t have to chase momentum to keep up with it. The point is Go With the Flow. The point is Let Inner Geek See the Light of Day—drown the pale loner in sunlight. –No! Don’t drown him! Embrace him! That’s right. Love your geek. (For he loves you.)

Ok. That’s settled.

Now, troops! I want to see you on your best behaviour. Pimples, RISE! Bronze skin, FADE! Don your high-water pants, strap on some suspenders, tape those old glasses back together and make for the streets. We’re about to start a geeky revolution.

In the spirit of age-old geekitude, our revolution will not be spontaneous, but rather a re-enactment of a revolution we’ve read of in too many not-for-school books. Re-enactments are cool when you’re a geek.
Your mission is to be your geek at its best. Show those snobby cool kids that geek is the new pink.

The pink guy at the diner is pretty weird. He wears a pink wig, speaks with his teeth gritted together and has expressions on his face that make me think he’s always smelling the worst smell in the world. Where do they find these people?

I’m insane?

Yeah so I’m not the same as everyone else here in Atlantis High and I actually feel like the only “normal” one. But is that what everyone else thinks about themselves as well? I mean don’t we all consider ourselves “normal” and everyone else is different?

Jet considers herself completely normal but who else would need pentosodiumtriphosphate just to keep their temperament normal. She thinks a little oddly sometimes and is convinced there is a conspiracy behind absolutely everything – now isn’t that irrational? Are there voices in her head telling her this stuff?

Because I’ve heard that a lot of insane people are often confused with schizophrenics. These people often have more than one personality and can argue with themselves, hear voices and generally without medication their situation gets worse.

Antonia and Antony could be a perfect example of somesort of personality disorder. I mean really they have to be one in the same and why would someone go to all that trouble to pretend to be two people?

Wow – there really are some strange people around here.

Anyway the old man down the street has stopped his bike in front of my house so I had better go and make sure all my doors are locked.

I’ll see you soon – unless you see me first.

“Since moving to Sunset Cove I’ve seen many insane people. I think I have a good overall knowledge of what defines such a person. Here’s my guide to some of the crazies in Sunset Cove”

.

So, most people in Sunset Cove are pretty weird. There’s people that walk down the street in Scuba gear, nuns that sing and dance in the street, men that dress as women and all sorts of other weirdness that you may not expect to see in your own city.

There’s something not right about the old man that lives down our street. He will walk to his letterbox about 20 times a day and sing into it. But that’s not all. You can catch him riding his bicycle down the street and he’s absolutely butt naked! He’ll wave out with a big hello and all you can do is smile and wave back and hope he hasn’t seen the horror on your face. I guess these things you just come to accept – there’s always one in each street isn’t there?

You have to treat these people with respect, partly because you don’t know what they might do to you if you don’t, but also because each of us has a weird side and some just have a whole weird side more than us.

The Sunset Cove Asylum

A special asylum was set up in Sunset Cove a few years ago. Everyone who lives there wears a straight-jacket. They all live fairly normal lives and are free to come and go with a caregiver. They wear their straight-jackets around town so they’re easily spotted and each one wears a sign on their back saying “Kick me and I’ll eat your liver”

You know to stare clear of them and keep eye contact to a minimum. They remind me of Lector from Silence of the Lambs and usually after I’ve seen on in town I’ll have a nightmare that night and wake up screaming. Sometimes because of that, my mother thinks I’m insane myself.