Nerd Rehab

When did nerds get the idea that it’s okay to be nerdy? I don’t recall seeing any Nerd Pride parades on the streets of Silicon Valley. But I guess if they tried that, they’d get wedgied and slammed into a locker by the Rose Bowl parade. Maybe geeks started getting all cocky after that movie about the nerds who get revenge, but nobody remembers what that one was called.

Regardless, the proliferation of nerdiness has reached epidemic proportions. It must be stopped; these people are addicts. And you know you’re in trouble when it’s me calling you an addict. I’ve got enough Scotch in me at all times to be legally considered a glass bottle.

The Three Stages of Nerdiness:

The Harry Potter Nerd

Life’s good, you’ve got friends, and maybe even a special little lady you get to bang like a screen door. Then a guy with a street name like “Slick Azergaith” or “Fast Eddie the Enchanted Plus Two Warlock” slips you a book at a party. “Go ahead, just read a page,” he says. Next thing you know, BAM, you’ve finished Goblet of Fire and you’re strung out for Order of the Phoenix. Eventually you’re reading Tolkien with a belt around your neck just to get that same high.

The Anime Nerd

Listen, we all knew Japanese people were messed up. But we had no idea as to the extent of it until we saw their animated movies about penis-tentacled demons that take busty schoolgirls and…fail to teach them long division, that’s for damned sure.

Anime nerds are more pale, gaunt and sexless than their Harry Potter counterparts. You know what’s never happened before? A guy getting a hummer while watching animated lesbian schoolgirls fight a robot dragon. I know, that sounds like it has all the ingredients to be cool, but it’s not. It’s like mixing “tequila” and “not being arrested”: each on their own is good, but they just can’t go together. Which brings us to the bottom of the downward spiral…

The World of Warcraft Nerd

Oh man, do you need help. For those not in the know, World of Warcraft is basically a five-million man game of Dungeons and Dragons that happens online. As if this wasn’t shameful enough, these addicts pay money every month just to keep playing the game. I know that last sentence sounded a Neil Young lyric, but stay with me on this.

Lots of other “users” in this game join “guilds,” which is something like an electronic crackhouse for people who refer to vagina as “ladyparts. Tee-hee!” Seriously, groups of these people get together and battle demons for hours (the virtual, not inner, variety). True story: my friends joined a guild where they have to show up for at least 6 hours a day, 4 days a week. When I did something like that, it was called college.

Conclusion

Which brings me to my final point: rehabilitation. When someone kicks their eighty-dollar a month World of Warcraft habit, it’s basically like they just got out of prison. Except without the candy bar, ten dollars, and chest full of Aryan Brotherhood tattoos.

The problem here is that nerds don’t actually want to change. Like alcoholics or women in short skirts, nerds never know how badly they need what you’ve got until you force it into them. The only way to change a nerd is an intervention. While he’s at work, secretly invite everyone he knows over to his house and pour all his books and electronics down the sink. Now he’s cured! When he gets home be sure to have an electric guitar handy, as he will probably need to play a Van Halen solo before playing several more Van Halen solos while riding a motorcycle.