The Holidays have come and gone. The gift cards have been defrayed with frightening speed and, for some of us, Comic-Con is still a staggering seven months away. What's a creative spirit to do in the grey bane of post-gifting, post-cocktail Winter? Prepare for Season 3 of Portlandia on IFC, of course. Get ready to get your Pacific Northwest-weird on, America!

From weird to Wired frames-of-reference, Primetime Emmy Awards-nominated and Gracie Allen Awards-winning Portlandia proffers an Übermodern vaudeville steeped in a homey and comforting grey and rainy respite of Northwestern coffee culture and smells just slightly of a musty vintage shop. Amidst a television culture of all-too-shiny, all-too-sparkly drama and desperate, hacky, wannabe comedy usually set in New York or L.A., Portlandia scratches an itch that one can only get from wearing the same rarely-cleaned, wool, REI sweater too many days in a row. (Apropos to NYC/LA: Producers, enough with where you live. We love landing at LAX and JFK, too; but there are other population centers across this vast country. Get out once in a while.)

Things White People Like: an on-target compilation of, well, things we like. The full list, available at the official website, is frighteningly dead-on in its accuracy. My eerily, correctly identified personal faves on this list include: Asian Girls, Girls with Bangs, Being Offended, Hallowe'en, Standing Still at Concerts, Conan O'Brien, Coffee, Wine, Dogs, Vegetarianism, Art Degrees, Vintage, Grammar, Arrested Development, Netflix, David Sedaris and Breakfast Places. I must, however, distance myself from Apple Products, Music Piracy, New Balance Shoes (not a tennis shoe kind of gal), Banksky, Facebook, Barack Obama, Promising to Learn a New Language (speak a few already) and Ugly Sweater Parties (why?).

Well done, Mr. Christian Lander, creator of said-2008-list ... your pinpoint insight disturbs me. Now, good sir, I call your White Jonesings and I raise you ... Nerdy.

White people do indeed come in many whiter shades of pale. Yet, there is no greater, no more beautiful, no more translucent shade of pale than that of the White & Nerdy. It is a shade carefully honed and cultivated by days upon days of uninterrupted screentime, an innate distaste for the sun and a natural inclination toward nighttime, vampires, UFOs, ghosts and space ... all of which can only be enjoyed via moonlight. We do not find interest in Outdoor Performance Clothes, Wrigley Field, Snowboarding or Marathons. We do, as it pertains specifically to your list, like Asian girls, TED, vespas, Film Festivals, Oscar Parties and Black Music Black People Don't Listen To Anymore.

As I was on one of my beachwalks last week (a White People thing, I'm pretty sure) a fave tune commenced to thumping on my mp3-player, Weird Al's White and Nerdy. It gave me a little bounce in my step, an uptick in my pace, a tighter squeeze in my hamstrings and got zee leetle grey zells moving and before I made it to Gargamel's enclave, I'd devised a list of Stuff White & Nerdy People Like. Not sure if you're a geek, versus, say, a dork, a nerd or a dweeb? Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel del Coronado might be able to help.

For your approval, my fellow White & Nerdys! (I am now flashing the W&N gang sign: left hand in a three-fingered "W"; right hand in an upside-down peace sign, an "N". Remember, always the "W" with the left hand, so the recipient can read it properly, otherwise it comes out left-to-right, like Hebrew, and you get the NW gang sign, which would be awesome, now that I think of it, for the F/V Northwestern. Either way. Plus, note that if you do an upside-down "W" with your right hand, you'll have the gang sign for the College of William and Mary. Go, Tribe!)

Stuff White & Nerdy People Like

• Comic Con
• The Big Bang Theory
• CNNGeekOut blog
• Geek Pride Day (May the 25th)
• Star Wars Day (May the 4th ... be with you)
  
• geology
• robots
• Bill Nye the Science Guy
• Steve Martin
• The Muppets
• Weezer
• NASA
• Star Wars
• Star Trek
• Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock
• crafting historical and theatrical alter egos (including learning Elizabethan English, Klingon, swordplay, spells, etc.)
• Wired magazine
• Swedish Fish
• action figures
• sci-fi and fantasy novels with anthropomorphic animals
• Weird Al Yankovic
• using "one" as opposed to "you" or "I"
• making and wearing costumes
• hovering when someone borrows our fancy pen
• lunchboxes
• George Noory
• UFOs
• Ghost Hunters (not Ghost Adventurers ... there is a difference)
• Bigfoot
• George Lucas
• Skywalker Ranch
• Mystery Science Theater 3K
• writing down, and working to memorize things like Pi, the Drake Equation, the hierarchy of performance art, et cetera
  
• Disneyland
• The X-Files
• Renaissance Faire
• jokes involving German, Austrian or Swiss scientists
• Bill Gates
• jokes involving Windows Vista, DOS, neutrons or nematodes
• The IT Crowd
• Microsoft
• Microsoft-blue button downs
• any and all digital media
• Fry's Electronics
• t-shirts with math or code humour
• Voyager Golden Record
• The Simpsons
• Lisa Simpson
• Jonathan Coulton
• comics
• comic books (yes, they are different)
• peppering conversations with foreign language-bon mots
• saying Linux
• American Dad
• Steve Smith
• Roger the Alien
• historical- and/or technical-inaccuracies of any kind (so we can first laugh, then correct them)
• bad grammar/spelling (ditto)
• George Will
• dictionaries
• shot-for-shot remakes
• memorizing, then sporadically reciting, TV and movie quotes (including full dialogues with multiple characters)
• role-playing
• acquiring movie props (including the front-end of a film reel, usually cut and tossed, from an X-Files episode)
• complaining about tech support
• making lists

Did I forget anything? @CNNGeekOut tweeted me, "We pride ourselves on having plenty of geek DNA including ppl who cosplay, ppl with geek tattoos & ppl with geeky pets!" As Mr. Burns would say whilst slowly drumming fingertips, "Excellent, Excellent." Contact us here if you've desired amendments. LLAP and TTFN!

Know a geek or two? Feel free to share the list and pick it apart ... as I know the real geeks are wont to do. Tweet