As of late, the adventure-lit of Edgar Rice Burroughs has captured my interest with a pleasant focus. The travel narratives of 19thC. adventurers have forever suited me well: Mark Twain, Richard Henry Dana, Charles Darwin, Henry James and Thomas Jefferson with his 18thC. accounts of Italian and French sojourns. To that end, contemporary travel essayists fill a healthy portion of our nearly 2,000 volume library: Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle, Hunter S. Thompson. Perhaps these travel writers and novelists have fueled my Wanderlust; perhaps I am drawn to them because of said-lust.

I have certainly been intrigued by adventure-lit since I first flipped through a fave and well-dogeared volume of Mom's 1940s  I Married Adventure by Martin and Osa Johnson. Tales of a 1930s power couple, he a photographer and contemporary of Jack London (another childhood fave of mine), she the devoted and steel-spined wife and protective riflewoman, they travelled South America and Africa well before the likes of Margaret Mead, Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall: all ladies whose works were also regular reading material about the house. (Mom was an anthropology major when I was wee and I suppose the lure of travel, questions of man's origins and the eternal quest for social knowledge set in early. Her degree was largely focused on Southeast Asian Studies; but I always thought it was Southy Station Studies, as in people who rode trains in the South. Silly girl.) Natch, I could go on here ad nauseum about all this twaddle, but I must save zee leetle grey zells' work for my current endeavour ... which brings me to the animal-loving Brit in the loin cloth.

Motivated by this year's themes for San Diego Comic-Con -for which I am anxiously awaiting press passes for the purposes of reporting from the convention floor for GoodtobeaGeek.com, as my alter ego/pseudonym Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame- I have dipped my feathered quill and now sit pensively, pondering my submission to the official Souvenir Book, my inky nib aloft and hesitating just inches above my parchment. My theme of choice? The 100th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes.

I utilize this casual canvas, similar to my previous post wherein I gathered some Savannah of Williamsburg thoughts -how to formulate my fourth book in this series- as a sounding board to crystallize some free-radical ideas in my noodle. It seems to be working; I feel the gears moving, like one of Dr. Lucia Devereaux's steampunk contraptions sputtering to life. (If you read Hannah, you'll know of Dr. Lucy.) Some of you may know I was published in the 2010 Comic-Con Book: lead story even for the 60th Anniversary of Peanuts segment! My task at hand this time is considerable. These Tarzan geeks are tough competition.

Now, being the weird combination of she whom reveres original fairy tales -Grimm (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel und Gretel), de la Fontaine (The Grasshopper and the Ant, The Tortoise and the Hare), de Ségur (Blondine), etc.- yet also adores the Disney reiterations thereof, my Viking and I ventured to Disneyland to get my noggin revving and skittered amidst the branches of Tarzan's Treehouse in Adventureland. In fact, the attraction used to be the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and far superior ... to the Tarzan Treehouse, not superior to the Robert Louis Stevenson book. Ha! It was a subtle homage of vintage suitcases, silver hairbrushes and antique china to the durable and genteel, accidental survivalists from the mind of the man from Edinburgh. Happily, some of the props have remained in place.

Once again, merci pour écouter, thanks for listening; I think I have some ideas brewing. I imagine, alongside reading more of Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs, a few more trips through the treehouse may very well be in order.

Update to Post: I did indeed come up with an article for Comic-Con 2012 and it was published in the annual Souivernir Book. Read it here!

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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