I wish I was a nerd.

When I made the fateful decision to start a blog, all those couple of days ago, the first thing that came to my head... well it was "Can I really be arsed?" The SECOND thing that came to my head was the best way to start it. Now, I thought I'd let you know that I'm not a conventional person. As anyone who knows me (which is probably everyone reading this anyway, but if, hypothetically, complete strangers were reading my shit) can tell you, the fictitious randomer enthralled by my writings, I'm a bit of a weirdo. While 89% of blogs begin with made-up statistics, I like to do things a little bit differently.

Thus, instead of introducing myself or whatever the hell people do when starting a blog (unless it's a Harry Potter review), I wrote a Harry Potter review, establishing myself as a grade 3 nerd. I'm doing my Grade 4 Christmas time, aiming to pass with merit thanks to my perfect recall of the names of all the Sindar Elves from Tolkien's works....

WAIT, DON'T GO! This blog's not going to be about the regurgitation of facts about Marvel superheroes or Yu Gi Oh magic cards. I'm a university student, so it would at least be the analysis, evaluation and synthesis of aforementioned nerdery. What the hell do those professors mean by synthesis anyway? I just know it's a move in Pokemon that restores up to half the maximum HP - not helping my nerdy blog mitigation statement here am I - but it's probably one of those words the definition of which is kept ambiguous so professors can't award decent marks.

If you read this blog over the time period that I can be bothered to write it, then you should be able to (try to) decipher the code to my personality. Although I warn you - it's more complex and nonsenical than an Ed Miliband speech. This post was meant to be my means of self-introduction, but then I realised how boring that would be. I will write what I want to write, and the fictitious enthralled randomer can get their own image of who I am and what I look like. I'd like to think that you picture a charismatic individual as handsome as Jared Leto, but at the moment you're probably picturing this:

 

Nevertheless, I do not see myself as a nerd as such, despite my encyclopaedic knowledge of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Pokemon. (If I were an encyclopaedia though, I would be Wikipedia, because I like to make stuff up and if you ask me for any citations in this blog, you can kindly fuck off.) For a young man with an affinity for useless information, I am rather hip and 'with it'. Oh yeah, I go to clubs such as Oceania and move it to artists such as Fascist Movement ('Like a G6' is a song about the game Battleship, right?) and David Get Her, just like any other 20 year old. 

But I do see eye to eye with the nerd. As a boy I wasn't interested in superheroes and Action Mans and Hot Wheels. I was interested in dinosaurs and outer space, things that are beyond the realm of human life. I was also, and still am, slightly retarded at sports or anything that involves hand-eye coordination. I'm a thinker, not a doer, yet I do not want to be a politican or a professor. The reason for the former is obvious - they're twats. The reason for the latter, however, is more complicated. You see, I grew up in Cwmbran, South Wales, where having an IQ higher than that of a goose is considered homosexual, which is a heinous crime there. As a result I struggled to fit in at school, so I preferred to learn things beyond the world I knew, and learn about the mysterious codes that are mathematics and languages, parallel worlds that are co-dependent with our own.

I don't want to bore you with my life story, because it is boring and depressing (it probably wasn't depressing, but I'm a pessimistic bastard okay?) but the point is - what's the best thing to do when you leave school having grown up in an overtly left-wing area, preferring to learn about bigger, better things than the real world? You got it - study a fucking business degree! Well done Oliver! Currently, there's no way in hell I want to be a business professor, and if I wanted to be a professor in something else I would most likely have to do another 3 years of a different bachelors degree first. I'd be studying ceaselessly until I'm 25 - a real-life Peter Pan!

That may be a recurring theme in my writings by the way, the teensy little decision that now means I am wasting four years and probably about £50000. The point is - I am now anchored in the real world. Pablo Picasso said "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." He also said "I think I've fucked up my self-portrait", but that's not the point here. I have not remained an 'artist', when I used to write stories, poems, songs... Hell, I even used to draw things, even though my cat looked more like a turd. I was quite a creative child, and one of the things that agitates me the most is that I have almost lost all my creativity. I'm stuck in the real world. I wouldn't have imagined what I would have looked like - I would have just looked to the right hand side of this page and see the picture of me there. As you can see, I don't look like Jared Leto - no surprises there - but at least I like to think I look mildly sociable..........

Okay so my second blog entry has turned out to give more information about me than intended. There goes the 'remain enigmatic and hence, sexy' approach! Anyway, my point is that nerds seem happier than other people, merely because they exercise their thoughts in both fantasy and science. They're creative in their own ways, and in a strange way, I would like to be one of them. A reason for me writing this blog is to persuade myself to be more creative, because I think that may be my passion - I don't know yet. Only time will tell. 

Of course, as well as being loads of fun, creativity is extremely important for competitive advantage in a dynamically changing business environment (that lecture probably cost me about £100 - stupid business school)  and so nerds are best placed for future prospects. I mean check out this article - yeah it uses Ed Miliband as an example, but ignore that :P http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/31/nerds-rule-world

After all, Bill Gates did say "Be nice to the nerds. Because someday you'll be working for them". He also said "Ballmer, why the fuck did you buy Skype? Most people get it for free you fat ass!" but that's not my point. 

Rant over

Ollie

PS. Okay you know that annoying bit you get at the end of your favourite YouTube videos - when the creator tries to get you to subscribe and watch other videos they have made, which are never as good as the one you've just watched? Here's my equivalent. If you like what you've read, subscribe. If you don't, subscribe anyway! Next post will be in a couple of weeks, when I reveal the REAL reason why I started this blog!

But firstly, I'm going to spontaneously disappear for a couple of weeks. Take care and don't eat undercooked dog. Ciao!