TwoWordHeap

Some days I wake up happy. Some days I wake up tired. Some days I wake up pissed. Some days I wake up generally awesome… well most days.

A few days back, I woke up irritated that my throat hurt and assumed that it was Swine Flu. Which is what I do for humor reasons, because I am not really a hypochondriac. Everything about that day was going to drive me a bit batty. This being said, it was also Star Wars Day! So you can’t be upset on Star Wars Day! Wait… What the fuck? Star Wars Day?!

If you are wondering why May 4th was arbitrarily decided to be Star Wars Day, it is actually quite simple: This is the anniversary of the theatrical premiere of A New Hope. A New Hope is Episode 4 of the series of Star Wars movies, or if you don’t know A New Hope the film is generally called “Star Wars” by the lesser knowledgeable people. So that would be a logical reason why this is called Star Wars Day right!? It would be, if it wasn’t a complete fabrication on my part. Star Wars Day is on May 4th, or May the fourth… as in May The Force Be With You. Yes, it is that simple. A holiday based upon a phrase that merely sounds like another phrase. BUT is this reason for a holiday much different than many of the other reasons for holidays out there?

I’m someone who is all up for more vacation days and more holidays, but if we are going to have a Star Wars Day, why not a Bill & Ted’s Day, where you try to^[1] “Be Excellent To Each Other” on Bill & Ted Day?

So far you are probably wondering “Where is the point? Why is he writing about this? He hasn’t really said anything. He kinda seems like he hates it, but then kinda doesn’t at the same time.” Well to be honest, there really isn’t a point to this. Mostly, I am just curious what the point of “Star Wars Day” is myself. So maybe if I put this out into the world, someone will be able to fill me in on this interesting Nerdgasm of a day.

In reality, we have created a weird thing in this world… maybe we should call it “Nerd Chic”. Nerdom has become a popular and cool thing in this society. A lot of the shirts that nerds exclusively used to wear have now become shirts many people wear^[2]. Has everyone finally admitted that they have a little bit of nerd within themselves, or are they posing as nerds? Wow what a thought… a thought that the once least popular, the once majority posers, the once major laughing stocks of the world… are now the ones that people are pretending to be like?! How peculiar. How symmetrical.

Photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/croncast/1315412714/}croncast{/link}

I tend to think that in reality it isn’t that people are posing as nerds, it is that they are in fact nerds and always have been^[3]. Our whole world has become more dominated by technology, and the Western World has definitely become gadget crazy. iPods instead of giant turn tables, iPhones instead of rotary pay phones, Kindles instead of books, and Wi-Fi instead of Hi-Fi. Everything is now about ‘how fast you can communicate’ and ‘how fast you can gather information’, and the giant nerd-made companies of the world have made it so that even if you are the biggest meat head in the world you could still understand and use your personal computer^[4], which used to be a task that was left to the non-girlfriend-having nerds. The things that used to take much of your free time to learn, now are essentially available “pre-learned”. So the persecution of nerds before was out of jealousy. Jocks gave wedgies, swirlies, and pink bellies because they were just upset that they couldn’t do the things that nerds did with Audio/Visual equipment, computers, and video games.

So maybe “Star Wars Day” means more than just a date that sounds a bit like a saying from a movie. Maybe it is a day to celebrate the emancipation of Nerd Culture. Maybe it is a day to really show that equality between two groups could actually be made, and a group of formerly persecuted people can find some satisfaction and popularity.

Or maybe it is a day that shows that the Nerd has surpassed all the tools of the world in popularity, and that everyone should take solace in that. Why? Because everyone needs to know that everything comes full circle and that eventually tools do, in fact, get their come-up-ens.^[5]

“Star Wars Day” is a day to celebrate that sometimes nice guys don’t finish last… though they may still be virgins when they do.

1. like being merry on Christmas [↩]
2. and can actually cost $57 [↩]
3. or at least wanted to be [↩]
4. maybe not to the fullest extent of the computer, but at least to do basic operations [↩]
5. how the hell do you spell that? [↩]

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