(Editor’s note: Lore Sjoberg’s Alt Text column is going weekly in 2010. Look for Sjoberg’s humorous insights into geek culture every Friday on Wired.com.)
Obsessional hobbies are part of the geek lifestyle. You can’t call yourself a geek if nobody’s ever feigned organ failure to get out of a conversation about your pet topic.
And yet you might find yourself, through no fault of your own, drifting into the mainstream over time.
In my lifetime, lots of geekish things have become popular cocktail conversation, including videogames, Star Trek and bioinformatic analysis algorithms.
If you find yourself suddenly able to pursue your hobby without ever leaving a Target, you might consider switching to one of the following, each of which is guaranteed to never get its own cable channel.
Simulated air traffic control
You know that there’s such a thing as a flight simulator. Did you know that there’s also such a thing as an air traffic control simulator?
Such a touching example of symbiosis I have not seen since I learned about crocodiles and the birds that pick leeches out of their teeth. The crocodiles get a tooth cleaning, and the birds get a total rush, man!
Similarly, yet not at all similarly, the guys in darkened rooms pretending to fly planes and the guys in darkened rooms telling the pretend planes where to pretend to land live in perfect harmony.
The only victims are the pretend passengers who have to sit on grounded pretend planes for up to eight hours before being offloaded and given a voucher for a crappy pretend hotel.
Change ringing
Say you like the idea of playing an instrument, but unlike most musicians you don’t want to dither about with multiple notes like some sort of unfocused dabbler.
No, you want to learn to play one note, and play it the best you possibly can.
You might look into change ringing — the art, science and lifestyle of making church bells ring.
It’s only 48 percent as boring as it sounds, and you can compete in (British) national competitions. One official page, which appears to award honors to actual physical cathedral buildings, has a slight Pythonesque tinge to it.
Motorized chariot racing
I love danger. I don’t love experiencing danger, but I like knowing it’s out there, kind of like the rain forest.
So I like knowing that there are still people hooking horses up to tiny, unprotected, two-wheeled chariots and making them run like the Carthaginians are coming.
And I love the idea of Roman-X Mechanized Chariot Racing even more, even though it apparently exists only as a website and a few grainy videos. When Roman history meets lawnmower engines, magic happens.
Muggle Quidditch
I make mistakes, just like any other person, robot or rendering engine.
And when I’m left looking like a complete dork, metaphorical pants around my ankles and actual pants in the digestive tract of a domesticated goat, I just try to remember: Someone out there is playing Quidditch on a broomstick. Adults, even!
These are the guys that ultimate players stand next to when they want to look cool. I wonder, now that Twilight has supplanted Harry Potter as the Fantasy Series Everyone’s Making YouTube Videos About, are there people playing vampire baseball? I assume it’s like regular baseball, except you douse yourself in glitter first.
Competitive duck herding
I like Babe as much as the next swine-eater, but the idea of actually training my own animal for vector-based sheep hassling never really appealed.
However, I learned that you can also herd ducks!
Not only that, but you can herd ducks specifically bred to resemble apprehensive bowling pins.
I’d feel bad about the poor ducks, but if you waddle like that you have to expect something to chase you for the sheer joy of it.
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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjoberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a hobbyist, a Hobbesian and a hobbit. You can follow his Twitter ramblings and recipes @loresjoberg.
