Comments on: More like a six foot turkey.

More like a six foot turkey.

roomthreeseventeen — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:03:38 -0800

"I rediscovered my Jurassic Park dossier when cleaning out a cupboard... At around 14 years old, I tried to charm a girl by saying if she ever wanted to know anything about dinosaurs, she could come to me." (via)

By: deludingmyself

deludingmyself — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:21:20 -0800

I started laughing at the air balloon ride (model), but it's the back and forth memos at the end that really take this to the next level of truly obsessive nerdy kid worldbuilding.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:33:49 -0800

Oh god, obsessive kid world building, It Hapoened To Me, I can still recite the amazingly intricate system of magic I developed (with FLOW CHARTS AND SPREADHSEETS) for a board game I invented. I never got past the doodling on grid paper stage cause I was bogged down with explaining every. Single. Thing.

By: dialetheia

dialetheia — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:36:55 -0800

This is absolutely delightful, positively the best thing I've seen in years. Thanks for the post!

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:47:31 -0800

(1) Blades which enable the helicopter to fly. This deserves to be read in a deep, authoritative voice. I'm not sure Morgan Freeman could do it justice.

By: Ursula Hitler

Ursula Hitler — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:48:05 -0800

Can we stop doing this thing where 1993 was a really long time ago and full-grown adults are talking about being kids back then? It's really getting old. (Or I am, at least.) For you younger folks, imagine waking up one day and being surrounded by 30-year-olds who were all talking about their fond childhood memories of Wall-E. It will happen to you. Any day now... All crabbing aside, it does blow my mind that that movie is 23 freaking years old. It doesn't help that it's on TV like every weekend, and the special effects look a hell of a lot better than the ones in this new movie. (Also, how the hell do you make a Jurassic Park movie without Sam Neill or Jeff Goldblum? It's not like either of those guys are unavailable. Or hell, bring Laura Dern back! The other guys got their own Jurassic Park movies! Where's Laura Dern's Jurassic Park movie, damn it?)

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:02:29 -0800

My god. This could totally have been me.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:03:41 -0800

I want a Jurassic Park movie starring Laura Dern where the antagonist is just plants. Straight up vegetation. Variety can call it "Universal's new Dern'n'Fern flick." Everybody's happy.

By: w0mbat

w0mbat — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:10:50 -0800

Spielberg could buy the rights to "The Day of the Triffids" and totally do that. Don't taunt the Spielberg.

By: Dip Flash

Dip Flash — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:14:26 -0800

If nothing else, it's a fascinating insight into the mind of the type of pubescent idiot who never had a suntan. I suspect many of the members of this site can relate to that sentence. I never had that obsessive need to create notebooks full of imaginary worlds (or imaginary friends, say) but I definitely lived too much in my own head.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:14:43 -0800

It is my sincere belief that anyone who makes a film without Laura Dern in it has committed a crime.

By: AlonzoMosleyFBI

AlonzoMosleyFBI — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:18:24 -0800

Where's Laura Dern's Jurassic Park movie, damn it? Honestly, she's got much better things to do.

By: rifflesby

rifflesby — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:18:36 -0800

(1) Blades which enable the helicopter to fly. This deserves to be read in a deep, authoritative voice. I'm not sure Morgan Freeman could do it justice. Yeah for that one I think you need James Earl Jones.

By: benzenedream

benzenedream — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:19:38 -0800

The part where he builds his own POSIX compliant OS is worth reading, especially the section on chroot jails.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:23:25 -0800

Honestly, she's got much better things to do. Dammit why isn't that a trailer to a new season of Enlightened.

By: Kitteh

Kitteh — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:26:55 -0800

I did tons of world-building as a kid and as a teenager. I aspired to be a writer for most of my adolescence for all of my short stories were interconnected in some way, characters knew each other, or knew of each other, or they would pass through the story of whatever character I was writing about at the time. This guy gets mad props from one kid who lived inside their head to another.

By: AGameOfMoans

AGameOfMoans — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:35:48 -0800

Well, I am no longer embarrassed about my "Dr. McCoy" style air injector that I drew plans for.

By: turbid dahlia

turbid dahlia — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:41:49 -0800

I love this to bits. I think the first movie I ever got truly obsessed about was Tim Burton's Batman, and this is precisely the sort of stuff I put together for that (I had a special 'Batman' file that was literally just full of every stupid sticker and propaganda postcard and newspaper cutting of movie times and, like, Popper cover or Batman-branded chip bag), so I totally know where this kid is coming from and applaud his efforts.

By: Fizz

Fizz — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:44:56 -0800

Well, I am no longer embarrassed about my "Dr. McCoy" style air injector that I drew plans for. Pics or it didn't happen!?!?!

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:54:26 -0800

Honestly, she's got much better things to do. She was great in movie although a little under-used. But note that Dern is now playing grandmothers.

By: Rangi

Rangi — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:01:41 -0800

I used to have a folder packed with hand-drawn material for a Pokémon game that my friend and I wanted to make with RPG Maker. There were a few attempts at maps to incorporate all the official regions as well as one of our own design; lists of new Gym Leaders, Pokémon species, attack types; more things than I can remember. At some point it was left at somebody's house and got lost. I wish I still had it; looking back on this sort of childhood obsession is kind of embarassing, but still fun to remember. It's nice to see evidence that other people were just as passionate/crazy. (Japanese has a word for this kind of behavior: chuunibyou. Literally, "eighth grader syndrome," because 14-year-old middle schoolers are typically the ones who act like this. There's at least one anime featuring realistic chuunibyou protagonists, who vividly remind me of myself and people I knew at 14.) ("Realistic" as in "don't actually have the fantasy lives they imagine, and sometimes want to forget that they ever behaved like that once they grow older." There are plenty of wish-fulfillment anime where middle schoolers actually do have special powers.)

By: justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow

justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:05:43 -0800

Well, I am no longer embarrassed about my "Dr. McCoy" style air injector that I drew plans for. Hyposprays are quite real. (aka Jet Injectors)

By: Mr.Encyclopedia

Mr.Encyclopedia — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:35:45 -0800

I may or may not have notebooks full of the manic scribbles of a 10-12 year old boy that thinks too much about Sonic the Hedgehog and his good friend, "Mach the Hedgehog". These notebooks are actually quite fantastic and amusing to me since there is otherwise little physical evidence remaining of this young man who has yet to figure out why girls are so interesting.

By: Ursula Hitler

Ursula Hitler — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:42:30 -0800

Spielberg could buy the rights to "The Day of the Triffids" and totally do that. If Spielberg did a remake of "The Day of the Triffids" starring Laura Dern it would at worst be a fun Netflix rental and it would at best be flippin' fantastic.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 19:36:22 -0800

Did you all know that you can get free hex graph paper online?

By: naju

naju — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 19:46:43 -0800

Uh, I still live in my head. Some of us never grew out of the obsessive worldbuilding stage.

By: easter queen

easter queen — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 20:17:57 -0800

Oh god. Laughing until tears were streaming down my face. Thank you for sharing this!!

By: um

um — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 20:41:06 -0800

"Nothing horrific should happen" is a phrase I use frequently, mostly in my test plans.

By: ricochet biscuit

ricochet biscuit — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 22:10:07 -0800

Gen X Star Trek fans may remember a couple of the slicker works of Franz Joseph Studios in the seventies, the USS Enterprise blueprints, and the Star Fleet Technical Manual, which offered a dizzying glimpse of other types of ships beside the heavy cruiser (of which the Enterprise was an example): the scout/destroyer, the transport/tug, and the dreadnought. My friend John and I met in school in 1978, bonded instantly over a shared love of science fiction, and sometime between then and the release of Star Trek: the Motion Picture in late 1979 drew blueprints for the other types of ships depicted in the Technical Manual. Seriously, imagine this drawing rendered painstakingly by hand as only a couple of nerdy tweens could undertake. (This is actually pretty close to what we drew.) I figured the things were long since lost around 1980 or so, but John surprised me with them as a housewarming gift about five years ago. The decades-old paper is yellowed, and they are a little bit brittle, but we both agreed that with the best will in the world there is no way we could produce work by hand a tenth as good now; we lack the patience, probably the hand-eye coordination and certainly the obsessive attention to detail. One of these days I am going to scan the things and clean them up a bit digitally (the tape we used to hold the sheets together is distinctly amber-coloured now), then print out a couple of full-size copies and mount them: one for him, and one for me.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:59:49 -0800

Why did I not buy that Star Fleet Technical Manual, when I had the chance? There it was! In mall bookstores.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 02:55:02 -0800

My howls of laughter are disturbing the cats. I thank you for the post; they do not.

By: Clinging to the Wreckage

Clinging to the Wreckage — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 06:26:17 -0800

That's fantastic. I had tons of very similar notebooks and C64 floppy disks full of the same kind of stuff. I tossed it all one day in 9th grade. I was bored in biology class so I was writing a sci-fi story in a little notebook and the teacher took it away and then read the first two lines to the class. The lines weren't that terrible but she was so mocking and the whole class laughed and laughed. Within hours the whole school had heard about how the nerdy kid was even nerdier than we had thought! I was mortified. Nobody was ever going to do that to me again, so out it all went when I got home. For years I thought that was a mistake and wished I had kept it until I joined Facebook 20 years after 'the incident' and one of the first things old classmates brought up was my horrible stupid short story. Nobody ever heard or read more than the first 15 or so words, but it didn't matter because it was obviously terrible and a joke. The only thing I never gave up on for some reason was designing pinball machines which I now actually build, sometimes using ideas from many years ago. I still don't let anybody see them though. It's so cool that this kid kept this and shared it. I feel like I'm in his and my shared middle-school head. I never got into Jurassic Park, but I sure get it instantly when I see these. I went with my son to the Twin Cities Maker Faire two weeks ago and it was so cool to see all of the various types of makers and like minded people showing interest in what is basically the 2015 version of this notebook instead of pointing and laughing. I'm so glad my kids aren't trapped in a suburb alone with their various passions and instead get to find people on the internet and IRL to share this kind of thing with who will get it.

By: Parasite Unseen

Parasite Unseen — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 08:31:46 -0800

I feel bad for any teachers who had to deal with YOUNG DUNGEON MASTER Parasite Unseen in their classes. I mean, I wasn't disruptive or anything, but I can imagine how disheartening it must have felt to get five minutes into a lesson, seeing me pull the graph paper out of my backpack, and knowing that they'd lost me for the day.

By: Richard Holden

Richard Holden — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:22:15 -0800

I need to look for the many photos I took of all my Jurassic Park merchandise laid out neatly on my bed.

By: not that girl

not that girl — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:53:40 -0800

If you are interested in a "kid who lives in his head" story, I just finished John Darnielle's novel Wolf In White Van is very much this. It's kind of dark, but shies away from being graphic. The writing is lovely and the structure of the novel masterful. I loved the Jurassic Park dossier. Kids are so awesome.

By: pretentious illiterate

pretentious illiterate — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:57:49 -0800

I think "Adult person has sarcastic & baffled yet affectionate conversation with his imagined childhood self" is one of my favorite forms of humor. Stuff like this invariably makes me grin like a idiot. I wonder if the greatest hits of this particular genre are collected anywhere in particular?

By: not that girl

not that girl — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:59:48 -0800

I went with my son to the Twin Cities Maker Faire two weeks ago and it was so cool to see all of the various types of makers and like minded people showing interest in what is basically the 2015 version of this notebook instead of pointing and laughing I feel this way, too. I heard the time we're living in called the Age of Enthusiasm, and it rang true.

By: signal

signal — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 11:52:05 -0800

You know, this gives me a crapload of verguenza ajena, which roughly translates as 'embarrassment for others', like a visceral reaction making me cringe from the laptop screen and not letting me read all the way through, and I think it's because even though I never did anything this nerdy, it's because I was lazy, not because I wasn't nerdy enough, and I might have if I'd gotten around to it, and boy would I be embarrassed if somebody, even myself, posted it online, like really, really, that dream where you're naked in high school embarrassed, which in a way is what happened, so I'm just going to back away from this like Homer when he catches Apu being unfaithful,ok?