Throughout my teen years, the “popular” and “cool” kids called me various names. These included: nerd, dork, dweeb, lame ass, weirdo, doofus, and freak. But the one name I didn’t mind being called was “geek,” because it sounded less harmless than the others.

Today I still consider myself a geek and I’m proud to be one. So to all those “popular” and “cool” kids, all I want the say is: Look at me now, beeyatch!

I’m the editor of a kind-of-popular not-so-popular quasi-review blog. What do you got?

Great kids, a loving wife, a low mortgage, a steady paycheck, and regular nights of sex?

That’s all?

Tell me, who’s the lame ass doofus now?

(tear)

Sometimes it’s hard being a geek, so I was excited when Amazon.com recommend Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton. In case you don’t know or don’t remember, Wil was Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and also starred in the movie Stand By Me.

I instantly bought the book hoping that it would be about becoming a better geek and how to cope with being a geek. I was also hoping there would be a section of “You might be a geek…” jokes, like these:

You might be a geek, if your wedding was performed by an ordained Vulcan or Klingon.

You might be a geek, if your kids’ names are Fortran and Pascal.

You might be a geek, if you find pleasure in bringing down a website by Slashdotting it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t read the product description before buying, so I was surprised when it didn’t contain any of the above.

Despite not having chapters devoted to such things as the snacks you should have for a successful Dungeons & Dragons gathering, Just A Geek was a great read. Wil gives you a look into his personal life and his difficult journey to find himself.

This book was so entertaining that it was the first book in a long time I did not want to put down.

The last book I did not want to put down?

Green Eggs and Ham.

Although I did not want to put that book down because I was trying to beat the class record for spinning a book on a finger.

From reading Just A Geek, you find out that despite being a great actor and a wonderful writer, Wil is just a normal guy with basically the same problems we have all faced at one time or another, except we probably don’t have the shame of being on the cover of Teen Beat magazine.

Just A Geek is a funny, smart, and honest book that I would highly recommend.

Although I REALLY wish there were “You might be a geek…” jokes.

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Item: Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton
Purchase Price: $14.95 (Amazon.com)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pros: A fun and quick read. Wheaton is a talented, funny, and creative writer.
Cons: Not a guide to becoming a better geek. No “You might be a geek…” jokes.

It all started last week when I woke up with a bad sore throat. According to my body, a bad sore throat guarantees a cold. I don’t know how I got the sore throat, but it could’ve been the extremely late night karaoke or the make out session with my pillow.

When the Impulsive Buy staff gets a hint of someone in the pre-stages of a cold, everyone suddenly becomes Howard Hughes. They put on surgical facemasks, break out Costco-sized bottles of waterless hand sanitizer, start opening doors with paper towels, and play the movie Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman over and over again, just to give that someone a subtle hint that he or she and his or her germs are not welcome.

Because of this, I was forced to find a solution to prevent the sore throat from becoming a full-blown cold. Usually, tackling this problem would include almost illegal amounts of NyQuil (or its generic counterpart), but due to my love of operating heavy machinery, that was no longer an option.

Marvin, a sporadic habitual Impulsive Buy reader and my self-proclaimed gay evil twin, was the one who suggested I use Airborne Effervescent. However, because he’s evil, I thought he was making up the existence of Airborne. But the next day at the checkout stand, which happens to be right next to the pharmacy, I saw a few dozen boxes of it. So I picked up a box.

At a slightly expensive $7.69 a box, Airborne better prevent me from getting sick, get rid of bad breath, and also give me the confidence I need when I’m around women.

The instructions for Airborne sound simple. When you get the first sign of a cold symptom, plop an effervescent tablet into a small glass of water, let it dissolve (which takes one to two minutes), and then drink it. However, the drinking part wasn’t simple.

There were two things that scared me about drinking Airborne: (1) The Airborne flavor I bought was orange, but the color of the liquid was not orange, instead it was green (see picture above). (2) I was drinking something that was bubbling like a witch’s potion.

Despite these issues, for five days straight I drank the not-bad-tasting Airborne and my pre-cold never materialized into a full-blown cold.

I could say it was just the Airborne, but I don’t want my self-proclaimed gay evil twin to gloat about how he knows everything. Plus, I think that the 10 hours of sleep I got each night and the 5 gallons of orange juice I drank probably helped.

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Item: Airborne Effervescent (Orange Flavored)
Purchase Price: $7.69
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: I think it worked. It was fun watching tablets dissolve. Can finally eject Outbreak DVD.
Cons: Orange flavor should be orange, not green. Looks like a witch’s potion. Slightly expensive.

Do your remember the times when your parents would read you bedtime stories, like the Three Little Pigs and Sleeping Beauty, to help you fall asleep early so that they can do the horizontal mambo in their bedroom, in the kitchen, or in the bathroom?

It was great because you didn’t have to worry about turning pages, remembering where you left off, or paper cuts, and sometimes nine months later you ended up with a brother or sister.

Today we still have some of those luxuries thanks to audiobooks.

Besides, who has time to sit down and read a book? Not when there’s a Punk’d and Pimp My Ride marathon on MTV and I have to play a season of Madden 2005. However, one of the great things about audiobooks is the ability to multitask. It’s hard to multitask when reading an actual book. There’s no possible way I can read a book, download porn, and play Madden 2005 all at the same time, but with audiobooks I can.

Besides I’m too lazy to flip pages. Have you seen the size of books today? It may look like I’m reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but what I’m really doing is working out my arms with those 255,000 words.

We at the Impulsive Buy are avid fans of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, because it’s where we get our world news. So on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, when the Daily Show isn’t on, we have no idea what’s going on. But then again, we are too stoned to care what’s going on.

America (The Audiobook) takes a humorous look at the history of American government in a textbook format, with classroom activities and discussion questions at the end of each chapter, which we didn’t do because…Um…Our dog ate our answers and then our computer crashed.

The audiobook may lean a little to the left, but whether you’re left-wing, right-wing, or one of those crazy Nader supporters, we think you will find this audiobook humorous. If you don’t, you have no soul or you’re legally deaf.

We were disappointed to find out that the audiobook was an abridged version of the best-selling hardcover book. We were also frustrated we couldn’t see the picture of the Supreme Court naked, which is in the actual book.

On second thought, not seeing that picture may have been a good thing.

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Item: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents America (The Audiobook): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction
Purchase Price: $15.95 (iTunes Music Store)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Pros: It’s downright funny. Read by Jon Stewart and the other Daily Show correspondents. Right-wing or left-wing, or Nader-loving, there’s something for everyone.
Cons: Abridged version. Didn’t get to see Sandra Day O’Conner’s boobies.

I remember the days when it was so easy to get the music I wanted. Jump on a PC at school, start up Napster, and download songs to my hearts content. Unfortunately, I now have to worry about lawsuits from the RIAA, which by the way is slowly becoming the second scariest acronym behind the IRS.

Now that I’ve gone legit, I get my music from CDs and the iTunes Music Store. However, recently I noticed one of the online music stores called eMusic was offering 50 free MP3 downloads, so I decided to give them a try.

eMusic is a little different than the iTunes Music Store because their catalog only consists of musicians from independent labels. That means you won’t find Britney Spears at eMusic, which is good thing. Also, with the eMusic Music Store, you can’t purchase individual tracks, instead you must sign up for monthly plans which allows you to download a set number of MP3s. Their cheapest plan at $9.99 allows for 40 downloads, which comes out to about 25 cents per song. So cheap that it’s like I’m stealing…I mean, downloading from the old Napster again.

It’s a great deal, but unfortunately, I’m not too familiar with groups on independent labels.

Fortunately, I got a few recommendations from occasional Impulsive Buy browsers, Kari, a former college radio DJ and Gabriel, a sleeveless taiko drummer. While looking through their lists of groups, I thought they were making up names, like The Postal Service, Interpol, Burning Airlines, The Impossibles, Slow Reader, The Music, Hot Hot Heat, Massive Attack, The Shins, and Morcheeba.

However, after searching through the eMusic catalog, I found out that they weren’t messing with my head. Although I didn’t find all the groups, so maybe they were messing with me a little.

While downloading their recommendations, I thought about how easy it must be to create a band name. As a matter of fact, it’s so easy that I created an equation for you boys and girls to remember so that you can create your own band names.

T + A + N = BN
(The + Adjective + Noun = Band Name)

With this equation I’ve created the following names: The Blue Quick, The Liberal Reporters, The French Fliers, The Rejected Credit Card Application, The Empty Wallets, The Stupid Presidents, and The Hyperactive Elementary School Kids on the Playground.

Many of the groups that Kari and Gabriel suggested were really good and it was great to hear something different than the 2,346 songs that were already on my iPod.

After downloading my 50 free MP3s, I decided to sign up for the $9.99 monthly plan, so I could download other groups I’ve never heard of.

(Note to RIAA: All songs downloaded during my misguided college years have been erased from the computer I was using at that time.)

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Item: eMusic Music Store
Purchase Price: 50 Free Downloads + $9.99 for 40 Downloads
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Monthly plans are a very good deal. Good source for music from independent labels, with over 500,000 songs. No Britney Spears-type crap. Uses MP3 format, so no DRMs.
Cons: Bad deal if you don’t use up all your downloads during each month, which expire. Sometimes downloads are slow.

B is for Bug

I have the iTunes Music Store bug. So far I’ve bought 453 songs from iTunes. Although as you regular Impulsive Buy readers may know, 117 of those came from the Mozart: Symphonies collection I bought a few months back in my attempt to win the iTunes 1,000,000th download contest.

The great thing about the iTunes Music Store is the ability to purchase and download individual tracks. I want “Ice Ice Baby,” but I definitely don’t want the rest of To The Extreme. Okay, maybe I might want “Play That Funky Music,” but just for those I Love the 90s nostalgia moments and when I decide to get lines shaved on the side of my head.

On occasion, I do purchase whole albums from iTunes, like Less Than Jake’s B is for B-Sides

B is for Bargain

B is for B-Sides is a bargain because I bought the album for $7.92. At Amazon the CD can be purchased for $13.98. That’s a six-dollar difference. Sure you can rip the songs and distribute them across peer-to-peer networks with the CD, but I’m really scared of the RIAA and Metallica, although not as much since they cut their hair.

B is for Brief.

B is for B-Sides contains 12 tracks that total about 28 minutes in length, which is quite brief. Almost all of the songs run under two minutes and thirty seconds. Just to let you ladies know, my lovemaking sessions last much longer than this album. So what album would best describe the length of my lovemaking abilities? All 9 hours and 56 minutes of the Mozart: Symphonies collection, of course.

Okay, not really.

B is for Bitchin’

Despite its length, the album is bitchin’ (Wait. Do the young folks still use that word? How about B is for Bad Ass?). All the tracks for B is for B-Sides were recorded for the Anthem album, which was released last year. If you’re a hardcore fan of the group, this album will probably sound a little different than their earlier albums, because the horn section isn’t featured as much. But the songs are as fast-paced as ever. Some of my favorites include “Portrait of a Cigarette Smoker At 19” and “Bridge and Tunnel Authority.”

B is for Bill

Because the iTunes Music Store uses your credit card information for purchases, the $7.92 was added to my slowly growing credit card bill, but it was worth it.

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Item: Less Than Jake – B is for B-Sides
Purchase Price: $7.92 (iTunes Music Store)
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Bargain. Bitchin’ and Bad Ass.
Cons: Brief.