I'd like to think that a slight temporal nudge would establish Ben Franklin as one of our founding geeks. Think of all the geek aphorisms that we'd have right now.

I'm nowhere near his league in experience or wisdom, but compared to the vast majority of younger geeks I meet at conventions and online, I have achieved some sort of elder status. Combined with my interest in the breadth of geek culture, the idea of a geek statesman tickles my funny-bone. And since I've wanted a place to store my explorations, thoughts, observations, experimentation, and occasional exploitation of my geek experience, this site will become that repository.

I've been a geek for over half a century. I count the start when I read my first comic book, which was a Marvel Journey Into Mystery featuring Thor. I vaguely  remember that he was fighting gangsters. I believe it was issue #89 with a cover date of Feb. 1963, and that more or less fits all of my other memories of the time.

Since then I've marveled at the Silver Surfer, wondered at the coming of Galactus, cried over Gwen Stacy and Jean Grey, watched the Hulk fight the Wendigo and some little Canadian guy dressed in yellow and black, rolled my eyes at the Punisher, tried to understand The Watchmen, felt overwhelmed by Crisis after Crisis, and ... well, you get the idea.

And that's just comic culture. I voraciously read science fiction and fantasy; grokking the Kwisatz Haderach while flying on a white dragon with my precious. I've watched the premier of EVERY Star Trek series (TOS through Enterprise, and I like ALL of them). I remember asking my father about every villain as I tuned in to the same Bat Channel for each newly released episode (remember I was a Silver Age Marvel reader). And in college, Star Wars was a first date movie (before it was called A New Hope), which I then proceeded to watch 20 more times in the theater.

My gaming has run the gamut from RPGs (including the original D&D), LARPs (Shadowrun and Vampire: The Masquerade), text games (Crystal Caves, Zork, etc), video games (from Pong and ASCII Star Trek to Lara Croft), MUDs and MMORPGs (so many choices), and the current table top craze (who'd have thought).

Although I attended the first San Francisco Star Trek convention back in the 70's, I took a long break from conventions until my 50th birthday when I finally attended San Diego Comic-Con. I've been back ever since. Convention culture has become its own phenomena, and so I'm also attending WonderCon and APE, and plan on adding a few more conventions to my schedule in the next couple of years.

And every year I've tried some new geek sub-culture, from Bronies to Furries. Some stick (I attend the Kung Fu movie round up every year at Comic-Con) and others don't (I appreciate My Little Pony, but it's not on my regular watch list). My current obsession is Cosplay, and documenting my progress is one of the reasons I'm starting this little publication.

To be clear, this ain't no humble brag. I'm flat out bragging. I like geeks, and I'm proud to be one. I like the imagination and creativity they show, the seriousness and the humor, the detail and the lack of continuity. I dive in when I can and try to understand the joys, motivations, and dreams of each sub-genre I've sampled. I've lived long enough to have some perspective and have enough disposable income to explore. What I record here is subject to my biases and viewpoint.

Live long and prosper, may the force be with you, and excelsior!