Let's take a minute to shower some geek love on our most prolific and acclaimed Chica, Pearce.

See, her birthday is this week, and even though she's way busy with her absinthe company, Southern Alchemy,  we wanted to mark the day. Though it seems her sweet fella, Circus Boy, beat us to the punch with this lovely, geeky confection:

They say baking is like chemistry, so I guess we know it's true. 

So, let us lift our glasses to a woman with enough energy to write for three websites, run two companies, tutor school children on the side and still look fabulous doing it. (Seriously, she's like a cross between some super-intelligent, alien ferret and a supermodel.)

Cheers to you Pearce!

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Most of us can only dream about using our hobbies and turning them into dream jobs. For Jackie Ottinger the dream is reality. Jackie is a professional plastic brick architect.

I first met Jackie when I went in search of the ever elusive Lego TM X-Wing Fighter- the only item on my son's holiday wish list I'd been unable to find anywhere else. A few minutes after stumbling into an unlabeled retail store front in St. Clairsville, OH at the Ohio Valley Mall, I knew she was a Geeky Gal to be reckoned with. This was just an interview waiting to happen.

So, Jackie, for starters, could you tell me a little about yourself?

Well, I'm 27,and grew up in Arizona before we moved to Wisconsin when I was 16. Then I met my business partner and we began the business in 2006 - online selling parts before we began working conventions and began traveling a bit in 2007. We ended up coming down (to the Ohio Valley) in 2009 to work Bellaire Toy and Plastic Brick Museum. It's an excuse to support the hobby (plastic brick building) and traveling.

How did you become a plastic brick architect?

I always wanted legos as a kid but never got them because it was a boys toy - I ended up with Barbies instead. When I was 8 or so, I got a tub of plastic bricks from a yard sale and began to play with it - And when I started making my own money began building a collection. My buisness partner was a friend who had been collecting his whole life and at some point we realized we had the same hobby. We started out selling the parts and that just expanded into building custom pieces.

Do you get any flack from people who think it's a bit geeky?

A lot of people will say things like "I didn't realize girls did that” or “isn't that for boys”; “I didn't think they made Lego TM for girls.” I like doing the shows to help break the myth. I want to be able to tell the girls (at the booth) that it's ok, girls can play with it. I try to support girls getting interested in the hobby.

What do you think of the latest trend in plastic bricks to follow the movie releases?

I think that they do well, but it's tough because the sets of toys become less interesting and have less parts and pieces. Sometimes they get criticized because the sets get discontinued right before a video game comes out. For example, the Batman set was discontinued just as a Batman video game was released and we've had clients come in looking for the related toys. Some of my favorite sets actually follow a theme - such as Atlantis. It seems like those (themed) sets seem larger because there's more parts without the licensing restrictions cutting into production costs. I'm looking excited about the Prince of Persia sets coming out in the future.

Are there many females in your field?

I'm used to being the only girl in the room - it's not odd to me any more. It became a matter of embracing it and running with it.

What's your favorite thing about being a plastic brick architect?

What I really love is the problem solving aspect of building with brick-it's a limited medium- you can't build curves- there's only 12000 parts out there so if you need to look at something in the real world and translate it to brick it can get challenging.

What's your least favorite?

My least favorite's that , as a business person, I know whats coming out up to three years in advance and it's really hard to be patient. To know that there's this part that's coming out that I want so badly, and to have to wait is against the American ideal of "instant gratification".

Do you get any celebrity orders?

Some. We sell a lot to the guy that directed the burning movie on the Wall E movie from Pixar. Also, at cons we'll also have the people buy the figures that represent themselves from our table - the Russian guy from Indiana Jones bought the figures of himself.

What was your favorite custom build?

The really nerdy stuff. I had a little boy that wanted a lot of Harry Potter characters from the book that don't exist in any of the box sets. "Which Lego TM hairpiece represents Luna Lovegood?"

Do you go to any conventions?

We'll be at several. Upcoming ones include Bricks by the Bay in CA, Wondercon, C2E2.

Jackie wants it understood that she is not officially affiliated with Lego TM or any other plastic brick manufacturer, despite using their products.

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It's  Women in Horror month on the Interwebs, and we at GC are here to say that we've traced the calls, and they're coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!

Wait, sorry; got the cue cards mixed up.

Anyway.  When our trusty leader UberWench asked for suggestions on notable women in horror, my reaction was "Shit, THAT's easy. Tananarive Due."

Florida native Due has written a couple of nonfiction works, but she's perhaps best known for a string of novels (My Soul To Keep / The Living Blood / Blood Colony) that are way more unsettling creepy than, on the surface, they should be.  The stories concern Jessica and her growing unease about her ridiculously perfect husband, David--who is secretly a 500-year-old immortal, thanks to his Living Blood.  There are about 50 immortals, we learn, based out of Ethiopia; all immortals have Living Blood, which can transform a mortal into an immortal if administered at the moment of death.  With me so far?  They're basically immortals, except they can sire more immortals like vampires do.

And what they have done--what Due has done--is make the whole vampire-romance thing scary again.

Part of that has to do with the way vampires have been (pardon me) defanged during their rise to pop-cultural stardom: I love Angel, Spike, and Being Human's Mitchell as much as anyone, but I think we lost sight of the terror of vampires, really, when we had them swear off blood.*  The denaturing of vampires then proceeded unchecked, until the nadir was reached with the execrable Twilight series, where vampire boyfriends are like regular boyfriends except sparklier.

Whereas the real attraction of vampires is that they are dangerous.  They pose a continuous threat--urge to kill barely held in check by nobler morals--and while there's no doubt about Edward's saintly restraint (despite his incessant claims to the contrary), there's plenty of doubt where these immortals are concerned.  Amorality and selfishness are the products of unnaturally long life, Due argues: everything else sort of gets worn away.  So when we see David calmly kill to protect his secret, calmly prepare to turn his wife and child, it all seems so natural that we can't help but see where he's coming from.  500 years of watching everyone he loves die; why shouldn't he turn his beloved into an immortal to keep him company?  The alternative is to go completely batshit insane, a fate that's befallen a fellow immortal who's spent too long hanging out with mortals; and which, as Due observes, is a particularly awful fate if you can't die.

It's David's essential decency, warped as it is by his centuries of undeath, that really establishes his power as a villain.  He really does adore his wife and daughter.  He privately bemoans how sorry he is to have to kill people, but he still resorts to it rather too often for the reader to believe him.  The signs of his lurking creepitude are all there in hindsight--Jessica's family and friends, we see, consistently find him self-absorbed and controlling--but Jessica's willingness to believe otherwise blinds her to them.  And it's Jessica's participation in her own rescue and redemption that establish her as a heroine.

Due also has a few standalones out: Joplin's Ghost is a neat sort of ghost story / psychic thing, easier to read than to describe.  I haven't read The Good House, which looks like a solid entry into that quintessential Seventies horror subgenre, the evil house story.

There's apparently a movie of My Soul To Keep that's stuck in development hell.  The male lead's been cast (Blair Underwood, on account of him being the story's champion and driving force behind the movie effort), which spoils my dreams of Chiwetel Ejiofor (the Operative from Serenity) or maybe Paterson Joseph; but, y'know, it's all good.  For Jessica I'd like either Zoe Saldana or Gina Torres.  That is all.

* To some extent this is a storytelling thing.  Vampiric struggles to stay clean provide lots of noble angst (Being Human is especially fond of this trope)--but also, it's hard to write stories about a group of heroes when one of them logically should be doing nothing but attacking the others.  One of the Eighties Doctor Who writers made this observation about the character of Turlough, a companion whose motivation for joining the TARDIS was to kill the Doctor: so far, an interesting and unique character. Trouble was, storywise you either had to have him be separated from the Doctor or else babysat by another companion, because otherwise he should, logically, attack the Doctor.  The writers wisely wrapped up that arc within three serials, but then Turlough lost much of what made him interesting.  I don't think it's an accident that Spike was defanged at precisely the same time he became one of the principals on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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When you’re a fan of several different franchises as I am, you have to realize that in doing so, there is a certain amount of risk involved.  A danger of your fandom not living up to your expectations and/or coming to the point that causes you to ponder “Why in the world did I ever start watching/reading/playing this?” is always present, even if it is only the danger of the story ending.

I first came to grips with this painful fact at the tender age of eleven, when my family and I sat in our living room with our eyes glued to the television, and we watched the last flight of the Enterprise 1701 D into an artful background of sun and nebulae on the small screen. Star Trek: The Next Generation is still my favorite show, but there is no one more depressed than I am about the fact that there will be no more of it.

Other examples include: Heroes, which turned to crap after the mesmerizing first season. Doctor Who, it will never be the same – no, really, it won’t. 

That’s why the main requirement of being a fan is unfailing, sometimes obsessive love.  But even after all of that, it’s hard not to wallow in despair at times. 

Sometimes we as fans just need a more solid ground to stand on.  There is one thing in this entire universe that I know will never fail me.  It’s a person actually, and his name is Bear Grylls.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him?

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I have to stop everything and give a shout-out to my little brother Wade.  He joined the Marines this past summer and is currently kicking ass and taking names in everything they're teaching him.

 He also just got engaged.   And his fiancee is ridiculously hot.

So congratulations on all your success, Wade.  Kudos on the engagement, and "me may foff" to you (don't worry - that phrase won't make sense unless we're related, so no, you aren't going crazy).   And great taste in engagement rings, too.  Many thumbs up.

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Shrinky-Dinks, I love to make them shrink!

How terrific is this?  Freshly-minted UC Merced professor Michelle Khine was in a bind. Her area of research was microfluidics--an emerging field that, from the sound of it, is like a cross between electrical engineering, chemistry, and steampunk--but she was missing a chip fabricator, a rather important bit of equipment if one is researching microfluidic chips.  Which she was.

But Prof. Khine had, in addition to the bucket o' brains needed for her Ph.D. and research career, that wonderful indie DIY sensibility that people I admire so often have, and she decided to build her own damn chip fab.  Since she dealt with the minute, she'd have to start with a full-sized design and then shrink it down... shrink it down... hmmm...

Not since Silly Putty was used to defeat fingerprint scanners has the world of childrens' toys contributed such a cool hack to the world of science.  Prof. Khine printed her circuits onto Shrinky-Dink plastic with her laser printer*, then sang the Shrinky-Dink jingle** as she stuck it in the oven.  Presto! Negative mold for one's microfluid chip, all ready to go.

Is this great, or what?  I think I need a very large research grant to investigate the possible scientific applications of the rest of the toy store.

* which, for those of you didn't know, doesn't use ink that soaks into the paper, but rather toner powder that's electrochemically bonded to the paper surface.  If your toner unit is busted, the powder won't fuse properly, and you can flake off chunks of the stuff off of your printouts.  (This lends a certain postmodern quality to one's term papers.)  The important part here is that the toner on the Shrinky-Dink clumped to itself as it shrank, and formed a little raised ridge like a line of frosting.

 ** It is true that I have no proof of this, but come on--wouldn't you?

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You know him as the Father of the Constitution,  the Father of the Bill of Rights, the fourth president of the United States (and the first U. S. president to wear trousers instead of knee breeches). Here's something you probably didn't know about James Madison -- he was a Geek.

Yeppers. A wee little geek-boy (he was about 5'4"). Like most Americans of the time, he was educated at home by his mother and tutors. Because of his poor health, he did not attend college at William and Mary as most well-to-do Virginia scions would have done, instead he went to The College of New Jersey, as Princeton was formerly named (*snicker*). He became involved in Politics at a fairly young age, and was an avid supporter of the Revolution. Poor health prevented him from military service during the war for independence, and I don't mean the "ouchies, I have a hangnail" variety of poor health. He was very frail and it was suggested that he suffered from epilepsy. He also claimed to suffer from a voice impairment in his youth, which he seemed to overcome with stubborn determination as he grew older.

In fact, he was so quiet and unimpressive that a fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph, agreed to present the Virginia Plan to the group, even though it was largely Madison's work. There had been a lot of talk at the time concerning the tendency of democracies to descend into mob rule and squabbling.  Madison believed that the central government of the states had to be stronger in order to protect the rights of individuals from local majorities. Because, as he put it, "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power."

Of course, he did not come up with these ideas out of nowhere. Like any self-respecting geek, he studied. He studied the strengths and weaknesses of  various forms of government both as they existed at the time and in ancient Rome and Greece, and took copious notes. Of course, the American Revolution and everything that came from it owed a tremendous debt to the ideas of John Locke. But that's what geeks do -- we study, we learn, we adapt what we learn to suit our circumstances.

My point is, the blueprint for our government was largely conceived and constructed by a small, frail young man who had done his homework. Our infant nation, saved from the chaos that was already beginning, by some kid who weighed 100 lbs soaking wet. To any person of the geeky persuasion, that's just sweet.

So, on this 222nd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, I raise my glass in a salute to one of the geeks who made this country what it is today. 

To James Madison, trouser-wearing geek boy and Father of the U. S. Constitution!

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District 9.  Where to begin?  I suppose by emphasizing that I had very, very high expectations for this film despite the fact that it was the writer/director’s first full-length feature.  I’m not a huge fan of Peter Jackson, but I even go so far as to tip my hat to him for producing the film.

District 9 is a visual and auditory infusion of pure, unadulterated awesome.  Although I generally enjoy most movies (even awesomely bad ones…for their badness), it’s very, very difficult for a film to impress me on this level…especially when I’ve fallen in love with the marketing tactics and the teaser trailer and heard nothing but good things about the man behind it.  I saw Cloverfield simply because I liked the way it was marketed, and….well, it wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t mind-blowing.  District 9 absolutely lives up to the hype.

The film is set up as a sort of after-the-fact documentary about an extraordinary event surrounding aliens who have already been on earth for twenty years.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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Today we take time out of our busy schedules to honor a real-life Geek Boy extraordinaire -- a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry, and all-around good guy.

Happy Birthday, Rider, and congratulations on being our very first Geek of the Week!

(Rider seen here as Tony Stark, accompanied by GeekaChicas' own Pearce).

Make the most of your special day! 

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