Though I had resolved not to, my appearance is “perpetually shaggy”. Unkempt hair, odd shirts with not-always work-safe innuendo, facial hair feigning a certain sense of “busy-ness”… all designed to portray a lack of concern for and time to waste on trivialities.
But, I must admit, a bulk of this is quite calculated. As in, shaggy hair doesn’t just mean wild hair, it means clean, nice-smelling, well groomed hair that’s been pseudo-randomly messed, “for effect”. T-shirts worn with funny messages aren’t arbitrarily thrown on—they’re tailored to the kinds of people I’m going to run into for the day. From meetings, to the number of bus rides, to which departments I’ll be hanging out at, … . I look unaware, but I am quite perceptive and figure all this into my outwardly unkempt appearance.
Anywho, this obviously extends to geeky shirts too (warning, quantum physics humour), and I’ve been sorely disappointed by the (lack of) attention this shirt has garnered so far. I mean, I pick it on days when I’m hovering around physics/really geeky engineering types, but so far it’s been lacklustre, to say the least. Either people don’t know, don’t care or don’t in anyway share my sense of “humour”. But not one to give up, I continued to wear it on select occasion, and I must say it was a smart move.
I was in a hallway this afternoon when someone behind me stifled a giggle, going “Hey, nice shirt. Where’d you get it?”; I turn smiling with an “It gets better”, and point to the opposite text on the front. At which point she bursts out laughing, remarking “how sweet it is”. We got around to talking, and after a bit, I let her know—what she deemed obvious—that I’d gotten it from one of the many geek stores on the internet… thinkgeek.
Later in the evening over coffee, I got to know more about her. She’s über brilliant, funny, and apart from liking geeks, she also likes macs!
Now is when I wished my brain didn’t hold random information such as this.
Either way, my point is, I’m unkempt, but calculatedly so.
Unrelated: I just got copy of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I’m wicked excited. Even if it’s cookie-cutter based off of the original, I am guaranteed 60–80 hours of super immersive and fun gameplay. Rock.