Diary of a Network Geek

I know some of my hobbies and obsessions seem rather more costly than is reasonable.

I’ll bet most of my readers thought it was a little crazy to even contemplate bidding on ephemera and, well, junk from the Battlestar Galactica set. I suppose, in a way, it is. And, I would imagine that more than a few people who are drawn in by the gravity well of time and energy I like to call The Diary of a Network Geek would find my semisecret urge to create my own props for my own, internal, unpublished science-fiction world, well, a bit odd, to say the least. Well, for those of you who doubt, I share with you Weta Collectibles: Original Rayguns. Look at them. Look at them closely. Now, look at the prices. There’s money in those rayguns!

Who’s crazy now?

So, yeah, I bid on some Battlestar Galactica items this week.

You know that part of being a full-on network geek like me is being into science fiction, right? Well, it is. And some of the best science fiction on television in the past couple years has been Battlestar Galactica. They’re almost done with the series, which, wisely, has a definite story arc and a planned ending. Naturally, they decided to whip up a little frenzy about all this with an auction of genuine, screen-used, props from the show. Only, I think things may not have turned out quite the way they hoped…

Apparently, the recession has hit BSG fans pretty hard. So, I don’t feel quite so bad for getting aced out of a couple super-geeky, background props that I really can’t afford to spend money on in the first place. Besides, in keeping with the only thing resembling a “New Year’s Resolution” I made this year, that I want to produce more than I consume, I should be making stuff like this. In fact, with my latest obsession, photography, I think it might be fun to create “props” for a science-fiction setting of my very own. Between watching all the seasons of Battlestar Galactica out on DVD and watching my Space: Above and Beyond DVDs, well, I’m finding myself inspired to think of some good, old-fashioned science-fiction stories to tell with the camera. Surely, the world could handle a little old school, gritty, space opera complete with photographic illustrations.

Well, we’ll see how that goes as things warm up and my garage gets more usable again. If I were to clean it out and make a little room, I could easily have a photography studio and a prop workshop out there.
It would keep me off the streets at night!