Scenes from Darcy’s talk at Westville High. Due to technical difficulties, the Westville Weezer and corn dog photos (!!!) are delayed, but we’ll post them soon.

(Click on the image to see the larger version. Charity promises to keep the cheesy-but-awesome special effects of PowerPoint to a bare minimum in the future.)

This week, the Geek Girls welcome Julie Linker, author of Crowned and Disenchanted Princess, here to discuss rivalries, pageants, and–of course–zombies. Want to know how to survive a zombie apocalypse? Julie has the answer.

Win: And … we’re giving away a copy of Crowned and Disenchanted Princess–two books, two winners! All you need to do is leave a comment on this entry.

1. Stereotypes? Geek Girls don’t need no stinking stereotypes! And yet, they have a strange hold on us. If you had to label your high school self – what would your label be?

Band Geek. I was a complete and total Band Geek, and I’m not ashamed to admit it! (Now, anyway.)

2. In Crowned, a beautiful but poor girl competes in beauty pageants against a richer, meaner rival. Have you ever faced a rival in real life — what happened?

Facebook prevents me from answering this question. Because thanks to its impressive social networking powers, the rival I want to write about has located me, knows where I live, and will very possibly read this interview. And then she (or he! I’m not saying it’s a girl!) would have written confirmation that we were, in fact, rivals.

Because, you see, we never actually admitted we were gunning for each other. We pretended we were friends. And we were friends, in a way, but there was always this one . . . thing hanging over us. A certain yearly competition similar to a certain sport that’s featured in a certain book that may or may not be advertised in the upper right hand corner of this website.

That’s all I can tell you. I’ve already said too much. But if I could say more, I’d probably mention that I totally kicked her/his butt Every. Single. Year.

And the fact that this still gives me sick pleasure is why I write young adult novels.

3. Does size matter … in tiaras, that is?

It’s not the size of the tiara that matters, it’s how you use it.

4. It’s a zombie apocalypse and you are trapped in the dressing room at a beauty pageant. Using only what you brought with you to the pageant, how will you defend yourself and ultimately save the world?

Am I trapped backstage with other beauty pageant contestants? Because if so, the good citizens of the world can rest easy-a mere handful of ticked-off beauty queens can take down an entire zombie army without so much as chipping a single French manicured acrylic nail.

Once you’ve walked across a brightly lit stage wearing nothing but a tiny bathing suit and five inch heels in front of hundreds of people, you’re not about to be intimidated by something as trivial as thousands of Undead corpses stumbling around trying to take over the world. Not to mention-and this is a very well-kept secret-Aqua Net is toxic to zombies.

That’s right-the hairspray that allowed your grandma’s beehive to defy gravity in the sixties, kept your mom’s Farrah flip “flipped” in the seventies, and blasted your bangs into perfect sky-scrapers of hair in the eighties, can also drop a zombie in its tracks.* More, if the wind direction is cooperating.

You see, Aqua Net is actually the brand name for “pehnolajilkankefafre,” a chemical that was developed by government scientists in a secret laboratory way back in the 1940′s. They were hoping it would be effective in combating an odd strain of were-chickens that had recently broken out near the Appalachian Mountains.

Unfortunately, however, the were-chickens proved to be both highly adaptable and highly vain. Within just a few days, the were-chickens wrestled control of pehnolajilkankefafre from the military and began using it to coif their feathers into elaborately arranged styles.

Devastated, the government sold the useless pehnolajilkankefafre to a fledgling cosmetic company for mere pennies. It wasn’t until the rise of “Hair Bands” in the 1980′s that they realized their mistake. Because as many of you already know, hair bands were comprised of zombies, not actual people.

What you probably don’t know, however, is that hair bands weren’t killed by Kurt Cobain and grunge. They were killed by Aqua Net. Literally.

Maintaining those glam locks required enormous amounts of hairspray, and night after night of inhaling the fumes . . . well, it finally just did them in.**

As soon as scientists pieced together what had happened, the government immediately ordered the makers of Aqua Net to increase its strength by one million percent, thereby making a single blast of the aerosol can fatal to the undead.

Which is why I, and the other pageant contestants trapped backstage, will simply grab our Aqua Net cans, kick off our stilettos and charge into the fray of zombies with nozzles primed and ready. The Zombie Apocalypse will be thwarted in a matter of minutes.

*Applicable to people who experienced at least part of their adolescence during years 1983 to 1989.

**Brett Michaels, lead singer of Poison, is the only zombie who survived the carnage. He is currently the star of a reality show on VH1.

5. Finally, what is the one interview question you wish people would ask you?

Is this the part where I talk about my fantasy where Oprah asks me how I got George Clooney to abandon his bachelor life and marry me?

Thanks, Julie!

Remember–leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win one of Julie’s books. Enter by Sunday night and we’ll post the winners on Monday, May 4th.

Gimme a W!
Gimme an H!
Gimme an S!
What’s that spell?

AWESOME!!1!!

Geek Girl Darcy spent Friday and Monday speaking to English classes at Westville High School in Illinois. The students there are smart, funny, and 100% made of awesome!

Big thanks to English teacher Johnnie Hull for coordinating the visit — and displaying her most excellent disco dancing skills.

That’s Ms. Hull second from left. Also in the photo are the equally amazing teacher’s aide Jackie Weller and Principal Extraordinaire Guy Goodlove.

More pics to come — as soon as I figure out why my SD reader isn’t reading (or find the connector thingie for my camera).

THANK YOU ALL FOR A WONDERFUL VISIT!

And WHS students, don’t forget to comment for the second chance drawing to win a $10 gift certificate for Blue Kangaroo Books!

Our guest this week, Julie Linker, is currently dealing with a lime-green Chihuahua. Darcy is still on her school visit. So I bring you this educational snippet from our inbox.

To: Charity
From: Darcy
Subject: Mushroom hunting

What? They don’t hunt for mushrooms in Minnesota? Seriously?

It’s a rite of spring in Illinois. It involves walking through the woods with your head down. Occasionally you need to look up — for clues. Mushrooms tend to grow beneath elm trees, especially dying elms. They also sometimes prefer to grow beneath ash or wild fruit trees. If you’re on the sunny side of a slope, you might be in luck — but it doesn’t have to be hilly; mushrooms sometimes grow in the flat areas, but only on the edges, unless they grow in the middle. It’s not an exact science.

Five of us tromped through the woods for a couple of hours. My brother found two mushrooms, his girlfriend found one. My step dad, who is so renowned for his mushroom hunting skills that he was once featured in a full page article re: mushroom hunting (Bob Jarvis – A Fungi) found zero.

It was still fun.

I Googled. Apparently people do hunt mushrooms in Minnesota (I assume this happens after the snow melts). So, how about you? Any unusual rites of spring in your neck of the woods (or Internet, as the case may be)?

The entire first chapter (beyond what we have here) of The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading is now available over on the Simon and Schuster site.

Ready? Okay!

Geek Girl Darcy checking in from her mom’s house in Illinois. I spent Friday with some of the coolest kids ever at Westville High School. I’d love to tell you more about it – and I will (!) – but not until I get to meet even more WHS students on Monday.

Being back at the high school where I spent my Junior year, almost wrecked the driver’s ed car, and received my one and only ‘F’ (It had to do with Mahatma Gandhi, calisthenics, and Chinese water torture – no really!) brought back all kinds of memories. Most of them were even good!

And … what goes with high school?
Bacon?
No, cheerleaders!

Geek Girl Charity was twittering the other day about cheering and haikus, and look what we’ve found on Google! It’s Tiffany of Poetry and Hums. A few months ago, Tiffany was wondering about cheerleading and haikus too. She gave cheer-ku a try and this is what she came up with:

Pirates pillage and
Plunder, raid the other team
Win the game tonight

Wildcats attack
Cardinals, true Blue will triumph
Go Kentucky, win!

This looked like fun so the Geek Girls jumped in:

Westville High School rocks!
Orange and black awesomeness
Tiger for the win!

We were curious about this woman who cheers in haiku, home schools her kids and blogs about both poetry and food, so we asked her a few questions:

1. As our readers know, the Geek Girls are totally anti-stereotype — yet we’re perpetually curious. If you had to put a label on yourself back in high school, what would that label be?

Hmmm, my group of friends called ourselves the “unclick” group. We were all very different. Band people, orchestra people, techy/math geeks, artsy, brainy… We didn’t really fit anywhere else, but we fit together.

2. We loved the Fictitious To Do Lists post on your blog. Imagine you are Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (let me know if you haven’t read this yet and I can change the character). What’s on your To Do List?

I’m so glad you liked the Fictitious To Do Lists! Those are so fun to write and I hope you give some a try yourselves. I haven’t read the book Pride and Prejudice, but I have seen the movies (I know – I need to read the book someday.) So here’s my try at Elizabeth Bennet’s to do list:

1. Read a book
2. Pretend to ignore Mr. Darcy as much as possible
3. Be annoyed with Mr. Darcy
4. Say something snarky to Mr. Darcy
5. Act above it all, as if I don’t need or want love
6. Dance with Mr. Darcy
7. Fall in love with Mr. Darcy
8. Kiss Mr. Darcy

3. BTW, what is on your real life list for today?

1. School the kids. (Is it summer yet?)
2. Work on my food blog, attempting to change it over to self hosted.
3. Worry a bit about teen daughter driving herself to dance with the new license.
4. Take teen son to guitar practice.
5. Laundry (this is never off the list)
6. Make dinner and remember to take pics for food blog
7. Try not to eat all the chocolate chip cookies made by daughter earlier.
8. Change youngest daughter out of mud covered shirt (more laundry)
9. Hope to catch on old M*A*S*H episode on TV
10. Crawl into bed

4. Can you write a haiku about bacon?

Smoky meat scent drifts
Awakening me from dreams
Breakfast sticks to hips

Sizzling hot pork fat
Juicy, delectable strips
Tantalize my tongue

5. What interview question do you wish someone would ask you?

“Where in the world would you like to go on the vacation we are giving you?”

Thanks, Tiffany, for sharing your cheer haikus, bacon haikus, and answering our questions!

I heard from Darcy and her school presentations went very well. She did four yesterday and has three schedule for Monday. They went off without a hitch expect for one small technical problem:

The battery in my remote presenter went out in the middle of the second one. The teacher had to sit with the laptop and I “clicked” her instead.

She’ll be back later next week with a full report and a few surprises thrown in as well. (Even I don’t know what they are.)

But today? I find out her mom took her mushroom hunting! At seven in the morning! On a Saturday!

I’m thinking she needs to give us a full report on that as well.

Darcy headed to Westville, Illinois late yesterday. She will be presenting her first author talks to the English students at Westville High School tomorrow and Monday.

Is she nervous about returning to the school where she attended her junior year and almost flunked Driver’s Ed? You bet. But more than that, she’s excited to find out if the school district still employs the Best Lunch Ladies in the Known World.

Report to follow!

Say what?

Synesthesia is not a word that pops up often in conversation but when it appeared on a friend’s Facebook wall this morning, Geek Girl Darcy felt compelled to investigate.

According to this Wikipedia article, synesthesia is:

a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

It’s that weird thing where some people experience music as colors. But, apparently, it’s even more than that.

In grapheme ? color synesthesia some people associate letters of the alphabet with particular colors.

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote this poem about it:

Vowels

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:
-O the Omega! the violet ray of [His] Eyes!

Even more lyrical (IMHO) is this statement by the subject of an 1893 study on Personification – a type of synesthesia in which a person assigns character traits to numbers, days, months and letters:

“T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but… 3 I cannot trust… 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his suavity.”

Okay, that’s just weird … but in a kind of cool way.

Even odder is Lexical –> gustatory synesthesia. It’s the condition in which individual words and sounds are associated with tastes. One person who “suffers” from a related cross-sensory experience describes the sensation when he hears the word “blue: as tasting:

Inky

In case you are wondering what letter corresponds to:

The Geek Girls believe that would be: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

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There is no experience necessary to be accepted into this FREE program. Find out how to apply for this, as well as opportunities for writers, actors and musicians here: Fresh Films: Filmmakers.