Geek Culture: Interior Design - The Geek Way

So you've finally peeled yourself out of your parent's basement and got yourself an apartment of your own. Good for you! You might actually meet people! Well, maybe not, but it will give you some new scenery in which to spend more countless hours playing WoW.

But should you decide to clear out the piles of empty pizza boxes, pop cans and coffee cups and invite people over to your awesome new digs, you should consider decorating a little. Question is, what's a geek to do? Well, you could always go to your local Ikea, and get the same crap everyone else who just moved out of their parents' has. Or you could whip out the credit card and do your shopping online. It's all a matter of where to look. Here's a look at some of the top pieces of geeky furnishings that I've found for you

The Han Solo Encased In Carbonite desk from Tom Spina Designs is a perfect place to start things off with. Not only can you spend hours imagining that you were Han and that a sexy Princess Leia would come and rescue you, but it makes for a great place to set up your home office. Having this beauty in your office would leave even the most tangentially geeky person in awe of your furniture owning prowess.

Couple the awesomeness that is the Han Solo Encased In Carbonite desk with the Emperor's Throne (also from Tom Spina Designs) and you've got yourself a workspace from which to rule the world, or at least your apartment.

There really are no words to describe this totally badass replica of the throne where Emperor Palpatine himself once sat his pasty, boney ass in beside fuck yeah!

Now, if only you could figure out how to use the Force to get that last slice of cold pizza from the fridge.

For a mere $2000, you can have Captain Kirk's chair from the original Star Trek series, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. Having this chair in your living room makes even the most mundane of tasks an action-filled adventure in the 23rd century! Whether you're ordering pizza, changing channels or just masturbating gloomily, you'll feel like Captain Kirk ordering pizza, changing channels and masturbating gloomily and have all the confidence of a man who humped his way across the galaxy.

This chair swivels, lights up and plays sound effects (intercom hail, phaser and more) and immortal phrases that dripped from the lips of William Shatner when he commanded Starfleet’s most famous ship. This includes Shatner’s full "Space: The Final Frontier" prologue, "Chekov, arm photon torpedoes" and the perpetually useful "security alert to all decks". The officially licensed Enterprise furniture is available at Diamond Select Toys.

If you plan on entertaining more than just yourself in your hovel, you'll need a couch. And a coffee table. Here are a few options to geek up your living room, in a classy way.

For anyone with even the tiniest hint of nerd genes inside them, Scrabble was the awesomest of board games for one simple reason: it made you look smart. Sure, if you walk around all day spelling difficult words at people, you'll eventually get shot. But do it in the context of a Scrabble game, and suddenly you're the life of the party.

Do you know what's awesome about chemistry? Fucking everything, that's what. Argon? Lead? Molybdenum? Back in the day being a geek wasn't just about video games and a shrine to Megan Fox, you also had to be the kid with thick rimmed glasses who carried a pocket protector and actually knew what the fuck calculus was good for. Now that everything nerdy is ultra cool, it's time to embrace that genius heritage with the Periodic Table (get it?), which has a sample of all 88 naturally occurring elements embedded in a replication of the Periodic Table. At $8,550, it ain't cheap, but keeping it real never is. And while the table is a guaranteed conversation starter, each element comes in its own individual cube, meaning if you ever throw a party, you're going to wake up the next day with a table containing only shit elements like calcium and fucking xenon gas with a busted thorium cube leaking small amounts of radiation. Meanwhile some jackass is trying to pawn the chunks of gold, silver and platinum you like to rest your coffee on.

If gaming is more your style than science, (for shame! Science brought you that video game console, you fool!) then you could always go for the  Rubik's Cube Coffee Table instead. Rubik's Cubes were once a huge part of our culture, and back in the 80s everyone had one. The fact that most people "solved" it by breaking it apart or rearranging the stickers didn't matter.

But for some puzzle geeks, the Rubik's Cube remained the exemplar of cool. In a masterstroke of unnecessary and inexplicable inspiration, someone gambled that those people might need a table to keep coffee on, or to toss out some copies of Wired magazine when friends were coming over. And thus,  this piece of furniture genius was born. I know what you're thinking. Get a bunch of friends together to try to solve this huge bastard, and you'll have a great time. Sorry to spoil your fun, but retailing for $600, this table combines all of the function of a table with none of the fun of a Rubik's Cube, since it doesn't actually work. So really it functions as a table in much the same way any object of a similar size would, including the box the table comes in.

For some folks, it takes a little more than one piece of furniture to geekify their domains. They'll turn a whole room into a shrine to some piece of pop culture. Super-fans Vic Wertz and Lisa Stevens used to run the Official Star Wars Fan Club and even the Star Wars Insider magazine. But even though they’re both out of that business now, they still pay homage to their dark lord and master each and every day. The entire thing was designed by Doug Chiang, the lead designer on Episodes I and II. DVDs are tucked behind a hidden door replica of Han Solo in carbonite, and the entire star field is lit by fiber optics.

For an extra dash of badassery, they added a life-size model of Boba Fett, and a life-size model of closet case, C3PO. Throw in a massive flatscreen and a few wicked chairs, and you have the ultimate place to watch Star Wars. Having any kind of home theater is pretty awesome, but a Star Wars home theater is double deep-fried awesome with extra awesome dipping sauce. What I'm really trying to say is, it's awesome.

The downside is that it's pretty much only good for watching Star Wars. It might get a little weird having Boba Fett see you cry when Macaulay Culkin dies at the end of My Girl. And forget about porn. Can you imagine tugging one out under the never-ending robot gaze of Threepio? His cold, robotic stare, observing you. Judging you.

Not enough to just deck out one room? Well, you and Tony Alleyne of England will have a lot to talk about. A big fan of Star Trek: Voyager, he completely stripped his apartment and refitted it to look like the starship.

Much like most of you, I like Seven of Nine's space-age tits too, and arguably there's something cool about living in an immersive world in which it seems like they're only a warp core breach away, but come on. We're talking about freaking Voyager here. While late at night after binge drinking Yoo-Hoo and schnapps it might seem like an awesome idea to model your entire home after Star Trek, but dressing it up as the second worst Star Trek series ever? Not Star Trek, TNG or even Deep Space Nine, but fucking Voyager?!

In the harsh light of day, the fantasy falls apart a bit. For instance, there is no longer the harsh light of day. Lacking windows as the dank starship Voyager did, Alleyne's home is a shut-in's dream cave making its owner a little more Gollum-like with each passing day. And in case you're wondering, yes, his wife left him.

And lastly, the piece of furniture that I stumbled on this morning that started this whole thing off: The Binary Table 01, from BRC Designs.

Let’s face it, a lot of people don’t recycle their old electronics. When they get a new cell phone, laptop, or replace that old desktop they’ve had collecting dust since 1995, most people are clueless about what to do with their old tech products. So, into the trash they go. However, one design firm decided to follow the Three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle), and decided to create something out of all those discarded computer parts.

In an abandoned warehouse, BRC Designs found a heap of old and discarded computers and electronics. They took motherboards, computer chips, LED screens, and hard drive disks, and used them to make one of the geekiest coffee tables I’ve ever seen. By bending the materials into the correct shape, and holding them in place with sheet metal screws, the Binary Table 01 was born. Even the top of the table is recycled. It too was found in the abandoned warehouse.

Although you can’t actually plug it in and expect it to work, the table is still interactive. The Binary Table 01 has disks that spin, buttons that click, and pieces that slide. So, if you’re bored on a rainy day, at least your coffee table can briefly entertain you.