Nerdism: Don't blink.

Nina's Awesome Weeping Angel

Don't blink is a fairly straightforward nerdism that comes from Doctor Who. It refers to weeping angels, creatures that look like the statues you find in cemeteries except these statues can ruin your very existence. Imagine stone vampires with sharp fangs and sharp fingernails and sharp...everything, and they hunt in packs. And pretty much any statue could be a weeping angel. (Remember that next time you make fun of a garden gnome.) Fortunately weeping angels can't move when someone's looking at them. The only way to keep them at bay?

Don't blink.

Usually when someone utters, “don't blink,” she's referring to something scary that you need to keep your eyes on--a pot of risotto, a red dragon, a particularly antagonistic classmate.

However, there's a universal subtext to don't blink.

As Ferris Bueller put it, “life moves pretty fast,” so if you blink you might miss something. Gamers, programmers, book lovers, movie lovers, people lovers, fire fighters and race car drivers all battle eyestrain at some point because every one of us has something that sucks us in so deep that we don't want to close our eyes to it. Not even for a second.

So next time you're up to your eyeballs in something you love, remember the good Doctor's advice.

Quinn Dombroski - Don't Blink