The typical girl used to be attracted to a hunk who could pull himself under her car and fix whatever doodad kept making her stall at a red light. Now, that same girl wishes to God that a handsome savior would operate on her Internet connection and fix whatever firewall keeps screwing up her file transfers. What is it about dorks that we find so endearing? Perhaps it's a reflection of our own inadequacies and personal flaws. Maybe it is their uninhibited ability to project love and affection toward what society often regards as lame. Guys often view female dorkiness as an automatic vulnerability that allows them to take care of their girl. This plays into the whole gender identity mess that feminists have been trying to sweep under their hairy armpits for the past century.

But, the answer could be even simpler than that: Dorks make us look good.

How do you know if you're dating a dork, or (gulp) might even be one? There are, of course, a few telltale signs, such as zealous office hours attendance and squeaky, nasal voice reminiscent of Screech Powers. But the others might take a little more detective work, so take careful notes:

Dorks tend to type ridiculously fast, though slightly inaccurately, with two fingers. I like to refer to this as the stabbing technique. It's loud, obnoxious and the perfect soundtrack to any dork's busy work day.

The slicked-back bowl haircut went out of style long before stirrup pants. So did fanny packs, David Hasselhoff and Magic Cards. I don't care if you played a blue and white deck. Keep it to yourself, it freaks people out. Just letting you know.

Along the same lines, nobody wants to play Scrabble with a dork. "Qat" is not a real word, it is not a synonym for "cat" and I don't care if you look it up on the scrabble.com dictionary. Trivial Pursuit turns into much more than just a game with dorks, who will go to great lengths to memorize the bulk of the questions and use them as away messages online when they are idle.

They tend to forgo partying weekend nights to read a book, and I'm not talking about a few chapters from their textbook as mid-term review. These readers mean business. More often than not, they'll pass on grass to pleasure read Leaves of Grass. If they do go out, dorks either remain dead sober or turn into crazed vomit machines. If one happens to appear drunk but isn't lurching around seeking refuge in a toilet or nearby bucket, chances are they're "drunk" on nonalcoholic punch. If a dork you know goes out drinking, expect a drunk-dial or two along the lines of "Heeeeey dude! I'm soooo ineeeeebriatedly drunk! I JUST HAD TWO DRINKS!!! Whoooa."

Unfortunately, many dorks suffer from a disease known as "Social Awkwardness Syndrome, Seriously," also known as SASS. Among the symptoms are an inability to discuss common topics without relating it to "The Matrix" and a nervous twitch that precedes random quotations from the great philosophers and Sting.

There is a subtle sense of alienation felt when conversing with victims of SASS. Although it can often be a noticed as a product of esoteric jargon, it often comes down to the dork's inability to differentiate between serious and sarcastic comments. He thinks anything he says can be easily counteracted with a painfully loud "NOT," though they neglect to remember that phrase lost its social significance around the same time Madonna started making shitty music.

Their musical taste is cringe-worthy, at best. A tasteful collection of classical is overshadowed by an obsession with three CDs - Dexy's Midnight Runners, Enigma and the soundtrack to "The Fifth Element." They download music off Boogle that their foreign language teacher had played as part of an in-class listening pop quiz because, get this, they like it.

When watching TV, they tend to watch highly fascinating networks such as Animal Planet, the Travel Channel and local government C-SPAN. According to a dork, who wishes for his name to be withheld for obvious reasons, shows on HGTV such as "Modern Masters" are stupendous, but "I HATE 'Designing For The Sexes,' and the show with that woman who looks like a water buffalo." Good to know, Sir Dorkus of Lame-a lot.
Dorks find it hard to hide behind jokes such as, "Whoever smelt it, dealt it." As a retort, dorks will flip a sentence around and consider it clever. For instance, while dining out one might say, "You know, this is the worst restaurant I've ever been to!" A normal person would agree, maybe offer a suggestion pertaining to the restaurants sub-par quality. But a dork will shake his head slyly and say, "Yoooou're the worst restaurant I've ever been to."

Some dorks have no other way to express their embarrassing wit than writing a weekly column for a controversial school newspaper full of politically incorrect insults that people take way too seriously. Why would anyone take to heart a humor-opinion column in the Arts section written by an obviously dorky girl in aviator glasses? After all, self-deprecating humor is a sure sign of dorkiness.

There's a little bit of dork in all of us. When done right, it can be endearing. Nothing says I love you quite like a pocket protector. When done wrong, however, that's another story. If you don't like dorks, you're at the wrong college, buddy. I mean, get real. This is Brandeis.