The 10 Geekiest Pieces of Furniture in the Universe

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, the Rubik's Cube Coffee Table was born.

The Downside:

We 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 the 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 anyone with even a smattering of nerd genes somewhere 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.

So it only makes sense to give us the game in furniture form!

The Downside:

"Does anyone have enough letters to spell 'this party blows?'"

Oh, wait. No. That actually doesn't make sense at all. What do you do, have each player sit on the floor behind their sofa with a stack of letter pillows? The novelty of that will wear off about three seconds before you finish suggesting it to your party guests.

And what do you do between games? Shaped like the game's tile holders and probably made of the same wood, comfort couldn't have been high on the list of requirements during the design stage. Sure, it looks kind of cool and you could spend hours spelling out dirty words to make yourself laugh in those lonely wee hours of the morning. But who would want to sit on it? Its sharp edges and unforgiving angles look like something from the lab of an evil genius chiropractor.

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. Like these wealthy nerds who decided to trick out their home theater to look like the control deck of the Death Star.

For an extra dash of coolness they added a life-size model of badass bounty hunter, 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 we're saying is it's awesome.

The Downside:

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 rubbing 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.

The Downside:

We like Seven of Nine's futuristic boobies 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, not The Next Generation or even Deep Space Nine, but fucking Voyager?

This is right above the toilet.

And 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, the one that forced his wife to leave him, is a shut-in's dream cave making its owner a little more Gollum-like with each passing day.

Any claims adjuster with glasses can live the nerd life, but it takes a special kind of geek to die a nerd death. If for some reason you want to be picked on in the afterlife as much as you were here, why not go to Valhalla in style?

The folks at Eternal Image have created two ways for you to spend your eternity safe in the knowledge that you probably were more disturbing to Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner than millions of other ravenous, reality-challenged fans could ever dream of being. The Star Trek coffin and urn can help you carry your love of sci-fi with you as you boldly go to the undiscovered country six-feet under.

The Downside:

On the one hand, it beats the shit out of the standard dollar store urn or pine box most of us will find ourselves in. But really, the funeral isn't for you. You'll be dead.

No, the funeral service is for all your friends and family to get together and celebrate the fact that you could have been a much worse person if you had really tried. But with these, you'll be reminding them that your entire days spent on this mortal coil were devoted to the show that gave us Tribbles and Ricardo Montalban's prosthetic chest.

For more geeky stuff that will make you weep for humanity, check out The 7 Most Impressive (And Depressing) Geek Collections and PathetiCon: 8 Geek Conventions God Never Intended.

And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks to see which columnist owns the Captain Kirk chair.