In which the man discusses a very un-cyberpunk theme

It's surprising where cyberpunk pops up. Yesterday, I went to the Oneida River Festival on the Bear River in Idaho. The theme of the festival was to raise funds and awareness to preserve the Bear River as free-flowing, as opposed to putting a dam on it, as the plan currently seems to stand. I'm not entirely sure about the specifics, but there you have it. Damming it would be bad for the ecosystems, and therefore we should all go read poetry and listen to live music.

It was about the most folksy event you can go to without men in tight jeans and flannel standing around saying, "Yep. I reckon." There wasn't even a jitter of cell phone reception. The music included covers of Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, as well as an original song by a young man bewailing his change of fate since he spent his lucky quarter on buying a Coke from a machine (yes, you read that right). I wrote a poem for the event on the spot, and it seemed to be fairly well received, or at least as well as anything is received that I didn't labor and sweat over for hours. Nobody threw themselves at me.

Normally, the lack of people flinging themselves at my feet isn't a tragedy, but this one had a hint of the tragic about it. There was a lovely young woman there with beautiful bronzed skin and long, curly brown hair who danced to the band when no-one else did, in a cheap green dress and sandals. Watching her just stand there and dance with everyone watching made me think what it must have been like to watch hippies dance. She had the kind of build that makes skinny girls look sticklike in comparison, with amazing legs that had a pair of the most well-defined calves I've seen. As much as I imagine one of my characters becoming enthralled by a dancing punkette in a seedy techno club, I myself was mesmerized by this young thing. Naturally, I never talked to her. The cynic in me just kept telling me that there's no use talking to a pretty girl I'll never see again. The romantic in me just watched her dance.

But, as I said at the onset, cyberpunk did pop up. I grabbed Neuromancer to read. One of the professors from the school saw me reading and told me that she would be teaching the book in an online class in the Fall about cyberculture.

A class about cyberculture? Teaching Neuromancer? Now that is win. I'm going to have to get in on it somehow.