Razor Sharp

I teach college English (although not really, since this will be the last semester I teach it, having nothing to do with how well I did and everything to do with the fact that it wasn't ever going to last anyway, and I am supposed to pretend to be an expert when I am unemployed in three months with really no job prospects, but I'm sure I've complained enough about that before and I will again later). In my classes on Tuesday, I had the students compete to see which team could come up with the most cliches. When my students asked why cliches are bad, I explained that it's because they no longer evoke images in our heads. They're so familiar that they've lost their power, and all we hear is the cliche.

But this isn't always true. Whenever I hear the phrase "razor sharp," for intance, it puts a very specific scene in my mind.

I'm standing in the upper bathroom of our house. I am holding a pink disposable razor from my mom's sink cupboard in my hand, the blade resting against my thumb. I am fourteen, attending Catholic school, and my father won't allow me to shave my first mustache. He says it's just peach fuzz anyway and it's not a problem. It is a problem: the dress code forbids facial hair and I've been warned. My father likes to brag that he was born with a mustache, and I have never seen him without one except once, in a photo of him as a small child.

I'm looking at myself in the mirror. Looking at my mustache, the dark hairs individual and straight, brushing my lip. I hate it. I don't want to have a mustache. I don't want to get in trouble.

Then, I hear someone at the door, the door starts to open, and I grip the razor tightly, trying to make it disappear in my hand. My brother tells me to hurry up so we don't miss church, then leaves. When he is gone and I check my hand, the razor has left two deep straight cuts half an inch deep in my thumb, the skin white and puffy around them, the blood just starting to seep up.

It starts to hurt later, when I lie that I cut my hand on a knife. I only hope no one notices there are two parralel cuts, not just one.

And I learn just how sharp razors are.

I Am Who I Say I Am (and now I proved it)

It was a two and a half hour drive to Rexburg, Idaho, because that's where BYU Idaho is. Why they put it there, I can't say. I guess they liked it better that way. I went there to take a one hour test, to prove that I speak Hungarian, the first language I learned to speak. Needless to say, the test was about as easy as being asked to point to an apple in a bushel of apples when someone is holding my hand and I'm already kind of poking one finger out.

As I was sitting there, one of the kids I was taking the test with said BYU in Provo had the same test last week. I don't know. The website didn't say that. I guess they really should update the website, if nothing else, to save people from having to go into Idaho when they really don't mean to.

It's like walking all the way through Mordor to get to Mount Doom, just to find out that throwing the ring in the hearth fire would have sufficed after all if I just left it in there for a while.

I Dream Avatar Fanfiction

Warning: Avatar Spoilers

Because she is his sister, Zuko decided not to throw Azula into prison after the events of the third season of Avatar. Instead, he found it a fitting punishment to exile her to an island-fortress kingdom in the far west of the Fire Nation. The island is ruled over by a teenaged king who had spent the war grudgingly watching the western boundaries of the Fire Nation against an enemy that never appeared; most believed there was nothing west of the Fire Nation. He would be both her guardian and her friend while she was in exile.

Azula, of course, was furious when she arrived. She behaved spitefully to the young king, whose laid-back exterior betrayed an intense interior. Finally, he grew tired of hearing that she deserved to rule the Fire Nation because she was the best, and he challenged her to a race around the outer walls of the fortress. Using a form of firebending similar to a flamethrower, he beat her in the race, using fire like jets out of his feet to drive himself to breakneck speed around the perilous course of the parapets. Humiliated by her defeat at the hands of a nobody, she challenged him to Agni Kai, but he refused, saying he knew she would beat him in that. The lesson to her was obvious: play to your strengths. It was a humbling moment, but Azula's new wisdom would be tested when a ship with dark sails appeared in the western ocean.

I dreamed all of this two nights ago. I am a major geek, I know.

"...what I do with my own time" PS

I blinked hazily from my bed, trying to lift a hand to block out the bright light in my face. I noticed two things immediately: first, I couldn't move my arm. Second, the bright light was being held by someone I knew well. Neuromancer. And Neuromancer was holding a very sharp knife.

Even though his face was shadowed behind the bright light, I could see his eyes, dangerous and cold like an old dog's. "I read your blog from Tuesday," he said, his voice as hard as a steamshovel.

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light. "What did you think?"

He looked at the knife like he was trying to read something on the blade. "You said some pretty serious stuff. About William Gibson. About his books."

I tried to laugh. My voice cracked. "Oh, come on, Neuromancer, you know I love you! You know William Gibson is..."

He put his finger against his lips and my voice failed under his glare. "Oh, I know," he said, his voice hushed. "I just wanted to make sure you know. When you wake up, remember that there are some lines you just don't cross."

I was about to protest when he hit me right in the forehead. His fist was harder than I expected. When I woke up, he was back on the shelf, like he had never left. Or like he had accomplished what he wanted to do.

And the knife was resting on the pillow beside my head.

...what I do with my own time

I was listening to my Pandora radio station and came across a song called "Mona Lisa Overdrive" by the band Juno Reactor. It sounded like something from the soundtrack of Ghost in the Shell, which means, as my good friend the Lord Admiral would put it, it is relevant to my interests.

Upon investigation, I discovered (thanks to my old nemesis Wikipedia) that the song was performed by request for The Matrix Reloaded. This is, after all, very relevant to my interests, despite the fact that the second two Matrix movies sucked robot ass.

I frequently refer to William Gibson as my favorite living writer, and I am not about to withdraw that praise, but here I would like to say how disappointed I am with the majority of his writing. I found Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive very underwhelming; I kind of liked Virtual Light, quite liked Idoru, but couldn't stand All Tomorrow's Parties, which I found endlessly dragging to a flat finale--the whole novel could have been condensed to a hundred pages without losing a damn thing. My reaction to The Difference Engine was mixed (I found the story creative yet flawed in plotting), and the jury is still out on my final verdict. I flat-out loved Pattern Recognition, a postmodern romp through the high-tech modern world. I haven't read Spook Country yet because the reviews I found were generally negative.

This is a mixed bag, of course, but I haven't mentioned my two favorite Gibson works: Burning Chrome and, of course, Neuromancer, which needs no introduction. Some of the stories in Burning Chrome are some of Gibson's best work, particularly the title story, which I feel shows that perhaps he should constrain some of his big ideas to the short story format.

This is all a tangent based on one song, but this is my blog, and it's my business...

Impractical

He kicked the motorcyle's stand down and let it sit on the sun-baked sand beside the dealer man's wagon, the amped engine purring like it was happy with something. He pushed the goggles back, unhooking the heavy rubber mask with one hand, careful with the bad catch. He wore soft brown leather, real good against sand, and heavy mesh metal under all that in case someone got ideas. For as far as he could see beyond the rusty old wagon, nothing but sagebrush, stunted desert trees, and the blue-black mountains under the darkling sky. There was this heavy, ugly cloud blowing up from the south, but it wouldn't get there for at least half an hour, which gave him time to take the mask off and breathe the air for a bit.

The other guy was a pretty old one, both legs gone below the knee, his sweaty rolls of flesh wedged into a harness strung up all through this mobile home on runners. Made it so he bobbed around like a drunk spider getting from here to there, so he mostly just sat when people were watching. Didn't want to look stupid--too close to looking weak. His ride had these solar panels like some giant bug's wings. Why he parked in the middle of nowhere, only he knew. Maybe he knew he could deal here, like rats smell food. He had one of those cheap plastic helmets that made him look like a confused astronaut, and he was watching the guy in leather, waiting to see what his hands would do.

"You selling?" The guy in leather, voice heavy, no accent.

The guy in the harness just about coughed up a wad of phlegm getting his voice in gear. "Sure." Helmet made him sound like he's stuck his head in a well.

"Guns? Ammo?"

"Sure." Like it's just another thing, the harness guy's hand starts going for the piece they both knew was there, because if you're buying, it means you ain't selling, and you ain't selling what you ain't got. No point trading with a dead man, and that bike could come in all sorts of useful.

But leather guy's knife came out in a flash, but real casual, because they're still doing business. "Trade you vitamins. Got a half bottle."

Harness guy didn't like the development. Still had his hand half there, thinking about it. "Pulled it off some poor dead bastard, I'll bet."

"No one you knew." Eyes black like obsidian under the smear from the goggles. 'Don't try it' eyes. 'You'll like me better if you live' eyes. Real crazy eyes, the crazy you work at.

"Got this thing." Harness guy levered something down from the ceiling, where he had most of his shit taped up, because he needed the floor space for things like beans and those big plastic jugs of water. "Bought it off some of pilgrims going to see the old city. Said they'd bought it from some militia types who found Jesus. I reckon they found him all right, so now they go together permanent, know what I mean. This thing, impractical. Ain't much good past two hundred feet." Been waiting to pass it off to somebody crazy.

"Talk, talk," growled leather guy. He was looking at the thing, the barrel thicker than his head, this crank on the side and a hanging necklace of beads the size of coconuts that could have been the magazine. "You trading?"

Talking lazy, like it's not really a problem. "Half a bottle? Stab me and take it, at least that's honest. Throw in the knife. This little doggy leave a hole like a melon. Pieces everywhere."

"Impractical, you said."

"Real impractical."

He gave him the vitamins and the knife. Threw in some seeds, too, real good desert wheat. Never know if you're coming back again, need a good place to buy.