Friday, July 10, 2009
Rat Attack
One of the nicest things about my new haircut is that showers are so much easier. It's a matter of minutes to get clean and dry, and messy situations are easier to handle. Like, for example, when I am covered in the exploded remnants of a rat. There was something of a babysitting mishap, to say the least. I was just reading a feminist fairy tale to the Disney nerd I babysit, when there was a peculiar noise from outside her room. It was kind of a drumming grate, like a carrot in the garbage disposal. I told the kid to stay put, snatched up her little aluminum baseball bat, and intrepidly investigated the situation like a good superhero. Long and disgusting story short, I wound up covered in a fine mist of blood particles from some unfortunate rat that wandered into the air conditioning unit and got its own personal horror movie carnival ride. The blood splattered all over the walls of the house, up to a couple feet above my head. I turned off the air conditioning and reassured the kid, but ten bucks an hour only covers childcare, not cleaning up rodent entrails. Her parents were less than pleased. Eight showers are not enough to make me feel clean again.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
What Asimov's Law?
Okay, that wonderful new red rabbit security program Mycroft stuck on my computer? It's gone all I, Robot and decided that I am engaging in self-destructive behavior by visiting some of my favorite websites. I don't care what you think about fanfic, Myke. I don't appreciate my computer automatically navigating away from fansites. And I hate it when my machinery gets all sanctimonious and acts for my own good. I know Myke wrote all those little warning messages. They ooze smugness.
I've been trying to infiltrate Administrative mode so I can actually make changes. It took hours, since I'm fairly sure my computer is hiding the files from me. The little bunny cartoon search helper makes such an innocent face when it tells me it can't find my crap. The computer also apparently learns from our encounters, and adapts its defense mechanisms accordingly. I don't have anything on my computer that is labeled 'control panel,' 'administrator,' 'security,' or 'fuck you, search engine'. I finally called Myke and threatened to take this computer apart with a screwdriver looking for the motherboard. All problems can be solved with a creative enough application of violence.
I've been trying to infiltrate Administrative mode so I can actually make changes. It took hours, since I'm fairly sure my computer is hiding the files from me. The little bunny cartoon search helper makes such an innocent face when it tells me it can't find my crap. The computer also apparently learns from our encounters, and adapts its defense mechanisms accordingly. I don't have anything on my computer that is labeled 'control panel,' 'administrator,' 'security,' or 'fuck you, search engine'. I finally called Myke and threatened to take this computer apart with a screwdriver looking for the motherboard. All problems can be solved with a creative enough application of violence.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Battle Scars
I have lovely purple splotches all over my skin. I've been taking pictures for posterity, since one of them seems to be developing into the shape of the Virgin Mary. Well, the Virgin Mary as envisioned by Mr. Potato Head. But it's still a cool bruise. And on second thought, those pictures are mostly for me. They're in a place that posterity doesn't need to see.
I'm glad to say, I'm taking my injuries like a champion, and not whining incessantly. It does suck that the cold packs are useless, though. I need to invest in a topical numbing gel or something. One of the hidden downsides to cryogenesis.
The ringing in my ears has changed pitch. Not sure what that means. I've been tinkering with my sister's electric keyboard, and if I could actually tell the keys apart, I'd know exactly which note was playing constantly in my head. As it is, it's the third highest black key. Very annoying.
Firecracker got stalked by some intrepid reporter, who managed to capture a few awkward moments on camera before he blasted away. It's hard to avoid the news clips, though I really don't want to see his face anymore. There's a betting pool on how long before he gets unmasked. I find that kind of speculation really morbid, but I'm guessing not long. He doesn't have the brains or the cunning to keep a secret like that. He's just some jerk with flamethrower fists. Of course, if anybody on the beach got a good look at him, he'd be busted even quicker. I didn't see his face, and I'm not sharing any other identifying details. Yuck.
I'm glad to say, I'm taking my injuries like a champion, and not whining incessantly. It does suck that the cold packs are useless, though. I need to invest in a topical numbing gel or something. One of the hidden downsides to cryogenesis.
The ringing in my ears has changed pitch. Not sure what that means. I've been tinkering with my sister's electric keyboard, and if I could actually tell the keys apart, I'd know exactly which note was playing constantly in my head. As it is, it's the third highest black key. Very annoying.
Firecracker got stalked by some intrepid reporter, who managed to capture a few awkward moments on camera before he blasted away. It's hard to avoid the news clips, though I really don't want to see his face anymore. There's a betting pool on how long before he gets unmasked. I find that kind of speculation really morbid, but I'm guessing not long. He doesn't have the brains or the cunning to keep a secret like that. He's just some jerk with flamethrower fists. Of course, if anybody on the beach got a good look at him, he'd be busted even quicker. I didn't see his face, and I'm not sharing any other identifying details. Yuck.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Why Things Exploded
You know the saddest part about last night? The laser-wielding sharks are the ones who stuck around to rescue people. Firecracker lit out of there after the explosion. I don't know if he ever got his pants back. The sharks are the ones who pinpointed the injured people in the water and on the beach, and hovered over them until the rescue crews arrived. It turns out that Waverider lost track of his son for fifteen minutes, and sent out sharks with face-recognition software to find him. The kid turned up a few minutes after the explosion. When your dad's a pioneer in the field of surveillance technology, I guess you have to go to great lengths to get a little privacy to make out with your boyfriend. I'm shocked he managed to slip the tracers for so long, honestly. I guess it helps that he was on dry land.
Firecracker is in the doghouse. He blew up the pier, wrecked every car parked next to the beach, ripped up the sidewalk and street, knocked over a ridiculous amount of palm trees, blasted most of the beach all over the street, capsized eight boats and oh yes injured a number of innocent bystanders, among them your friendly neighborhood cryogenetic. And nobody can find him to give him the bill, though a very angry Waverider is looking. And all because he never bothered getting on friendly terms with the local supers, or even reading the basic government info packets. I mean, seriously. If it's mechanical and looks like an aquatic creature in this part of Florida, it belongs to Waverider. Taylor's got a great story about scuba diving and taking pictures of the lobsters migrating, except one of them started taking pictures of her.
I've been marinating my bruises in the pool all day. The pool is icy cold after several hours of me splashing around, which is just as well, since I don't particularly want my sister's company right now. She's been mumbling just to annoy me. I know she's mumbling, since I can hear everyone else over the ringing in my ears, but she takes an unwholesome pleasure in mocking me. I can't imagine why.
Firecracker is in the doghouse. He blew up the pier, wrecked every car parked next to the beach, ripped up the sidewalk and street, knocked over a ridiculous amount of palm trees, blasted most of the beach all over the street, capsized eight boats and oh yes injured a number of innocent bystanders, among them your friendly neighborhood cryogenetic. And nobody can find him to give him the bill, though a very angry Waverider is looking. And all because he never bothered getting on friendly terms with the local supers, or even reading the basic government info packets. I mean, seriously. If it's mechanical and looks like an aquatic creature in this part of Florida, it belongs to Waverider. Taylor's got a great story about scuba diving and taking pictures of the lobsters migrating, except one of them started taking pictures of her.
I've been marinating my bruises in the pool all day. The pool is icy cold after several hours of me splashing around, which is just as well, since I don't particularly want my sister's company right now. She's been mumbling just to annoy me. I know she's mumbling, since I can hear everyone else over the ringing in my ears, but she takes an unwholesome pleasure in mocking me. I can't imagine why.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Boom
Quite a spectacle tonight. I was there. Let me start from the beginning.
I went down to the beach with my family unit to catch the fireworks and browse the stands. I got the coolest set of earrings- hoops with a thread snowflake pattern, except in orange. I shall wear them everywhere. My sister got a hot dog, and hopefully asked them to hold the e coli. She's looking a little green, though that might just be from the rest of the evening. I trusted the frozen foods stalls a bit more, and slurped a lemon slushie. The noise is half the appeal of it, and it wouldn't taste quite as good without my sister's annoyance as garnish. Mmm.
We got ourselves settled on the beach away from the speakers blaring obnoxious patriotic music, and got a prime spot right in front of an obnoxious patriotic asshole. You know the type. The one who wishes he were military, and watches war movies all the time, but is far too undisciplined to actually sign up. He got loud, hollering "Bring the rain!" and other slogans while we still had fifteen minutes to go. I didn't turn around, though my I had a few choice words on the tip of my tongue that could have slagged the sand into molten glass. See, I can be polite. It was dark, and we still had five minutes to go when the commotion started. The sea was thick with boats, and I heard hollering from over the waves. Most of the boats had little greenish lights on them, so I thought for a moment they had lifted out of the water. Then the lasers started. Flying robotic hammerhead sharks with rotating laser turrets on their heads. It took a while to process that. The crowd started running pretty much immediately. I wish I could say I stayed behind to protect someone who had fallen and was being trampled. I wish it were that heroic. I stayed because I wanted to see what was going on, and I thought I could tough it out if necessary. Just like all those other idiots left on the beach.
The hammerheads were still about thirty yards out when the asshole behind me started stripping. I noticed it when his pants landed on my towel and he bolted past me, heading for the water. I got a brief glimpse of something I really wish I hadn't seen, and then he shot out over the water like a jet. Exactly like a jet, in fact. Right down to the blistering streams of fire propelling him. I didn't see his next move, because I was about ten feet away from my previous position, blinking the white hot afterimage out of my eyes and shielding my face from the spray of burning sand he kicked up. Yeah, that's Firecracker. Our hero.
He'd pretty much ruined my night vision, so all I saw were crazy streaks of light every time he maneuvered and blasted a shark blimp, but I heard the boats frantically bumping and roaring to get away. The police boats were whooping, the sharks were making an eerie feedback screech, and Firecracker was bawling "Get some!" as the exploding sharks rippled back soundwaves from the condos for double the ridiculous amount of noise. By this time I had enough sense to retreat under a lifeguard hut, since at least two dozen sharks were out over the beach, using their lasers like catfish use their feelers. They weren't burning anything, though I kept my eyes far away from the lights bouncing off the sand. Blindness, you know.
The other people under the lifeguard hut were predominantly male, young, and the type to surf in a hurricane. I don't surf, but we got along fine, whispering commentary and muffled shrieks as if this were a sporting event. In a way, it was. Firecracker was giving a lot better than he got. The sharks mostly veered away from him, sweeping their lasers over the boats beneath. The details got a bit blurry, since a huge cloud of steam from Firecracker's propulsion billowed up around him. Thankfully, none of the boats were that close to shore.
It was hard to keep track of things between the darkness, the flashing lights, the fire and the sand, but Firecracker veered towards the pier, chasing a shark or something. The pier from which they launch the fireworks. We all realized this at pretty much the same time. My response was on the vulgar end of the spectrum, though nobody seemed to hear it since we were all running as fast as we could over the sand, and didn't stop once we hit the boardwalk. I don't even know where the flying sharks went, because I was setting a new landspeed record.
The explosion was immense. No. There aren't words immense enough to describe what it was. It was ten minutes of fireworks, an entire pier packed full of explosives, rolled into one awful moment. It didn't make a sound, any more than a tidal wave makes things wet. It slammed into me, and I felt it in my rib cage, not my ears. Even as far as I was from the pier, I lost contact with the ground. The next thing I know, I was watching a paramedic mouth words at me as she attacked my eyes with a flashlight. Nothing's broken. Just a little shock and some scrapes and bruises. They don't hurt yet. A little blood came out of my ears, but I'm wearing my new earrings and the hearing is back in one ear, mostly. All fine.
My parents are pissed, but also feeling way guilty, since they lost track of their offspring in the crowd, and I've got just enough bruises to play it up for sympathy. I teared up through their lecture, not because anything they said got through to me. I don't know why. The whole evening, I guess. I've barely spoken a word to them, but I'm spilling my guts now and I don't know why I'm crying again.
Stupid Firecracker.
I went down to the beach with my family unit to catch the fireworks and browse the stands. I got the coolest set of earrings- hoops with a thread snowflake pattern, except in orange. I shall wear them everywhere. My sister got a hot dog, and hopefully asked them to hold the e coli. She's looking a little green, though that might just be from the rest of the evening. I trusted the frozen foods stalls a bit more, and slurped a lemon slushie. The noise is half the appeal of it, and it wouldn't taste quite as good without my sister's annoyance as garnish. Mmm.
We got ourselves settled on the beach away from the speakers blaring obnoxious patriotic music, and got a prime spot right in front of an obnoxious patriotic asshole. You know the type. The one who wishes he were military, and watches war movies all the time, but is far too undisciplined to actually sign up. He got loud, hollering "Bring the rain!" and other slogans while we still had fifteen minutes to go. I didn't turn around, though my I had a few choice words on the tip of my tongue that could have slagged the sand into molten glass. See, I can be polite. It was dark, and we still had five minutes to go when the commotion started. The sea was thick with boats, and I heard hollering from over the waves. Most of the boats had little greenish lights on them, so I thought for a moment they had lifted out of the water. Then the lasers started. Flying robotic hammerhead sharks with rotating laser turrets on their heads. It took a while to process that. The crowd started running pretty much immediately. I wish I could say I stayed behind to protect someone who had fallen and was being trampled. I wish it were that heroic. I stayed because I wanted to see what was going on, and I thought I could tough it out if necessary. Just like all those other idiots left on the beach.
The hammerheads were still about thirty yards out when the asshole behind me started stripping. I noticed it when his pants landed on my towel and he bolted past me, heading for the water. I got a brief glimpse of something I really wish I hadn't seen, and then he shot out over the water like a jet. Exactly like a jet, in fact. Right down to the blistering streams of fire propelling him. I didn't see his next move, because I was about ten feet away from my previous position, blinking the white hot afterimage out of my eyes and shielding my face from the spray of burning sand he kicked up. Yeah, that's Firecracker. Our hero.
He'd pretty much ruined my night vision, so all I saw were crazy streaks of light every time he maneuvered and blasted a shark blimp, but I heard the boats frantically bumping and roaring to get away. The police boats were whooping, the sharks were making an eerie feedback screech, and Firecracker was bawling "Get some!" as the exploding sharks rippled back soundwaves from the condos for double the ridiculous amount of noise. By this time I had enough sense to retreat under a lifeguard hut, since at least two dozen sharks were out over the beach, using their lasers like catfish use their feelers. They weren't burning anything, though I kept my eyes far away from the lights bouncing off the sand. Blindness, you know.
The other people under the lifeguard hut were predominantly male, young, and the type to surf in a hurricane. I don't surf, but we got along fine, whispering commentary and muffled shrieks as if this were a sporting event. In a way, it was. Firecracker was giving a lot better than he got. The sharks mostly veered away from him, sweeping their lasers over the boats beneath. The details got a bit blurry, since a huge cloud of steam from Firecracker's propulsion billowed up around him. Thankfully, none of the boats were that close to shore.
It was hard to keep track of things between the darkness, the flashing lights, the fire and the sand, but Firecracker veered towards the pier, chasing a shark or something. The pier from which they launch the fireworks. We all realized this at pretty much the same time. My response was on the vulgar end of the spectrum, though nobody seemed to hear it since we were all running as fast as we could over the sand, and didn't stop once we hit the boardwalk. I don't even know where the flying sharks went, because I was setting a new landspeed record.
The explosion was immense. No. There aren't words immense enough to describe what it was. It was ten minutes of fireworks, an entire pier packed full of explosives, rolled into one awful moment. It didn't make a sound, any more than a tidal wave makes things wet. It slammed into me, and I felt it in my rib cage, not my ears. Even as far as I was from the pier, I lost contact with the ground. The next thing I know, I was watching a paramedic mouth words at me as she attacked my eyes with a flashlight. Nothing's broken. Just a little shock and some scrapes and bruises. They don't hurt yet. A little blood came out of my ears, but I'm wearing my new earrings and the hearing is back in one ear, mostly. All fine.
My parents are pissed, but also feeling way guilty, since they lost track of their offspring in the crowd, and I've got just enough bruises to play it up for sympathy. I teared up through their lecture, not because anything they said got through to me. I don't know why. The whole evening, I guess. I've barely spoken a word to them, but I'm spilling my guts now and I don't know why I'm crying again.
Stupid Firecracker.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Internet Stalking, Kinda
There's pretty much no info on St. Elmo yet. I keep replaying the clip. I don't know what I'm looking for. There's no way to definitively tell who it is from a few seconds of grainy nighttime footage, and it's not like he's stupid enough to display any obvious mannerisms that could link him to his civilian identity. Not that I could tell, since I don't know him well enough from school to pick him out of a crowd. Maybe if St. Elmo sat at a desk and looked bored, I could recognize him.
This is voyeuristic and wrong, I know. I shouldn't be sitting here poised like a vulture, ready for him to slip up and kill someone or display poor taste in music or something so I can conclude that he's a failure as a (super)human being. What kind of music does he listen to, anyway? I'm not going to provide any identifying details here, but he seems like the type to have cool taste in music. That's something.
God, I hope he's a nice person. You have to be a nice person to rescue ships, right? I mean, he could have stayed home and kept warm and dry and rested instead of patrolling the coast. Even though he probably wasn't risking his life, he definitely went way the hell out of his way to help perfect strangers. The poor guy looked like a drowned rat in that cloak. I don't think he's going to be wearing that silky material the next time he goes out. Satin and silk are great for static electricity effects when dry, but such a pain to care for.
This is voyeuristic and wrong, I know. I shouldn't be sitting here poised like a vulture, ready for him to slip up and kill someone or display poor taste in music or something so I can conclude that he's a failure as a (super)human being. What kind of music does he listen to, anyway? I'm not going to provide any identifying details here, but he seems like the type to have cool taste in music. That's something.
God, I hope he's a nice person. You have to be a nice person to rescue ships, right? I mean, he could have stayed home and kept warm and dry and rested instead of patrolling the coast. Even though he probably wasn't risking his life, he definitely went way the hell out of his way to help perfect strangers. The poor guy looked like a drowned rat in that cloak. I don't think he's going to be wearing that silky material the next time he goes out. Satin and silk are great for static electricity effects when dry, but such a pain to care for.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Rising Star
The Internet is a great place to confess things. Nobody knows your name or face. You can say what you want and nobody knows it's true. And if you say something stupid, or don't want to admit something, you never have to face it again. The Internet is very easy to avoid.
I haven't even started up my computer for close to a week. It started off with a crummy little cold (no extra special symptoms, but it looks like I don't have any super resistance to disease) and then there was a family movie night and then stuff. It's easy to find excuses to not log on. But I might as well say this, since I need to think it out and there's no way I'm writing it in a diary people could find. This is as close as I can get to anonymity to protect everyone involved.
There's a new super in Key Largo. He's going by St. Elmo, and he got a sliver of air time in the local news for leading a couple boats to shore during a storm. So far, it looks like he can fly and make green fire. Crackly, electric green fire that doesn't melt things. You see where I'm going with this. I know who he is. There is an awfully short list of suspects who attend my school, live in the room directly above mine, and come from Key Largo. I'm not friends with this guy or anything. But I know his name.
This puts me in a peculiar position. I can bust this guy. If he ever does something stupid while wearing his green cloak, I can make him answer for it in the real world. It would be wrong to out him, of course. It would piss him off, make the super community see me as a dangerous snitch, and put the media microscope on supers attending my school. He's nobody important. His powers don't look awfully dangerous. There is absolutely no reason to share his identity with anybody at all. But I could. I don't want to be someone's watchdog. I don't want to judge him; I don't think I have the right to. What do you do when you've stumbled onto another person's secret? This might be how Dani feels. If she knows. I don't know if she knows, and it's really awful to depend on someone's goodwill or obliviousness to keep a very important secret.
Do I let him know that he got caught? He was being awfully sloppy, letting the green fire reach all the way to my room. But I've made messes with my powers practice before. The guy's gotta learn how to deal with it on his own. Besides, he might see it as a threat. Blackmail or something.
Do I pretend it never happened? That might be for the best. But if he starts getting twitchy around me, I might have to tell him that I know. Besides, I might be missing out on a great resource. We could help each other out. Alibis, tips, costume help. But what if he wants to blackmail me? I need to talk to his friends and the people he's dated. No way am I going to risk this without knowing more about him.
I haven't even started up my computer for close to a week. It started off with a crummy little cold (no extra special symptoms, but it looks like I don't have any super resistance to disease) and then there was a family movie night and then stuff. It's easy to find excuses to not log on. But I might as well say this, since I need to think it out and there's no way I'm writing it in a diary people could find. This is as close as I can get to anonymity to protect everyone involved.
There's a new super in Key Largo. He's going by St. Elmo, and he got a sliver of air time in the local news for leading a couple boats to shore during a storm. So far, it looks like he can fly and make green fire. Crackly, electric green fire that doesn't melt things. You see where I'm going with this. I know who he is. There is an awfully short list of suspects who attend my school, live in the room directly above mine, and come from Key Largo. I'm not friends with this guy or anything. But I know his name.
This puts me in a peculiar position. I can bust this guy. If he ever does something stupid while wearing his green cloak, I can make him answer for it in the real world. It would be wrong to out him, of course. It would piss him off, make the super community see me as a dangerous snitch, and put the media microscope on supers attending my school. He's nobody important. His powers don't look awfully dangerous. There is absolutely no reason to share his identity with anybody at all. But I could. I don't want to be someone's watchdog. I don't want to judge him; I don't think I have the right to. What do you do when you've stumbled onto another person's secret? This might be how Dani feels. If she knows. I don't know if she knows, and it's really awful to depend on someone's goodwill or obliviousness to keep a very important secret.
Do I let him know that he got caught? He was being awfully sloppy, letting the green fire reach all the way to my room. But I've made messes with my powers practice before. The guy's gotta learn how to deal with it on his own. Besides, he might see it as a threat. Blackmail or something.
Do I pretend it never happened? That might be for the best. But if he starts getting twitchy around me, I might have to tell him that I know. Besides, I might be missing out on a great resource. We could help each other out. Alibis, tips, costume help. But what if he wants to blackmail me? I need to talk to his friends and the people he's dated. No way am I going to risk this without knowing more about him.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Health Day
Blagh, getting sick. I'm going to try to head this off with vitamins and rest. I do not want to risk things getting out of control like last time. Now is really not the time to out myself as a cryogenetic. Hell no. Take care of yourself, internet denizens.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Winter Wonderland: I'm Confused
I just heard about the Global Thermostat project. I don't know what I could possibly say. I wish ours was a world in which things like this don't happen. Why do so many people want to destroy the world? How can they be so selfish that they think their vision of the world is worth all the lives they take to achieve it? I'm a freaking cryogenetic, and even I don't want to live in an ice age. This is our damned planet. It belongs to baseline humans, superhumans, metahumans, cyborgs, xenoids, plants, animals, fungi, and whatever else I've overlooked. We all have to live on this one planet. We're not getting another one. The Pan-Galactic treaties are very clear about that. And yet it seems like every day another person tries to destroy it.
I can't think about this anymore. I can't think about the people just like me who are dying. Since this is my blog, I'm going to be selfish and talk about me now. I need the distraction, and the best part about navel-gazing is that I never find something traumatic in there. I'm going to ignore the rest of the world, and the looks on people's faces whenever they hear the word cryogenesis. Here's what's been happening in my life.
Internet's been down here for days due to a combination of nasty thunderstorms and DJ Livewire redirecting communications satellites for some interstellar crisis. The power's been down too, and you can imagine how pleasant that is in June in South Florida. Cryogenesis has never tasted sweeter. On that note, I've been researching peppermint. Science students bear with me here, I know I'm bastardizing this. Peppermint contains menthol, which chemically triggers TRPM8 receptors. TRPM8 receptors are sensitive to cold, which is why peppermints make your mouth feel cool. So I'm wondering if the sporadic spontaneous peppermint taste is less a sign of impending brain tumor doom, and more a matter of crossed wires in my chemical receptors that interpret peppermint and cryogenesis the same way. Or maybe I can produce menthol? I'm confused. Maybe I should conduct a scientific experiment and smooch someone to determine whether or not I'm only imagining the peppermint taste. Or I could just ignore the problem and eat another peppermint humbug. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Candyland Fail
Babysitting. The kid is asleep and I'm just poking around on the internet until the parents return. Since this isn't Myke's place, I feel secure that nobody is hijacking my internet connection to listen to every word I type. Or read every word. Whatever.
I was playing Candyland with the kid earlier. It's been updated. Since when is Queen Frostine a princess? Seriously, she used to be this awesome queen with the world's coolest blue cupcake dress and transparent blue hair. Now she's just another pink Barbie-wannabe on ice skates. And she's blonde. What the hell? She had a killer, trademark look, and then she traded it in for sparkly snowflake barbie, now with fluffy earmuff accessories. Way to downgrade there. Crap, gotta go. Parents just pulled up.
I was playing Candyland with the kid earlier. It's been updated. Since when is Queen Frostine a princess? Seriously, she used to be this awesome queen with the world's coolest blue cupcake dress and transparent blue hair. Now she's just another pink Barbie-wannabe on ice skates. And she's blonde. What the hell? She had a killer, trademark look, and then she traded it in for sparkly snowflake barbie, now with fluffy earmuff accessories. Way to downgrade there. Crap, gotta go. Parents just pulled up.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Laurence Olivier Wants You To Upgrade Your iTunes
Wow, it's been a busy week. For starters, I have a new computer. It survived the electricity thing, and then I kinda more or less drop kicked it. Into the pool. It was an accident, and not really as hard to accomplish as one might think. Anyway. My new computer is tiny. Like, about the size of a hardcover book. It was cheap. It didn't come with much memory at all, and the reason I haven't posted for a while is because Mycroft kidnapped it for some sort of upgrade. Maybe a bulletproof casing. Even though he could do that in like a minute, I think he's been holding on to it in the hope that I'll decide I don't want a computer after all. He seems to think giving me a computer is morally equivalent to letting a rabid hyena babysit a toddler. He finally mailed it to me this morning, and I've been monkeying around with it. It talks to me. The computer, I mean. It constantly nags me to approve esoteric functions and back up my data, and it's very supercilious about it. If I say no to something it wants me to do, it asks me if I'm sure twice, explains why my choice is wrong, and then reminds me five minutes later. And it speaks in Laurence Olivier's voice, which is why I haven't destroyed it yet. I'm not sure if I owe Myke, or if I should kill him. I mean, I was totally fine with a normal computer. This is like owning a toaster that can do your dry cleaning. It's great, but confusing and not entirely necessary.
In other news, I am bald. Well, not entirely. I have something that could be charitably described as a pixie-cut-in-training on my head. It turns out that there was an awful lot of damage from the electricity and heat of that evil hairdryer, and I had to lose pretty much all of my hair. I bought a new hairdryer, but I haven't had the nerve to use it yet. Also, I have no hair to use it on.
In other news, I am bald. Well, not entirely. I have something that could be charitably described as a pixie-cut-in-training on my head. It turns out that there was an awful lot of damage from the electricity and heat of that evil hairdryer, and I had to lose pretty much all of my hair. I bought a new hairdryer, but I haven't had the nerve to use it yet. Also, I have no hair to use it on.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
How Not To Use Cryogenesis
Well, it finally happened. If I could find a time machine, I would set it to earlier this evening, and bash my hair dryer to pieces to prevent this atrocity from ever occurring. There was something of an incident. It turns out, cryogenesis and hairstyling have never before mixed for a damned good reason. I had the coolest hairdo ever, and I pinned it in place with carefully applied ice instead of gel. I took a bajillion pictures, which I will carefully delete from my camera blah blah blah because I'm not an idiot who leaves evidence around. I'm just an idiot. I shocked myself while defrosting my hair. My eye is still twitching, and it's been hours. My hair is... there are no words in the English language to describe my hair. Let's come up with a term that means "resembling a poorly groomed yeti due to cold-induced brittleness and electric shock". But don't put my picture in the dictionary beside it, because I don't want to go down in recorded history as the person with the worst hair day ever including people with lycanthropy.
Uh, gotta cut this short. Still carrying a residual charge and my laptop is freaking out. Ow.
Uh, gotta cut this short. Still carrying a residual charge and my laptop is freaking out. Ow.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Back to Blogging
Water is blissfully back to normal, and I've been busy. Babysitting, looking for plants that can withstand ice, weeding the garden (weeds cannot withstand ice, as it so happens), looking for a place a little bit more private than my pool to practice cryogenesis now that my little sister has decided it's swimming weather, and wearing my awesome black leather vest. I've been unable to post because of the weekend rush of parents trying to escape their offspring. You try posting with kids looking over your shoulder and howling about bedtime stories. Seriously, the Gregson boy must be Nosferatu, judging by his sleep cycle. I've been making sure to order garlic sticks with the pizza, just in case.
On the good news front, they finally arrested Dr. Wilde. That creep was hanging out at a zoo. The monkey exhibit, of course. Some supervillains are just extraordinarily hard on endangered species. Remember Snow Leopard a couple years ago, who was all "Snow leopards are my totem, so that gives me the right to wear a costume entirely made out of their fur"? Yeah, the clip of Goldenrod smacking her seven ways to Sunday is one of my YouTube favorites. Snow leopards are just too damned adorable. And there's another great cryogenetic name I can never use, thanks to that jerk. Not sure what happened to her costume. Isn't it a felony to even touch something like that?
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Rampant Consumerism
Water still not normal. My sister decided to risk it anyway and take a shower, though I notice she didn't wash her hair or face.
I went out thrift-shopping with a couple of high school friends. Most of my college friends live far, far away in mystical lands with real snow. I've kept in touch with Lisa and Taylor since I graduated high school. Everyone makes those empty promises to keep in touch for the rest of our lives, and gets all emotional and affectionate once yearbook signing rolls around and they don't actually have to see your face ever again. But Lisa and Taylor actually meant it.
We hit up some of the small local stores. Taylor has an uncanny gift for finding them. We tried on hats, laughed over outrageous dresses, and offered scorecards for the pants we found. I found a gorgeous silk jacket. It was deep blue, with silver dragon embroidery on it. Too big for me. Lisa is wearing it now, and I am contemplating stealing Linda Farrow's shrink ray out of the police lockup and using it on the jacket, because I want it. Sigh. Lisa looks good in it. Blue is not my color, no matter how much I want it to be.
I looked through bathing suits and raincoats and winter boots. Nothing worth having. What fabric stands up well to repeated submersion in ice? Does one even exist? Why don't any professional cryogenetics donate their gently-used costumes to thrift stores and save me the trial and error? I feel like I'm constantly reinventing the wheel here. If I ever make it to the big times, I'm going to write a book. Cryogenesis for Dummies, or maybe Everything You Wanted To Know About Your Superpowers But Had No Wise Old Mentor To Explain To You, or Stuff Nobody Bothered Explaining To Me That Could Have Made My Life As A Cryogenetic Much Easier If Only I Had Known What You Know Now You Lucky Reader.
I did get a cute leather vest, though. I need to replace the buttons, but it is totally awesome.
I went out thrift-shopping with a couple of high school friends. Most of my college friends live far, far away in mystical lands with real snow. I've kept in touch with Lisa and Taylor since I graduated high school. Everyone makes those empty promises to keep in touch for the rest of our lives, and gets all emotional and affectionate once yearbook signing rolls around and they don't actually have to see your face ever again. But Lisa and Taylor actually meant it.
We hit up some of the small local stores. Taylor has an uncanny gift for finding them. We tried on hats, laughed over outrageous dresses, and offered scorecards for the pants we found. I found a gorgeous silk jacket. It was deep blue, with silver dragon embroidery on it. Too big for me. Lisa is wearing it now, and I am contemplating stealing Linda Farrow's shrink ray out of the police lockup and using it on the jacket, because I want it. Sigh. Lisa looks good in it. Blue is not my color, no matter how much I want it to be.
I looked through bathing suits and raincoats and winter boots. Nothing worth having. What fabric stands up well to repeated submersion in ice? Does one even exist? Why don't any professional cryogenetics donate their gently-used costumes to thrift stores and save me the trial and error? I feel like I'm constantly reinventing the wheel here. If I ever make it to the big times, I'm going to write a book. Cryogenesis for Dummies, or maybe Everything You Wanted To Know About Your Superpowers But Had No Wise Old Mentor To Explain To You, or Stuff Nobody Bothered Explaining To Me That Could Have Made My Life As A Cryogenetic Much Easier If Only I Had Known What You Know Now You Lucky Reader.
I did get a cute leather vest, though. I need to replace the buttons, but it is totally awesome.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
That Funny Taste
Still on a boil water restriction. You know that saying that a watched pot never boils? This might just be me being paranoid, but I think it takes longer for water to boil when I'm around. Is that possible? No, it's just me being paranoid. My cryogenesis can't reach all the way across the kitchen. I'm jumpy around water when other people are around. It's the easiest way to get caught out.
I wonder if this happens to other cryogenetics. I mean, there's no big book of superpowers. There have been a handful of studies, but they're all science gibberish and mostly focused on how much damage we can do to bystanders. There's no cryogenetic support group. I can talk to Myke about superhuman stuff, but I can't ask him if stuff suddenly tastes like peppermint for no reason. Even if I ask another cryogenetic, I probably wouldn't get answers. It's not like we all have the same origin or power level, and some have secondary powers so that really throws off the equation. If something goes wrong with my powers, I don't know if I would even know. For all I know, the peppermint thing is a side effect of a lump of ice building in my brain like a tumor. Or something. I've sworn off all homemade frozen goods for a while. Just in case.
I wonder if this happens to other cryogenetics. I mean, there's no big book of superpowers. There have been a handful of studies, but they're all science gibberish and mostly focused on how much damage we can do to bystanders. There's no cryogenetic support group. I can talk to Myke about superhuman stuff, but I can't ask him if stuff suddenly tastes like peppermint for no reason. Even if I ask another cryogenetic, I probably wouldn't get answers. It's not like we all have the same origin or power level, and some have secondary powers so that really throws off the equation. If something goes wrong with my powers, I don't know if I would even know. For all I know, the peppermint thing is a side effect of a lump of ice building in my brain like a tumor. Or something. I've sworn off all homemade frozen goods for a while. Just in case.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Convenient Cryogenesis
Someone took out the entire county's water supply today. Well, technically it's still there. There are just things in it that aren't water. The news crews were awfully vague about what precisely went wrong, which means it's probably something governmentally hush-hush. Or maybe some M'lar skinny-dipped in the water towers again and nobody wants to make a big thing out of it.
Of course, I found out about this contaminated water stuff in the middle of a shower. So I had to decide between walking around with chlorinated skin and sudsy hair, or using cryogenesis on the sly. What do you think I did? Yeah, I lied to my sister and told her I was already clean and just stealing all her hot water. She's pissed that I got in the shower first, since she didn't get a turn, but since it was contaminated water anyway it all evens out. She's been mocking me, saying maybe it was radioactive water and I'll get superpowers from it. Ha. Ha ha.
Technically I don't really need to take showers. I can make enough water on my skin to keep clean. But I like hot water and the way the water hits my skin, so I take normal showers unless I've touched something extraordinarily gross and I need to get clean immediately. Please don't lecture me about water conservation.
I focused the water out of my hands. All the practice with the sno-cones and stuff helped me pinpoint my cryogenesis. It took forever to wash my hair, since I use very sudsy shampoo and I can't make more water pressure than a faucet, and I was holding back a bit because I didn't want the water to freeze in my hair or get out of control and turn into another sheet of ice. I can make ice a heck of a lot faster than water, for some reason.
I also used cryogenesis to brush my teeth. It saves the drinking water for the rest of my family, who actually need it. And it's not like anyone is checking my water consumption and I need to misdirect them. My family doesn't actually think I have any secrets from them. It could be worse. I could have to deal with the crap Mycroft puts up with.
Of course, I found out about this contaminated water stuff in the middle of a shower. So I had to decide between walking around with chlorinated skin and sudsy hair, or using cryogenesis on the sly. What do you think I did? Yeah, I lied to my sister and told her I was already clean and just stealing all her hot water. She's pissed that I got in the shower first, since she didn't get a turn, but since it was contaminated water anyway it all evens out. She's been mocking me, saying maybe it was radioactive water and I'll get superpowers from it. Ha. Ha ha.
Technically I don't really need to take showers. I can make enough water on my skin to keep clean. But I like hot water and the way the water hits my skin, so I take normal showers unless I've touched something extraordinarily gross and I need to get clean immediately. Please don't lecture me about water conservation.
I focused the water out of my hands. All the practice with the sno-cones and stuff helped me pinpoint my cryogenesis. It took forever to wash my hair, since I use very sudsy shampoo and I can't make more water pressure than a faucet, and I was holding back a bit because I didn't want the water to freeze in my hair or get out of control and turn into another sheet of ice. I can make ice a heck of a lot faster than water, for some reason.
I also used cryogenesis to brush my teeth. It saves the drinking water for the rest of my family, who actually need it. And it's not like anyone is checking my water consumption and I need to misdirect them. My family doesn't actually think I have any secrets from them. It could be worse. I could have to deal with the crap Mycroft puts up with.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Sugar and Snowballs
Did you know that cryogenetics and frozen treats have a long and honorable history? It turns out DuBois ice cream was started up by a cryogenetic. I may have to buy some caramel chocolate chip ice cream as a gesture of solidarity with my people. I guess I was reinventing the wheel with my experiments with ice cream and freeze pops. It seems really freaking obvious in retrospect, doesn't it? Yeah, I really need to research the history of my powers some more, or I'm going to wind up looking really stupid in the superhero arena.
I've been thinking of how I can use cryogenesis in my ordinary life if I go public. Whether or not I go pro, I'm going to be a cryogenetic 24/7 for the rest of my life, and I might as well turn that to my advantage. My powers (and a jug of syrup) can win me love and acceptance at any barbecue or picnic. I can drive my own little ice cream truck around and listen to the jingle all day. Hey, a girl's gotta dream.
I'm totally paying my respects to my superhuman heritage (figuratively, of course- my power isn't hereditary) by my quest to create the perfect sno-cone. This has required some rigorous experimentation, of course. There are a lot of variables, such as temperature and granule size. I stayed home while my parents and sister went out, put on a swimming suit and sunscreen (just because I can create ice doesn't mean I'm immune to skin cancer), hauled a jug of grape syrup and a plastic cup and spoon outside, inflated the big rubber ring and floated around the pool idly practicing my cryogenesis. I generally don't go swimming when there's someone else nearby, because the water gets cold awfully fast, and people would wonder why I'm the only one without blue lips. Of course for me, every weather is swimming weather. I practiced making tiny grains of ice with each hand, and crunched into the results to test their texture. The ones that passed the test got doused in syrup and eaten. I dumped the rejects into the pool, where they vanished without a trace. I'm thinking I need to spend a lot more time in the pool, especially since we have a hedge right next to it where I can hide large chunks of ice. The ferns are already full of hail balls, and my mom wonders why they're looking kind of wilted. Oops. I water them as often as I can to get rid of the evidence. My mother sees this as a budding interest in gardening.
My tongue is so purple right now. For the record, the ultimate sno-cone is soft and powdery on the inside, with a crisp (but thin) shell. It's really hard to compensate for the syrup and the sun, but I am a consummate professional, and diligently practiced until I got it right.
I've been thinking of how I can use cryogenesis in my ordinary life if I go public. Whether or not I go pro, I'm going to be a cryogenetic 24/7 for the rest of my life, and I might as well turn that to my advantage. My powers (and a jug of syrup) can win me love and acceptance at any barbecue or picnic. I can drive my own little ice cream truck around and listen to the jingle all day. Hey, a girl's gotta dream.
I'm totally paying my respects to my superhuman heritage (figuratively, of course- my power isn't hereditary) by my quest to create the perfect sno-cone. This has required some rigorous experimentation, of course. There are a lot of variables, such as temperature and granule size. I stayed home while my parents and sister went out, put on a swimming suit and sunscreen (just because I can create ice doesn't mean I'm immune to skin cancer), hauled a jug of grape syrup and a plastic cup and spoon outside, inflated the big rubber ring and floated around the pool idly practicing my cryogenesis. I generally don't go swimming when there's someone else nearby, because the water gets cold awfully fast, and people would wonder why I'm the only one without blue lips. Of course for me, every weather is swimming weather. I practiced making tiny grains of ice with each hand, and crunched into the results to test their texture. The ones that passed the test got doused in syrup and eaten. I dumped the rejects into the pool, where they vanished without a trace. I'm thinking I need to spend a lot more time in the pool, especially since we have a hedge right next to it where I can hide large chunks of ice. The ferns are already full of hail balls, and my mom wonders why they're looking kind of wilted. Oops. I water them as often as I can to get rid of the evidence. My mother sees this as a budding interest in gardening.
My tongue is so purple right now. For the record, the ultimate sno-cone is soft and powdery on the inside, with a crisp (but thin) shell. It's really hard to compensate for the syrup and the sun, but I am a consummate professional, and diligently practiced until I got it right.
Monday, June 8, 2009
I Do Not Like Green Fire And Spam
Back at home. Myke was very reluctant to surrender the laptop into my hands. He doesn't have a lot of faith in my technological aptitude. Actually, he called me a Luddite when I told him I didn't need more RAM on my computer. I think he installed it anyway.
Now to the interesting news. The green fire was not a data download. Myke can see every single file I've ever deleted off the computer, and knows how often I've turned off my computer "improperly" and can tell where all my pirated music came from, and knows which web sites I've been visiting and how often (to the nanosecond!). I stopped listening to the specifics right about the time he started talking about cookies and virus protection, in the tone of voice my mom uses when my sister paints her toenails on the antique Persian rug. But hey, now I have great custom-made virus protection with a cute little red rabbit logo. Anyway, the point of that was, nobody's spying on me. Except Myke.
So what was that creepy green fire?
He doesn't know. Myke, the internet demigod, doesn't know. He says it was a gibberish transmission. It's not coded messages or mind control or anything. It's just white noise, a freaky electric phenomenon that scrambled my computer's brains for a few minutes. At least, that's what I think he was explaining. He's not too good at speaking in plain non-tech English when there's a computer in the room.
I'm willing to just call it a gremlin. Now that I know it's not a worst case scenario, and I'm not going to get my brains irradiated or eaten by tentacle monster gods, I'm kind of okay with it. You know, it's a weird world we live in. I can accept freaky green light. As long as it doesn't happen again.
Now to the interesting news. The green fire was not a data download. Myke can see every single file I've ever deleted off the computer, and knows how often I've turned off my computer "improperly" and can tell where all my pirated music came from, and knows which web sites I've been visiting and how often (to the nanosecond!). I stopped listening to the specifics right about the time he started talking about cookies and virus protection, in the tone of voice my mom uses when my sister paints her toenails on the antique Persian rug. But hey, now I have great custom-made virus protection with a cute little red rabbit logo. Anyway, the point of that was, nobody's spying on me. Except Myke.
So what was that creepy green fire?
He doesn't know. Myke, the internet demigod, doesn't know. He says it was a gibberish transmission. It's not coded messages or mind control or anything. It's just white noise, a freaky electric phenomenon that scrambled my computer's brains for a few minutes. At least, that's what I think he was explaining. He's not too good at speaking in plain non-tech English when there's a computer in the room.
I'm willing to just call it a gremlin. Now that I know it's not a worst case scenario, and I'm not going to get my brains irradiated or eaten by tentacle monster gods, I'm kind of okay with it. You know, it's a weird world we live in. I can accept freaky green light. As long as it doesn't happen again.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Elementary Deduction
Hey, remember that part about me questioning whether I should tell Mycroft about me being a cryogenetic? It turns out that when you borrow Myke's internet, he gets all Big Brother on you. I wiped the browser history, but he poked around and kinda put two and two together. I've already threatened him in person, but since I know you're reading this Myke, if you tell ANYONE, I will distribute your naked baby photos to the entire state of Florida and a couple choice parts of Oregon via snail mail. That will be all.
So, to the rest of my readers, here's how my day went. Despite my heartwrenching sick puppy impression, I got dragged out fishing. Because fresh air is good for me. And there were pierced worms and flopping fish and inconvenient sprays of water. And muggy weather, and bright sun, and so many bugs. I was sulking behind a slightly damp book when Myke dropped down beside me and said, "You might as well power up. Nobody's going to notice except the mosquitos."
As you can imagine, my razor sharp wit came up with an appropriate reply. About thirty seconds later. I smacked him over the head and told him to keep his voice down, because my sister was like ten feet away. But I upped the frost aura a bit more. The bugs left, and Myke stopped sweating. We talked. I'm halfway terrified at my secret being out to a real live person (besides maybe Dani), and a bit annoyed that he snooped, and a bit thrilled to have someone to actually talk to. I know Myke's been following the news (I don't think he can NOT follow it, actually) but he wasn't scared. I cooled his soda for him. I actually like drinking mine warm, but it's kind of impossible to do that anymore, because it starts cooling down the moment I touch it. I didn't dare do any more, or even sneak Myke an ice chip, since the parental units were kind of watching me to make sure I didn't steal a vehicle and flee the premises.
But he knows. And it's okay. Out of all this horrible weekend, after hearing everyone talk about Killer Frost, after putting up with fishing and camping and car rides, I have someone who understands. I'm typing this on his computer, because he's got my laptop wired into something and the screen is displaying things that aren't my desktop. The computer is actually working for him, and I think he might be debugging it and downloading stuff while he looks for green fire residue, since he's making disapproving noises at me. Like I'm some sort of idiot who doesn't take the lint out of the dryer and then it bursts into flame. Whatever. If he keeps doing that, I'm going to make a sheet of ice down his back.
Wait, are you reading this, Myke? I haven't even posted it.
Myke is a slobbering troll.
You ARE reading it. Quit it. At least be polite and look over my shoulder or something because that's really creepy that you're reading it off a different computer while I'm writing it on the other side of the room. Don't you dare sign into my account and edit this. And stop mocking my typing speed, you jerk.
So, to the rest of my readers, here's how my day went. Despite my heartwrenching sick puppy impression, I got dragged out fishing. Because fresh air is good for me. And there were pierced worms and flopping fish and inconvenient sprays of water. And muggy weather, and bright sun, and so many bugs. I was sulking behind a slightly damp book when Myke dropped down beside me and said, "You might as well power up. Nobody's going to notice except the mosquitos."
As you can imagine, my razor sharp wit came up with an appropriate reply. About thirty seconds later. I smacked him over the head and told him to keep his voice down, because my sister was like ten feet away. But I upped the frost aura a bit more. The bugs left, and Myke stopped sweating. We talked. I'm halfway terrified at my secret being out to a real live person (besides maybe Dani), and a bit annoyed that he snooped, and a bit thrilled to have someone to actually talk to. I know Myke's been following the news (I don't think he can NOT follow it, actually) but he wasn't scared. I cooled his soda for him. I actually like drinking mine warm, but it's kind of impossible to do that anymore, because it starts cooling down the moment I touch it. I didn't dare do any more, or even sneak Myke an ice chip, since the parental units were kind of watching me to make sure I didn't steal a vehicle and flee the premises.
But he knows. And it's okay. Out of all this horrible weekend, after hearing everyone talk about Killer Frost, after putting up with fishing and camping and car rides, I have someone who understands. I'm typing this on his computer, because he's got my laptop wired into something and the screen is displaying things that aren't my desktop. The computer is actually working for him, and I think he might be debugging it and downloading stuff while he looks for green fire residue, since he's making disapproving noises at me. Like I'm some sort of idiot who doesn't take the lint out of the dryer and then it bursts into flame. Whatever. If he keeps doing that, I'm going to make a sheet of ice down his back.
Wait, are you reading this, Myke? I haven't even posted it.
Myke is a slobbering troll.
You ARE reading it. Quit it. At least be polite and look over my shoulder or something because that's really creepy that you're reading it off a different computer while I'm writing it on the other side of the room. Don't you dare sign into my account and edit this. And stop mocking my typing speed, you jerk.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Wholesome Family Fun
I spent four hours in the car today, with my little sister whining that I was obviously hogging all the air conditioning despite all the vents being aimed at her. Sigh. I am thankful for the inventor of text messaging, since it kept her busy for most of the trip. I buried my nose in a book, but towards the end of the trip I started counting cows. Yes, I'm in THAT part of Florida. We're at my aunt and uncle's house. They don't personally own any cows, but they have a few horses. We're staying there for a whole weekend of fun. We had a family picnic, where I made subtle use of cryogenesis to discourage ants from attacking me, and also ward off food poisoning from the potato salad. I don't even like potato salad, but I had to eat some to make Aunt Eliza happy, despite the obvious risks of mayonnaise in the sweltering sun. I managed to keep from restocking the ice in the cooler, even after it all turned into slush because Jordan left it open. That would have been a little too obvious, and now is really not the time to out myself as a cryogenetic. Not in the wake of what Killer Frost did, and definitely not to my extended family. I mean, they're not even willing to admit that Mycroft is a metatech.
Mycroft is my cousin. I call him Myke, and I can get away with it because I'm older and stronger than he is, and I can get him in a mean headlock. He is the only reason I have internet access right now, way out in the sticks. He's more of a software metatech than the engineer type, but he's managed to do something with turbines and satellite programming so we have internet at his house. Despite the fact that his parents still think they have dial-up. I'm not too curious about the details, because I'm not certain that this is strictly legal. Knowing Myke, he's got some sort of arcane legal loophole prepared in case he gets caught. The whole family knows he's a metatech, even if his parents refuse to admit it. No, their son just has natural talent, by gosh. None of that cheating superpower stuff for him. He's just a whiz with computers, and would love to fix the family computers in his free time. It's his hobby, isn't it? And of course he'll set the timer on the VCR. And explain the functions of the microwave. Myke drew the line at fixing cars, though. He hates engine grease with a passion.
I haven't told Myke that I'm a cryogenetic. I think maybe I should. I mean, we don't get along all the time, but he is my favorite cousin. He's reliable and knows how to keep secrets. I'm pretty sure he's even keeping a few government secrets that aren't really his to keep. He's a metatech, so he could understand where I'm coming from with the superpowers thing. I tried to bring it up subtly in conversation, but Myke's not too good at nuances, and he spent most of the day twiddling morosely on some sleek little phone thing that projects a hologram touch screen about twice its size. I think it might have started as an iPhone. He loves the outdoors just as much as I do. Anyway, I gotta sign off. We're fishing tomorrow. I think I'm gonna fake a cold and stay home. I can certainly fake shivers, a cold sweat and clammy skin.
Mycroft is my cousin. I call him Myke, and I can get away with it because I'm older and stronger than he is, and I can get him in a mean headlock. He is the only reason I have internet access right now, way out in the sticks. He's more of a software metatech than the engineer type, but he's managed to do something with turbines and satellite programming so we have internet at his house. Despite the fact that his parents still think they have dial-up. I'm not too curious about the details, because I'm not certain that this is strictly legal. Knowing Myke, he's got some sort of arcane legal loophole prepared in case he gets caught. The whole family knows he's a metatech, even if his parents refuse to admit it. No, their son just has natural talent, by gosh. None of that cheating superpower stuff for him. He's just a whiz with computers, and would love to fix the family computers in his free time. It's his hobby, isn't it? And of course he'll set the timer on the VCR. And explain the functions of the microwave. Myke drew the line at fixing cars, though. He hates engine grease with a passion.
I haven't told Myke that I'm a cryogenetic. I think maybe I should. I mean, we don't get along all the time, but he is my favorite cousin. He's reliable and knows how to keep secrets. I'm pretty sure he's even keeping a few government secrets that aren't really his to keep. He's a metatech, so he could understand where I'm coming from with the superpowers thing. I tried to bring it up subtly in conversation, but Myke's not too good at nuances, and he spent most of the day twiddling morosely on some sleek little phone thing that projects a hologram touch screen about twice its size. I think it might have started as an iPhone. He loves the outdoors just as much as I do. Anyway, I gotta sign off. We're fishing tomorrow. I think I'm gonna fake a cold and stay home. I can certainly fake shivers, a cold sweat and clammy skin.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Don't Eat That Cherry Snow
So, I've given myself a stomachache from all those Freeze Pops. Not really sure if that means I'm vulnerable to cold from the inside, or if I'm allergic to red food coloring, or if I just need to try eating less sugar water and more real food.
I've got to get to bed now, because we have wholesome family activities to do at a disgusting hour of the morning tomorrow. More updates later.
I've got to get to bed now, because we have wholesome family activities to do at a disgusting hour of the morning tomorrow. More updates later.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Winter Wonderland: Movies
I've been trying to find reasons to keep using my cryogenesis. The media is bombarding me with images of how NOT to use cryogenesis. I'm not sure if I'm glad that everyone can see what Killer Frost has done, or if I'm angry at how predatory the paparazzi are towards the victims. Mostly I'm just horrified. Nobody deserves to die like that. Not supervillains, not murderers, not anybody.
So I've devoted the past couple of days to therapeutic fluff movies and rediscovering what I love about my powers. I missed yesterday's Winter Wonderland installment, so here it is.
The classic cryogenesis movie is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I never really got a feeling of bleak winter horror out of what the White Witch did to Narnia. It seemed like a really awesome place: snowball fights every day, misty breath, frosted windows, ice castles, kickass fur coats. And imagine what that would do for the winter tourism industry. You know the Archenlanders were totally skiing there. I would. I thought Narnia was much cooler in its beautiful stark winter than in spring with all those flower people and snooty lions prancing around. The White Witch had some very pretty sparkly ice effects. I kind of envy her, the way she never gets her outfit wet despite all the snow. The more recent Narnia movie has a really cool scene involving a frozen river. You know, whenever anyone crosses any frozen body of water in a movie, someone is inevitably going to fall in. It's like that rule in theater about how the loaded gun in the desk has to go off by act three. Except this rule is more likely to result in someone pulling the old let's-cuddle-for-body-warmth act, which I don't think you can do with a gun scenario. Unless it's a freeze ray.
Carrying on the tradition of evil cryogenetic women is the Snow Queen, in the movie of the same name. The movie takes place in a wonderful little Germanic town with ice skating, hot chocolate, sledding and all the other seasonal perks of living in a place that isn't Florida. I wish I could make it snow all over Florida for just one day. I've seen real snow before on vacations, but some people never have. That strikes me as unutterably sad. Anyway, the Snow Queen has an awesome sled and a polar bear and some sort of mirror mind control-ish power that I never quite got. I highly recommend the movie.
In the X-Men movies, Bobby (Iceman) has a cameo. He does a cute thing with his powers, making a blooming rose out of ice. I admire his delicate touch, and the way he got the ice so clear, but perhaps it's not a good idea to hand something that cold to someone you like. Just because you're immune to cold doesn't mean your sweetheart is. Also, she probably doesn't want to carry around a chunk of ice that will melt all over her textbooks. In later movies Bobby does standard stuff like walls of ice, but he doesn't get much screen time. I know he's fictional, but I'm kind of relating to him. My powers look a lot like his, except not as good. I might be able to make a wall of ice, but then I'd have to find some place to hide it until it melts. I tried making an ice rose. I had to make all the petals separately and then make more ice to stick them together. It was kind of blobby, but it looked rose-ish. Kind of. I don't think I've seen Bobby make snow in the movies either, but I think he can in the comic books. Maybe I'm the type of cryogenetic who's just supposed to make ice instead of snow.
More recently, there is Frozone in the Incredibles. I like how he breaks away from the stereotype of Aryan cryogenetics. Seriously, just because I can make ice doesn't mean I'm descended from people who lived in icy climates. That's like saying every hydrokinetic has the last name Fisher. It doesn't work that way, people! Frozone was more of a cryokinetic than a cryogenetic, because he used ambient humidity, but he managed to produce amazing amounts of ice, really fast. His power also produces fluffy snow, which I envy because he uses it to cushion a couple impacts. Also, he could hypothetically start a snowball fight AT ANY MOMENT. Imagine living with that potential. I just have my little hail balls, and I wouldn't want to use those in a friendly fight because they're solid ice. It's like having a pillow fight after stuffing your pillowcase with bricks. Frozone has very aerated ice for the most part. It's white, unlike the mostly clear glasslike stuff Bobby makes in the movies. Frozone also does that classic violating-the-laws-of-physics skating ramp ice thing, except he disintegrates it behind him to reuse the water. I totally wish I could do that.
So in essence, I've been avoiding the news and watching movies that make me want to use my cryogenesis in new ways. I've also invented a way to motivate myself to practice every day: Freeze Pops. Little tubes of flavored water, which I can turn into popsicles merely by holding them and concentrating. I think I'm going to run out of room in my stomach and Freeze Pops in my fridge before I hit the limits of my power or even get appreciably better at freezing things in my hand, but this is the best practice tool ever.
So I've devoted the past couple of days to therapeutic fluff movies and rediscovering what I love about my powers. I missed yesterday's Winter Wonderland installment, so here it is.
The classic cryogenesis movie is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I never really got a feeling of bleak winter horror out of what the White Witch did to Narnia. It seemed like a really awesome place: snowball fights every day, misty breath, frosted windows, ice castles, kickass fur coats. And imagine what that would do for the winter tourism industry. You know the Archenlanders were totally skiing there. I would. I thought Narnia was much cooler in its beautiful stark winter than in spring with all those flower people and snooty lions prancing around. The White Witch had some very pretty sparkly ice effects. I kind of envy her, the way she never gets her outfit wet despite all the snow. The more recent Narnia movie has a really cool scene involving a frozen river. You know, whenever anyone crosses any frozen body of water in a movie, someone is inevitably going to fall in. It's like that rule in theater about how the loaded gun in the desk has to go off by act three. Except this rule is more likely to result in someone pulling the old let's-cuddle-for-body-warmth act, which I don't think you can do with a gun scenario. Unless it's a freeze ray.
Carrying on the tradition of evil cryogenetic women is the Snow Queen, in the movie of the same name. The movie takes place in a wonderful little Germanic town with ice skating, hot chocolate, sledding and all the other seasonal perks of living in a place that isn't Florida. I wish I could make it snow all over Florida for just one day. I've seen real snow before on vacations, but some people never have. That strikes me as unutterably sad. Anyway, the Snow Queen has an awesome sled and a polar bear and some sort of mirror mind control-ish power that I never quite got. I highly recommend the movie.
In the X-Men movies, Bobby (Iceman) has a cameo. He does a cute thing with his powers, making a blooming rose out of ice. I admire his delicate touch, and the way he got the ice so clear, but perhaps it's not a good idea to hand something that cold to someone you like. Just because you're immune to cold doesn't mean your sweetheart is. Also, she probably doesn't want to carry around a chunk of ice that will melt all over her textbooks. In later movies Bobby does standard stuff like walls of ice, but he doesn't get much screen time. I know he's fictional, but I'm kind of relating to him. My powers look a lot like his, except not as good. I might be able to make a wall of ice, but then I'd have to find some place to hide it until it melts. I tried making an ice rose. I had to make all the petals separately and then make more ice to stick them together. It was kind of blobby, but it looked rose-ish. Kind of. I don't think I've seen Bobby make snow in the movies either, but I think he can in the comic books. Maybe I'm the type of cryogenetic who's just supposed to make ice instead of snow.
More recently, there is Frozone in the Incredibles. I like how he breaks away from the stereotype of Aryan cryogenetics. Seriously, just because I can make ice doesn't mean I'm descended from people who lived in icy climates. That's like saying every hydrokinetic has the last name Fisher. It doesn't work that way, people! Frozone was more of a cryokinetic than a cryogenetic, because he used ambient humidity, but he managed to produce amazing amounts of ice, really fast. His power also produces fluffy snow, which I envy because he uses it to cushion a couple impacts. Also, he could hypothetically start a snowball fight AT ANY MOMENT. Imagine living with that potential. I just have my little hail balls, and I wouldn't want to use those in a friendly fight because they're solid ice. It's like having a pillow fight after stuffing your pillowcase with bricks. Frozone has very aerated ice for the most part. It's white, unlike the mostly clear glasslike stuff Bobby makes in the movies. Frozone also does that classic violating-the-laws-of-physics skating ramp ice thing, except he disintegrates it behind him to reuse the water. I totally wish I could do that.
So in essence, I've been avoiding the news and watching movies that make me want to use my cryogenesis in new ways. I've also invented a way to motivate myself to practice every day: Freeze Pops. Little tubes of flavored water, which I can turn into popsicles merely by holding them and concentrating. I think I'm going to run out of room in my stomach and Freeze Pops in my fridge before I hit the limits of my power or even get appreciably better at freezing things in my hand, but this is the best practice tool ever.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Broken Prison
Have you been watching the news? I never realized that ice could do that much damage. It's a sobering thought. They'll have to build an entirely new prison, and prisons aren't exactly delicate works of architecture. It's not just broken pipes and frosty windows. The prison doesn't really have right angles any more, just bulging mounds and spires of ice with dark lumps trapped in it. There are no sharp lines in the ice, just irregular wobbles and curves, but it doesn't look funny or harmless or beautiful at all. I've seen those National Geographic pictures of icebergs and shattered rocks, but it always seemed so abstract, so artsy. When you look at something like a broken concrete and iron building, wrenched from its foundations and shattered into jagged boulders slimed over with ice, then cryogenesis stops seeming all winter wonderland pretty. There are people impaled on icicles, or frozen to death, or with blocks of ice in their lungs. There are parts of people everywhere, and the ice is so dirty that there's no way of telling what's grime and what used to be part of a person. The media has been merciless in its coverage. They're still extracting prisoners from the wing that was furthest away from Killer Frost, and they've had to pull a lot of the Midwest pyrokinetics to do it without boiling anyone to death. Even with all the professionals and tools far more sophisticated than hairdryers and screwdrivers, people are coming out minus their faces, fingers and skin.
This is ugly. I got the shivers watching the news feeds. It makes me afraid of what I can do. I would never, ever do something like this. But one day, I might be able to. And nobody is going to have as much confidence in the strength of my principles as I do. Nobody would think my word that I'm a good person would be enough to keep everyone else safe. And I'm not entirely sure I could blame them for that.
When a cryogenetic like me starts seeing eye to eye with people like Angela Slater, it's confusing to everyone's world view. But honestly, superhumans can be terrifying at times. Even when you're one of them.
This is ugly. I got the shivers watching the news feeds. It makes me afraid of what I can do. I would never, ever do something like this. But one day, I might be able to. And nobody is going to have as much confidence in the strength of my principles as I do. Nobody would think my word that I'm a good person would be enough to keep everyone else safe. And I'm not entirely sure I could blame them for that.
When a cryogenetic like me starts seeing eye to eye with people like Angela Slater, it's confusing to everyone's world view. But honestly, superhumans can be terrifying at times. Even when you're one of them.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Killer Frost: What's He Up To?
If you guessed 'killing people,' you are correct. It's shit like this that makes me cringe to call myself a superhuman, let alone a cryogenetic. It's not that all the cryogenetics out there are batshit crazy serial killers. It's just that the most visible ones are. There was even a freaking league of evil assholes specifically devoted to cryogenesis, trying to start up a new ice age. Cryo isn't around any more to tip the scales with cute charity events like free ice skating for orphans or whatever. Every time you hear of a cryogenetic there's always some picture of frostbitten faces and people shattered into little bloody ice shards. Now that Killer Frost is out of jail and murdering people again, it's just going to get worse.
On less depressing topics, last night I babysat for the demon kids next door. Their parents were escaping for a date or anniversary or whatever, and I had to entertain them, feed them, then stuff them into their beds. Naturally, they're picky eaters, they're easily bored, they argue over ridiculous trifles, and don't like listening to me. And to top it off, one of them managed to douse himself in orange juice, and he just LOVES baths, let me tell you. I'm almost willing to trade jobs with Vector right now, if only to watch him suffer.
On less depressing topics, last night I babysat for the demon kids next door. Their parents were escaping for a date or anniversary or whatever, and I had to entertain them, feed them, then stuff them into their beds. Naturally, they're picky eaters, they're easily bored, they argue over ridiculous trifles, and don't like listening to me. And to top it off, one of them managed to douse himself in orange juice, and he just LOVES baths, let me tell you. I'm almost willing to trade jobs with Vector right now, if only to watch him suffer.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Status Report: Eating Ice Cream
Cryogenesis-created ice cream is perfect. It's exactly soft enough to scoop out with ease, with a slightly crisp surface, and it never melts. I went very slowly, so I could gauge the appropriate solidity instead of creating some freezerburn monstrosity. Not even I want to eat freezerburn.
I'm getting good at freezing specific objects. That seems to be my strong point. I can generate baseball sized lumps of hail (and I could go larger, except they wouldn't fit into the tiny cooler under my bed, and would be harder to dispose of properly), and I can cool something in my hand very easily, but I still can't figure out how to make snowdrifts properly. All I'm getting is a floor slick with ice, and my bruises still hurt, so I'm wary of walking on it. I should either buy ice skates or rent myself out to an ice skating rink. On that note, I need to find myself some secret headquarters where I can practice this crap properly, because I really don't want my bedroom turning into a fetid swamp. I'm neat enough that the floor is free of debris and my laundry hampers can be moved away from my practice area, but the room is far from spacious, and I have bookshelves that need more protection than a plastic sheet. Also, I think I need better dehumidifiers or more outlets, because my room is a little ... humid. Humid is a better word than choking wet miasma. I'm running my space heater pretty much constantly to keep my family from noticing the haunted house chill in my room, but my sister still whines that my air conditioning vents work better than hers.
I'm getting good at freezing specific objects. That seems to be my strong point. I can generate baseball sized lumps of hail (and I could go larger, except they wouldn't fit into the tiny cooler under my bed, and would be harder to dispose of properly), and I can cool something in my hand very easily, but I still can't figure out how to make snowdrifts properly. All I'm getting is a floor slick with ice, and my bruises still hurt, so I'm wary of walking on it. I should either buy ice skates or rent myself out to an ice skating rink. On that note, I need to find myself some secret headquarters where I can practice this crap properly, because I really don't want my bedroom turning into a fetid swamp. I'm neat enough that the floor is free of debris and my laundry hampers can be moved away from my practice area, but the room is far from spacious, and I have bookshelves that need more protection than a plastic sheet. Also, I think I need better dehumidifiers or more outlets, because my room is a little ... humid. Humid is a better word than choking wet miasma. I'm running my space heater pretty much constantly to keep my family from noticing the haunted house chill in my room, but my sister still whines that my air conditioning vents work better than hers.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Ice Cream Aftermath
Why didn't you update last night, summer_snow? Did something go horribly wrong? Did you accidentally out yourself as a superhuman via some tragic ice-cream-based accident? Nope. I had an awesome time. A little bit of chaos in the kitchen, a game of kick-the-can with my sister, a few minutes mopping up the leaky saltwater (I love love love tile floors) and some tasty ice cream all round. I'm thinking I'm going to store the coffee can, salt box and ice cream jars in my room. That way if there's an accident I've got a built-in excuse, though I haven't found a way to make the ice cream mix keep. And no, you smart alecks out there, freezing it won't keep it good indefinitely. It's got milk and eggs in it. I want to try making ice cream via cryogenesis. If nothing else, it's going to be faster than the other way. I am an ice cream monster, since it doesn't make my tongue go numb, and I can taste every bite of it. After we ate all the ice cream (I had half my dad's portion, since he has delicate little fillings that don't like temperature changes), the whole family sat down for a movie together, and I snarfed 75% of the popcorn, and it was midnight before I got back to my computer. Oh well. It was one of those adorable time travel movies, Kate & Leopold. The movie was a bit iffy on the pseudoscience of time travel, but whatever. My sister squealed over Leopold and his fancy pants, but I was actually a bit more interested in Stuart the inventor. It's not that I have a thing one way or another for metatechs or time travelers, it's just that I liked the character better. You gotta be a total optimist to jump off a bridge like that.
I had some issues with the portrayal of the time traveling couple's relationship. One, I totally wouldn't live in any period of history except my own, what with the advent of feminism and hygeine and all that. Can't live without 'em. Two, if I couldn't persuade my time-displaced sweetie to live in my period without catastrophic universe-altering paradoxes, I'd go for a time share or just living out of a time machine. Anna Chronos and her husband do that, and they've been together for several billion years.
I had some issues with the portrayal of the time traveling couple's relationship. One, I totally wouldn't live in any period of history except my own, what with the advent of feminism and hygeine and all that. Can't live without 'em. Two, if I couldn't persuade my time-displaced sweetie to live in my period without catastrophic universe-altering paradoxes, I'd go for a time share or just living out of a time machine. Anna Chronos and her husband do that, and they've been together for several billion years.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Winter Wonderland: Tools of the Trade
Since I live in Florida, I don't have access to a lot of anti-ice devices. Screwdrivers and hairdryers really aren't cutting it for me, as yesterday's events demonstrated. My ankle hurts from where I scraped it. It's not infected or anything, but it throbs whenever I walk. I can't exactly tell my parents that I've stabbed myself with a screwdriver, so I don't even get sympathy points from them. Of course, I'm totally lazy, so the not-walking thing is well within my normal range of activity.
I've been researching ice management online. The options so far are salt, antifreeze, and windshield scrapers. I'm not going to go for something disgustingly expensive like those automatic thermal coils in Vector's suit. Unfortunately, odds are I can't physically buy anything but the salt. I don't believe there is a single auto shop in South Florida that sells ice scrapers, and I don't really own a car or have any interest in cars at all, so that might seem a tiny bit suspicious. In Florida, cars don't freeze. They spontaneously combust. And they spontaneously get melted by Firecracker during his collateral-heavy throwdowns with the local goons. One of the reasons I don't own a car is because the insurance down here is truly obscene.
Antifreeze doesn't sound particularly useful. The whole point of it is to prevent things from freezing, which is kind of counterintuitive seeing as I'm a cryogenetic and all. Plus, I don't particularly want to expose myself to too much of it. Salt seems like a better choice. It does melt ice a little bit, it's not going to kill me, it's easy to find, and nobody will ask questions if I buy a box or two of it. Plus I can totally make my own ice cream with it. I'm going to rescue that empty coffee can from the recycling bin and make ice cream tomorrow. I learned how to make it in chemistry class. I think it was supposed to be educational, since we did a token lab report afterwards, but mostly it was a bunch of kids kicking coffee cans full of ice around and eating ice cream.
I've been researching ice management online. The options so far are salt, antifreeze, and windshield scrapers. I'm not going to go for something disgustingly expensive like those automatic thermal coils in Vector's suit. Unfortunately, odds are I can't physically buy anything but the salt. I don't believe there is a single auto shop in South Florida that sells ice scrapers, and I don't really own a car or have any interest in cars at all, so that might seem a tiny bit suspicious. In Florida, cars don't freeze. They spontaneously combust. And they spontaneously get melted by Firecracker during his collateral-heavy throwdowns with the local goons. One of the reasons I don't own a car is because the insurance down here is truly obscene.
Antifreeze doesn't sound particularly useful. The whole point of it is to prevent things from freezing, which is kind of counterintuitive seeing as I'm a cryogenetic and all. Plus, I don't particularly want to expose myself to too much of it. Salt seems like a better choice. It does melt ice a little bit, it's not going to kill me, it's easy to find, and nobody will ask questions if I buy a box or two of it. Plus I can totally make my own ice cream with it. I'm going to rescue that empty coffee can from the recycling bin and make ice cream tomorrow. I learned how to make it in chemistry class. I think it was supposed to be educational, since we did a token lab report afterwards, but mostly it was a bunch of kids kicking coffee cans full of ice around and eating ice cream.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Glass Slippers Give You Concussions
So, shoes made of ice rank pretty damn low on my list of brilliant ideas. I blame Cinderella. I've been back like a day, and I've already been dragooned into babysitting for one of the kids down the street. She's going through her ultra-femme Disney princess phase, except she's a total nerd about it. We spent some time arguing over what those "glass" slippers are actually made of. I voted Plexiglas, but the kid thinks they're made of that smart self-repairing polymer stuff that the Hamsternauts make their bubbles out of, because otherwise the shoes would be all sweaty and scuffed by the end of the evening, and hurt her feet besides. I cannot dispute that the shoes remained very sparkly, but they did shatter easily, despite having withstood an evening of dancing, going up and down stairs, and fleeing from royalty. Maybe they're programmed to self-destruct in the presence of evil stepmothers or something.
After the kid's parents got home (and paid me sweet, sweet cash) I went home and thought about glass slippers. And then I took a shower. And thought about glass slippers some more. They've got to be more practical than clunky Crocs, right? They'll be just my size, and I can repair them and change the shape of the treads, right? Nope. What I wound up doing was encasing my feet in impenetrable hooves of solid ice. It turns out, feet need to actually move when you walk. It took a while to chip off my ice clogs (should I invest in an ice pick? or is that a bad idea?) and I've got a painful scratch down my ankle from where the screwdriver slipped. And since I was standing in the shower with my slippery melting ice boots, I slipped and fell. I cracked my head against the wall on my way down, and I shot out an instinctive fluff of snow to cushion the fall. Except the snow wasn't quite snow, more like a sheet of ice, and it varnished every surface from the shower curtain to the wall, including the shower drain, faucet head, and emergency drain hole. There was another emergency cleanup procedure, involving my toothbrush cup, the sink, the hairdryer, the screwdriver, an ungodly amount of hot water, lots of towels, some parental deception and a scrub brush.
Once I had disposed of the evidence, put two band-aids on my ankle and dressed in dry clothes, I spent half an hour curled up on my bed waiting for the painkillers to kick in for my bruised skull, butt, elbow and ego. I suck. I suck so much. What the hell kind of superhuman almost kills herself with her own damned powers?
After the kid's parents got home (and paid me sweet, sweet cash) I went home and thought about glass slippers. And then I took a shower. And thought about glass slippers some more. They've got to be more practical than clunky Crocs, right? They'll be just my size, and I can repair them and change the shape of the treads, right? Nope. What I wound up doing was encasing my feet in impenetrable hooves of solid ice. It turns out, feet need to actually move when you walk. It took a while to chip off my ice clogs (should I invest in an ice pick? or is that a bad idea?) and I've got a painful scratch down my ankle from where the screwdriver slipped. And since I was standing in the shower with my slippery melting ice boots, I slipped and fell. I cracked my head against the wall on my way down, and I shot out an instinctive fluff of snow to cushion the fall. Except the snow wasn't quite snow, more like a sheet of ice, and it varnished every surface from the shower curtain to the wall, including the shower drain, faucet head, and emergency drain hole. There was another emergency cleanup procedure, involving my toothbrush cup, the sink, the hairdryer, the screwdriver, an ungodly amount of hot water, lots of towels, some parental deception and a scrub brush.
Once I had disposed of the evidence, put two band-aids on my ankle and dressed in dry clothes, I spent half an hour curled up on my bed waiting for the painkillers to kick in for my bruised skull, butt, elbow and ego. I suck. I suck so much. What the hell kind of superhuman almost kills herself with her own damned powers?
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Family Matters
I have glitter in my TEETH. There is glitter on my toothbrush, and in my hair, and on my floor, and on my doorknob. It's like a nanovirus that is multiplying and trying to take over the world. It should be illegal to own this much glitter. She uses it in every possible part of her makeup, and leaves a sparkly trail around the house. I'm fairly sure that my sister has ingested so much glitter that she just naturally excretes it now. I never lend her books, because they always come back with the pages crusted with glitter. Actually, that's not true. I don't lend her books because we have vastly different tastes in literature. She likes sparkly vampires. 'Nuff said.
Now to the big question. Have I told my family that I'm superhuman?
Uh, no. No I haven't. Since my cryogenesis is not hereditary, they don't know about it. And I don't think I'm going to tell them. They don't really need to know, do they? Some things are private. Some things you don't tell your parents. I don't tell them about my sex life. I don't tell them about the times I'm up way too late color-coding my closet. I don't tell them about the trashy magazines I buy sometimes. I didn't tell them about that one time I drank beer at a party and threw up. So I don't see a reason to tell them about an unusual new talent and a private hobby. I haven't told them about this blog either. I just want to keep this to myself. I don't have an awful lot of secrets, and I want this to be all mine. I don't want my dad offering me suggestions and instituting training sessions, I don't want my mom asking me to make ice cubes when we run out, and I don't want my sister telling everyone in the world that I have powers. I don't want them to control this. To limit and regiment and monitor what I do. This is mine.
Okay, that came off a little harsh. I would probably tell them if I started being a vigilante or something. If it put them in danger, or stood a chance of getting me seriously hurt. They have a right to know why and how I'm affecting the family. I'd better come up with a few principles or a mission statement before I go pro, since my parents would put me through the wringer making sure I'm doing it for the right reasons before they would support me in something that risky. But as long as there are no consequences, this will be my secret.
Now to the big question. Have I told my family that I'm superhuman?
Uh, no. No I haven't. Since my cryogenesis is not hereditary, they don't know about it. And I don't think I'm going to tell them. They don't really need to know, do they? Some things are private. Some things you don't tell your parents. I don't tell them about my sex life. I don't tell them about the times I'm up way too late color-coding my closet. I don't tell them about the trashy magazines I buy sometimes. I didn't tell them about that one time I drank beer at a party and threw up. So I don't see a reason to tell them about an unusual new talent and a private hobby. I haven't told them about this blog either. I just want to keep this to myself. I don't have an awful lot of secrets, and I want this to be all mine. I don't want my dad offering me suggestions and instituting training sessions, I don't want my mom asking me to make ice cubes when we run out, and I don't want my sister telling everyone in the world that I have powers. I don't want them to control this. To limit and regiment and monitor what I do. This is mine.
Okay, that came off a little harsh. I would probably tell them if I started being a vigilante or something. If it put them in danger, or stood a chance of getting me seriously hurt. They have a right to know why and how I'm affecting the family. I'd better come up with a few principles or a mission statement before I go pro, since my parents would put me through the wringer making sure I'm doing it for the right reasons before they would support me in something that risky. But as long as there are no consequences, this will be my secret.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
School's Out
Home. My room smells good, I can actually fit into my shower stall without keeping my elbows clamped to my sides, and I have tasty food to eat. On the downside: glitter. Oh, does my sister like glitter. I've been here a few hours and I already have a sparkly exoskeleton that won't come off with hot water, cold water, ice, duct tape or exfoliating scrub. My forearm is raw. And glittery. There's just like one tiny little glint left on my skin, but I can see it and it's not coming off. Honestly, fleas would annoy me less.
Since I am a neurotic freak, unpacking was totally easy. I had packed in each box a list of its own contents. And I had a master list in my pocket, just in case. And also I emailed a copy of the list to myself. Am I overthinking this? I do have a lot of stuff. And I actually own my own bubble wrap, mostly because I have a gorgeous stained glass type lamp that doesn't travel well, and I optimized my packing space by wedging all my socks and underwear between my books. I consider packing to be a science. And sometimes an art. It feels like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
Now that I'm away from school, I'm more willing to think this was just my imagination, but it might be worth mentioning anyway. When I picked up my phone this morning, all the hairs on my arms stood up. No green light, and the laptop was perfectly normal. I dunno. It might just be the air conditioning, or residual electricity from my socks and the thunderstorms, or maybe it's psychological. But maybe it got green-fired while I was asleep? For the record, it was closer to the window than my laptop, but it wasn't plugged into the charger. I don't know what that means. I'm not Batman. I'm not a detective or an investigator or a logician and I really wish weird shit would stop happening to me. Says the girl with the superpowers. At least I understand the superpowers, and I want them, and I know where they came from. I just want someone to fess up and let me know what they're trying to accomplish here.
Since I am a neurotic freak, unpacking was totally easy. I had packed in each box a list of its own contents. And I had a master list in my pocket, just in case. And also I emailed a copy of the list to myself. Am I overthinking this? I do have a lot of stuff. And I actually own my own bubble wrap, mostly because I have a gorgeous stained glass type lamp that doesn't travel well, and I optimized my packing space by wedging all my socks and underwear between my books. I consider packing to be a science. And sometimes an art. It feels like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
Now that I'm away from school, I'm more willing to think this was just my imagination, but it might be worth mentioning anyway. When I picked up my phone this morning, all the hairs on my arms stood up. No green light, and the laptop was perfectly normal. I dunno. It might just be the air conditioning, or residual electricity from my socks and the thunderstorms, or maybe it's psychological. But maybe it got green-fired while I was asleep? For the record, it was closer to the window than my laptop, but it wasn't plugged into the charger. I don't know what that means. I'm not Batman. I'm not a detective or an investigator or a logician and I really wish weird shit would stop happening to me. Says the girl with the superpowers. At least I understand the superpowers, and I want them, and I know where they came from. I just want someone to fess up and let me know what they're trying to accomplish here.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Brain Unwinding
Free! My academic deadlines no longer loom over me like the proverbial axe. Go, me! I've spent most of the evening in a blissful B-movie stupor. Okay, B-movie is probably generous. It's a godawful old sci fi movie with cheesy special effects. I like to watch bad movies. Somebody has to. You'd think they'd get a metatech to work the puppets or something, since they've had sophisticated automatons since practically the Victorian age, but I guess they were worried about a metatech going all mad scientist and engineering the monster puppets to eat the director or something. So the special effects look like they were made with drinking straws and clay. They couldn't even afford shoestrings. Besides, I doubt a metatech would want to collaborate on yet another 'hubristic scientist unleashes forces beyond human comprehension' movie. I know I'd have moral objections to providing the special effects for Killer Frost: The Musical. That's not an actual play, but considering how many dramatizations of Cobalt's origin story we've got in book, movie and play format, it's probably not far off. Good grief, are there no supers writing good parts for supers out there?
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
CryoGENIUS
Why haven't you posted, summer_snow? Are your finals going well? Have you suffered a pork pox relapse? Did you get hit by a truck? Did the government kidnap you? Have you concluded that the only honorable way out of this semester is via seppuku?
Not quite. As embarassing as this is, I kinda sorta wound up freezing my keyboard. Yeah, I'm that stupid. I hang my head in shame. I was typing with my icicle fingers, and then they kinda melted a little bit, and dripped under the keyboard and then refroze because I panicked and tried to solidify them in time to get them out before they short-circuited the machine that contains my final essays. And I couldn't even use a hairdryer. I had to take apart the laptop, and then take out the keyboard, and wait for that to thaw so it wouldn't damage the rest of the computer. After the ice thawed, I blasted it out with compressed air, then reassembled the computer (I have a screw left over and I don't know where it came from). Naturally, this did not help my essay deadlines. At all.
I bet Cryo never did crap like this.
Not quite. As embarassing as this is, I kinda sorta wound up freezing my keyboard. Yeah, I'm that stupid. I hang my head in shame. I was typing with my icicle fingers, and then they kinda melted a little bit, and dripped under the keyboard and then refroze because I panicked and tried to solidify them in time to get them out before they short-circuited the machine that contains my final essays. And I couldn't even use a hairdryer. I had to take apart the laptop, and then take out the keyboard, and wait for that to thaw so it wouldn't damage the rest of the computer. After the ice thawed, I blasted it out with compressed air, then reassembled the computer (I have a screw left over and I don't know where it came from). Naturally, this did not help my essay deadlines. At all.
I bet Cryo never did crap like this.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Stormy Weather
I don't want to talk about schoolwork right now, except to assure you that I'm totally on top of it and not stressed out in the slightest. Not at all. What I do want to talk about is the weather. In Florida we have two seasons: wet and dry. We have (finally!) started the wet season. I love the afternoon thunderstorms. And the midnight thunderstorms most of all. Honestly, I just love thunder, especially when I'm snug indoors with my face pressed to the glass, hearing the surrounding murmer of rain and feeling the windows rattle with every boom. Florida is a pyrogenic environment, and the lightning strike capital of the world. It's also the capital of cars bursting into flame, but I'm not sure how much of that is due to lightning and the heat, and how much is due to Firecracker. Either way, I'm looking forward to the storms.
The air before a thunderstorm is heavy with expectation. The skies are a moody black, instead of their usual relentless blue during the day, or gaudy orange at sunset. Florida doesn't do brooding weather very well most of the time, but we have some truly awesome thunderstorms. The wind picks up, blowing away the stifling heat. If you're looking close enough, sometimes you can see the rain racing towards you. Florida rain is serious business. It falls in fat drops that slam the rooftops and bounce up off the ground, rendering umbrellas useless. Within minutes, the runoff has created puddles so deep that it's almost worth the ringworm to jump in them barefoot. I can stand outside spraying snow as hard as I can in all directions, and it still won't measure up to Florida rain. I did that this afternoon during the storm, and I couldn't see the difference between when I was creating water and when I was just being rained on. I really need to start putting my phone in a ziplock bag or something before I do crap like that, because I'm not sure if I broke it. It was turned off, and I'm letting it dry before I try it again. It's an old phone anyway (and it did glow green the one time, so it's kinda expendable). I don't trust (and my parents don't trust me with) new technology. After a couple years locked in a battle of wills with my laptop, I'm terrified that any complex technology will attain sentience and deem me (and by extension humanity) unworthy of leadership and then it will take over the world and it will all be my fault for not stopping it. So no iPhone for me.
The best part of any storm is the thunder. It's so much more thrilling and dignified than fireworks, and leaves no smoke to obscure further flashes. I saw Stormcloud once, before she left for Shining Citadel, but her javelins had a sharper sound, more like a whip crack than deliciously deep rolling thunder. I guess it was because she was only a few blocks away. Either way, she didn't make that much of an impression, sorry to say. It only took her the one strike to end the fight. I'm fairly sure I saw her face off against a Titan as well, but even through the binoculars there was just a huge fluffy cloud occasionally lit up by flashes of orange light and little threads of lightning. It was way out at sea, at night, and too far north for us to get anything worse than really choppy waves the day after.
The air before a thunderstorm is heavy with expectation. The skies are a moody black, instead of their usual relentless blue during the day, or gaudy orange at sunset. Florida doesn't do brooding weather very well most of the time, but we have some truly awesome thunderstorms. The wind picks up, blowing away the stifling heat. If you're looking close enough, sometimes you can see the rain racing towards you. Florida rain is serious business. It falls in fat drops that slam the rooftops and bounce up off the ground, rendering umbrellas useless. Within minutes, the runoff has created puddles so deep that it's almost worth the ringworm to jump in them barefoot. I can stand outside spraying snow as hard as I can in all directions, and it still won't measure up to Florida rain. I did that this afternoon during the storm, and I couldn't see the difference between when I was creating water and when I was just being rained on. I really need to start putting my phone in a ziplock bag or something before I do crap like that, because I'm not sure if I broke it. It was turned off, and I'm letting it dry before I try it again. It's an old phone anyway (and it did glow green the one time, so it's kinda expendable). I don't trust (and my parents don't trust me with) new technology. After a couple years locked in a battle of wills with my laptop, I'm terrified that any complex technology will attain sentience and deem me (and by extension humanity) unworthy of leadership and then it will take over the world and it will all be my fault for not stopping it. So no iPhone for me.
The best part of any storm is the thunder. It's so much more thrilling and dignified than fireworks, and leaves no smoke to obscure further flashes. I saw Stormcloud once, before she left for Shining Citadel, but her javelins had a sharper sound, more like a whip crack than deliciously deep rolling thunder. I guess it was because she was only a few blocks away. Either way, she didn't make that much of an impression, sorry to say. It only took her the one strike to end the fight. I'm fairly sure I saw her face off against a Titan as well, but even through the binoculars there was just a huge fluffy cloud occasionally lit up by flashes of orange light and little threads of lightning. It was way out at sea, at night, and too far north for us to get anything worse than really choppy waves the day after.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Carpet Crisis
I tried shampooing the carpet today. Not that I think I can salvage it and spare my housing deposit, but I don't think it's healthy to keep breathing mildew. I guess it smells a bit nicer now, and the splotches have changed color. There's really nothing that can make that particular shade of carpet look worse, really. This might even be an improvement. I am so tired of damp socks and squishy wall-to-wall carpeting. At home I have ugly tile floors that I don't care about, and I can use a mop or towel on them, problem solved. Gasp! Did I just reveal a scrap of information about my private life that people can use to track me down? How many college girls in Florida have tile floors? Quick, to the Brotherhood of Evil Real Estate Agents!
Sometimes you just have to mock these things, or you wind up driving yourself crazy. There's only so much second-guessing I'm going to do. I have tile floors. Alert the press. Whatever.
Gotta get some sleep now, or I won't wake up on schedule tomorrow. I've set my own deadlines for my finals, and I am a harsh mistress. I'm waking up early to get the maximum amount of library time (yes the library's open on Sunday, but not for long), because I seriously want to get this done early and then slack off and lounge around the common room in my pajamas and play video games while Dani frantically flips through her chem notes and chants the names of molecules or whatever.
Yeah, I'm a jerk.
Sometimes you just have to mock these things, or you wind up driving yourself crazy. There's only so much second-guessing I'm going to do. I have tile floors. Alert the press. Whatever.
Gotta get some sleep now, or I won't wake up on schedule tomorrow. I've set my own deadlines for my finals, and I am a harsh mistress. I'm waking up early to get the maximum amount of library time (yes the library's open on Sunday, but not for long), because I seriously want to get this done early and then slack off and lounge around the common room in my pajamas and play video games while Dani frantically flips through her chem notes and chants the names of molecules or whatever.
Yeah, I'm a jerk.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Procrastination Time
I should be writing essays and studying right now, shouldn't I? My first exam is on Monday, and I've got a ten-page paper due Tuesday by 5:00. Instead, I have gone into a cleaning frenzy. It's the most useful form of procrastination I know. When I'm vacuuming, taking out the trash and sorting my closet, I feel the warm glow of accomplishment, of doing something grown-up, responsible, and laudable. Regardless of how much other stuff I should be doing instead. I've packed a lot of my stuff into the boxes under my bed, folded my clothes neatly, organized the papers floating around my desk into their respective binders, and lined up all my textbooks neatly in descending size. So yeah, my room is immaculate. Except there's kind of a stain on the carpet under my bed, and it's not coming out with vacuuming and I think maybe it's mildew. It smells musty. Damn you, short blowdryer cord!
Actually my whole room kinda smells like rancid old books or something, despite the cinnamon broom in my closet (which, by the way, is a really good way to scent up a room when you're not allowed to burn candles despite being a human fire extinguisher). So I'm thinking I can kiss my housing deposit goodbye. I'm also thinking that since my housing deposit will be used to replace the carpet and stuff, there's no harm in practicing a little bit more...
crap iuts hard tio typewith icicle Fingers
Actually my whole room kinda smells like rancid old books or something, despite the cinnamon broom in my closet (which, by the way, is a really good way to scent up a room when you're not allowed to burn candles despite being a human fire extinguisher). So I'm thinking I can kiss my housing deposit goodbye. I'm also thinking that since my housing deposit will be used to replace the carpet and stuff, there's no harm in practicing a little bit more...
crap iuts hard tio typewith icicle Fingers
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sometimes The World Sucks
This Thanksgiving, I will give thanks that I am no longer in a class with Amie. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is a ways off, and I've still got to endure one more class with her before exam week starts. Wow, can she derail class discussions. How can you turn an overview of the themes in Kafka's Metamorphosis into a discussion of druids? How? I was there, and I still don't understand the process. And then I had to ditch my lunch plans to talk to the professor about essay topics, which I didn't get to do in class because Miss Motor Mouth was doing her "I'm really thinking hard and might have an epiphany any minute" face, and the professor bought in to it and actually spent thirty minutes trying to untangle her thought processes.
I ripped the knees out of another pair of jeans. Between them, my eight pairs of jeans have nine patches. One pair is basically patched from shin to mid-thigh. This is not good. I tried to sew a patch on to the latest rip, but quit after the second time I stabbed the needle into my flesh right above the thumbnail. Crap like that is why I don't lend out my sewing kit. It's seen more blood than a surgeon's scalpel.
Velocity got out of intensive care today. Her handlers released a brief clip of her propped up in bed, but they're still keeping the media circus away from her. God, it's heartbreaking. Her face doesn't even look like her face. The clean new costume she's wearing makes it even worse somehow.
There was something in the news about Vector again. He was posing with a firefighter and wearing a shit-eating grin. I didn't bother reading the headline.
I ripped the knees out of another pair of jeans. Between them, my eight pairs of jeans have nine patches. One pair is basically patched from shin to mid-thigh. This is not good. I tried to sew a patch on to the latest rip, but quit after the second time I stabbed the needle into my flesh right above the thumbnail. Crap like that is why I don't lend out my sewing kit. It's seen more blood than a surgeon's scalpel.
Velocity got out of intensive care today. Her handlers released a brief clip of her propped up in bed, but they're still keeping the media circus away from her. God, it's heartbreaking. Her face doesn't even look like her face. The clean new costume she's wearing makes it even worse somehow.
There was something in the news about Vector again. He was posing with a firefighter and wearing a shit-eating grin. I didn't bother reading the headline.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Winter Wonderland: Math
Freezing point of water:
0 °C, 32 °F, 273.15 K, 491.67 R.
Just because I'm trying to memorize this (and it's taped on my mirror too), here is the Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion:
Fahrenheit to Celsius: [°F] = [°C] x 9/5 + 32
Celsius to Fahrenheit: [°C] = ([°F] − 32) x 5/9
At negative 40 degrees, Celsius and Fahrenheit converge.
The various thermodynamic temperature scales used today are Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin and Rankine, named after Anders Celsius, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, William Thomson (1st Baron Kelvin) and William John Macquorn Rankine. What is the Rankine scale, you ask? It's basically Kelvin if it were based on Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. It starts measuring temperature with its zero point at absolute zero like Kelvin, and then uses degrees Fahrenheit from there up. Confusing. Yeah, I'm not a math major.
By the way, that Wikipedia article (what, you think I'm doing actual research on a Wednesday night?) is kinda out of date. It may be impossible to reach absolute zero through natural means, but metatechs have been doing since Dr. Miracle (or Miriam S. Closson, as she was called during her undergrad days) invented the Zero Point Chamber for her thesis in 1974, or was it 1975? Depends on your point of view on that whole time travel thing. Personally, I think it's kinda cheating to get an extra eight months to work on your thesis due to a chronal loop in your dorm room.
0 °C, 32 °F, 273.15 K, 491.67 R.
Just because I'm trying to memorize this (and it's taped on my mirror too), here is the Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion:
Fahrenheit to Celsius: [°F] = [°C] x 9/5 + 32
Celsius to Fahrenheit: [°C] = ([°F] − 32) x 5/9
At negative 40 degrees, Celsius and Fahrenheit converge.
The various thermodynamic temperature scales used today are Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin and Rankine, named after Anders Celsius, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, William Thomson (1st Baron Kelvin) and William John Macquorn Rankine. What is the Rankine scale, you ask? It's basically Kelvin if it were based on Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. It starts measuring temperature with its zero point at absolute zero like Kelvin, and then uses degrees Fahrenheit from there up. Confusing. Yeah, I'm not a math major.
By the way, that Wikipedia article (what, you think I'm doing actual research on a Wednesday night?) is kinda out of date. It may be impossible to reach absolute zero through natural means, but metatechs have been doing since Dr. Miracle (or Miriam S. Closson, as she was called during her undergrad days) invented the Zero Point Chamber for her thesis in 1974, or was it 1975? Depends on your point of view on that whole time travel thing. Personally, I think it's kinda cheating to get an extra eight months to work on your thesis due to a chronal loop in your dorm room.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Confession
I have thought long and hard over whether I want to share this aspect of my private life with the internet at large. Whether I'm going to expose this ugly truth about myself to the judging eyes of millions. But since I've already shared other, more dangerous secrets, I might as well take the plunge. I hope you won't think worse of me for it.
I wear Crocs.
Yes, I just admitted to owning the dorkiest shoes since the invention of foot coverings. The one-piece plastic foam clogs. The industry standard for lack of taste. The shoes that are used to represent the fall of society's intellectual and aesthetic standards in Idiocracy. Mine are lime green.
It's not that I don't own and appreciate shoes. I do. I have shoes ranging from strappy sandals to snow boots. Sometimes I coordinate entire outfits around my shoes. I have spent ludicrous amounts of money on soft leather boots with tiny little pockets on the sides. And one day I will own a pair of knee high boots just like Flare's. So why have I surrendered myself to the nadir of footwear?
Because they're waterproof. There is nothing I hate more than squelchy shoes, and I have discovered the hard way that my shoes take a long, long time to dry out after I've used my superpowers. Sandals get slippery, rubber boots get full, and leather boots get hours of loving conditioning and heartfelt apologies after a soaking. Crocs get squeaky. That's it. And since I have not committed the cardinal sartorial sin of wearing Crocs with socks, all I need to do after an afternoon of cryogenesis is just towel them off and put them back on.
As much as I don't want to be the superhero who runs around in Crocs, I can't see a better solution. Crocs supply pretty much everything I need in footwear while I'm using my powers. Decent traction, impervious to damage by soaking, repels water (and ice), easy to care for, drains water instead of collecting it like little foot-shaped buckets. I'm weighing the prospect of universal mockery against the prospect of sensible shoes. It wouldn't be the most gaudy costume to ever come out of Florida...
I wear Crocs.
Yes, I just admitted to owning the dorkiest shoes since the invention of foot coverings. The one-piece plastic foam clogs. The industry standard for lack of taste. The shoes that are used to represent the fall of society's intellectual and aesthetic standards in Idiocracy. Mine are lime green.
It's not that I don't own and appreciate shoes. I do. I have shoes ranging from strappy sandals to snow boots. Sometimes I coordinate entire outfits around my shoes. I have spent ludicrous amounts of money on soft leather boots with tiny little pockets on the sides. And one day I will own a pair of knee high boots just like Flare's. So why have I surrendered myself to the nadir of footwear?
Because they're waterproof. There is nothing I hate more than squelchy shoes, and I have discovered the hard way that my shoes take a long, long time to dry out after I've used my superpowers. Sandals get slippery, rubber boots get full, and leather boots get hours of loving conditioning and heartfelt apologies after a soaking. Crocs get squeaky. That's it. And since I have not committed the cardinal sartorial sin of wearing Crocs with socks, all I need to do after an afternoon of cryogenesis is just towel them off and put them back on.
As much as I don't want to be the superhero who runs around in Crocs, I can't see a better solution. Crocs supply pretty much everything I need in footwear while I'm using my powers. Decent traction, impervious to damage by soaking, repels water (and ice), easy to care for, drains water instead of collecting it like little foot-shaped buckets. I'm weighing the prospect of universal mockery against the prospect of sensible shoes. It wouldn't be the most gaudy costume to ever come out of Florida...
Monday, May 11, 2009
Blogging My Secrets Away
What are the odds that this blog will inadvertantly reveal my identity to the internet at large? Pretty slim, actually. I fudge dates, names and locations. You really think there's a place called Coral Pines? I'm not linking this site to any personal business, I'm not posting pictures of my cats or my room, and I'm definitely not sticking my real name up here.
I don't think anybody's really invested in figuring out my secrets. If the creepy green flash was some sort of a data download, then I don't have any more secrets, and if it wasn't then I think I'm still under the radar. Either way, this hasn't touched my public life yet. I make a point of not befriending budding investigative journalists, and not blithely confiding in my roommates. If Dani knows or suspects I'm a superhuman, she's polite enough to keep it to herself. I haven't really done anything worth watching yet, and I'm just a low-level cryogenetic who can barely make icicles on her fingers. If I had a valuable/dangerous talent, I would censor myself a bit more carefully, but the odds of anyone ever tracing this back to me are vanishingly small.
Regardless, if I ever make it to the big times, I'm deleting everything I ever wrote here. Celebrity comes with its disadvantages and dangers, and I don't want the media trawling through my posts to find something to throw in my face. Worst case scenario, I wind up important enough to score a tech-savvy nemesis who uses internet mumbo-jumbo to figure out who I am. If I can't get Myke to shut him up/shut him down, I guess I go public then. There are public supers in my town. I could do it. Suck it up, beat the living daylights out of whoever outed me, be a role model to all the little cryogenetics out there (and damn do they need one), do whatever hero business I can do without being bulletproof, and possibly shoot myself in the face after a week of constant public scrutiny, losing friends, worrying about my citizenship and possible military service, hearing classmates whispering about me behind my back, the government sniffing at my public records, media vultures shrieking about supers invading their precious little schools, and my family ... I don't want to think about my family. No, going public is not an option for a long, long time. I don't have as much to lose as some people, but I still want to be in control of my life. I don't want cryogenesis to be the first thing people think of when they hear my name. I don't want to live in a little gated community of supers, I don't want this to change my career, I don't want Killer Frost knocking on my door to cut down the competition. I almost understand why Mind Master tried to erase the memories of everyone in Stockport. Just to live a normal life for a little bit longer.
I don't think anybody's really invested in figuring out my secrets. If the creepy green flash was some sort of a data download, then I don't have any more secrets, and if it wasn't then I think I'm still under the radar. Either way, this hasn't touched my public life yet. I make a point of not befriending budding investigative journalists, and not blithely confiding in my roommates. If Dani knows or suspects I'm a superhuman, she's polite enough to keep it to herself. I haven't really done anything worth watching yet, and I'm just a low-level cryogenetic who can barely make icicles on her fingers. If I had a valuable/dangerous talent, I would censor myself a bit more carefully, but the odds of anyone ever tracing this back to me are vanishingly small.
Regardless, if I ever make it to the big times, I'm deleting everything I ever wrote here. Celebrity comes with its disadvantages and dangers, and I don't want the media trawling through my posts to find something to throw in my face. Worst case scenario, I wind up important enough to score a tech-savvy nemesis who uses internet mumbo-jumbo to figure out who I am. If I can't get Myke to shut him up/shut him down, I guess I go public then. There are public supers in my town. I could do it. Suck it up, beat the living daylights out of whoever outed me, be a role model to all the little cryogenetics out there (and damn do they need one), do whatever hero business I can do without being bulletproof, and possibly shoot myself in the face after a week of constant public scrutiny, losing friends, worrying about my citizenship and possible military service, hearing classmates whispering about me behind my back, the government sniffing at my public records, media vultures shrieking about supers invading their precious little schools, and my family ... I don't want to think about my family. No, going public is not an option for a long, long time. I don't have as much to lose as some people, but I still want to be in control of my life. I don't want cryogenesis to be the first thing people think of when they hear my name. I don't want to live in a little gated community of supers, I don't want this to change my career, I don't want Killer Frost knocking on my door to cut down the competition. I almost understand why Mind Master tried to erase the memories of everyone in Stockport. Just to live a normal life for a little bit longer.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Scrabble and the Supervillain Ethic
I'm enjoying my last gasp of freedom before I have to start studying for my finals. This will be the last week of classes, starting Monday, and I am so ready for summer. It's like high school senioritis all over again. A couple of my professors, lagging behind in their syllabi, will attempt to cram their classes, and the rest will go easy on us. I remember in high school after the AP exams were done, the AP classes just played Scrabble for the last couple of weeks. I am a Scrabble GOD. I can manage to make solid blocks of words that earn me points vertically and horizontally, and would also earn diagonal points if those were possible. I'm also apparently a lot better at keeping a straight face than I thought, since I managed to convince quite a few people that the contents of my all-vowel Scrabble rack were actually a legitimate word of Hawaiian origin. Several times. Mostly I played by the rules, but I'm more partial to making awesome words than winning by strategy. Kind of like how Mockingbird will try and take over Chicago with giant jack-in-the-boxes or whatever. Sure, it's not the most efficient way, but it's the most fun. It's a matter of style, which seems to be a villain thing mostly.
I don't always win Scrabble games, but sometimes it's worth losing just to savor the game. If I'm playing a word game, I don't really see the point in playing by arcane mathematical rules, and having a joyless, calculating bland game. Why get 50 points for 'ox' when you can put down 'corsets' or 'globule'? I preferred to team up with Jack so he could do the strategy part, and I could do the creative part. We were virtually unbeatable together. That's probably why we spent so much time on separate teams. Scrabble week was one time where I earned instant popularity in high school. It's like dodgeball in reverse: the geeks get chosen first out of the lineups.
I don't always win Scrabble games, but sometimes it's worth losing just to savor the game. If I'm playing a word game, I don't really see the point in playing by arcane mathematical rules, and having a joyless, calculating bland game. Why get 50 points for 'ox' when you can put down 'corsets' or 'globule'? I preferred to team up with Jack so he could do the strategy part, and I could do the creative part. We were virtually unbeatable together. That's probably why we spent so much time on separate teams. Scrabble week was one time where I earned instant popularity in high school. It's like dodgeball in reverse: the geeks get chosen first out of the lineups.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
1 Billion Monkeys, No Shakespeare
Even if the internet hasn't proven that old saying wrong, this random word generator has:
http://hamete.org/babel/index_en.html
Lots of random word-like sequences, but nothing approaching Hamlet, let alone coherency. It really makes me appreciate the complexities of language, grammar and syntax. Although our language would be much richer if we included words like "avfdhgoot," "hgmff" and "meavx." I intend to start introducing those into my everyday conversation. If mcjob made it into the dictionary, I'm sure I can start a new fad. I'm not sure how many times you need to click the Library of Babel button before it produces actual sentences. Exactly how improbable is the structure of Hamlet anyway? Shouldn't you get "Act one scene one Elsinore Castle Denmark" at least once out every trillion clicks? Maybe chimpanzees and computer programs share an innate hatred of the works of William Shakespeare? Someone should finally train a chimp to type out Hamlet, just to resolve this deeply pressing issue. Preferably an actual chimp, and not one of those Zeebots. Geez, who in the world looks at a poo-flinging primate and says, "That's a nice chimp, but you know what would be cooler? If we gave it ballistic weaponry and onboard tactical AIs. That would be a great use of government funding!"
Dr. Wilde, that's who.
I don't know what's going to happen to those cyborg chimps after the whole ice cream truck fiasco. Nobody wants an ape that's been trained to shoot people. I don't think they can remove enough of the weaponry to make the chimps safe in zoos. Where do you send crazy weaponized/radioactive/superpowered apes anyway? None of the news articles are saying where they're keeping the Zeebots, mostly because they don't want Dr. Wilde breaking them out. But are you allowed to keep them in a pound? A research facility? A zoo? A veterinary lab? Dr. Wilde is the only one I can think of who would actually want to live with those chimpanzees, and he's still on the most wanted list. Who can provide a safe, loving and law-abiding home to three deadly gun-toting cyborg chimpanzees?
http://hamete.org/babel/index_en.html
Lots of random word-like sequences, but nothing approaching Hamlet, let alone coherency. It really makes me appreciate the complexities of language, grammar and syntax. Although our language would be much richer if we included words like "avfdhgoot," "hgmff" and "meavx." I intend to start introducing those into my everyday conversation. If mcjob made it into the dictionary, I'm sure I can start a new fad. I'm not sure how many times you need to click the Library of Babel button before it produces actual sentences. Exactly how improbable is the structure of Hamlet anyway? Shouldn't you get "Act one scene one Elsinore Castle Denmark" at least once out every trillion clicks? Maybe chimpanzees and computer programs share an innate hatred of the works of William Shakespeare? Someone should finally train a chimp to type out Hamlet, just to resolve this deeply pressing issue. Preferably an actual chimp, and not one of those Zeebots. Geez, who in the world looks at a poo-flinging primate and says, "That's a nice chimp, but you know what would be cooler? If we gave it ballistic weaponry and onboard tactical AIs. That would be a great use of government funding!"
Dr. Wilde, that's who.
I don't know what's going to happen to those cyborg chimps after the whole ice cream truck fiasco. Nobody wants an ape that's been trained to shoot people. I don't think they can remove enough of the weaponry to make the chimps safe in zoos. Where do you send crazy weaponized/radioactive/superpowered apes anyway? None of the news articles are saying where they're keeping the Zeebots, mostly because they don't want Dr. Wilde breaking them out. But are you allowed to keep them in a pound? A research facility? A zoo? A veterinary lab? Dr. Wilde is the only one I can think of who would actually want to live with those chimpanzees, and he's still on the most wanted list. Who can provide a safe, loving and law-abiding home to three deadly gun-toting cyborg chimpanzees?
Friday, May 8, 2009
Peter Parker's Secret Hobbies
How come every single superhero in the comics automatically knows how to make his or her own costume? Peter Parker, science nerd, is able to hand-sew a form-fitting and intricately patterned costume several times, from scratch, without any help. Clearly his Home Ec class rocked, if it can produce such professional results. And yet Peter has no other sewing-related hobbies. You never see him quilting, or designing his own shirts, or so much as patching his jeans. Shenanigans! I demand scenes of Peter Parker hunting for red web-patterned fabric on clearance racks.
Marvel seems to believe that people with sewing hobbies are at high risk for gaining superpowers. The Invisible Woman, Wasp, and Scarlet Witch all spent their time designing and sewing costumes for themselves and their teammates. Without even being asked! I totally need to start hanging out with people like that. As it is, I'm the one who gets suckered into sewing up the foot-long tears in my friends' ludicrously impractical gauzy skirts (seriously, I long for the day those things go out of fashion), but I doubt I'd be able to make an entire costume for myself, let alone one made out of something that could withstand constant soaking and low temperatures. The difficulties of working with the fabric aside, I have far too much dignity to wear a costume made entirely out of umbrellas.
Marvel seems to believe that people with sewing hobbies are at high risk for gaining superpowers. The Invisible Woman, Wasp, and Scarlet Witch all spent their time designing and sewing costumes for themselves and their teammates. Without even being asked! I totally need to start hanging out with people like that. As it is, I'm the one who gets suckered into sewing up the foot-long tears in my friends' ludicrously impractical gauzy skirts (seriously, I long for the day those things go out of fashion), but I doubt I'd be able to make an entire costume for myself, let alone one made out of something that could withstand constant soaking and low temperatures. The difficulties of working with the fabric aside, I have far too much dignity to wear a costume made entirely out of umbrellas.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Getting People Killed
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Some dumbass in Miami, spooked by Coral Snake's absence, got hold of a ray gun and started doing the kind of vigilante crap that gets people killed. Putting aside the fact that ray guns are in no way covered under the concealed carry permit, that is some seriously stupid shit. Contrary to the laws of action movies and comic books, it is rarely a good idea to pull a weapon and stop any kind of armed robbery. Not only do you escalate the situation and possibly provoke the robber into shooting people, but you also run the risk of getting shot by the police when they arrive at the scene of a violent crime and see you waving a weapon. And even in the best case scenario, you still have one more weapon in the hands of a nervous, trigger-happy person than you did before you pulled the gun. Mr. Wild-West-wannabe didn't get any innocent bystanders killed, thankfully, but there was a confrontation. The perpetrator is dead and the vigilante is in critical condition. All for a few hundred bucks in some crappy fast food joint till. Great job, dude.
Now just imagine how the scene could have played out if the vigilante was a superhuman instead of just a moron with a fancy gun. You start off with a basic hostage situation, and then the guy holding the gun notices someone doing something- a shiver of force field, a twinkle of electricity, whatever. Do you think the armed robber is going to spend a minute rationally assessing your threat level, running you through the list of known superhumans? No. He's going to shoot you in the face. And then he's going to start shooting random people that he thinks are looking at him funny, because they might have superpowers too. Even if you happen to be bulletproof, it's dollars to donuts that most of the other people in the room aren't.
That's one of the big reasons I've been so slow to pursue the superhero angle. I can't stop bullets. I can think of a million cool things to do with my powers, none of which would be any use at all against a gun unless I had a five minute head start. And any display of powers at all is an open invitation to get shot in a violent situation. You can't tell by looking at me that I have superpowers, or what kind of superpowers I have, or how strong they are, or whether I'm willing to use them with lethal force. Some random mugger is not going to know who I am. For all he knows, I'm the next Killer Frost, and if he doesn't put a bullet in me he's going to die, fast. And that even holds true for the other end of the spectrum. Not only is assault with superpowers a felony, but it's often a death sentence at the hands of cops who've seen one too many harmless-looking supervillain take out a city block.
Now just imagine how the scene could have played out if the vigilante was a superhuman instead of just a moron with a fancy gun. You start off with a basic hostage situation, and then the guy holding the gun notices someone doing something- a shiver of force field, a twinkle of electricity, whatever. Do you think the armed robber is going to spend a minute rationally assessing your threat level, running you through the list of known superhumans? No. He's going to shoot you in the face. And then he's going to start shooting random people that he thinks are looking at him funny, because they might have superpowers too. Even if you happen to be bulletproof, it's dollars to donuts that most of the other people in the room aren't.
That's one of the big reasons I've been so slow to pursue the superhero angle. I can't stop bullets. I can think of a million cool things to do with my powers, none of which would be any use at all against a gun unless I had a five minute head start. And any display of powers at all is an open invitation to get shot in a violent situation. You can't tell by looking at me that I have superpowers, or what kind of superpowers I have, or how strong they are, or whether I'm willing to use them with lethal force. Some random mugger is not going to know who I am. For all he knows, I'm the next Killer Frost, and if he doesn't put a bullet in me he's going to die, fast. And that even holds true for the other end of the spectrum. Not only is assault with superpowers a felony, but it's often a death sentence at the hands of cops who've seen one too many harmless-looking supervillain take out a city block.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Winter Wonderland: Liquid Nitrogen
In honor of Wednesdays, I encourage you all to head over to YouTube and look up liquid nitrogen, and all the things one can smash dramatically after immersion in it. Bananas seem to be a popular target, but you gotta go with pumpkins for tradition. This clip shows a pretty good variety of things getting dipped in nitrogen: grapes, a rose, eggs, a ping pong ball and a balloon.
Most of the experiments I've seen with balloons tend to involve watching them shrink when they're dipped in nitrogen. This one had a balloon self-inflate after being filled with liquid nitrogen.
Now, I know you're all desperate to know: did I immediately go out and purchase large quantities of fruit to freeze and smash to brittle crystaline chunks with my awe-inspiring cryogenetic powers? That would be completely awesome, but the answer is no. One, no way can I get to those kinds of temperatures yet. Nitrogen freezes at -210 °C, or −346 °F, but is more commonly measured in degrees Kelvin. Yeah, no way am I there yet. Two, I'm still leery about leaving evidence around. Despite those murder mystery icicle-dagger-in-the-sauna stories, ice is really hard to melt in large quantities. It took me FOREVER to get rid of the ice fist I made around my hand, even alternating boiling hot water and a screwdriver to chip it off. It was fun to punch things with my indestructable fist for all of fifteen minutes, and then I realized that my hand was completely useless for doing anything else. Like, say, zipping my jacket. Opening doors. Typing. Scratching my nose. Picking things up. Walking around inconspicuously. I had been punching things in the privacy of a scrubby little patch of woods behind my dorm, but then I had to sneak back in with my fist wrapped in my jacket to defrost it in private, and also compete with Dani for the bathroom. I seriously need to set up some sort of secret headquarters where I don't have to worry about damaging the carpeting, or sneaking around, or having to scramble for a way to defrost myself and the immediate surroundings.
Now, I know you're all desperate to know: did I immediately go out and purchase large quantities of fruit to freeze and smash to brittle crystaline chunks with my awe-inspiring cryogenetic powers? That would be completely awesome, but the answer is no. One, no way can I get to those kinds of temperatures yet. Nitrogen freezes at -210 °C, or −346 °F, but is more commonly measured in degrees Kelvin. Yeah, no way am I there yet. Two, I'm still leery about leaving evidence around. Despite those murder mystery icicle-dagger-in-the-sauna stories, ice is really hard to melt in large quantities. It took me FOREVER to get rid of the ice fist I made around my hand, even alternating boiling hot water and a screwdriver to chip it off. It was fun to punch things with my indestructable fist for all of fifteen minutes, and then I realized that my hand was completely useless for doing anything else. Like, say, zipping my jacket. Opening doors. Typing. Scratching my nose. Picking things up. Walking around inconspicuously. I had been punching things in the privacy of a scrubby little patch of woods behind my dorm, but then I had to sneak back in with my fist wrapped in my jacket to defrost it in private, and also compete with Dani for the bathroom. I seriously need to set up some sort of secret headquarters where I don't have to worry about damaging the carpeting, or sneaking around, or having to scramble for a way to defrost myself and the immediate surroundings.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Grudging Praise
I might have to take back some of the stuff I said about Vector. Not all of it, but some. He's showing a surprising level of tact in his interviews with the press recently. Even though he's an ego-driven blowhard, I don't think this is the way he wanted to one-up Velocity. He's doing a lot better with the solar vampire thing than I expected, but he can't really play it up for the press like he usually does, because that would look like kicking the competition while she's down. It's easier for me to find Vector's admirable traits when he's not constantly trying to point them out to everyone. He might actually be a decent guy under all the macho posturing. For all his criticism of Velocity, he's got to respect her, since he did model himself on her, right down to the exact same flight capacities in his exoskeleton, and even the color scheme. He's got one hell of a chip on his shoulder about powers elitism, but I guess it is pretty hard for a metatech to hold his own among supers, and he has worked damned hard to get where he is.
Vector's most redeeming feature among his many, many flaws is that he's serious about helping people. No matter how much he cashes in on his moment of glory (Vector Cola? Seriously?), he's still willing to put in time on the unglamorous and hard work. It's not all kitten-rescuing photo ops, despite what his spin doctors would like you to think. He's taken on the Goorillas five times. Nobody else wants to do it even once.
It looks like Vector might be stuck in South Carolina for a while, since Warbird is still missing. Not even the government telepaths can find him. Come to think of it, has anyone seen him since The Paradox? Crap, I think he's a time traveler. That would explain the retro-futuristic plane, and his 60-year career. I really hope he didn't get caught up in The Paradox.
It's hard to believe in a benevolent, fair universe when things like The Paradox can happen. The Paradox didn't differentiate between the timeline-wreckers and the 9-to-5 precogs. It shut them down or made them disappear regardless of whether they made a difference in the course of history, or even wanted to. And it wasn't just outed precogs and professional time travelers that were getting killed. It was anyone who ever accidentally walked through a temporal vortex, or had one vision, even in a dream. They weren't even all supers, just people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I still don't know why Jack disappeared. I don't know what happened to him to make The Paradox take him away. It's terrifying, to think that the world is that arbitrary.
Vector's most redeeming feature among his many, many flaws is that he's serious about helping people. No matter how much he cashes in on his moment of glory (Vector Cola? Seriously?), he's still willing to put in time on the unglamorous and hard work. It's not all kitten-rescuing photo ops, despite what his spin doctors would like you to think. He's taken on the Goorillas five times. Nobody else wants to do it even once.
It looks like Vector might be stuck in South Carolina for a while, since Warbird is still missing. Not even the government telepaths can find him. Come to think of it, has anyone seen him since The Paradox? Crap, I think he's a time traveler. That would explain the retro-futuristic plane, and his 60-year career. I really hope he didn't get caught up in The Paradox.
It's hard to believe in a benevolent, fair universe when things like The Paradox can happen. The Paradox didn't differentiate between the timeline-wreckers and the 9-to-5 precogs. It shut them down or made them disappear regardless of whether they made a difference in the course of history, or even wanted to. And it wasn't just outed precogs and professional time travelers that were getting killed. It was anyone who ever accidentally walked through a temporal vortex, or had one vision, even in a dream. They weren't even all supers, just people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I still don't know why Jack disappeared. I don't know what happened to him to make The Paradox take him away. It's terrifying, to think that the world is that arbitrary.
Monday, May 4, 2009
This Is Not My Homework
My campus is weathering the storm pretty well. We're a tough crowd. The dining hall, showing a rare sense of humor, is serving chicken soup, which is actually pretty good for a change. Classes go on, even though they are sparsely populated. Amie is coughing so hard that I'm surprised her entire respiratory system hasn't come loose. I'm actually impressed, since she's the mouse-sneeze type who never seems to have bodily functions in public. Rest assured, she does. Despite her racking coughs, she is still taking notes in that perfectly round indecipherable handwriting. I can't tell her letters apart. Class discussion is kind of strained, since pretty much everyone has a sore throat.
I'm technically in good enough shape to do the mountains of catch-up work I need to do, but I'm coddling myself for a bit longer. I don't want a relapse. By which I mean I am a lazy, lazy procrastinator, and blogging is far more fun than reading postmodern drivel. I've been keeping up with the news feeds all day. Vector finally put his money where his mouth is, and is taking over Velocity's job until they can find a long-term replacement. That means he's got a hell of a commute when there's an emergency back at headquarters, but the guy can go supersonic, so I don't feel too bad for him. I guess the rest of the Lightning League can pick up the slack while Vector's picking off the solar vampires in South Carolina. I really hope they can get hold of Warbird fast, though. Baron Dynamo (I forget his real name) gets out on parole pretty soon, and I'd rather have Vector closer to the West Coast, since Shining Citadel has turned into a frigging quarantined ivory tower. I know they can't afford to risk the planet-movers and star-smashers getting a sniffle in case there's an imminent threat of world destruction, but seriously, way to turn your back on us mere mortals.
I'm technically in good enough shape to do the mountains of catch-up work I need to do, but I'm coddling myself for a bit longer. I don't want a relapse. By which I mean I am a lazy, lazy procrastinator, and blogging is far more fun than reading postmodern drivel. I've been keeping up with the news feeds all day. Vector finally put his money where his mouth is, and is taking over Velocity's job until they can find a long-term replacement. That means he's got a hell of a commute when there's an emergency back at headquarters, but the guy can go supersonic, so I don't feel too bad for him. I guess the rest of the Lightning League can pick up the slack while Vector's picking off the solar vampires in South Carolina. I really hope they can get hold of Warbird fast, though. Baron Dynamo (I forget his real name) gets out on parole pretty soon, and I'd rather have Vector closer to the West Coast, since Shining Citadel has turned into a frigging quarantined ivory tower. I know they can't afford to risk the planet-movers and star-smashers getting a sniffle in case there's an imminent threat of world destruction, but seriously, way to turn your back on us mere mortals.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
It's Not The Black Death, People
According to the major news sites, nothing improves a crisis more than a colored map. Florida is orange, whatever that means. Geez, you'd think this is the Ebola Virus the way people are reacting. Nobody's puking blood. This isn't the end of the world or the end of superheroes. Granted, poor Velocity's going to be in traction for about a year, but she'll probably be okay. It could have been a lot worse. Nobody in that building died either, thankfully. I'd send Velocity a get-well card, except she's probably already got a pile of them big enough to wallpaper the hospital three times over, and she probably won't be able to read them until they take her off the morphine anyway. So I'll just send good wishes in her direction, and hope there's a telepath out there who can pass them on. I hope she's going to be okay.
My campus is in full-on panic mode. Which isn't too different from your average Saturday night. I don't think anyone here's gone to the hospital from the flu yet, except for Lydia, and she's a hypochondriac anyway. She's fine. This isn't much worse than the time the dining hall served the beanbird-contaminated snow peas last year and took out half the campus. I have never been more grateful that I don't eat my veggies. People were throwing up things that chirped, for crying out loud.
The president of our school has issued an email, which basically boils down to "This is not a zombie outbreak! Don't shoot infected people on sight! Wash your hands! Take some vitamins!" Wow, really helpful. Every single person I've encountered today told me to stay hydrated and get some rest. Except for Dani, who just breaks into impromptu renditions of Monty Python's 'bring out your dead' skit every time she sees me. Which is every five minutes, since she's my roommate. I'm about to strangle her.
Nobody on my campus has been power-outed that I know of. Except maybe me. I don't know if Dani knows. The ice chips on the carpet were melted by the time she helped me flip the mattress, and I put the sheets through the dryer before she saw them, so maybe I got away with it. But my hair was still wet in the morning, and I'm not sure if there was a noticeable amount of ice left on me by the time I made it to the couch, or if she could even see it in the dark, even though she had to have been really close to put a blanket over me. She doesn't act like she knows. She hasn't made any ice puns or blackmailed me or anything. How can I ask her if she knows without revealing everything if she doesn't? Today I casually mentioned something about trying to break the fever with ice cubes. Yeah, that's plausible. God, I suck at this secret identity thing.
My campus is in full-on panic mode. Which isn't too different from your average Saturday night. I don't think anyone here's gone to the hospital from the flu yet, except for Lydia, and she's a hypochondriac anyway. She's fine. This isn't much worse than the time the dining hall served the beanbird-contaminated snow peas last year and took out half the campus. I have never been more grateful that I don't eat my veggies. People were throwing up things that chirped, for crying out loud.
The president of our school has issued an email, which basically boils down to "This is not a zombie outbreak! Don't shoot infected people on sight! Wash your hands! Take some vitamins!" Wow, really helpful. Every single person I've encountered today told me to stay hydrated and get some rest. Except for Dani, who just breaks into impromptu renditions of Monty Python's 'bring out your dead' skit every time she sees me. Which is every five minutes, since she's my roommate. I'm about to strangle her.
Nobody on my campus has been power-outed that I know of. Except maybe me. I don't know if Dani knows. The ice chips on the carpet were melted by the time she helped me flip the mattress, and I put the sheets through the dryer before she saw them, so maybe I got away with it. But my hair was still wet in the morning, and I'm not sure if there was a noticeable amount of ice left on me by the time I made it to the couch, or if she could even see it in the dark, even though she had to have been really close to put a blanket over me. She doesn't act like she knows. She hasn't made any ice puns or blackmailed me or anything. How can I ask her if she knows without revealing everything if she doesn't? Today I casually mentioned something about trying to break the fever with ice cubes. Yeah, that's plausible. God, I suck at this secret identity thing.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Answering Imaginary Mail
So, it's Saturday and I'm bored. Most of my friends are busy hacking up their lungs, and I'm tethered to the tissue box, so I can't really go anywhere without getting the plague-bearer evil eye. Therefore, in light of recent developments in the chatrooms and the dining-hall gossip, I will perform a civic service and dispel some of the batshit crazy rumors out there by broadcasting my boundless wisdom and invaluable experience as a superhuman with the flu.
Q: OMG are people gonna know I have superpowers if I get sick?
A: Okay, that was a MASSIVE breach of medical protocol on the part of the staff at Merriman General. I don't care if she is a senator's daughter; she has a right to her privacy. So, assuming you're not going to a hospital staffed by chimpanzees, you shouldn't have to worry about your secrets leaking to the press. If your superpowers are physical, like superstrength, the nurses will probably be able to tell, but if they don't change the structure of your body much, you might be able to squeak by unnoticed. But if you go into a hospital with a binary cardiovascular system or wings or something, it's not unreasonable to expect that to show up on your private medical records from now on. And your insurance.
Q: My co-worker is sick. I've always suspected he was a superhuman! This is conclusive proof, right?
A: For the record, the cyborgs are getting hit the worst proportionally, because their immune systems generally suck. However, the baseline humans compose the vast majority of the people getting hospitalized. Supers are just getting the most press right now, since 1) people like Diamante and The Universal Remote generally don't get sick, and 2) an awful lot of us are experiencing fluctuations in our powers. Very visible fluctuations.
Q: Will I get superpowers if I get sick? Will I lose them?
A: Uh, no. You'll just get sick. The people who appear to spontaneously develop powers are just the ones getting outed. Just look at the list of powers, and you'll see that they have nothing in common. It makes no sense for one disease to be the source of scattered reports of electrogenesis, self-duplication, the ability to turn things invisible (is there a name for that?) and whatever kind of power can implode all the furniture in an apartment without breaking any windows. Not even Zero Serum can give people that range of powers. Similarly, the people 'losing' their powers are just getting sick. Kind of like how baseline humans 'lose' the ability to walk in a straight line when they're running a fever. Except most people aren't going 70mph 20 stories above the ground when they discover they're dizzy. Right now I think being sick is the least of Velocity's worries.
Q: My city is left undefended! Where can I buy a force field generator?
A: Don't be a stupid vigilante. If the superheroes are sick, so are the supervillains. So odds are, the city's going to be pretty quiet for a while, barring a robot invasion or something. Also, we have police officers.
Q: Is the Swine Flu the military's new bioengineered supervirus that got out of control? It's the military, right? Or the CIA. Or the Mexican supervillains. They're trying to kill us all! It's a conspiracy!!!111!
A: No, it probably isn't. May I refer you to El Coyote's press conference, in which he explains why you're an idiot? Why don't you go put your little tinfoil hat back on and go back to writing frothy little rants about how those evil aliens are trying to steal your allegedly superior genetic material to breed a clone army to colonize the Earth?
Q: Are you okay? You aren't going to infect me, are you?
A: I feel like Baron Dynamo after Vector got done smacking him around, but I doubt I'm a walking biohazard anymore.
Q: Do you still have superpowers?
A: Yes, but using them makes me feel nauseated right now. Then again, a lot of things are nauseating me at the moment, including the color of my walls. I'm not going to do party tricks just to prove that I still have powers, since I want to focus on getting better.
Q: OMG are people gonna know I have superpowers if I get sick?
A: Okay, that was a MASSIVE breach of medical protocol on the part of the staff at Merriman General. I don't care if she is a senator's daughter; she has a right to her privacy. So, assuming you're not going to a hospital staffed by chimpanzees, you shouldn't have to worry about your secrets leaking to the press. If your superpowers are physical, like superstrength, the nurses will probably be able to tell, but if they don't change the structure of your body much, you might be able to squeak by unnoticed. But if you go into a hospital with a binary cardiovascular system or wings or something, it's not unreasonable to expect that to show up on your private medical records from now on. And your insurance.
Q: My co-worker is sick. I've always suspected he was a superhuman! This is conclusive proof, right?
A: For the record, the cyborgs are getting hit the worst proportionally, because their immune systems generally suck. However, the baseline humans compose the vast majority of the people getting hospitalized. Supers are just getting the most press right now, since 1) people like Diamante and The Universal Remote generally don't get sick, and 2) an awful lot of us are experiencing fluctuations in our powers. Very visible fluctuations.
Q: Will I get superpowers if I get sick? Will I lose them?
A: Uh, no. You'll just get sick. The people who appear to spontaneously develop powers are just the ones getting outed. Just look at the list of powers, and you'll see that they have nothing in common. It makes no sense for one disease to be the source of scattered reports of electrogenesis, self-duplication, the ability to turn things invisible (is there a name for that?) and whatever kind of power can implode all the furniture in an apartment without breaking any windows. Not even Zero Serum can give people that range of powers. Similarly, the people 'losing' their powers are just getting sick. Kind of like how baseline humans 'lose' the ability to walk in a straight line when they're running a fever. Except most people aren't going 70mph 20 stories above the ground when they discover they're dizzy. Right now I think being sick is the least of Velocity's worries.
Q: My city is left undefended! Where can I buy a force field generator?
A: Don't be a stupid vigilante. If the superheroes are sick, so are the supervillains. So odds are, the city's going to be pretty quiet for a while, barring a robot invasion or something. Also, we have police officers.
Q: Is the Swine Flu the military's new bioengineered supervirus that got out of control? It's the military, right? Or the CIA. Or the Mexican supervillains. They're trying to kill us all! It's a conspiracy!!!111!
A: No, it probably isn't. May I refer you to El Coyote's press conference, in which he explains why you're an idiot? Why don't you go put your little tinfoil hat back on and go back to writing frothy little rants about how those evil aliens are trying to steal your allegedly superior genetic material to breed a clone army to colonize the Earth?
Q: Are you okay? You aren't going to infect me, are you?
A: I feel like Baron Dynamo after Vector got done smacking him around, but I doubt I'm a walking biohazard anymore.
Q: Do you still have superpowers?
A: Yes, but using them makes me feel nauseated right now. Then again, a lot of things are nauseating me at the moment, including the color of my walls. I'm not going to do party tricks just to prove that I still have powers, since I want to focus on getting better.
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