Of Coffee Shops and Superheroes

So here I am. Wednesday’s update, as promised. It is, as of when I begin to write this, 1:47 PM, and I’m in the food court of the Reitz Union. Normally I prefer to write at home, but it’s raining (drizzling, but still), and past experience has taught me that lugging a computer home in the rain is a bad sort of idea. I sure wish the wireless network would work around here. It’s probably this bloody computer. Says I’m connected in one breath and says I’m not in the next. I’ll have someone take a look at it.

Monday’s update was not what might be called my best work, vaguely interesting, or even a coherent piece of writing. I called it a game review, in my naiveté, but the comments of others gave me cause to give it a once-over, and now I am ashamed to admit that it is nothing of the sort. It’s too long, for one thing, and it’s less a review than a gushing description of all of the game’s mechanics. Any decent gaming magazine, should I present them with that, would laugh until their spittle had drenched my shirt, whereupon I would be booted from the premises for so completely failing. I didn’t even give it a numerical score out of five or ten. I am disappointed in myself.

Well, that’s what this journal is for, isn’t it? It’s as much a practice of my writing skills as it is an archive of my thoughts. I won’t take it down or even edit it: I want it to stand for all time as sort of a testament to my unpolished technique, an example of what not to do, the very thing to glance over whenever I feel that my writing is too amazing to be believed. Roald Dahl, an accomplished children’s book writer (he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among others), gave this advice: “Maintain a degree of humility. The author who believes his work is marvelous is headed for trouble.” This will do that very thing. Sorry for subjecting you to all that, though.

What happened in the last two days that’s worth writing about? Well...I had a quiz in Public Speaking. It was fairly easy to ace, which I did, seeing as the teacher was kind enough to give us all five questions the class before. Maybe he believes that we could profit more by studying exactly what we need to study. Maybe he believes that actual speeches are more important towards our grades than simple written quizzes. Maybe he’s just sick of grading papers and wants things to be easier on himself, for a change. Maybe he was bribed by one of the students; I’ll never know. We WERE supposed to hand in an assignment today, but he made no mention of it the whole class period, and nobody made a move to turn it in. It is just as well, for I had forgotten to do it.

As I sit here in the crowded food court, I wonder many things. Thoughts cross my mind at lightning speed. One notable example is why there is a Starbucks under construction on the other side of the room. I would not normally question this, for the frequency of Starbucks...Starbuckses...Starbucksi? The frequency of the coffee shops in question is not anything new or puzzling. What baffles me is that across the way from the future Starbucks is another coffee shop, Java City. And I mean, right across. I could walk between the two in five seconds. Two Starbucks kiosks in the same building would raise an eyebrow, but in the same room, a stone’s throw from each other? Even if that stone were thrown by a really weak guy?

The comedian Lewis Black commented that seeing two Starbucks shops across the street from each other caused him to realize that this was the end of the universe. I’m not sure how this applies to competing joints, but surely it must presage something of some cosmic importance.

Speaking of cosmic, I’m reading too many comic books lately. Enough so that I actually start to get into the stories and get personally interested in the characters. But I am saved from total immersion by the persistent belief by comic book writers that if logic and reason, nay, the very laws of the universe must be twisted and bent beyond recognizability to maintain their hackneyed stories, then so be it. That is to say, the laws of the universe that are not already bent to allow for people who can fly, lift cars, use heat vision, etc.

Heat vision...now wouldn’t that be an awesome superpower? The ability to cook your food by staring at it. Or to surreptitiously set fires from meters and meters away. And...er...well, there aren’t that many uses for it, now that I think about it. I’ve just always had a strange fascination with it, for whatever reason. I can’t see the practical application of burning things from a distance, anyway, barring a few unusual circumstances (“What? The research paper was due today? Do I have it with me, you ask? Er...look over there!” *FWOOSH*)

But I digress. The characters in comic books will strain credibility to the breaking point to avoid obvious solutions to their problems. Every comic-book universe contains a few heroes who are so far beyond every other hero in terms of power that the presence of the rest seems unnecessary. Why have Batman when...well, scratch that, Batman is cool. Why have Aquaman when Superman is around? Why have Aquaman at all? Has his ability to talk to fish ever mattered? Aquaman is the Ringo Starr of the Justice League: he has talent, yes, but the others mostly keep him around because he would complain if they left him at home.

Which is why I like the Sentry. Even people who don't read comic books can appreciate this. Surely you, the reader, has seen a movie, or read a book, or something similar, wherein one of the characters does something so completely stupid and against all elementary logic that you want to reach into the page (or screen) and beat them senseless for being such an idiot. An unarmed girl in a horror movie walking into an obviously haunted house, for instance. It makes you want to scream "DO THIS, YOU MORON!" Or is that just me? (Please tell me it isn't.)

The Sentry is extraordinarily powerful. He commands the power of a million exploding suns (which a few minutes on wikipedia and a calculator tells me is 1.217x10^35 megawatts per second, a great big number if I've ever seen one), but that isn't why I like him. It's his obvious determination to actually do all the things he should be doing, logically. At one point, his greatest foe, the Void, taunts him for his weakness and mockingly states "You'll never be rid of me." A normal comic-book character would, at this point, bury his face in his hands and weep in despair. The Sentry, however, disagrees, grabs the Void, flies him into space, and hurls him into the sun. I was so shocked that he actually did the thing that made sense that I immediately sought out other books that featured him.

But enough about comic books. What else happened? Well...I rejoined the online community of World of WarCraft, to the somewhat tepid response of my friends. I get to level 65, and all I get is a mild remonstrance from Travis for leveling faster than he? Come on, you clowns, the school year can't be that difficult. Nevertheless, I foresee a lot of time wasted on WoW in the coming weeks...though not so much time as to lower my grades. I do have an image (and several scholarships) to maintain, after all. I think a future potential employer would be more impressed with a degree than he would with a level 70 Warrior in full Karazhan epics.

To my surprise, I apparently look good in hats. I was initially skeptical when my girlfriend showed me the hat she bought me, but as near as I can figure out, anything which shields the general public from my hair (which is legendarily untidy) is a boon. So I may buy some more in the near future. Although a paper bag would be cheaper, and do just as well; perhaps even better, for it would spare people having to look at my face.

So that's about all I got. Bye.

(Things to do for next time: Figure out how to write an actual game review. Find more comic books with the Sentry in them. Learn the plural of Starbucks.)