You may be wondering about the title. I'm borrowing a practice from my sister's blog, where she starts writing with no title and after she's written her material, she scours it for a good phrase and makes that the title. I like it, and I like this title. I plan to continue this.
Last few days have been sort of eventful. Lots of fun, though. I told y'all about the band banquet, and then...er...I was practicing for a play that I have to perform tomorrow, a snippet anyway (speaking of which, I should really go over that). It's weird. My character spends a full paragraph blithering about beds:
Deeley: We sleep here. These are beds. The great thing about these beds is that they are susceptible to any amount of permutation. They can be separated as they are now. Or placed at right angles, or one can bisect the other, or you can sleep feet to feet, or head to head, or side by side. It's the castors that make all this possible.
He spends most of the snippet I'm reading from blithering about all sorts of things. It's probably because he's talking to a girl who he's had a crush on for years. When a guy is in the presence of a girl he's attracted to, the mouth has a habit of running away and doing its own thing while the mind tries vainly to compensate. A hypothetical situation with me and a girl:
Me: Thanks for the peaches. They're really good.
Girl: Thanks. I picked them myself.
Me: I mean, these peaches are amazing. Seriously, I just want to sell all my possessions and take my savings and just buy all of these peaches that I can afford. I would sell my body for a jar of these peaches. They're that good.
Girl: *stare* Me: ...
My brain: You idiot. Me: What I mean is -
Girl: *runs*
All guys have this problem. The most self-assured, self-confident guy can be turned into a babbling loon in the presence of the right girl. I don't really know why this is, it isn't as if it's some kind of evolved survival characteristic. My theory is that there's a small part in my brain that hates me terribly and lives to see me commit blunders. While the rest of my brain is paralyzed, it feeds me lines, and cackles madly at the results. I'll conquer you yet, you stupid me-hating faux-pas-committing brain segment, if I have to scoop you out with a melon baller.
So that aside, things have been going peachy. Here's an interesting tidbit: I've decided to start eating healthier. I'm cutting most of the fast food out of my diet, and am replacing it with sandwiches and fruit and vegetables and actual food, as opposed to the grease-laden garbage I usually consume. I mean, I'll still enjoy the occasional mound of grease-laden garbage, but not with anywhere near the frequency I did before. Also, when I can get an appointment, I am going to have a session with a personal trainer and get a gym regimen going, which I will follow scrupulously. I will be in shape by the end of this semester, dadburnit, not have a developing gut that's poking out like some kind of pink fleshy tortoise head. No Alien beings bursting from my stomach, I'll be trim come May.
Oh, and I wrote this up, and I wanted to share it with everyone: I am giving you here a list of nine superpowers. Choose four and write which ones in the comment box, and if you please, tell me why you chose them. Why did I do this? I was bored, and it was fun.
Super Strength. You can lift up to 50 tons, and use other strength-related skills at a proportionate level. You have a certain low-grade toughness to go along with this, because it's no use lifting a tank if the weight squashes you, or smashing down a steel door if your hand is liquified on impact. You're tough, but not indestructible.
Super Speed. You can run at up to Mach 10. You have the reflexes necessary to avoid objects, people, etc. You can run up walls. Again, you have a certain toughness about you to prevent air shear from ripping your skin off or your tendons from disintegrating from friction, or if you punch something at super-speed, your hand doesn't explode into shards of bone and muscle.
Flight. You can fly at up to 400 mph, and you ignore wind shear and/or small objects in your path. Birds, etc. You don't get tired, and you fly Superman-style.
Invulnerability. You cannot take damage. At all. Ever. No attack can pierce your skin, no harm can befall you at any point. You retain touch sensitivity, but you no longer feel pain - why would you? (Pain from older injuries, diseases, etc, still plagues you, though. You can't acquire new diseases - that counts as damage - but if you broke your leg ten years ago and it twinges on rainy days, that stays.)
Invisibility. When you wish it, you can become completely transparent. You can turn this on and off at will. Your clothes and any small objects in your possession (small objects being defined as anything you can carry around reasonably unobtrusively) fade with you. No form of light-based detection can pick you up (invisible to radar as well), but sound-based or smell-based can still detect you.
Energy Projection. You can fire beams of energy from your hands, eyes, and mouth. Think Dragonball Z, except not quite to that scale. Let's say that your best blast can destroy a medium-size building or harm a large one to the point of structural collapse.
Telepathy. You can read the surface thoughts of others as easily as you might hear them speaking, except from any distance at which you can see them. You can hear the surface thoughts of as many people at once as you like, but you must be able to see them and it may get a bit confusing with that many voicess. If you concentrate on a single person, you can pick up their inner thoughts, memories, knowledge, etc. You cannot control people, but you can influence them slightly, a la a Jedi Mind Trick. (This doesn't work on the particularly strong-willed.)
Telekinesis. You can pick up and manipulate objects with your mind. You can lift anything up to, say, 5 tons, at any distance you can see. With exceptional concentration, you can manipulate several objects at once, but doing so requires your full attention, and this may leave you vulnerable. You can form a wall, a spike, a line, a cage, or any shape you desire out of your telekinetic force. You can choose for it to be invisible or a faint glowing color of your choice.
Time Stop. You can freeze time for everyone but you, at will, and restart it again. You can move freely during the stopped time, but you can manipulate stopped objects only to a limited extent - you can't do anything drastic. You can effect slight changes, but it gets exponentially harder the more you try to affect something, to the point where it becomes impossible after a little bit. The same rules for Invisibility apply in terms of what you can bring with you. You do not age in stopped time.
ALSO!
You may consume one of your four power-slots in order to apply an Overcharge effect to a power you already selected. So instead of this:
Super Strength
Telepathy
Telekinesis
Flight
You may choose:
Super Strength
Telepathy - Overcharged
Telekinesis
-
- Overcharge Summary
Overcharges are brief bursts of time in which you can increase the level of your power tremendously. Each of them has the following rules: You may invoke an Overcharge power in complete safety for up to five minutes. Every minute after this that you keep the Overcharge power going, you invoke a 20% cumulative chance per minute of burning out your power and losing it permanently. (So first minute 20%, second 40%, and so on.) When you invoke an Overcharge power, a mental timer appears in your head, giving you perfectly accurate time and warnings as you approach your limit of safety. After you complete your invocation of the Overcharge power, you become physically and mentally exhausted and cannot take any action for several hours as you rest.
- Overcharge Abilities, Per Power:
Super Strength: Strength of the World There is no known limit to your strength. You become temporarily invulnerable, and no object or force can check your momentum. You can produce massive shockwaves by clapping your hands together or smashing your fists onto the ground.
Super Speed: Warp Factor Five You can accelerate to incredible, unimaginable speeds. You can asymptotically approach the speed of light on the ground, and relativistic effects will apply - time will slow down and your mass will increase the closer you get to lightspeed. ***
Flight: All The World This does not work like a standard Overcharge, rather, it is a permanent upgrade to your existing abilities. Your top speed increases to 1,000 mph. If you have Super Speed, your top speed is increased to Mach 10. You can now move and see through water as easily as through air. You can breathe underwater and in the vacuum of space. You are unaffected by extreme pressure or temperature in your location, be it at the bottom of the ocean, in the stratosphere, or in orbit. You can move through space, but obviously, even at your new increased speed, you’re not going far from Earth.
Invulnerability: The Ultimate Shield You can erect a spherical, faintly glowing barrier with a 20-foot radius centered on you. This barrier is as invulnerable as you are; no attack can pierce it. If it is interrupted by the ground or some other object, it stops flush with that object, but if the object is removed, the barrier forms where there was once a hole. In addition, anyone inside the barrier with you whom you designate gains a temporary form of your invulnerability. This can last up to one month. You may only have ten people shielded in this way at any given time, and you may cancel someone's invulnerability at any time.
Invisibility: Without A Trace You become absolutely, utterly undetectable. There is no way to find you, no form of detection can track you. You lose your physical form and become temporarily intangible, able to pass through walls and float at your normal running speed. Since you cannot be observed, you are not obviously anywhere, and are thus potentially everywhere - you may re-corporate at any point in existence you so choose, as long as you have a clear mental picture of your destination. If you try to do this without a clear mental picture, the effect ends and you reappear where you started.
Energy Projection: Explosion of Power Your power ceiling is raised. Your maximum now are massive blasts that can destroy an entire city. Alternately, you can expend your entire Overcharge to fire a single colossal blast that could put a distinctly visible crater on the Moon, seen from Earth.
Telepathy: Know Your Enemy, and Know Yourself You gain full mind-control powers, and can apply them to as many people as you can see. You can reach into a person's mind and add, edit, or delete any information or personality characteristics you see. You can also do this to yourself, although you cannot add information that you do not possess (though you may take information from someone's mind and add it to yours). Any effects of this, though, fade over time - a period of weeks or months, depending on the person - and you cannot use this power on someone twice. You cannot even use your influence on a person you have previously controlled. (Any changes you make to yourself are permanent, but you can alter yourself as often as you like.)
Telekinesis: Mind Over Matter Your power is amplified tremendously. You could uproot a skyscraper or empty a lake into space. You can control multiple objects with no extra concentration required. You may finesse your power to a very fine point; you could split an atom with your mind if you so deemed it.
Time Stop: Rifts In Time You can travel backwards in time. This power works differently than the others: since traveling in time does not take any time, you may only travel backwards to a maximum of five minutes. Traveling back further invokes the standard penalty of a 20% cumulative chance per additional minute of your power being lost forever. You are not exhausted upon the conclusion of this invocation. (No point in redoing your last action if you’re too tired to redo it.) ***
ALSO...
Save Point You may choose, at any moment, to designate the time you are in as a recall destination. Any time you choose, you may yank yourself backwards in time to the spot you designated...but you have a 95% chance of losing all your powers when you do this. (Always gotta have some chance to land on your feet. One chance to roll a natural 20.) If you recall yourself and keep your power, you may not use your Save Point again. You get one do-over, and that's it.
*** = This Overcharge is extremely taxing on your body. You lose use of this power for a week, no matter what. Complete bed rest can return usage of it to you sooner.
My choices were:
Flight (always, always, always wanted to fly)
Super Speed (running real fast, and reflexes that allow me to dodge bullets? Heck yes.)
Time Stop (I can sleep while time is stopped. That alone was enough reason for me to take this, and all the other uses are icing on the cake.)
Telepathy (If I knew what some people were thinking, my life would be so much easier.)
An Overcharge was tempting, but I decided against it. If I had to Overcharge one of those, it would either by Time Stop or Flight.
What would you choose?
I knew, as soon as I saw this video, that it would be my Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day. It's a work of art. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3rhaLVk8U It's called "The Day of a Pyro," an in-game movie starring the Pyro of Team Fortress 2. With no intelligible dialogue and barely any facial expressions, it manages to tell an amazing story. The only thing anyone not acquainted with this game should know is this: The area he's in is a Capture-the-Flag map, where the objective is to capture the enemy briefcase full of intelligence and bring it to your briefcase full of intelligence.
REPLIES.
All those who commented on my not finishing: I fell asleep. So sue me. My Internet went down, as well.
Jake: I like the way you think. Why can't you all be more like Jake? Come on, interpret my gibberish as genius. Do it. Do iiiiiit.
Mike: Ah, the trade agreements. As I mentioned, I had no meaningful trade agreements with anyone, so I could war with anyone I darn well pleased. Yes, asteroid fields ruin anyone's run to the capital planet, Mecatol Rex.
Mom: No doubt he had that in mind when he told us about the tazering. Have fun in NH.
Steve: I didn't say I didn't like it, I said the War Sun was ripping it off. Hancock will probably be enormously hilarious, depending on if they try to throw in a sappy he-learns-the-right-way storyline or not. I hope not. A whole movie of a loser Superman screwing things up would be perfect. And yes, Brawl was delayed, but only for a week in Japan. We in the States are betting that it's a production problem. We'll get it soon enough.
Finito.
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10 comments:
I'm glad you decided to shape yourself up. Remember though, nutrition is more important than exericise so do not make the mistake of treating food like a reward for your exercise, they need to work together. A lot of women make that mistake, but you're lucky enough to be a man, so flex your superior will. I say this because you mention you still want the occassional grease, which shows weakness. I should start going to the gym as well, I barely move despite my superior ingestion patterns.
Luke, this brain segment you speak of was actually a selected trait in early human population development because people lived in small packs, tribes, or towns for a long time where everyone knew eachother, and impressing one of the few ladies you would meet was the best means of your seed progressing to the next generation. The problem is we live in an era that's so densely packed with people that don't know eachother that we would be better served not caring what any individual female thinks and simply play the numbers game. Being human, we have huge brains, so it shouldn't be too difficult for you to overpower such urges. Just like how you frequently fight the urge to piss and crap on the floor when you need to excrete.
As for your game, I choose:
Flight
Time Stop
Telepathy - Overcharged
Flying lends me rediculous transportation capabilities. Time Stop lets me modify my way out of bad situations and gives me time to think about things when otherwise unavailable. Telepathy itself doesn't mean much to me because I could care less what others think, but being able to control people is so potent, it is easily worth two power slots. There are so many people in the world that only being able to use it once on an individual is hardly a penalty. It reminds me of Code Geass (look it up if you have not watched this).
That was a funny youtube, although I saw it back when it first came out.
With Brawl, I'm certain it's an issue with Nintendo's clunky internet designs. I really want to play it, but some things are worth the wait.
-Steve
How very interesting...I like this list you wrote up, I think I'll save it to my computer for later use. As for my choices...
Invisibility
Telepathy
Telekinesis
Time Stop
The ultimate superpowers for screwing with people. With my sense of humor, this is what I'd choose. I liked the overcharges, but it just gets complicated. Besides, it'd be hard to figure out which one to drop.
Hmm...could someone sacrifice two slots to overcharge two powers?
-Jake
Sorry about the double-post, but I remember something else. Great choice of video, and I've already seen it, too. But I just might watch it again.
What the heck does that Scout say at the point where they meet? >.>
-Jake, pt. II
luke, as your mom I'm thrilled you've decided to eat better. Remember one of the best ways to be fit is to eat LESS...I just read the 8 sets of foods you should concentrate on and eat every day if possible:
1.spinach/romaine lettuce/kale-greens
2.yogurt
3.tomatoes (ketchup, sauce, v8)
/watermelon
4.blueberries/strawb/raisins/ purple grapes
5.black beans/peas/lentils/other beans
6.walnuts/almonds/p-nuts/pistachios7.carrots/sweet pots/pumpkin
8.oatmeal/wild rice/quinoa
exercising is also good. I'm praying for you.
More on the superpowers later, but first I have one question: can the powers be public? ie, we will not get kidnapped by an evil rich guy or the govt. to torture/dissect us and get our secret? We can use them out in the open fearlessly? That will make a diff in what I choose. Porque si me van a secuestrar, tengo que tener cuidado
love you,
Mama
^ I agree with everything except the yogurt. Yogurt's gross.
-Steve
Totally cool ideas. Let's see. Strength, speed, flight, invulnerability, invisibility, energy projection, telepathy, telekinesis, and time stopping. Can I “under”charge and have them all? Probably not. Some of them overlap, don't you think? Although strength gives you 50 tons and telekinesis only gives you 5 tons, how much does one really need to lift at any given moment? Flying sounds cool, but that speed thing gives you so much more. Aside from the nefarious, what real use is there for invisibility? I like the phrase smell-based. I suppose some of your friends might have trouble with this one, haha. If you could grab another person and get out of a bad situation, ok. Also, don't use a super power when real world technology exists. That energy projection thing could be accomplished in a bunch of ways, just ask the terrorists. :( As for time stoppage, there is this Gold Watch in sc-fi somewhere. It would give you a total of one hour of time-stoppage per day.
Anyway, my choices are the everyday useful stuff, not true “super” powers. Flight, telekinesis, telepathy and how about a new one. Magnified wherewithal; stick-to-it-iveness. I’m already good at a lot of stuff, I would just like to be better at some of them.
Best of luck on the whole diet/exercise thing. Start with don’t eat crap and slowly work into eating good stuff. Everybody will have advice on this one. Water instead of soda, that sort. As for the gym, here’s my advice (for which you did not ask): you already walk all over campus, that’s good. Drop and give me twenty. Push-ups, that is. Anybody (your age) should be able to do a bunch of push-ups and sit-ups. Just getting the habit started will go a long way towards succeeding at the gym and getting rid of the alien growing in front of you.
This got longer than I thought. Here’s my link for the day, it’s strange.
www.neave.com/strobe/
yer frend and dad’s sister......Karen
PS I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
Douglas Adams
Inside of a ring or not, ain’t nothing wrong with going down. It’s staying down that’s wrong.
Muhammad Ali
Walking is great and all, but work on running endurance. Nothing is a greater gauge of fitness than how long you can run. Make your first goal to run 30minutes straight, you can get closer and closer until you nail a full 30minutes. Then start to increase your pace for those 30minutes, since spending more than 30minutes running gets boring. Don't worry about pace until you can hit that 30minutes though. When you stop running, either because you're tired or you hit your 30minute goal, sprint before you start your cooldown walk always, maybe 1/10 of a mile, it will make your legs stronger than if you just start walking. Karen is right about the pushups and crunches, do them. I prefer pushups to benching because it applies less force on your shoulders, and you can do more of them which makes you feel good. Crunches will make running less likely to give you cramps and stitches in the long run, and while they don't themselves reveal your sixpack, they do make it bigger when it does reveal itself. Curls are important too. Depending on how evenly strengthed your arms are, either do one handed if your trying to even them out, or just do two handed. I'm going to start going to the gym again tommorow hopefully, assuming I can get my card unbanned, which I should (long story).
-Steve
-Time Stop
-Flight
-Invisibility
-Invulnerability
-Honestly, I'm not out for the whole "cool, look at me, factor". With these powers, I would be able to avoid many problems and possibly be able to establish more time to succeed.
- I understand that with super speed I would be able to catch bullets and essentially avoid harm, however I don't want to become paranoid with the idea that I always have to be looking over my shoulder for attackers. Invulnerability is just anti-stress.
- Time stop may become a depressing ability to use. As I continually use it, I will age small amounts while everyone else stays at a stand-still. I will age, I will leave those I know behind.
-I may reconsider Time stop in the future.
Just in case this didn't put my name>>> TJ
copycat... : )
Telepathy- Overcharged
Time Stop
Telekinesis
Your comment about guys losing focus around girls is correct. I remember reading an article about a writer who was interviewing Jaclyn Smith (an extraordinarily beautiful woman, she was on the original "Charlie's Angels" television show), who stated that he needed his tape recorder during the interview, because every once in a while he would look up at her face and be simply struck dumb and completely lose his train of thought. The most interesting comment he made is that she saw the look on his face when this happened and simply waited, because for her this was a common occurrence... :-)
I agree with many of these comments: go for endurance and try to eat right. And one other point is that you shouldn't become discouraged by any given day's case of over-eating or not exercising. Simply treat the next meal or the next day as a fresh start. And focus on 10-March, when you and I will strap skinny little pieces of wood on our feet and throw ourselves off of a mountain in sub-zero weather! You really need to be in shape for this... :-)
As far as the super-powers, there is really no choice:
- Flight overcharged to All The World (2 slots)
- Time Stop overcharged to Rifts In Time (2 slots)
Flight is obvious: that is just such a cool super-power that I can't imagine not choosing it. I tried hang-gliding before you guys were born, and it was special, but overcharged flight is as good as it gets.
I chose Time Stop because of my experience with Tivo. The ability to simply stop the action, do something else and start it up again, is cool. For example, if you are in class, or a meeting, or talking with friends, and you get a question you can't answer or simply want to think harder about your answer, would be extremely helpful. And again, the ability to re-run the action would be extremely helpful: see the end of "Galaxy Quest" to see the advantages of this... :^)
-- Your imagining Dad
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