Instead of studying for my test tomorrow or preparing for my presentation in Japanese, I decided to find out what level of hell I would go to. The results came as no surprise to me.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
Ah, with all the heretics. Could be worse, I guess. It didn't take long to take that test anyway.
On a completely unrelated note, recent events have me pondering yet again the balance of power in interpersonal relationships. The details are unimportant, but it's pretty interesting how the power balance is generated. To oversimplify, it almost seems as if power is born out of simply
assuming that the other person wants to talk to you and then acting accordingly. It entails being a bit aloof, not volunteering much information, and other similar actions that basically tell the other person that you are talking to them almost as a favor rather than because you want to. If you
know that you are the one with the power, then you are. That may be putting it a bit too simply, but it seems true.
On the other hand, it is very easy for you to give up your power to the other person, should you so choose. All you need to do is to lean towards them, focus attentively, babble incoherently, and so on and so forth. Even if a person is not looking for the power in the relationship, if you give it up, they are almost certain to take it, consciously or not. Once they have the power, it becomes hard to get it back, especially if they are conscious of the power balance. It is still possible, but it requires an attitude adjustment, if you will.
At the same time, it is always "easier" to be the one without the power, as you don't have to make any decisions. I'm going to reveal details of my sordid comic book past by saying so, but just as they say in the Spiderman comics, "With great power comes great responsibility." The phrase is self-explanatory, and while power in a relationship isn't "great," responsibility increases in direct proportion to power. The problem with this is that the one with the power ends up doing most of the "work" in the relationship, which can weigh down on some people. Some thrive on the pressure, but not everyone is cut out for that kind of thing.
Changing topics, it's about three months until I head to Japan, and I can't wait. It feels weird that soon I'll be out of this university, and in a year's time, I'll be
working. Not just working, but working exclusively. And not working during a break or vacation just to make money, but to
survive. The concept boggles my mind. I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of responsibility, but as they say, time waits for no man. Or woman, if you want to be politically correct. In any case, the idea that soon my time here will be over leaves me a bit nervous, for once in my life. Where will my life go from here? No one knows, unless you believe in some sort of nebulous higher power, in which case he/she/it knows. If said higher power exists, I'd like to meet him/her/it so he/she/it can tell me what is going to happen. Then again, maybe I don't want to know. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
Last night it was pouring rain, and today looks to be much of the same. It's the kind of day where you want to just stay inside curled up in bed or on the couch doing absolutely nothing. So of course, what better than 6 hours of work? So let's see, 6 hours of work at $7 an hour comes out to a account-fattening $42 before tax. After tax, that probably comes out to $35 or so. Man, that's depressing. I used to be able to make that in less than 3 hours doing tech support. Any money is better than none, of course, but there comes a point when it becomes ridiculous. It's rapidly approaching that point for me. Ah, it's a rough life.
I tried to make a post yesterday, but it disappeared into the black hole of the Internet, and I dare not try to resurrect it. You will all just have to imagine that you have read it. Thankfully, I didn't waste my
fun link of the week. In case you are too lazy to click through and read a total of about 300 words, it says that scientists have linked obesity and cancer risk. Shocking!
Does this really come as a surprise? That being fat brings with it a whole host of other related health problems? Apparently about 65% of the population of the United States is either obese or overweight, as of 2000. I'm sure that number has just gone up since then. We are a nation of fat bastards, and most people don't seem to give a damn. Being proud of your race? Race doesn't really exist, but sure, your pride in the arbitrarily designated category of your race is fine. Pride in your state? Country? Town? College? Sure, ok. It doesn't always have to make sense. However, there are those that say they are fat, and proud of it. I'm going to draw an imaginary line in the sand here and say that if you can't see your feet, you deserve whatever's coming to you. Big-boned? Yeah, that's a pretty big bone you have in
your gut. Glandular problem? You probably shouldn't pass on your genes anyway, since they're obviously defective.
Speaking of passing on genes, there are people who I know (and would rather not know) who should never reproduce. If they, say, were suddenly run over with a car, I might not be happy,
per se, but I wouldn't be sad either. Chlorine in the gene pool, my friends, chlorine.
I spent most of Saturday reading a book that had been recommended to me:
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. I finished it in one day, and I can see why it is regarded so highly. It is very well written, and avoids the trap a lot of sci-fi writers fall into, and that is focusing too much on the technology rather than the story. The story follows one soldier and his life, using the theory of relativity and time dilation to allow the writer to examine multiple possibly future societies without resorting to unexplained time travel. It is a relatively short book, and I highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys sci-fi. However, it stands on its own as a good story, even not taking the technology into account. The science fiction part of the book is in the background while the characters are in the foreground, just as it should be. I wish I could discuss it more, but I don't want to spoil anything, just in case anyone actually reads the book later.
I'm sort of inspired to write again, using a vague idea that has been bouncing around in my head for a while. The problem is that I want to at least be sort of original, and to avoid talking more about the technology than the characters. This will be hard to do, since making up future technology is great fun (for me). However, if I do start writing again, I will probably write out entire chapters at a time, so they may be too long to just post here. I also enjoyed writing that (very) short story down there, but when they are that short, it's hard to get any character development at all. If there's no gimmick to the story - for example, ninjas - then it's hard to make it that short without making it almost pointless to write.
Stories, in my mind, should always be character driven, as opposed to anything else. If you don't care about the characters, then the things that happen around them won't really matter. The Black Plague (II) could strike half the population of the world dead, but it's just a statistic unless you know the characters that are being killed. I feel sometimes that unless I have nothing else to do, I will never be able to write seriously. Schoolwork always gets in the way of writing. However, I don't think my writing is good enough to justify dropping everything else and only writing. After all, I could spend months writing a story that no one will want to read. Then again, practice makes perfect, so if I don't even try, of course I'll never get better. Ah, it's a rough life.
Spam pisses me off. I can't even imagine how much wasted paper and bandwidth is generated every day by spam. For example, let's take just one of the junk e-mails I got today. It was ranting for a bit about how those damn college graduates were ahead of us, the working class. Or shall we say, the proletariat. Us proles, it said, are being unfairly passed over by those punks with those pieces of paper. Well, if you send some money our way, we'll get you your degree. Sure, it'll be fake and will ultimately mean nothing, but you'll be able to compete with the bourgeoisie. That's right, with your fake diploma, you'll be able to compete with those who realized that college is not just more school, but an opportunity. Yes, with your sub-par high school education, you'll be the very picture of a college graduate.
Give me a fucking break. Not only is the email stupid, they're sending it to an email address that is obviously an university address. Did the .edu at the end of the address not mean anything to them? I don't care if they don't even see the addresses they're spamming, at least filter out addresses with .edu at the end. Christ, if it has that at the end, does it really make sense to spam people with an email about getting a college diploma in days? Jesus.
I was talking to my Japanese conversation partner today, and we somehow got on the topic of the animals that live in and around our respective areas. Apparently Tokyo has rats, cockroaches, and crows. That's right, crows. The rats are pretty much expected, since it's a big city. The cockroaches are also expected, since the area is relatively humid, I think, and cockroaches can survive anywhere. However, crows I wasn't expecting. It seems that there are a whole shitload of them, too. It's not just a small flock, they're all over the city, and they're a large problem, especially since they aren't generally afraid of people. My partner said that one time a crow actually
landed on her head and then took off again. I'll let you absorb that for a bit.
I've dealt with some aggressive animals in the past, but none have violated my airspace, so to speak. Any crow that tries to land on my head runs the risk of being turned into crow soup, or at least getting a good strangling. My head is not an airstrip, and neither is anyone else's, for that matter. It's exceptionally strange because physical contact is a line that most wild animals will simply not cross. Even the fat aggressive squirrels don't actually touch you, or get
too close, unless you have food.
In keeping with the stream of consciousness crap I'm spewing now, have any of you ever seen a muscle of yours twitch involuntarily? Perhaps I should say spasm rhythmically? In any case, it's a bit disturbing when you see a muscle spasm periodically; knowing full well that you didn't want it to do so. I wonder why they do that. Well, I suppose I know why, on one level. It's almost certainly a misfiring of the motor control neurons, which could be for any number of reasons. Those reasons, which I don't know, are the mystery. Why did this one particular thing happen so that the neuron misfired and cause my muscle to twitch causing me to type this run-on sentence?
Again, I leave you with more questions than answers. Think of it as exercise for your brain. Hey, you should be thanking
me.
I'm going to try to cover two main topics here, inserting random bits of my day here and there because I can. It was a relatively productive day, I think. I managed to get a few things done that I had been putting off due to my laziness, some of which relate to money, so it's a good thing they finally got done. I also managed carry on a decent conversation with two people today that I hadn't really talked to before. Yes, they were girls, but I shouldn't even have to mention that. It is beside the point, regardless.
The point is that I took the opening to conversation and ran with it, instead of dropping the ball. It's always easier to say nothing, and sit in your comfortable little bubble, but you certainly can't get anything accomplished that way. Slow but steady wins the race, as they say.
Then I was thinking about why it's fun to talk to girls. I'm going to sound strange here, but bear with me. After some deliberation, I came to the conclusion that it is interesting mainly because you get a glimpse into a world where thought processes flow completely differently from mine. Or rather, it kind of shows how the world would suck if everyone agreed with everything you said. Variety is the spice of life, and I couldn't agree more. Sameness is boring, which is why I guess they say opposites attract. Hanging out with just guys is great, but it's not something I could do all the time. The same goes for being around girls; fun for a while, then progressively less so. Besides, if I'm around girls too much, I get all wimpy and shit. I'm not sure I'm making sense, but that's how it is.
On a related note, some girls scare me. Why, you ask? Wouldn't you be scared of someone who told you that they hated some other girl's guts and then proceed to turn around and greet said girl with much smiling and fake enthusiasm? If not, you should be. You could be next. That brings me to a point I wanted to cover long ago, and that is the rules of social interactions and how we all deal with them.
I should be more specific and say that I wanted to cover the topic of the face that we all present to the world. This face, of course, is dictated in part by the rules of society, both spoken and unspoken. But back to the face we present to the world; I find it interesting how everyone deals with the issue of how much of their true self to present to the outside world. We all must regulate our level of privacy to some extent since our true opinions of some people must be kept hidden, lest the social order break down and anarchy reign. Being polite and hiding things are the social lubrication, if you will, that allows things to go smoothly. Just think what would happen if that guy you hate actually knew it.
Some seem quite fine laying it all out there, wearing their heart on their sleeve, if you like, for any old person to come by and squish. Others are intensely private, choosing to reveal next to nothing, or nothing, if possible. Most, of course, are somewhere in the middle. Why is it that some are more comfortable sharing their secrets than others? I won't name names, but some people have all sorts of private information and feelings laying out there in the public domain for anyone to see. Others have nothing out there at all. Is one necessarily better than the other? I'm not the one to ask, but if you did, I would of course say that a middle ground of sorts would be the best way to go about it. Don't share too much, but don't share too little, either. Too much, and you run the risk of being marked as desperate for attention. Too little, and you look like either an arrogant bastard who thinks he or she is too good for the rest of us, or a generally unfriendly person.
For example, why do I have information about my private life and feelings up where anyone could see them? I'm not really sure about that answer myself, and the question as to how much information to actually put up continuously vexes me. How much is too much? Do I want people to know my deepest thoughts? Will they really give a damn if I actually put them out? Why do I care?
So many people go through life not thinking of the consequences of their actions; I'll put one of my opinions out here for all to see by saying that those people need to turn on their damn brains and think for once in their lives. Every action has a consequence, and if you didn't examine it to see if the consequence might be bad, it's your own damn fault if it goes bad. Life really is what you make of it, but at the same time, you can't ignore those around you, as they are part of your life, for better or worse.
Life is much simpler if no one else is around, isn't it? For example, I want to sleep now, and since I'm the only one in this room, I shall do just that. It wouldn't be that way if there were other people around at this particular moment in time. However, how meaningful is life alone? You tell me.
It's always strange when someone you haven't talked to in literally years just sends you a message. What's stranger, or perhaps not, is that we talked as if time had not really passed. Everything is different, but yet the same. How much do people really change over the course of their lives? I like to think that I have changed a lot, but have I, really? From the inside, it's hard to tell.
How much of our personality is tied to our past? Conscious decisions can definitely influence your personality in the short-term, but how much of a real change do they make? Can we escape the combined forces of our genes and our parental teachings? It has been postulated that those that we could call thrill-seekers do so because it takes more to stimulate their brain than a "normal" person. Ritalin (which I probably spelled incorrectly), used to treat ADD/ADHD, is actually a stimulant, not a depressant. People with ADD require much more external stimuli in order to maintain the same level of arousal. In case any of you don't follow, "arousal," in this case, refers simply to the state of being attentive and interested, as opposed to lethargic and unresponsive. Can that be changed without drugs, or is it a fundamental flaw in that person's genome? Is it really a flaw at all?
So many questions, so few answers, and for me, not enough sleep.
It is an inviolable law of the universe that if I fail to bring an umbrella on a day that may or may not have rain, it will rain. The reverse is also true. This leaves me with two options. The first is to get rained on, for an unknown period of time. The second is to carry around an umbrella all day in vain. Today I chose the first option, and walked home in the rain. I didn't get completely soaked through, as if that were some consolation. It is unfortunate for everyone else that happens to choose the same course of action as me, as they suffer the same fate. That's right, the universe revolves around
me.
It's far too late to be writing in any sort of coherent manner, so I'll do the boring thing and summarize my day. Or rather, I will just dump my thoughts out for all to see.
Life is only as eventful as you want it to be, I think. I have said before that my life seemed to be more eventful when I started writing this, but I think that's due to a number of factors, which I won't go into here, or anywhere, for that matter. It was not mere coincidence. In any case, the short version is that if you leave your place of habitation more, more things will happen to you, as a matter of course. It's all in how you choose to take on life.
Today was a relatively uneventful day, as usual, although I did spend too much time categorizing soil nematodes. Some of them had mutations that caused them to have blisters on their bodies that were larger than they were. I then went to a general orientation for EAP, which is the Education Abroad Program. It seems that although I have not received official word from my host university in Japan (Sophia University), it is almost a sure thing that I will be going. Keeping in the spirit of things, I tried yet again a different combination of numbers in an attempt to call my old conversation partner in Japan. Making a phone call shouldn't be that hard, one would think, but one would think wrong. Once connected, it was nice and clear, but you have to push just the right sequence of numbers.
The problem arises because first you have the international prefix, then a country code, a city code, and a number. However, since I was calling a cell phone, there's no city code. Further complicating things, when calling a cell phone in Japan, where the equivalent to the area code is 090, you don't dial the first 0. The first time I tried, I dialed the international prefix, country code, city code, area code, phone number. Then it was prefix, country code, city code, phone number. Then I realized that a cell phone doesn't have a city code, so I dialed the prefix, area code, phone number. This didn't work, and then I realized that I was a moron and finally dialed prefix, country code, area code (minus the first 0), phone number. I almost didn't know what to do when someone actually picked up on the other end.
It was nice talking to my friend again after so long. Now that I can speak much better Japanese than back then, it just made it that much more fun. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but the conversation has left me in a pretty good mood, in spite of the kanji quiz I have tomorrow. Apparently, 3 AM here is 7 PM there, when we take into account daylight saving time. It's actually a bit easier without daylight saving time, since then we're 17 hours off, and it doesn't have to be as late here to call Japan after most people get off of work. Anyway, I feel that it's been a relatively productive day, what with actually doing my laundry and immediately hanging it up and then this call that was finally successful. Sure, the phone card only gives me 55 minutes total, since I'm calling a cell phone, but if I've paid for the card, I might as well put it to use. And that, as they say, is that.
Now that my lab report is (almost) done, I shall present to you all, a gift, a wondrous
link to a magical land, where strange beasts reside.
If you impulsively clicked that link, then you shall not have read what I will say next. That picture damn near gave me a heart attack. They shouldn't get that big. It's downright
unnatural. If I found a spider that large in my residence, I'd move, as in yesterday. I'd probably leave anything there that a spider could hide in, although a spider that size can't hide in much. Apparently it can't even hide behind a
clock, and that says a lot.
This being the Internet, many people have seen this picture, and I enjoyed some of their responses. I shall list a few for your edification.
"The spider in the pictures is a huntsman spider. They're harmless to humans, they're just really bloody big. When I was in Australia the guy I was staying with say that they sometimes like to hide up in sunvisors in cars. Imagine driving down the highway at 60mph when you flip down your visor and this thing falls into your lap."
In your
lap. Jesus H. Christ. If that thing fell in my lap while I was driving, you'd better damn well have your seatbelt on, or there would be deaths, assuming I didn't just up and die of a heart attack on the spot. I'm not sure I'd even have the presence of mind to stop the car and run screaming away. If I did manage to get out of the car without dying, I'd have to burn it on the spot. How? I'm not sure, but I'm sure I'd think of something. Desperate times bring out the innovator in all of us. Or, if you want to use an old saying, necessity is the mother of invention.
"We had tons of those in our house when we lived in Florida. I kid you not, if the house was really quiet you could hear their little feet tap tap tapping as they scrambled across the wall."
That's damn near the freakiest thing I've ever heard. The very thought of spider feet tapping their way across a wall within earshot chills me to the bone.
Tapping! Christ on a frickin' crutch, that's just wrong. Spiders are bad enough when you can't hear them, but hearing them walk would just make me think they're coming for me! I'm convinced, I'm never moving to Florida or Australia. Ever. You'd have to pay me a
lot. And I'd spend it all on bug-proofing my place so no bugs could get in. Knowing my luck, they'll just get in, but won't be able to get out, and will take refuge in my bedsheets. Then I'll have a massive hemorrage in my brain as a blood vessel explodes, and keel over and die from shock.
I love writing stories, but it just takes up so much time, and while I'm never fully satisfied with the end product, I also am too lazy to go back and edit my work. This presents a problem in the sense that I will never be able to write for a living. It is not something I have really thought about that much, but it is always a possibility, sitting there in the back of my mind. I would like to write for a living, but most writers barely scrape by, and the amount of work required to write at the level necessary to earn a decent living is too much for me at the present moment. Writing for a living would require writing for hours each day, and at the moment, my attention cannot be held for hours at a time by much. There are exceptions, but work is not one of them. Creative writing isn't exactly work, so I could probably do it for an hour or two, but longer, and I will lose interest or hit a block in the flow of the story and set it down to pick it up another time.
I need to learn to write down my ideas as soon as I get them, because I'm sure I've lost many an idea by not writing it down. That is why I wrote this short little post; I don't want to forget the thought I had at this very moment. I have a little more, but it will have to wait until the next post. As a note to myself, I shall try to cover the topic of how people present themselves to the world.
Inspiration comes in many forms. Some ideas are born out of others, while some just appear. The inspiration for the story below comes from a talk I had with my roommate. We began by agreeing that kids were nothing but trouble, and then proceeded to come up with the brilliant idea of having a ninja keep order in school. Kids are the worst from the beginning of middle school or so until maybe sophomore year in high school. Obviously, then, we must keep order very strictly during those formative years. And what better way to do so than with ninjas?
The idea is to have a ninja sit in every room. You get one chance to act up, then you die. This is a gross oversimplification, but to detail every situation would be quite impossible. But to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I present the example of throwing a paper airplane in the classroom. The first time you try, a ninja star will quite abruptly appear to pin the paper airplane to the wall. The second time, it's a ninja star in your hand. If you are stupid enough to do it a third time, it's a ninja star in the throat. And you have to clean the one that goes in your hand, and place it carefully in a well-marked bin for spent ninja stars. Let's look at another example: cheating. If you look at someone else's paper, it's a ninja star in the eye. You will be provided with sterile gauze to hold over your eye, because no one wants you to drip your blood all over the desk. If you cheat yet again, perhaps because you have three brain cells to your name, it's a sword through the back of your head and out through your other eye.
Too harsh, you say? I say it'll teach those brats a lesson. Kids don't respect authority like they used to. With our new discipline plan in place, they will. Oh, they will. And for the good students; say, the ones that currently carry an A in the class, will get a whole extra chance to mess around before dying. So an A student can try to throw a paper airplane
twice before a ninja star goes in his or her hand. I think that's generous, but we always do think about the children. They'll thank us for it later.
Justin Bailey had always been small. When he was born, he was only 5 pounds. His family was not poor, but his mom's cooking skills, or lack thereof, were legendary. People would make up excuses to not stay for dinner.
"Hungry? Oh no, I ate yesterday."
As a result, Justin didn't eat enough in spite of his mom's insistence. He gave her an A for effort, and a D for taste. His family lived in a lower-middle class town that pretended to be upper-middle class. Just because a Camry has a Lexus logo on it doesn't make it a luxury car. And if you had to take out a second mortgage to get that new Jaguar, you aren't really that rich. In this environment, school was bad for a sickly child like Justin. Other kids would kick him just because they could get away with it. Justin hated school.
One day when Justin was about 10 years old, his school was one of the few schools around the country selected to run a pilot discipline program unlike any that had been seen before. There was one kid in particular who took great pleasure in terrorizing the school. He had flunked 3rd grade, twice. Read that again and think about it. He flunked
third grade. This kid was not one of the brightest bulbs of the bunch, so to speak.
"New diss--discli--program? Hah! They can't do anything to me!"
The school counselor was at a loss as to what to do with the kid. By law, he couldn't even touch him without risking a lawsuit. What made matters worse was that this kid, Jared Gregory Thompson III was, as his name implies, the progeny of parents who had more money than the entire state of Arkansas. Which isn't saying that much, but it's something. They were the highest of the lower-middle class, which is to say that they even had a pool in their backyard. The product of a proud line of white trash extending back to their plantation owning (and losing) forefathers, the family was sure that they had a God-given right to be on this planet, and they made sure that everyone else knew it.
Jared, or Jar Head, as he was known to most of the kids when he wasn't around, was a grade-A asshole of the highest order. He would slap the smaller kids (and at his age, that was just about every kid in the school) around for an appetizer, and then kick the living daylights out of his daily victim for shits and giggles. He could not be suspended because of the influence his parents had. No other school would take him, so they couldn't expel him either. That is to say, he had already been expelled from every other school district within 50 miles.
The day before the pilot program was launched, every child in the school had to get their parents to sign a waiver. This was to be a revolutionary leap in disciplinary science, and the school needed to make sure that the parents all agreed before going through with it. It promised incredible improvements in classroom behavior and performance. The smarter parents actually read it and made a note of the fact that it suggested very strongly that they read it to their kids, as it outlined all the new rules that were to be followed, and their punishments. Since the document was 34 pages long and couched in incredibly confusing legalese, most parents read the first page where it mentioned that there might be some risk to the child if he or she was unruly, but that well-behaved children would be fine, and then went to the last page and signed. Two families total not only understood the entire document but also read the rules to their children.
Justin's father was not stupid, and read the entire waiver, nodding with approval. He then explained the important points to Justin, who was soon to be very grateful for the information. Justin was by no means a bad student, but occasionally, due to the way the school was run, he acted up. He decided that the next day was not a good day to do so.
The next day dawned bright and clear, as if signifying that a new age had begun in school discipline. Justin's father drove Justin to school on his way to work, and reminded him of the new rules before letting him get out of the car. Justin wandered into class a good 5 minutes before the bell, and sat quietly, waiting for the day to begin.
First period for Justin was history. He thought history was sometimes interesting, but for the most part it was boring. Why should he care which king of England killed who? And those French. It seemed that after Napoleon had fucked up, all they did was surrender. At least that's what his teacher liked to say. Not in so many words, but he did say it. Unfortunately for Justin, Jared was in his history class, and sat directly to his left. He liked to slap Justin on the back of the head as he came in late, as he always did.
About a minute before the bell rang, as people were filing into the classroom, Justin noticed with a start that there was a small man sitting in the back of the room, in the corner, almost hidden in the shadows. He was dressed all in black, and had his head down, as if he was sleeping. Somehow, Justin knew that he was not. He seemed to be waiting, but for what, Justin did not know. The waiver had only made mention of the rules and the consequences; it had not said how the punishments were to be carried out.
The bell rang, and Jared was late.
The teacher started taking roll, and Jared strolled in, insolently grinning at the teacher, who smiled back knowingly. A little put off by this new expression on the teacher's face, Jared scowled at the teacher and went for his seat. He casually raised his hand up to strike Justin in the back of the head, and Justin tensed up, waiting for the blow. He felt a small movement in the air, and then Jared was on the floor, gasping for air. Every kid in the room was wide-eyed with surprise, and the more observant ones glanced towards the back corner where the small man was, still sitting, still not looking at anything. The ones that were even more observant noticed that the teacher's face was twitching in an attempt to keep a shit-eating grin from breaking out over his face.
"What the fuck was that?!" Jared demanded. He glared around the room, but didn't know who to blame. Jared's parents had failed to read the waiver in its entirety, but he would soon learn one of the rules and consequences. His eyes locked on Justin, who still hadn't moved. Justin kind of knew what was going to happen next, but wasn't sure exactly how it would take place. Now that he could breathe again, Jared made a fist with his right hand, and began to reach for Justin with the left. The rest seemed to happen in slow motion.
As his left hand approached Justin's shirt, it suddenly detached itself from his arm. Slowly, it slid off his arm and fell towards the floor. Suddenly, the small man in black was standing in front of Jared, who had not yet had time to start screaming in pain. He was facing away from Justin, who noticed then that the man had a short sword strapped to his back, diagonally.
Never let it be said that Jared was all talk, because he took the loss of his left hand in stride. Tears appeared in his eyes in response to the pain, but he reached into his pocket for the illegal switchblade he had hidden there. As it began to appear out of his pocket, the man suddenly moved. In an instant, he was across the room, cleaning his sword. Three puncture wounds, each the size of the sword's blade, bloomed in Jared's chest. To a keen observer, it would be obvious that the wounds corresponded exactly with his heart and lungs, one hole for each.
Justin would discover later that this man, who they called a ninja, would protect him from the mean ones around him for another few years, but for now, he gaped at Jared's slowly falling body with his face locked into a wide-eyed stare of complete surprise, as it fell to the floor. The teacher then started time again by rapping his ruler against his desk just as Jared's body thudded to the floor heavily.
"I hope you all read the waiver we gave you yesterday," said the teacher.
