Super-Powers

That looks so political...

No, I want to talk about good old-fashioned super-powers, like invisibility, x-ray vision, and all that. Because everyone has super-powers. Seriously. They're just not all really cool super-powers.

For example, MP (MP is my guy; you'll hear a lot about him [poor fellow]) swears that his super-power is Cold. Okay, I thought, a sort of Silver Surfer thing going on... No. He means Cold as in being cold -- cold hands, cold feet. While I agree that MP does indeed have unusually cold feet, it makes for a pretty lame super-power. The crime fighting possibilities are narrowed, as it were. What's a little more unusual about MP's super-power of Cold is that he also has... Well, a very cold butt. I've never actually heard of having a cold butt unless you were ice fishing or something. MP tells me that his butt is sort of like cooling fins for his computational brain... And yes, that's right about the part where my mind shuts down, too.

There's an anime, Outlaw Star, in which one of the satellite characters has the special talent of "space fighting with cats." Hello? How do you find out you have that skill? And how do you market that?

I actually have two super-powers, but they're passive; I have no control over either, it's just what happens in my universe. The first is that people tell me everything and anything. The second is space-time bending.

I've had the first super-power for as long as I can remember, and frankly, I'm still working through what it actually is. Am I invisible, so people just talk like I'm not there? Do I have some Bene Gesserit mind-control trick to force people to reveal things that they later regret? Perhaps I just have an understanding face that says, "go ahead -- you can tell me all about that little personal habit of saving your scabs and I'll understand perfectly."

It isn't that I listen without judgment. Oh yes, I have my opinions. Perhaps it's that I reserve that judgment for myself, later, after I've had time to think about it. In the meantime, I'm just gonna keep asking you questions and nodding my head. It's a nice talent for a writer to have, except that if I write what I know, I'm gonna get sued -- not to mention hurt a lot of people's feelings. One must never abuse one's talents. I am sworn only to use my Evil powers in the cause of Good. In the meantime, I guess I wait for everyone I know to die off or something.

The space-time thing happens a lot while people are busy revealing their inner-lives to me (and both happen a lot at Café Tor, now that I think of it). They sort of look up and say, "Wow, it's only seven thirty? Huh. Where was I?" I can expand time really well, but I'm not so hot at compression. We can spend a fascinating hour together, but I can't help your workday fly by.

Useful talents, true, but I'm still working on the space fighting with cats. I want to be well-rounded.