Impossibly Cool
Jul. 13th, 2003 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaI've been rereading China Mountain Zhang, which I read about eight years ago and found confusing and depressing, and contemplating how one would write a parody of the cyberpunk genre (Gibson, Stephenson, et al.) It's harder than it sounds, because the genre spends half its time mocking modern life and the other half mocking itself to begin with. But everyone is impossibly cool. That has to be a start.
Johnny Wu lives in a box. At least, that's what he tells his friends: I live in a cardboard box. It is a nice box, a refrigerator box from before they passed the third set of Williamson-Pavlovski laws and the fashions shifted, and nobody's refrigerator was bigger than a two-foot by two-foot cube. Johnny has lined his box with white plastic. The heat from all of his equipment reflects off the white walls and keeps him warm. Johnny is a hacker.
Johnny does not tell his friends that his box is tucked neatly in the corner of his grandmother's garage. That is information they do not need. It is just like, when he tells his friends that he lives on ramen and Zap! and his best friend's girlfriend Mandy says he will die of malnutrition before he is thirty, Johnny does not mention that he bought the ramen at the Asian superstore with his grandmother, and it has three separate flavor packets including vegetables that reconstitute completely once you add hot water, plus the pickle is vitamin-fortified. Johnny lets Mandy worry. He imagines her saying, That Johnny, he is a hard core hacker. Hard to the core.
Mandy is not hard to the core. She has a lot of squishy places. She has also had cosmetic surgery, so little razors pop out from under her jungle-themed fingernails and her teeth gets pointy when she's mad, so Johnny would never say this to her face. But Mandy still squishes. She is the kind of woman who could get a job as a construction worker and then work out five hours a day on top of it, and all she would manage is the figure of a competition belly-dancer. Which is not so bad, belly-dancers are sexy. But they do not have razors under their fingernails.
Johnny is far too skinny to have a belly. He knows this is a requirement. If you want to be a real hacker, a hero hacker, you have to look strung out all the time. Johnny tries his best. He jacks in for days sometimes. He knows how things work. First you learn to code, then you fail to find a real job, then you meet an AI and transcend. Johnny has the first two steps down cold. Not having a real job is pretty easy, though not as easy as you'd think when his grandmother's friends keep visiting and she keeps telling them about the handsome young grandson with the degree in computer science, he just needs to put some meat on his bones!
Johnny does not listen. If he finds a real job and puts some meat on his bones, existence will be bleak and mundane. Johnny does not want to be mundane. Johnny wants to transcend.
Johnny Wu lives in a box. At least, that's what he tells his friends: I live in a cardboard box. It is a nice box, a refrigerator box from before they passed the third set of Williamson-Pavlovski laws and the fashions shifted, and nobody's refrigerator was bigger than a two-foot by two-foot cube. Johnny has lined his box with white plastic. The heat from all of his equipment reflects off the white walls and keeps him warm. Johnny is a hacker.
Johnny does not tell his friends that his box is tucked neatly in the corner of his grandmother's garage. That is information they do not need. It is just like, when he tells his friends that he lives on ramen and Zap! and his best friend's girlfriend Mandy says he will die of malnutrition before he is thirty, Johnny does not mention that he bought the ramen at the Asian superstore with his grandmother, and it has three separate flavor packets including vegetables that reconstitute completely once you add hot water, plus the pickle is vitamin-fortified. Johnny lets Mandy worry. He imagines her saying, That Johnny, he is a hard core hacker. Hard to the core.
Mandy is not hard to the core. She has a lot of squishy places. She has also had cosmetic surgery, so little razors pop out from under her jungle-themed fingernails and her teeth gets pointy when she's mad, so Johnny would never say this to her face. But Mandy still squishes. She is the kind of woman who could get a job as a construction worker and then work out five hours a day on top of it, and all she would manage is the figure of a competition belly-dancer. Which is not so bad, belly-dancers are sexy. But they do not have razors under their fingernails.
Johnny is far too skinny to have a belly. He knows this is a requirement. If you want to be a real hacker, a hero hacker, you have to look strung out all the time. Johnny tries his best. He jacks in for days sometimes. He knows how things work. First you learn to code, then you fail to find a real job, then you meet an AI and transcend. Johnny has the first two steps down cold. Not having a real job is pretty easy, though not as easy as you'd think when his grandmother's friends keep visiting and she keeps telling them about the handsome young grandson with the degree in computer science, he just needs to put some meat on his bones!
Johnny does not listen. If he finds a real job and puts some meat on his bones, existence will be bleak and mundane. Johnny does not want to be mundane. Johnny wants to transcend.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-14 02:37 am (UTC)