"please don't make fun of ninjas. i find that very offensive"

today i set out once again to study at borders and perhaps find a collective of intellectual elitists with whom i can share my snobbish smarty ass ways. instead i apparently offended joe, a ninja-in-training who enjoys thinking of killing and torturing people.

according to joe there are 2,000 ways to kill a person with just your thumb. professionally trained acupuncturists know each of these.

the conversation with joe started rather simple. he asked what i was reading. night. by elie wiesel. his recollections of his experience in auschwitz as a young adolescent. joe is studying art and visual communications at uvsc. he missed most of the last semester due to an unidentifiable disease that left him unable to finish his classes. apparently the lack of symptoms made it difficult to identify. i'm guessing joe's physicians were equally baffled as to what a symptom-less and unidentifiable disease consisted of.

what does joe want to do with his degree? he wants to make anime. of course. but what he really wants to do is develop civilian space station security systems. systems simple enough to block the common thief, yet sophisticated enough to provide a sufficient defense in the upcoming interstellar war with china. also known as world war iii.

what followed was the longest (and only) argument i have ever had trying to convince a person that land on mars and the moon could not be purchased, and that there would never be sufficient utility in our lifetime to create and populate a civilian space station housing over 5,000 persons.

by this point, joe's world went from interesting to annoying. it would soon turn to disturbing.

according to joe, there are no ninja codes against causing a person to suffer before killing them. if he was mad enough, he would want to torture the person and watch him slowly die.

i conceded to myself that joe would never accept my arguments. he had read too many issues of popular mechanics and popular science. according to joe, his mind was too open to reject the possibilities. i wondered to myself if there was literally an opening in his head. if i looked what would i see? would i see anything? knowing it was an argument that could not be won, i decided to play with it. i told joe that his civilian space station security system should be strong enough and sophisticated enough to protect the civilian station station (and all its inhabitants) from space ninjas.

"please don't make fun of ninjas. i find that very offensive."

joe's preferred way of killing someone (if he were to kill someone) would be a short stab to the jugular with a short sword. i'm guessing he'd use a ninja sword.

i wasn't sure how to respond to joe. he seemed genuinely offended. how do you respond to someone who is genuinely offended by a remark about space ninjas? i told joe that i was sorry, but he didn't believe me. joe was right. i wasn't sorry.

joe went on to tell me about his extensive training in ninjitsu (that's ninja-talk for 'ninja'). joe was picked on when he was little because he was too nice. joe's niceness turned into anger. dark anger. very dark anger. through his training to be a ninja, joe's sensei (that's ninja-talk for teacher) helped him control his anger and thus control the raging beast within.

i'm not sure how good of a teacher his sensei was.

according to joe, most black-op governmental organizations utilize ninjas. i told joe this is why space ninjas were going to be a serious threat in the future.

joe continued to tell me that his real goal in life was to be an assassin. he whispered as he told me this. that's how ninja's keep things on the down-low. they whisper. when a ninja is wearing a mask and whispering, you wouldn't even know he was talking. unless you were the fellow ninja being whispered to. joe hasn't killed anyone yet, but he has put several victims in body casts.

according to joe, most ninjas are quiet and keep to themselves. it's difficult to be social when you've done so much killing.

joe told me that he likes to secretly think about killing people. he also likes to secretly think about torturing people. joe especially likes to think about torturing people and then killing them.

that's when i decided i didn't want to talk to joe anymore.