It's too late for the government to train me to be a weapon. For someone to approach me on the street, and to tell me I match a certain profile. I probably won't even learn another language well enough to speak it fluently. Giant crazed attack dogs won't ever suddenly act like scared puppies when they see me. I won't ever be a grandmaster of chess, either. I don't think at this stage I can even reasonably expect to make Expert. There are some things I regret as I get older, I guess. There are a ton of traditional ways to be bad-ass, and I missed the boat. But that's okay. It just means I have to be more creative. And then later that creativity will make people think I was an evil genius, instead of just so desperate for a world with monsters that I didn't mind becoming one myself. What I'm saying is - I stole an ice cream cone yesterday from the 7-11 and I have no regrets at all. untoward

"Until a man is twenty-five he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastry in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken." -- NealStephenson, "Snow Crash" 

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