Decrepit monsters

Just down in the cafeteria, eating my sandwich, reading my book, a guy from Events came up and asked Do you work here?" (we don't all know each other). I answered yes. He said, "I knew it. You look like a professor."
This has been the story ever since I was 17. It must be the sweater, or sitting by myself reading books, or just the durn smartness of my aura. This must also be the reason why everyone I work with thinks that I am a scrawny wine drinkin classical music lover. I guess there are worse things to look like, but for the record, I am just a bureaucrat desk drone.
Of course, that's only until I finish my terminal degree and become ...
a professor.

And that reminded me of the cookout I was at this weekend, with a bunch of the painting faculty. I was amusing myself by chatting with the little kids, who were watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I said, "This came out when I was your age."
The seven year old girl asked "Did they have movies when you were little?" Yes, of course I said.
"Did you have power?"
Yes, sweetie, we also had electricity. It seems I have crossed that boundary, wherever it's at, where I no longer belong to the same world as the yunguns.

And I just read this line and like it a lot. Stanislaw Lem on the geography of Titan: "It was as if the gates of unearthly museums had been flung open and the remains of decrepit monsters had been dumped in a cascade of bones."

That must be why.