<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/b/b5/Cal_Snyder_Avatar.jpg)</div><strong>CAL SNYDER<br/><em>Rockford City College, McCarty Hall, 3rd floor<br/>Room 312, Math 221: Non-Euclidean Geometry</em></strong><br/><br/><strong>"No way, man, I'm telling you, the behavior is all wrong.  Look, I didn't bother with anything more than weed, you know, but I had friends, especially back in high school, who tried everything out there:  acid, coke, heroin ..."<br/><br/>"... if there is nonzero torsion, the first Bianchi identity becomes a differential identity of the torsion tensor.  If on the other hand ..."<br/><br/>"I mean, the only thing I ever heard of that was anything like that was PCP, right? 'angel dust'?  Not feeling pain, hallucinating -- sure, that could explain some of it, but the thing is, how do you get the whole crowd to react the same way?  It doesn't work like that, no drug I've ever heard of.  Even if all of them took the same bad shit, they might all freak out, but not in the same way.  <br/><br/>"I'm telling you, all these guys were running around like -- like wild animals, wild dogs or something, drooling on themselves and coming up on the cops with their mouths hanging open, like they were looking to chomp into them.  <br/><br/>"There was this one cop that had his nightstick out in front of him, and this guy comes up and clamps down on it with his mouth, right? and the cop's like, 'what the fuck?,' trying to shake this guy off of it, and the guy's got his teeth around it and won't let go.  <br/><br/>"And the camera got in tight on this guy's face, and his eyes aren't even looking at him -- at the cop, I mean -- his eyes are just rolling around in his head, going in different directions and shit, like they weren't working right or something ..."<br/><br/>"... where the brackets denote the antisymmetric part on the indicated indices. This is equivalent to the previous version of ..."<br/><br/>"So this cop starts freaking out, right? I mean, who wouldn't?  And this whole time the newscaster guy has just gone quiet, you know, 'cause what do you say about something like that?  So all you can hear is the yelling from all the different cops, and sirens, and the gas bombs going off.  <br/><br/>"So finally, the one cop's had enough, and he really gives the guy a push, just to get rid of him, you know? and not only does the guy not let go, like, he keeps biting on the thing ... and pretty soon his teeth start breaking on it, and you could hear the snaps and cracks, because the camera was right up on him -- I guess they had a mic on him, too ... so this cop's had enough, right? so he just starts slamming the stick into the guy, trying to shake him off, 'cause he's fucking freaking out too, you know? and the guy still won't let go!  <br/><br/>"All of a sudden, this guy's teeth are popping out in all directions, and there's like, blood spraying out of his gums and getting on this cop, and you see some get on the fucking camera, like a few little drops, and the camera's shaking around, but they keep on filming ... and the cop's backing away, trying to pull back off the guy, but he's still clamped down on that stick, and he won't let go.  Fucked up, man! I'm telling you, but that's not all ... <br/><br/>"So by now, the cop and the camera guy are both backing away from this fucking psycho dude, just trying to get away, and finally, the cop -- I mean, he's not going to just give up his stick, right? but this freak won't let go of it either, even with his fucking teeth all broken -- his front teeth are all popped out and gone now, and the others are sticking out at all different angles.  You can see the roots of some of them where they're almost out, and some are just these black holes, leaking blood all down his face -- just fucking horrible, man.  <br/><br/>"... sub-theta are the coordinate vector fields. The above expression can be written using Christoffel symbols, R-rho-sub ..."<br/><br/>"So finally, the cop has enough, and the last thing you see, before they go back to the news studio anchor girl -- this cop's been shaking the stick for a while, and that's doing no good, so finally he just -- <em>wham!</em>, smacks the stick forward, right into the guy's mouth!  'Cause he figures to push the guy off him, what else can he do, right?  But the guy never comes off.  He just takes the whole hit straight on, right into his fucking mouth.  <br/><br/>"So, the last thing you see, the guy's fucking mouth just pops downward, like the jaw -- the guy's whole jaw just comes open, snaps open and down away from his face, and you see his fucking cheeks -- I swear, his fucking cheeks just split right open on both sides.  <br/><br/>"You can see the skin all ripped, and there's the inside of his mouth all pink and red, and fucking blood is just everywhere.  That's when they cut away, the cop was finally loose, but here's this guy on the screen, his fucking jaw is hanging loose off of his face, the whole bottom of his face is split wide open and just hanging there -- <em>and he's still coming.</em>  <br/><br/>"The guy's eyes are rolled back in his head, and he's stumbling <em>forward</em>, not back!  The guy was still coming forward at the cop and the camera, with the bottom half of his face broken, just hanging there.  I couldn't believe it.  I mean, can you fucking --"<br/><br/>"Alright!  Jesus!  ENOUGH!"<br/></strong><br/>Professor James Tobias stopped his busy scribbling on the huge chalkboard that stretched across the front of the lecture hall.  He was in the middle of a complex series of equations when Cal decided he'd had enough of Cody Shreveport's nightmarish descriptions of footage from the ongoing westside riots.  Cal was trying his best to keep up with the professor's verbal arguments and the endless scrawl of equations.  Cody's mind, however -- not to mention his mouth -- was busy reviewing in lurid detail everything he'd just seen on the television before their class period began.<br/><br/>Between the bizarre footage Cal had witnessed himself that morning, the vague tension that seemed to hang over the entire campus, and the non-stop whispering among students throughout the lecture hall, Cal was struggling to make sense of that day's complicated lecture on the express curvature of Riemannian manifolds.  To his credit, Dr. Tobias had chosen to ignore the unusually high level of chatter in the room, continuing patiently with his lecture right up to the moment when Cal had snapped.<br/><br/>Perhaps it was the sleep he'd lost watching DVDs the night before ... or perhaps it was the thought of his Aunt Ginny at home by herself, and the recent news that the rioting was spreading in the direction of Cal's residential neighborhood, with no signs of abating.  One way or the other, Cody's monologue had set Cal off and elicited a far more volatile response than he intended, expressed in a voice loud enough to be heard by several rows of students in the front of the hall, as well as the long-suffering lecturer at the chalkboard.  The accidental outburst had been the last straw for Tobias, who had put up with being ignored by his students for nearly forty minutes at that point, with precious few minutes left in the class period.<br/><br/>Still, he was taken aback when he turned around and recognized the source of the interruption as one of his brightest students, a young man whose name he couldn't recall, but who had distinguished himself with high marks on both exams so far that semester.  Nonetheless, the teenager obviously lacked an appreciation of the decorum appropriate to the college setting.<br/><br/><strong>"Excuse me, young man, but would you like to take over at this point in the lecture?"  </strong>Dr. Tobias addressed Cal loudly, appraising him with an icy glare.  All the muttering in the room came to a total halt, and scores of faces all around the hall turned simultaneously to see whom the professor had singled out.<br/><br/><strong>"No sir," </strong>Cal responded, his voice lowered to a whisper.<br/><br/><strong>"I'm sorry, what was that?  Speak up, young man!  You seemed to have no problem speaking up just now.  Will you be lecturing today, Mr. -- ?"<br/><br/>"Snyder, sir.  Cal -- Cal Snyder."<br/><br/>"Mr. Snyder."  </strong>The professor fairly spat out the words, and then sighed loudly.<strong>"I'm sure we've all got a lot on our minds today, with the strange news around town and so forth; but let's try and keep our minds on the task at hand, shall we, Mr. Cal Snyder?"<br/><br/>"Yes, sir.  Of course, sir."<br/><br/>"Thank you, Mr. Snyder."</strong>The professor turned back to the chalkboard, and Cal shriveled down into a little mound in his chair.<br/><br/><br/><br/><hr/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 8pt;">(OOC:  Pseudo-math lecture pilfered nearly verbatim from Wikipedia, natch.)</span>