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Someone from Provo wins my most valuable reader award for the week, chalking up 16 page views in a sitting.

And, collectively, the citizens of Australia win my coveted Most Superheroic Nation award for SN readers per capita.  What can I say? This proves that “aussie” isn’t just a phonetic pronunciation of a certain American national security agency that employs Agent Orange and Captain Carnage.  (OSI, in case you’ve forgotten).

My favorite city has to be Edmonton, whose readers have averaged half an hour each.

I don’t have a Least Superheroic State award, which should be especially comforting to West Virginia, Mississippi, and South Dakota.

Bill was a bit unclear about how the Office of Special Investigations was organized.  I could leave it at this flowchart… yes, it’s a flowchart.  Whenever anything in the government gets a flowchart, you know it’s serious. 

The OSI has four component branches.  In theory the OSI Director controls each of these.  In theory..

A few details about the branches…

Human Resources

• Agent Orange was kicked upstairs to head HR to prevent him from destroying property a bit too wantonly. 
  • Agent Orange does not maintain a secret identity, but he does pretend to be a mutant alligator rather than an alien.  (Everyone knows that extraterrestrials haven’t made contact with Earth.  Don’t be silly).
  • No one knows what’s in his briefcase.  Prominent theories include Jimmy Hoffa’s body, a nuclear weapon or evidence proving that JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald…  and his own time-travelling grandson, who then disappeared because he couldn’t actually exist.  Whenever bomb-sniffing dogs go near the case, they cower away.  We can only safely say that it’s probably not paperwork.
• HR handles employee recruiting, training, preventing a “hostile work environment” and handling other “personnel issues,” a category that Agent Orange extends as far as getting back in the field requires.  How can he guarantee that the field work environment isn’t hostile if he isn’t in the field?
• HR also handles human intelligence, keeping tabs on Leaguers and other personnel of note.

Retroactive Continuity (RETCON)

• Ever wonder why New York’s steam pipes and gas mains (supposedly) explode in New York City? RETCON makes sure that the news doesn’t unduly terrify the public.  Face it: you don’t really want to know what’s ripping up the sewers.
• RETCON also handles public relations (damage control, usually) and protects government secrets, particularly alien-related ones.  Don’t you know what a mutant alligator looks like?
• Mike heads RETCON, the only division that doesn’t face budgetary catastrophe.  Each year, the oversight committee forgets to oversee his budget.  Whoops.  It happens.
• Mike has neither a secret identity nor, as far as anyone can tell, a last name.  He doesn’t need either.
• Mike and RETCON don’t exist.  The idea that the government would underplay the terror threat we face is preposterous– if the public believes there is no threat, how will the government get the funds and authority it needs to handle the situation? You have already forgotten Mike.

Operations

• When people think OSI– masked g-men tearing after supercriminals– that’s Operations.
• OSI-Operations has five branches: New York City, Surf City, Washington DC, the rest of the United States and finally overseas (and Canada, theoretically, but everyone knows that a Canadian “supercrime” is probably someone robbing a Edmonton* Timmy Horton’s with a sharpened spoon).  For reasons that have puzzled sociologists and urban planners for generations, the three American cities feature at least 80% of the world’s supernatural activity (or 75%, depending on the classification of Everton and White Sox victories).
• Operations is headed by Captain Carnage, whose combat-to-Congressional-hearings ratio is surprisingly high for a ranking government official.
• Those in the know have always revered Carnage’s commitment to his secret identity.  The “Texan” revels in rodeo, grappling, NASCAR and down-home idioms loaded with animals and oil wells.  CBS has no idea it plays into his hands whenever it re-airs the clip of him claiming that Texas is the smartest place in South America, giving supercriminals wildly false cues.  By day he runs a Massachusetts psychiatric practice.  He has a Ph.  D.  in neurobiology and speaks eight languages (including Mexican, obviously).
• Observers have asked how it’s possible for a highly visible Homeland Security official to make Congressional hearings, work in the field and maintain a dual life as a psychiatrist.  But that question misses the point.  He’s Captain freaking Carnage.  Of course it’s possible.

Logistics

• Oh yeah, them.  When you think of comic book stories, Logistics handles all of the details that didn’t make the page.  How does Captain Carnage get from one city to another? Who ensures that Agent Black has enough ammo clips? When a superpowered being (government or otherwise) gets in a fight, the glass panes get shattered for miles around.  Check your insurance policies– they explicitly do not cover terrorism, acts of war, nuclear accidents/attacks and supercrime.  Yeah, those panes of glass…  a LOT of paperwork.  A lot of logistics.  So think about THAT the next time you see a strip that just shows glass shattering everywhere.  That’s my freaking WEEKEND, dammit.
• If there were any soldier as stupid as the one depicted in Transformers– “hey, let’s take this hotly disputed, mystical artifact into a densely occupied US city!”– I’d make Captain Carnage cap him in the face.  That, or he’s going to be booking his own goddamned plane tickets.

*I just had to work in the Edmonton reference.  See an above posting on my most hard-core readers for more details.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a glowing review of Superhero Nation… sort of…

“Superhero… Nation… is an… exceptional… and… witty takedown… of… mythic tales from ‘Superman’ to ‘Star Wars’ to ‘Spiderman’…

This… visceral… book… will… rouse the crowd to multiple ovations…

Fast-and-furious… action… harness… this… new book’s… easy appeals to… the subtext of political contests,… tangling with… both… the flower-child… crowd… and… clergy… in Virginia… and… South Carolina.

Forceful one-liner[s]… command the stage… of an… absurdly… manly… work… trying to… find common ground… on… the need to use… young superheroes… to slay your opponents.”

Thanks, Maureen. We think it’s easy to laugh at your writing, too.

Additionally, B. Mac received his first fan-mail today… sort of. According to President Bush, his “idealism and energy represent the spirit of our Nation.” I envision three possibilities.

1. Bush had another Putin moment.

2. Bush was referring to B. Mac’s work in political science, which is almost certainly more idealistic than the coldly cynical editor that oppresses his Superhero Nation staff. [Boohoohoo, get over yourself — B.M.] Based on the award’s letter, Bush probably was referring to his academic work. However, I hope that Bush hasn’t actually read any of B.M.’s work. (He writes about nuclear warfare, right?) [Mostly.]

3. Bush was referring to Superhero Nation, because he realized that superhero stories say much more about America than political science does. It’s true!

The good news: I’ve written a new chapter, The Human Resources Promise.  Just to get you antsy: one of the choice quotes is “Humans don’t usually molt, sir.  It would be a cause for concern.”

The bad news: the chapter fits between Everybody Dies (Chapter 4) and Stockbroker to the Slaughter (Chapter 5).  HR Promise will become the new chapter 5 and Stockbroker will become chapter 6 and takes place right after the Mallow chapters.  I hope that’s not too confusing.

Thanks for waiting!

Chapter 5: The Human Resources Promise

Two weeks later

The following conversation took place in the office of Agent Orange, the Office of Special Investigation’s Deputy Director for Human Resources.  

Participants include ORANGE and Gary SMITH, Agent-in-Training.

START TRANSCRIPT.

SMITH: Hello, sir. You asked to see me.

ORANGE: I no longer direct the Surf City branch.

SMITH: Promoted, right? Your new office sure beats the basement. Damn large, sir.

ORANGE: It’s bright.

SMITH: Yeah. Great view. That’s Elysian Field down there. I’d kill to have this office, sir.

ORANGE: It’s bright.

SMITH: Well, uhh. Maybe it would be possible to keep your old office…

ORANGE: It isn’t.

SMITH: …or put up blinds or an entirely new wall?

ORANGE: I like your thinking. The construction crew’s scheduled for one.[OJ, did you get that cleared with Legal?–Logistics].

SMITH: Will the crew also handle mildew prevention?

ORANGE: What?

SMITH: The room feels, uhh, very damp.

ORANGE: I set up six humidifiers behind my desk. Can’t you hear that infernal buzzing? It sounds like a Vietnamese gnat-storm.

SMITH: Well, wet rooms sometimes get mildew. For humans, the smell is usually just unpleasant, but, uhh…

ORANGE: Oh.

SMITH: Do alligators smell very well?

ORANGE: REDACTED (pursuant to Operational Security Code, clause D: Agent Capabilities/Demographics– RETCON)

SMITH: Humans don’t usually molt, sir. It would be a cause for concern.

ORANGE: REDACTED.

SMITH: [My training has been going] well, thank you.

ORANGE: My first chore at Human Resources is to fill the vacancy my “promotion” left at the head of the Surf City branch. Agent Flux, naturally… then he had to be replaced, and then his replacement had to be replaced… all the way down to a vacancy at “Field Agent, Third Class, New York Branch.” Would that position interest you, Agent Smith?

SMITH: Yes, sir.

ORANGE: … Your eyes flared. Are you dissatisfied?

SMITH: No, sir, but I’d like to suggest that it might be preferable to…

ORANGE: Verbal delicacy isn’t in your job description.

SMITH: “Agent Smith” won’t work.

ORANGE: Unsurprising. No one is ever satisfied with normal names…[Damn straight. No criminal will ever lie awake, terrified that Agent Lovejoy is about to burst through the ceiling– CPT CARNAGE].

ORANGE: “Agent Black” is currently open but that title has always been regarded as unlucky.

BLACK: I’ll survive.

ORANGE: Brave man. It’s always a Black that’s the first to die. The first possessor died after a frog leaped into his weapon, causing a misfire. We retired the name after a chance meteor shower removed his successor. Well, then… a last formality, several competency questions. The one-year survival rate of OSI field agents, third class is…

BLACK: Sixty-one percent.

ORANGE: How many survive two years?

BLACK: Fifty-five percent.

ORANGE: Right again. Why do you think that so many more agents die in their first year than their second?

BLACK: The agents that survived the first year are more experienced and generally more careful and situationally aware than the KIAs.

ORANGE: …

BLACK: If you don’t mind me asking, sir, what’s the correct answer?

ORANGE: I don’t know. I’ve reviewed a lot of the first year death reports. It couldn’t be that they’re all sloppy beginner mistakes, could it? I think… I think that the trust and faith of the people influence who survive.

BLACK: Pardon?

ORANGE: The survival of a given agent correlates strongly with his standing with the American people. If that means anything… then Americans are either just naturally inclined to trust agents that are likely to survive… or the trust has some sort of incomprehensible influence on chance events.

BLACK: I’ll stick with the experience and Darwin factors, sir. (Mammals–HR).

ORANGE: When Freakshow is melting your neural synapses together, let me know how much inspiration and comfort Darwin gives you.

BLACK: I will try to remember to do that, sir. (Wiseass–HR).

ORANGE: Repeating a point from before. Thirty-eight percent of field agents fail to survive the first year. It would be safer to shoot yourself in the chest and retire. What do you think about that?

BLACK: I didn’t go Special Investigations to maximize my lifespan, sir. You’ve either got it or you don’t.

ORANGE: …

ORANGE: And what is it you have, exactly?

BLACK: When the chips are down, if protecting the innocent will get me killed, then I’m ready to die, sir.

ORANGE: I notice your police records didn’t include any lethal force reports. What do you think about killing someone?

BLACK: Killing a criminal? I could do that.

ORANGE: You sounded a lot more enthusiastic when Georgia Tech beat my Gators.

BLACK: Well, sir, the Georgia Tech win was unexpected. They were ready to go. And, if you’re not ready to go, you shouldn’t wear the uniform. I wonder how a certain Gators fan would describe what happened to Florida… their mammalian instincts got the best of them? (Mammals—HR).

ORANGE: Your Georgia Tech sympathies have not gone unnoted… speaking of wildly incompetent teams, have you had much experience with the Social Justice League? They’re very active in New York.

BLACK: No, sir.

ORANGE: Please describe the standing rules of engagement with the League.

BLACK: “Do not initiate hostilities unless the Leaguer has killed a civilian, government employee or possibly a criminal in the course of his vigilanteeism. Other pursuable offenses may include a failure to compensate civilians and the government for property damages or undue violations of the rights of civilians, criminals and otherwise. The mask of a Leaguer is not to be removed or violated without a warrant for his arrest.”

ORANGE: Identifying Leaguers is obviously a critical aspect to deterring them from violating the ground-rules we’ve laid out. Please describe the demographic characteristics we had used to profile Leaguers before 1982.

BLACK: Unusual medical history, particularly a lot of wounds but very few illnesses. Chronically tardy or absent. Works in journalism or another field with little direct supervision and relatively few office hours. Overwhelmingly New Yorkers, but a few West Coasters, virtually no Southerners or Midwesterners.

ORANGE: How have our profiling methods changed after the New York Times revealed those generally professional characteristics of the vigilante-in-hiding?

BLACK: There are some ideological tendencies. Generally much more socialist than the country as a whole, but it’s frequently hard to distinguish them from New York City on that basis. Compared to other New Yorkers, they’re more likely to perceive themselves as the victims of persecution, particularly on race, gender or species/mutantness. Compared to other New Yorkers, they’re somewhat more likely to be secular, discomforted by patriotic appeals, educated in the humanities…

ORANGE: All of your answers are found in our training guides… they are not wrong, but we’ve only printed out what we could tolerate the New York Times exposing. Ideology is not a particularly useful basis for indication. Anyone can pretend to be a full-blooded capitalist. But there are certain traits associated with the “superhero” lifestyle that couldn’t be so easily hidden. What do you think that we haven’t told you so far?

BLACK: Hmm. Relationship problems? Those would probably stem from time constraints and a desire to prevent their lovers from getting kidnapped or killed…

ORANGE: Go on.

BLACK: …romantic involvement could lead to ex-girlfriends that know too much. They’re treasure troves of information in regular cases. And, of course, a girlfriend that knows will probably tell someone, especially under torture.

ORANGE: Additionally, only ten Americans alive have been kidnapped twice or more. We’ve got files on all of them.

BLACK: …

ORANGE: A few final notes to improve your odds of survival. Your field supervisor will hopefully elaborate. First, do not ever step within five feet of a New York sewer grate unless you have mastered melee combat or wish to die painfully. Second, carry heavy weaponry with you. Always. Third– this is the most important. It doesn’t matter who says it—a heroin addict in Central Park, a fortune teller on the subway or The New York Times—if anyone THINKS he’s seen the Jersey Devil, run—don’t walk—to a phone and call STRATCOM. With any luck, you’ll survive long enough to put the “man” in “Manhattan.”

BLACK: I like that, sir. It would make a nice tagline.

ORANGE: Unlikely. Twenty minutes later, the League will start saying that you really put the “man” in “maniac.” The press will seize on any reason to repeat that as much as possible.

BLACK: The Manhattan Maniac. “Too suicidal to kill…” Hah. That will definitely deter criminals.

ORANGE: Let me know how that works out for you.

END TRANSCRIPT

The story continues! You can read chapter 6, Stockbroker to the Slaughter, here.

This article will review Empire of Ivory and focus on what beginning novelists should take away from it to improve their own skill.

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On November 6, San Francisco will have the opportunity to vote Captain Democracy in its mayoral election.  Democracy is so ridiculously bold that his opponents have already written their concession speeches.  Like Kenny the Clown and Chicken John ever had a chance. 

As far as I can tell, Democracy is qualified to be Mayor because his family is military.  Kind of scant… I bet Kenny the Clown has at least done a USO tour.  However, I give Democracy the edge because it takes a special kind of man to run a campaign out of a Wordpress blog.  Damn straight!

Hello.  A few of my readers asked me about the chapter titles.  Did I mean ____ as a pun on ____? The answer is probably yes.  I’ll go through a few…

Gotta Kill ‘Em All! is a dark play on Pokemon’s slogan, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.”  The popular children’s cartoon series, Hegemon, plays a prominent role in this chapter.  A related pun…  in politics, a hegemon is a completely dominant nation.  Since the end of the Cold War, “the hegemon” has always referred to the United States.  After all, what story about superheroes could be complete without a superpower?

How Many F’s are there in Katastrofy? (Win a Pulitzer in 20 Minutes a Day!) is a play on the latest Superman movie, where a supposedly Pulitzer-calibre journalist (Lois Lane) wonders how many F’s are in “catastrophe.”  Katastrophy is the name of the Hegemon that’s clearly based on Mewtwo (he’s in the header).  For reasons that I will hopefully be able to reveal by the end of 2007, the real-world incarnation of said character decides to go by “Catastrophe” because you’d have to be a complete idiot to spell it “Katastrofy.”

National Catastrophe is a phrase.  In a book that already has a character named Catastrophe and Nation in the title, how could I resist?

Dr.  Berkeley’s name is actually a reference to George Berkeley, an 18th century philosopher who claimed that anything we perceive is necessarily real.  (Mirages and The Matrix are both perceivable things that probably aren’t real).  The more obvious Berkeley association features a certain university in California, but that wasn’t my main objective.

What Do We Do About Berkeley? This time the reference actually IS to the university.  Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) had been advised by his gubernatorial staff not to hit on the counterculture of UC-Berkeley.  Reagan responded: “Look, I don’t care if I’m [campaigning] in the mountains, the desert, the biggest cities of this state, the first question [I get is]: ‘What are you going to do about Berkeley?’ And each time the question itself would get applause.”  I amended the phrase to “What do we do…”  rather than “What are you going to do…”  because the title is already a bit long.

Forget Who’s Watching the Watch-Man…  Don’t Leave Yourself Alone with Him is a play on the phrase “but who watches the watchman,” and of course the comic book series The Watchmen, but most prominently Syler from Heroes.  You definitely wouldn’t want to find yourself alone with THAT watch-man.

The Empire State Strikes Back is an obvious play on Star Wars…  not too tricky.

Gods and Supermen at Yale is a reference to God and Man at Yale, conservative William Buckley’s seminal work on the relationship between faith and scholarship.  In the context of Superhero Nation, the “Gods” are researchers…  well, I shouldn’t spoil a chapter I haven’t written, right?

The Crisis of Infinite OSIs is a play on DC Comic’s seminal series, The Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Really, really devoted students of US government might know there is a separate Office of Special Investigations within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Air Force, and the legislative Government Accountability Office.

It Takes a Child to Raze a Village…  the original is liberal Hillary Clinton’s quote, “it takes a village to raise a child.”  I can’t say any more without hopelessly spoiling the chapter.  Suffice it to say that I hope you won’t miss Greenwich.  (Heh.  A red herring, I assure you).

The First Draft of History is a reference to the quote that “journalism is the first draft of history.” 

Hegemonic Instability Theory.  Maybe you’ve heard of “hegemonic stability theory,” the theory that particularly strong nations contribute to world peace.  Well, mental instability appears to be more relevant to the plot (and creation) of this novel, so I thought that was more appropriate.   It’s also a play on the Hegemon angle, if you’ve been paying attention.   (Additionally, Orson Scott Card wrote a book called “Shadow of the Hegemon,” which  I might turn into something like “Shadowing the Hegemon”)

The Last Oorah.  “Oorah” is a Marine concept…  hell, a way of life! Its origin probably derives from “heard, understood and acknowledged” (HUA), a general expression of enthusiasm (ahem…  “anything and everything but no“).  At one point, I had the chapter called The Last Huah because I wasn’t sure whether the character that dies is a Marine or an [Army] soldier.

The pun is that there’s a novel called The Last Hurrah, which is also a stage in Star Fox 64.  (Wow, I am such a nerd).

A few of the chapters (Agents of Change, Agents of Destruction, etc.) play on the double meaning of “agent” as a federal employee (IRS agent, OSI agent) and a causative factor.  The Free Agent plays on a sports-term for someone who currently has no employer.

Yep, that’s most of it.  I should add– well, it should be obvious that– a title that has to be explained is probably not working.  So hopefully titles like A Free Agent or What Are We Going to do about Berkeley? work even if the reader isn’t familiar with the inside joke.  If they don’t, then the author has needlessly alienated a lot of his readers.  I think the titles would be effective even if the reader didn’t know.

I like the show Heroes a lot.  However, I think that it’s generally pretty poorly-written, at least flabbier than most shows I enjoy.  So many characters are thrown at us that take up an episode but have no bearing on the plot.  Like the woman that’s able to access the Internet remotely…  she was so insignificant that no one noticed that it looks like the writers forgot about her after her first episode.

I can’t tell what the remaining episodes in this season will look like, so it’s hard to tell which characters will become interesting and serve to drive the main plot, but I think that from the first four episodes we can start to tell which characters aren’t working.

In the first season, we had several main clusters of characters.  There’s a lot of overlap.  If one character could fit in several clusters, I tried to place him in the cluster that would be most affected by his removal from the script.

• Peter and Nathan Patrelli (and their family)
• The painter and his girlfriend
• Hiro/Ando
• Claire/Mr. Bennet and the other Bennets.
• The Haitian and The Company employees
• Linderman and his guys
• Nicky, her kid and her husband
• The L.A. cop, his family and the hot FBI partner.  I’d also probably put the nuclear guy and the remote control woman here.
• Suresh
• Syler

(I probably missed some people.  Heroes has an enormous cast).  Please forgive me for having a bad memory.

A few thoughts about the different clusters.

• Peter was the main character– supposedly!  But he does very little.  He matters a lot more in terms of what he doesn’t do, namely destroying New York.
  • Well, he’s instrumental in saving Claire from Syler.  But that doesn’t matter very much, does it?  Remember the episode that looks at five years in the future after Syler survives the stabbing (because he had Claire’s regenerative powers)?  At the end of that episode, five years after he survives the stabbing, Syler kills Claire and takes her powers.  Most people didn’t notice that glaring plot-hole, probably because saving the cheerleader didn’t seem like a major element of the plot (because it wasn’t).
• I would give Peter a more prominent role in the fight against Syler.  If he doesn’t tie into that fight more directly, he should probably be removed from the plot entirely.  His quest, to prevent NYC from getting nuked, really has nothing to do with Syler.
• Syler is probably the character I enjoyed the most.  “This is usually the point where people start screaming” is one of my all-time favorite TV quotes.  As far as supervillains go, he has an interesting modus operandi and origin story.
• I would, however, remove the scene where he kills his mother.  It wasn’t any MORE gruesome than anything else he did over the first season, but it just came out of the blue.  Why did he kill his mother again?  How did that advance the story?  We already KNEW he was damn creepy and violent.
• I’d remove the Nicky/son/husband cluster entirely.  That ENTIRE cluster amounts to two relevant plot points: the device by which Petrelli is going to win the election and Nicky making a ridiculous cameo in the climactic fight against Syler.  As far as supervillain plots go, trying to rig an election with a wunderkind hacker is stupid and ill-conceived.
  • Let’s see… a candidate al0ready under federal investigation for mob ties moves from a 4-way dead heat to a “landslide” victory on the strength of bajillions of electronic votes.  Wouldn’t anyone get suspicious that precincts that presumably turned out pretty close in paper-voting produced enormous Petrelli majorities?
• I like the Company, but it’s never quite clear (to me, at least) why they’re tracking the special people and what their eventual goal is.   How does Linderman tie into the Company’s goals?  I assume that they aren’t related.  If so, what IS the Company trying to accomplish?  Why does it attempt to take in Syler after it knows he’s a serial killer?  etc.  Critiques of Superhero Nation frequently offer some variation of “I don’t get the distinction between the Office of Special Investigations and the Social Justice League.”  I’d say that the Company-Linderman distinction is way hazier.
• Suresh is OK, but do we really have to hear him narrate every episode?
• I love the LA cop, but his role in the plot serves mainly to show what the law enforcement authorities are doing to stop Syler (not much, apparently).  He also makes an almost-cameo in the climactic fight against Syler.  I like this character a lot, but I would deemphasize his personal life– which is kind of trite– and emphasize the Syler connection.
  • The writers shot themselves in the foot with his hot partner.  The writers REALLY want this to be a world where no one really knows about people having superpowers.  To some extent, this suggests that the FBI is comically incompetent, but we’d have to believe that his partner is WILDLY stupid.
    1. She knows that he can read minds.  Ahem, he read HER mind and she knows that he is able to get all sorts of #$^# out of interrogatees.  She eventually shrugs that off with a few lines that are so painful that I can’t imagine they were written with a straight face.
    2. Syler’s kill scenes are distinctly unnatural.  Stuff like a building being iced over is par for the course.  Heads lopped off, etc.
    3. Mr. Radioactive produces radioactivity without any logical scientific explanation.  THEN Mr. Radioactive and his Homeland Security convoy are eliminated by something that threw the van down without leaving explosive residue or a collision impact.

  The easiest way to resolve all of this would be to remove the scene where the cop (Parkman) exposes his ESP secret to his partner.

Have you noticed that attack ads sound pretty similar? They’re all made from the same script. To create a political advertisement, you just need to plug in…

• One opposed political candidate

• Two positive interest groups

• One positive adjective

• Three negative adjectives

• Two negative interest groups

• One supervillain

I’ve got some suggestions for you, but you can pick your own. After picking your words, plug them into the Script at the bottom of the page.

Word-Banks

Opposed political candidates (1)

• Pick your favorite. It’ll work on anyone.

Positive interest groups (2)

• Armed servicemen

• Puppies

• Armed servicepuppies

• Unemployed Media Studies professors

• Starving single-parents with absolutely no control over their situation

• Starving artists that are merely misunderstood by society

• Ninja amphibians

• Superhero Nation readers

• Navy SEALs [not to be confused with ninja amphibians]

Positive adjectives (1)

• Daring

• Sexy

• Vigorous

• Punctual

Negative adjectives (3)

• Bible-thumping

• Atheist

• Anti-puppy

• Tax-and-spend

• Tax-cut-and-spend

• Mutant-loving

• Puppy-eating (don’t play the fool with me. In Pinnochio, there’s a puppy that follows the “protagonist” and then the puppy suddenly disappears. What happened to him? Kibbles and bits).

Negative interest groups (2)

• Illuminati

• Massachusetts

• Big Tobacco

• Big Media

• Big Toilet Paper [not to be confused with Big Media]

• Texas

• The New York Money People [“but my best friends are Jewish!”]

• Seventh-Day Adventists

• Mutant haters

• Mutant sympathizers

• Pirates

• Captain America

Supervillains (1)

• Magneto

• Spock (“Spock’s not a supervillain!” You need to pay more attention, biatch).

• Rush Limbaugh

• Lex Luthor

• a Teletubby

• Hillary Clinton

• Barney the Dinosaur

The Script

Dear Voter,

Hello. Even as we speak, (political candidate) is plotting to destroy America, even our cherished (positive interest group #1)s. Any (positive adjective #1) American can see that (political candidate) is only running because he wants to sell out our (positive interest group #2) to advance the (negative adjective #1) agenda of (negative interest group #1). Because he’s (negative adjective #2).

If you are wavering on the issue of whether (political candidate) is a (negative adjective #3) pawn of (negative interest group #2), ask yourself: can America survive a President that looks so much like (supervillain)?

…if Notre Dame defeats #11 ranked USC.  In fact, the win would affect my mental state so greatly that it might affect my website.  Suffice it to say that the website redesign would be GLORIOUS.

Yahoo News: “As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.”  You’re heart-broken, I’m sure.

This article will cover how to name characters effectively and how to avoid the most common naming problems.

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I’ve been doing some chapter divisions. Right now we have…

1. Life, Death and the Manhattan Mangler
2. The Empire State Strikes Back
3. The Best Investigator in the World
4. Everybody Dies
5. Stockbroker to the Slaughter

The newly named chapters are generally smaller splits of old, large chapters. There isn’t very much new material here yet. Some exceptions: #1 is all new (as of early October). And the beginning of #2 is newly formulated, as of mid-October.

Speaking of chapters, I got a comment about my chapter titles. It entails a minor spoiler.

The chapter is called Everybody Dies but nobody does. Did you just forget about it?

Hmm. In the first thirty thousand words, a bit less than half of the eventual novel, three characters die, although in admittedly horrific and lurid ways. I’m outlining a squiding now… I’ll let you imagine what that entails, but I promise that kill #4 will make #1-3 look like a midnight heart attack. I’ve tried to keep my few kills outrageously gruesome to mock the genre, which seems to believe that quality entails more blood than most ER procedures.  And, as much as possible, it’s always the black guy that’s the first to die.  Even being named Agent Black didn’t help him very much, did it?

Chapter 4: Everybody Dies

Six years before

Jacob Mallow was a bright young man, the interviewer decided.  His eyes were wide and always searching, so he looked lost, but he would probably contribute to some graduate program in bioengineering… just not this one.  The interviewer glanced at Jacob’s folder and knew he wouldn’t get in.  His test scores and grades were as exceptional as those of any plausible candidate.  Hell, he hadn’t even heard of the St.  Louis college Jacob had attended.

On the off-chance that Jacob had some previously undisclosed quality, the interviewer lobbed him a few softball questions.  Maybe he was a major donor’s son.  Probably not, given that wreck of a suit.  When asked why he wanted to become a bioengineer, Jacob said “I want to help people.” The interviewer had heard that response almost fifteen times that day, but usually it came with superhuman tales of compassion and service.  The interviewer’s stomach grumbled.  This was already eating into his lunch break.

When prompted, Jacob mentioned a project to grow vegetables for inner-city dwellers he had been involved with.  Strictly speaking, “involved with” wasn’t as accurate as “run alone and worked like a full-time job,” but he hated sounding boastful.

The interviewer wasn’t even sure that this alleged service project had actually existed.  He didn’t have any reason to specifically suspect that, but psychological studies have shown that two-thirds of applicants to top graduate programs lied on their applications… they usually said that competing honestly would be unfair because so many lied.

When asked what he liked doing, Jacob said he enjoyed writing and painting and problem-solving.  Jacob thought that it might sound good to say that he might eventually figure out a better way to grow crops in the heavily polluted farmlands surrounding the shattered neighborhoods of East St.  Louis that he had grown up in, but he demurred.  That prediction was presumptuous; he didn’t know if he would graduate, let alone what kind of bioengineer he would be and whether his research would yield significant results.  He had been Missouri’s State Scholar in high school, having earned a perfect ‘five’ on sixteen college-level tests, but he had, embarrassingly, only accomplished that by begging a bookstore owner to give him the Barron’s Guides for courses vastly beyond the capability of his crumbling high school.  Besides, the three books he had consulted on graduate school interviews said that referring to high school accomplishments screams of desperation.

After wasting eight minutes trying to squeeze answers from the painfully humble and shy Jacob, the interviewer had already mentally written his assessment.  Jacob really was interested in people, but his hands shook so much he looked epileptic.  His back was pressed against his seat and he seemed to squirm a little whenever asked about his qualifications, particularly what he did for service activities.  The interviewer had four more prospects today.  He just didn’t have time for this.

The admissions committee for the same university glanced through the interviewer’s assessment.  Phrases like “meek,” “might not contribute much to intellectual environment (ready for academics here??)” stuck out, but it was “NO HOOK” that was scrawled at the bottom, underlined twice.  A hook is a compelling reason an applicant should be admitted.

After two minutes of conferring, the admissions committee rejected Jacob Mallow.  He had done research on the shifting demographics of poor farming communities, but it didn’t sound scientific.  Next!

By comparison, it took a jury 46 minutes to convict Charles Manson.

In all, eight schools concluded Jacob would excel… somewhere else.  MIT, Penn, Harvard, Georgetown, Washington University, etc.  Only the University of South Carolina at Surf City said yes.  Jacob didn’t know that it was ranked forty-second on US News and World Report’s list of top postgraduate bioengineering programs, but science recruiters did.  They had all heard the joke that USCSC had only ranked that high because US News figured it would sell more copies if at least one school in the city of five million people was in the top fifty.  It might not have been a joke.

Jacob had heard a lot about Surf City.  Strange things happened there that just didn’t happen in the Midwest.  People sometimes put on capes and went berserk, things like that.

In any case he was dimly aware that living in Surf City would entail exotic risks.  East St.  Louis was unsafe in a more banal way.  The city had a life expectancy roughly twenty years below the national average, fully ten years worse than Gary, though ten better than Mogadishu.  It was the no-man’s-land where destitute slums loaded with drug-dealers and prostitutes and gangs met dusty, dead farmlands.  Jacob had survived by being a totally valueless target in a slum where several pizza-boys got killed each year for the change on a twenty.  But Jacob rarely had any money and looked so mousy that his presence on gang territory–more or less all of East St.  Louis– usually warranted jeers or warning shots rather than, say, a stabbing.

There were, however, disadvantages to having no money.  Food stamps had helped, and he got cheap chicken from his job at Lenny’s Chicken Shack, but the flavor of refried chicken gradually induced him to crave produce.  But even imported fruits had been beyond his means.  Originally he had grown up in the far reaches of the county, what had once been real farming country, but the best land available for cultivation here was the burnt-out shell of what might have once been a factory.  His makeshift vegetable garden was probably the only completely drug-free plot for miles around.

Most inner-city dwellers don’t know much about international trade and agro-economics, but every kid on the corner knew the market value of a kilogram of marijuana, which can be grown in the space of half a pound of corn.  Farmers usually get four dollars for a bushel of corn, 56 pounds.  Even farmers could do the math from there.

As enticing as another summer of inner-city farming and the Chicken Shack had been, he tried finding a job over the summer in Surf City.  He had a college degree– admittedly, one hardly worth the paper it was printed on.  He figured he could find something better than $5.25 an hour and whatever chicken was left at the end of the night.  But the degree would only be worth anything if there were white-collar jobs.  In East St.  Louis, that meant running meth labs.

He first tried looking away from USCSC.  He assumed that the school would be mostly vacant over the summer.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the University that shut down.  His job search was an unsuccessful routine.

1) Ride subway to public library after work ($1.45 each way)

2) Print resume ($.10 each)

3) Google Surf City companies

4) Mail applications ($.45 each)

5) Speak with recruiters ($.5/minute)

6) No job offer: back to step 1.

The recruiters proved eerily curt and unproductive.  This conversation with a Wendy’s manager was typical.

“Hello, this is Jacob Mallow.  I was wondering if the night manager position might still be available.”

Jacob heard the manager sifting through papers over the phone.  “Mallow… Mallow… there.  Sure, we’ll hire you as night manager.  Can you start in September?”

“I was kind of hoping for something a bit sooner, maybe something by late May, if that’s possible?”

“We, uhh, won’t have any openings until September.  We, uhh, don’t get much summer business.  Yeah.” The manager sounded edgy, maybe thrown off when Jacob mentioned May, so he didn’t push the issue.

He was offered several jobs, some paying an unthinkable $9.60 per hour, but all started in September.  He speculated that Surf City was a college town that just shut down during summer.  Whatever the reason, it only mattered that there were no jobs, not why.

As the ordeal of another three months of serving chicken from behind two layers of twice-proven bulletproof plexiglass appeared increasingly inevitable, Jacob turned to the University, his last resort.  He didn’t know what summer jobs a university might offer, but buildings presumably got cleaned and being a janitor in a fairly wealthy area would be bearable.

He called the Career Center and spoke to a staffer who mentioned offhandedly that his summer vacation would start in three days.  Jacob said that he was looking for work.

“Sure thing.  The market is pretty hot now.  Many jobs will open up in late September, maybe early November.” The staffer sounded rushed.  Jacob speculated that he was thinking about his summer vacation.

“Do you suppose there are any openings right now?”

“No.  Surf City doesn’t have many people over the summer.” The staffer’s response was immediate.  He couldn’t have looked in his computer or made any calls or sifted through listings, anything.  His tone was cold and final.

“Are you sure? Do you think you could maybe check again?” Jacob felt very awkward imposing on him, but getting out of East St.  Louis meant that much.  Even beyond the smoke-filled, ashy air and extremely irregular garbage service, the city just felt dirty.  There was a grimy film over everything.  The smog didn’t help, either.

“Fine.” The staffer sounded annoyed, as though Jacob had asked him to double-check whether the sun is hot.

Jacob heard around ten seconds of petulant typing and then a “Hot freaking damn…” After a few more seconds, the staffer said “Say, do you know anything about farming? We’ve got an experimental field that needs someone to tend to it over the summer.  ‘Pay negotiable.’ ”

Jacob wanted to rip his phone out of the socket and throw it through his already broken television.  He could get out of St.  Louis, work in a real city, away from the Chicken Shack… as a college-educated farmer.  His father—one of many failed farmers—must be spinning in his grave.

“I know a bit, probably not as much as an agricultural engineer, though.”

“My guess is that this job probably won’t be too hard, at least mentally.  Here, let me give you Professor Michelle Polono’s number; she runs the plot.  Bye.”

With that, the staffer rather abruptly hung up.  Jacob didn’t know how to find an application or where to send it, but he did have the number, so he called Polono.

“Hello, I was wondering where I could find an application for the farming position.”

“Application? For the summer job on the experimental plot?”

He hadn’t been too excited about farming, but when he heard “summer job” his blood started really pumping.  He was close, so close to escaping.

“Yes.  The summer job.”

“There isn’t an application.” Jacob cursed silently.  He assumed that the opening had been closed, that Surf City would have to wait.  Down the street he heard three gunshots and a siren.  He wished he had talked to the University sooner.

“Oh, uhh, that’s too bad.  I was really hoping to get the job.”

“The job’s still open, but I don’t take applications.”

“You don’t?” asked Jacob.

“Can you use a ruler and write passably in English?”

“Assuredly.” He kicked himself for using that ostentatious word—it sounded really stupid, in hindsight—but he hadn’t been sure that Professor Polono would have been sure his English was good enough if he just said “Yes.”

“Then, if you can use a hoe and other hand-tools, the job is yours.  Assuming you’ll be in Surf City until September.”

“Thank you.” Jacob’s voice was weak; it was only then he realized that he had no way to get to Surf City.  He had essentially no savings, certainly not enough for a plane ticket, but couldn’t bring himself to mention that because then Professor Polono would think he was hiring a hobo or something…

Professor Polono abruptly asked, “What salary were you looking for?” That question unnerved Jacob, who had been kind of expecting the Professor to lay out an ultimatum “offer” like “the position pays $7.50.”

Jacob saw an opportunity to press for more money.  “Eight would be fine, but I’d really like to maybe get an advance.”

“Well, I’ll have to legally contract you to stay on for the duration, but sure.  Four thousand tomorrow, four thousand at summer’s end.”

Jacob nearly dropped the phone.

“Four thousand dollars?”

The Professor sounded annoyed.  “Right.  Your advance.  Half of your pay.” Jacob had been expecting twelve weeks at eight dollars an hour, $3840.  His expected pay had doubled because of a misassumption that he wasn’t about to correct.  The advance would easily cover the University housing deposit.

The next morning, it was Tuesday.  He went to his tenement’s mailroom on the way to the Chicken Shack.  It was early, but people with money– Colombian drug dealers working for the creatively named ‘The Colombian– ate at the Chicken Shack every Tuesday morning and talked about whatever dealers talk about.  It was understood that the store would be open early or bad things might happen.  The Colombian and his dealers weren’t the only ones awake at eight.  A few people were checking their mail or walking through the adjoining hallway.

Jacob was astonished to find that Polono’s letter had actually arrived overnight.  The envelope had a gaggle of stamps reading URGENT and PRIORITY and GOVERNMENT MAIL and ESPECIALLY URGENT PRIORITY.

Jacob opened the letter.  The check didn’t say $4000.  Only $3500.  He realized that even 87.5% still grossly outstripped his current salary.  His arms suddenly felt tired and he found it hard to hold up the check, so he pocketed it.  The next piece of paper in the envelope appeared to be a contract.

“I, __(sign your name here)__, do contract with Michelle Polono (hereafter the Contractor) to satisfactorily maintain the 3-A Tomorrow Plot for the period of three (3) months.  I will be financially liable for any damages I cause to the University’s resources and/or facilities.  The remainder of my payment, four thousand dollars ($4000), is contingent on my successful rendition of duties, as is the payment already made ($4000)…”

Jacob looked at the check again.  It still said $3500.

“I disclaim any right to pursue civil action against the University and Contractor for damages incurred by risks associated with the inhabitation of Surf City during the duration of this contract.  These risks include but are not limited to: supernatural crime, terrorism, acts of God, loss/gain of limbs, and species change/mutation…”

“I, __(sign your name here)__, am mentally fit to enter into this contract, under neither coercion nor mental domination.  Under the penalty of law, I disclaim any right to withdraw from this contract prior to the Contractor discharging me of my duties or the contract’s natural expiration.” That sounded particularly sinister.  As far as he could tell, he was signing his life away to adequately farm a plot he hadn’t ever seen, in a city where the risk of supercrime, terrorism and “species change/mutation” was significant enough to include in contracts.  Suddenly the Chicken Shack sounded fairly attractive.

He stuffed the contract back in the envelope.  For a moment, he thought he might have seen a flash of green in the envelope.  He decided to consider the job later, after work.  There _were_ risks to staying in East St.  Louis, but he knew which alleys to avoid and how to stay low enough to avoid troub–

“Drop the cash, fucker, or I’m taking your head off.”

Jacob felt what was almost certainly the cold point of a mugger’s knife against the back of his neck.  He didn’t have any cash but he didn’t want to say that.  So he dropped everything he was holding, the envelope with his contract.  There were brisk footsteps behind him, a guy or two running from the mailroom.  He couldn’t exactly blame them—being a witness to a likely stabbing was an occupational hazard.

“Get against the wall and don’t move.”´

Jacob silently did so.  He heard the mugger ripping the envelope to shreds.

“Who’s your supplier.”

“My supplier?”

“The drugs, bitch.  Who are you moving for?”

Jacob heard a second voice a bit farther back.

“C, the hell you doin’?”

“This bitch is selling on our turf.  Was selling.”

“Daaamn.  You sure, man? He don’t look like a seller.  A Chicken Shack seller, maybe.  I could go for some Chicken Shack.”

Jacob wanted to say that, yes, he was dressed up in a horrendously stupid-looking green apron because he did work at the Chicken Shack.

“He got two Franklins in the mail, cash.  Sure as fuck wasn’t from no Chicken Shack.”

Jacob wanted to scream at himself for missing two hundred cash in the envelope, money even a bystander had seen.  He thought back to the flash of green in the envelope.  Damn.  The first gangster, the concisely named ‘C’, had said he found $200 but there must have been $500 cash in the envelope.  So he has pocketed the last $300.

Jacob considered a few different possibilities.  Explaining that he had been paid so much to farm could only lead to the assumption he was farming drugs.  That could only end with a slow and messy death in the mailroom.

Escape was not an option.  Two gangsters stood between him and the exit.  He was trapped in the mailroom.  Even in broad daylight, the police were damn slow, even assuming that someone would call the cops for a stranger.  The police would arrive late, find nothing, and then knock at the caller’s door, which was as likely to get the caller killed as spraypainting his door with “COP-CALLER HERE.” So Jacob was very much alone.

He had to come up with some reason to get them to want to not kill him.  His mind drifted towards dark possibilities, like getting the second one to kill C for stealing his money, but they were in a gang together and he wasn’t willing to bet his life that anyone could talk that smoothly.

A hand grabbed Jacob’s neck, banged his head against the wall, and then threw him onto the ground.

Now it was the second gangster talking.

“Let’s hear it.  Where’s the cash from?”

Jacob tried talking.  His head felt warm and sticky with blood.  Am I really going to die here? His eyes desperately swept the ground—he saw scraps of his envelope lying around.  GOVERNMENT MAIL… ESPECIALLY URGENT.

He wasn’t very lucid.  GOVERNMENT.  ESPECIALLY.  GOVERNMENT.  ESPECIALLY.  His mind homed in on three letters of ESPECIALLY.

“The CIA.  My contract’s right there.” He was willing to bet his life that the gangsters couldn’t understand anything in the contract.  Thankfully, like all legal contracts, it was incomprehensible by design.  C read maybe a line before throwing it away.

Sometimes it was whispered that the CIA was somehow controlling the inner-city drug trade.  He didn’t really know much—anything, really— about any drug players, but the CIA theory still seemed so ridiculous that staking his life on its believability almost made him blush.

He thought about grabbing the GOVERNMENT MAIL scrap of the envelope and saying that it really was kind of plausible, at least as plausible as anything that had happened since he had woken up.  But he just stared at the second gangster.  His face was soaked with blood and hurting like he ran a bike into a car.  Maybe he looked more serious and less nerdy.

“The CIA hired you to move its dope? Where’s your supply?”

Clearly, Jacob hadn’t thought this all the way through.  His legs wanted to run.  No.  Think.  There is a solution here.

“No, I wasn’t paid to sell drugs.  I’ve been paid to kill