Agent Orange: This has been troubling me for weeks: humans are obviously tail-deficient but claim to have a “tailbone.” Why is that?

Agent Black: Beats me. Whenever something about mutated alligators confuses me, it’s usually just because we’re hundreds of millions of years ahead of you evolutionarily.

Orange: …!

Orange: Tails are really useful. You’re jealous you don’t have one.

Black: Quoteth Calvin to Hobbes: they’re neckties for the ass.

Orange: Neckties that can strangle someone, an important distinction.

Black: I’m sure there’s scientists somewhere that deal with random shit like this. Just call one of them. And, while you’re at it, a psychiatrist.

The next day

Orange: Reptologists are friendly and helpful, like their area of research. They can answer any reptilian question, like why crocodiles are alligator-rejects.

Black: I thought your question was about humans.

Orange: I’m getting to that! I called several mammologists and I’ve concluded that mammologists are part of a vast conspiracy to conceal the truth about mammalian “tailbones” from reptiles.

Black: …

Black: They obviously didn’t do such a good job concealing the truth if you uncovered it anyway.

Orange: I was far too clever for them. I asked one what mammalogists were good for besides wasting oxygen and she blabbered about providing “mammo-grams.” That response was so inane that I knew right then it was an attempt at deception.

Black: Uhh, a mammogram is…

Orange: Not merely a unit of mass, it’s British mass. And the problem here is not that I have too little mammalian mass (British or otherwise) but rather that humans have a dishonestly marketed bone. Perhaps if y’all got a few repto-grams, you might have a real tailbone.

Captain Carnage walks in.

Captain Carnage: Am I interrupting something?

Black: No, I think it’s almost over.

Orange: Yours is a very wacky species.

I attend a university whose many strengths definitely do not include a high wealth-to-tipping ratio. How stingy are students here?

Six strangers got into a van from the airport to campus. It cost $3 each. We all handed over a $5. Four people asked for a dollar back. I was really taken aback by that outlandish pettiness, so I handed over a $10 and took no change back, more to make them feel bad about themselves than because I’m innately generous.  After I tipped, two of them asked for another dollar back.

Understandably, few cabbies do the airport-to-campus line, even though the trainstop there produces a lot of cab passengers. So there’s often some jostling to get to the cabs. I’m not much of a jostler– my bag is heavy as hell– so I didn’t even try to go for the first wave of cabs.

One of the cabs started to drive away, jerked suddenly and pulled a 180 degree turn.

The cabbie rolled down his window, pointed wildly and screamed “YOU!” Then he made the girl in the passenger seat get out to make room.

The gist of the lawsuit is that Heroes supposedly ripped off a preexisting plotline that where an artist painted the future and included the (possible) destruction of two New York City landmarks.

If this lawsuit works out, I’m going to sue every romance publisher because they’ve all ripped off a story I wrote last year where a guy and a girl struggle through adversity and finally get together.

(Wait a minute…)

I’m not sure I can think of a superhero story set in the real world where a New York landmark isn’t endangered. In fact, superhero stories are probably more likely to endanger NYC landmarks than romances are to show guys and girls getting together, because some romances are tragedies).

As as for the supposed ripping-off of a superpower (painting the future), again pretty much every superpower is a direct and blatant ripoff of something that’s already been used. Some of the superpowers used on Heroes are…

1. Superstrength

2. Regeneration

3. Flying

4. Mind-reading

5. Time-travel
   

Groundbreaking stuff there!