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I’ve already written a standard SIWBI review. My main conclusion was that most of SIWBI is wasted space that fails to satisfy readers or advance the main plot. So what do these wasted chapters do? To answer that, I will summarize and analyze the content and writing of each chapter.

(Spoilers).

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I am in a debilitating amount of pain right now and will likely be unable to blog for the next week or two.  Until then, please enjoy the sparkling insights of the rest of the Superhero Nation writing staff.  Thanks for your understanding; I hope to get better soon.

Picture c/o simplydumb.com, caption courtesy of me (inserted with the help of ICanHas Cheezburger.com

In a header, text usually looks best when balanced. For example, in our header “a fairly unbalanced” is balanced nicely because it’s exactly as wide as the row below it, “guide to superpower politics.” If you’re interested in learning how to make text look pleasant, this will help.

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After comments like these from Senator Clinton, I get the impression that the Democratic Convention is going to be pretty crazy.

VAN SUSTEREN: And if he says, no, I won’t do it, that leaves Michigan and Florida out. And does that leave you out?
CLINTON: No. Not at all, because we are going to make sure those votes get counted, one way or another.

VAN SUSTEREN: How?

CLINTON: Well, you know, you can always go to the convention. That is what credential fights are for. You know, let’s have the Democratic Party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months before the general election? I don’t think that will happen. I think they will be seated. So that is where we are headed if we don’t get this worked out.

The conventional wisdom– I think I saw this on Politico a few weeks ago– is that Clinton’s supporters have a slight edge over Obama/Dean’s on the credentials committee.

Agent Orange, our resident mutated alligator, offers us these insights into Things Mammals Like:

1. Seatbelts. Why anyone would want to be attached to a flaming, twisted deathtrap is beyond me. If you find yourself in a car with a mammal– particularly one named Agent Black– the windshield is your surest path to freedom. Indeed, attempting to escape his mobile coffin by hurling yourself through the windshield would probably improve your odds of survival.
2. Traffic signals. These hypnotic lights calm mammal drivers but scare mammal driving instructors when a reptile is taking a driving test. Relatedly, did you know that alligators are red-green colorblind?
3. Playing golf. The mystery of golf-playing has fascinated alligators for eons, which is why you can find so many of us at golf-courses. Then the mammals shoo us away because they know how goofy their clothes look. (Mammals).

St. Patrick’s Day

Agent Orange: Greetings, mammal-Black!

Agent Black: You’re wearing a green trenchcoat.

Agent Orange: Daringly green. I notice you’re wearing a green tie.

Agent Black: Yeah, I’m celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. I would assume that you are, too, but yesterday you claimed that St. Patrick was a reptile-hater that cleansed Ireland of its snakes.

Agent Orange: Indeed! And St. Patrick’s grim legacy of reptilian removal is precisely why every alligator eagerly observes Gatriot’s Day.

Agent Black: Gatriot’s Day?

Agent Orange: Yep. We wear green to celebrate alligator virtues.

Agent Black: Such as…

Agent Orange: Well, there’s carnage, whupass, and charity. Ooh, teeth, too. That’s a big one.

Agent Black: Does it bother you that every, uhh, human wearing green today is celebrating St. Patrick?

Agent Orange: Ehh. American gators survived him and other predators. In fact, only the American and Chinese gators survived. Everyone else died out. Why do you think we lived?

Agent Black: A favorable climate, stable food supply and relatively little human contact?

Agent Orange: No, you dummy! Because of Gatriot’s Day.

Agent Black: Oh, uhh… I see. That makes sense. (Nutcase).

Agent Orange: So, on every Gatriot’s Day, American gators use four-leaf clovers to explain the true nature of our awesomeness to heathen mammals. Not coincidentally, the Four Pillars of American Awesomeness are green: the Statue of Liberty, dollars, military camouflage and go-signs. These four pillars represent freedom, happiness, strength and energy. And they, like the leaves on a clover, rest on the stem, which obviously represents gators.

Agent Black: (Obviously). … Hey, do you actually have a four-leaf clover? I’ve never seen one before.

Agent Orange: Indeed! Look, here…

Agent Black steals the clover.

Agent Black: Thanks.

Agent Orange: Hey!

Agent Black: And a happy Gatriot’s Day to you, too!

“I’m not a poker shark.  Did you know that coconuts kill more people than sharks do?  I’m like a hurricane of coconuts.”
–Catastrophe

Google Analytics reports that only 40% of our visitors on Tuesday were new. Previously, that number had never been less than 90%.

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“The war on terror will not be won with just bombs and guns. We’ve got knives, too.”

–Agent Orange

Fiction is a response to threat. No one wants to read happily ever after. That’s why the story ends at happily ever after.

–Cadet Davis

It has been incorrectly claimed that the Office of Special Investigation’s Human Resources branch terminates with extreme prejudice. Make no mistake: we are 100% committed to equal opportunity.

–Agent Orange, OSI-HR Director

Our mutated alligator, Agent Orange, presents us this nugget of reptilian wisdom.
Many mammals believe that, because alligators are friendly and helpful, that all reptiles must be similarly awesome. This is not the case.

The Associated Press gives a grisly account of an alligator forced to prove his awesomeness after being attacked by a python.

The snake apparently tried to swallow the gator whole—and then exploded. Scientists stumbled upon the gory remains last week.

Unsurprisingly, snakes have proven completely ineffective against gators.

And we here are, [a gator-snake fight has] happened for the fourth time,” Mazzotti said. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

And the only reason there was a draw was because the gator felt merciful.

This site allows you to rank some of your favorite types of colors and then it suggests possible color schemes. What really impressed me was how smoothly it integrated its free features with a gentle offer of (paid) web designing services.

I had the UConn Huskies going to the Final Four. They just lost in the first round to the San Diego Toreros. Although this screws my bracket, it does make me feel a bit better about Florida missing the tournament.

The picture came courtesy of stock.xchng, with a hat tip to Squally-Chan.

Agent Orange: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Agent Black: If you’re about to ask a question that includes the word “alligators,” “mammals,” “conspiracy,” or any combination of those, no.

Agent Orange: …

Agent Orange: Have you developed psychic–

Agent Black: No.

Agent Orange: Are you posi–

Agent Black: Yes.

Agent Orange: So how–

Agent Black: Wily mammal tricks. I could tell you more, but then I’d have to make you into a suitcase.

Agent Orange: …!

I got into Lolcats today and I find it stupidly amusing. 

Climbing Gator picture taken from here.

A WWII German fighter ace just learned that one of the Frenchmen he killed was his favorite author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. (Whoops!)

This further shows that, if you should ever find yourself in a gunfight with an author, you should let him kill you.