Oct 09 2008
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I found this Halo quote on TV Tropes.
Cortana: Just one question: what if you miss?
Master Chief: I won’t.
The dialogue needs more flair. If I wrote a similar conversation between two Superhero Nation characters, it might look something like this.
Jun 16 2008
Agent Orange: Greetings, Mammal-Black! I require your expertise.
Agent Black: Tax trouble again?
Agent Orange: Indeed. Your former colleagues at the IRS persist in their shameless schemes to extort me.
Agent Black: And did this vendetta against you begin before or after you insisted on paying your income taxes in pennies?
Agent Orange: That wouldn’t have seemed unreasonable if they hadn’t demanded so much money!
Jun 10 2008
Agent Orange: Greetings, Mammal-Black! The National Security Agency has leased us a new agent, someone I surmise to be an inordinately skilled assassin.
Agent Black: You surmise that he’s an assassin?
Agent Orange: When I asked about his experience, he wouldn’t say anything more than “implementing informational synergies and synthesizing data management systems.”
Agent Black: That doesn’t sound like killing people.
Agent Orange: The NSA is top-secret, so I don’t blame him for not spelling out the details of what “data management” entailed. Perhaps if you were charged with the stealthy disposal of compromised personnel in the middle of the night, Mammal-Black, you too would appreciate discretion.
Agent Black: He probably handled hard drive backups or something.
Agent Orange: The hell he did! I bet the NSA let him go for killing a surly underling that doubted his credentials.
May 30 2008
Mike challenges Agent Black and Agent Orange to a game of Clue. Question: if the victim was killed by a noose, was it murder or assisted suicide?
May 27 2008
Agent Orange: Greetings, Mammal-Black! I have an excellent costume for our upcoming office Halloween party. It makes full use of my mammal-frightening teeth and reptilian horror factor and this pleases me.
Agent Black: Godzilla?
Agent Orange: IRS agent.
Agent Black: That’s a terrible costume.
Agent Orange: Don’t make me take 28% of your candy!
May 24 2008
Agent Orange, the mutated alligator, has a conversation with Agent Black about a firearm he purchased from Jim’s Gunz and Mattresses.
May 21 2008
The main difference between the IRS and a robber is that the IRS makes the victim an accomplice to the crime.
–Agent Orange
Hey! Don’t make me audit you.
–Agent Black, formerly of the IRS
May 19 2008
Agent Orange: Kids today are so hard to please.
Agent Black: I don’t even want to think about how you might know that.
Agent Orange: Yesterday…
Teacher: Class, today our guest speaker is Agent Orange.
Agent Orange: I’m a Special Investi-Gator.
Teacher: Could you explain what it is you do?
Agent Orange: Are you sure? There are kids here.
Student 1: Have you ever killed anyone?
Agent Orange: Laws need claws or they’d just be words.
Student 2: How many people have you killed?
Agent Orange: The confirmed score or a rough estimate?
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: Suddenly I have questions of my own.
May 07 2008
Agent Black and everybody’s favorite mutated alligator, Agent Orange, have a strange conversation about killing terrorists with sponge-cake. And other questions you never thought to ask!
May 03 2008
Agent Black and everybody’s favorite mutated alligator, Agent Orange, have a heated argument about one of America’s most popular daily comic-strips, Don Gato.
Apr 24 2008
Agent Orange: I have learned something important about mammals. Two quasi-mystical words will put a mammal into a hypnotic stupor that will force him to believe anything.
Agent Black: You’re crazy.
Agent Orange: I am prepared to demonstrate my new-found learning of mammalian psychology. First, I will greet a victim-mammal of your selection. Then you will make an outlandish statement. And I will administer the two word hypnotic spell.
Agent Black: Let’s see it.
Five minutes later.
Agent Orange: Greetings, Mammal-Darpa! We have learned something intriguing on our latest posting.
Dr. Darpa: What?
Agent Black: We were attacked by robotic, flesh-eating airplanes.
Agent Orange: IN JAPAN!
Agent Black: … !
Dr. Darpa: Egads! How did you survive?
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: NO!
[end] (If you’d be interested in reading a related article, “Stuff Mammals Like: Japan,” please see more.
Apr 21 2008
Agent Black stumbles into the Special Investigations lunchroom, his face and suit covered with ashes, dust and blood.
Captain Carnage: You look like you done tried your IRS mojo on a Texas woman.
Agent Black: Would you rather have Agent Orange drive a car or handle a submachine gun?
Captain Carnage: Is that a trick question?
Agent Black: Do I look like I’m feeling tricky right now?
Captain Carnage: Well, is Agent Orange in a combat zone on another continent, or is he somewhere where a red light actually means something?
Agent Black: Washington, DC. In my car.
Captain Carnage: Hotdamn, kid. I wouldn’t get in a tank if I knew O.J. was driving it. Give him the submachine gun, I reckon it’s less likely to hurt nastylike when he gets you killed. Those damn reptiles, they drive like everyone’s limbs grow back.
Agent Black: So, I was driving Orange. He was late to a meeting on Capitol Hill.
Captain Carnage: Hooh boy. I like where this is going.
Agent Black: We got a red light and Agent Orange says something like “why are you stopped? Keep moving, keep moving, dummy.”
Captain Carnage: Alligators reckon green and red’re the same color. When they talk about traffic lights, y’just gotta take it like Congress talking about collateral. They’re talking, but they’re not really talking, y’reckon?
Agent Black: Well, uhh. I’d heard about the green-red colorblind thing before. So I said “shuddap, I know we’re late.” And then the back of our car exploded.
Captain Carnage: Rocket launcher ambush?
Agent Black: Ambushes.
Captain Carnage: Many?
Agent Black: Four cars.
Captain Carnage: Hot damn! So you had to pick between driving or shooting. Damn sure he ain’t doing the driving. He makes NASCAR look like bumper cars. You know he once managed 8 digits of damage with a golf-cart?
Agent Black: I believe it.
Captain Carnage: Since you survived, I reckon you gave him the gun. But how did he shoot it? His hands are big enough to palm a rifle.
Agent Black: I took the gun.
Captain Carnage: But that means…
Captain Carnage: !
Agent Black: I long for death’s sweet embrace.
Later that day:
Agent Orange: Greetings, mammal-Mike!
Mike: The Captain said you had an interesting day today.
Agent Orange: I met a wily mammal-gelatoier.
Mike: A gelatoier?
Agent Orange: A mammal that sells gelato. He introduced me to the seedy and sinister gelato underworld by tricking me with a gallon of orange-flavored gelato. That was very interesting. No doubt Mike-flavored gelato would interest you. But his alleged “orange” flavor was not even remotely similar to my real orange flavor, which proves that it was a foul ruse. I also seem to have lost feeling in my digestive tract. In retrospect, I have concluded that gallons of orange gelato are better-suited to mammals than cold-bloods.
Mike: I think Carnage was referring to an attempted assassination with rocket launchers.
Agent Orange: Oh, there was that, too.
Mike: …
Mike: Don’t you think that was a little bit more interesting than the gelato?
Agent Orange: (Mammals). Before today, I had not ever been offered gelato, let alone gelato that was (purportedly) in my flavor. But assassination attempts are a dime a dozen. In fact, perhaps the gelato was an assassination attempt.
Apr 17 2008
Agent Black: You’ve claimed that alligators invented football, baseball and basketball.
Agent Orange: That’s right.
Agent Black: … (Do I even want to know?)
Agent Orange:
Many generations of alligators ago, before the Swamp and before widely available chemical mutagens, my alligator ancestors lived in a state of total boredom. There was painfully little to joke about besides the pathetic failings of crocodiles, which were obvious even in those dark times. And, given that there weren’t any mammals, we couldn’t even make fun of golf.
One day a brash, stupid crocodile (to the extent that any crocodile can be unusually stupid) challenged a legendary alligator, the Gregarious One, to a wrestling spectacle. Unsurprisingly, the crowds of gators and crocodiles bore witness to a quick slaughter. Within ten seconds, the crocodile’s head had come clean off. The disappointed crowds began to disperse. The Gregarious One shouted them to attention.
He challenged the crocodiles to stop him and his gator compatriots from ejecting the head of the offending crocodile from the Everglades. The crocodiles chased the G.O. to the dark ridges at the edge of the glades, where he fooled them into thinking that he would kick the head away. But the kick was a fake, and the crocodiles were entirely unprepared for his bold victory march. Thus the first football game was a Gators victory, 6-0.
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: What about baseball?
Agent Orange: Well… the alligators weren’t quite done with the ball when they took it out of the Everglades.
Apr 06 2008
B. Mac gave me this to post. He says he will be healthy enough to return to full-time status within a few days.
Agent White, junior recruiter: Mr. Smith, I have no doubt that you are an excellent IRS auditor, but I’d like to know more about how an accountant might be qualified for this agency. What about killing. Have you done any of that?
Gary Smith: No, sir.
Agent White: Have you ever seen someone die brutally? A de-limbing, perhaps?
Gary Smith: No, sir.
Agent White: I see. You seem like an excellent fit… for the IRS. I’m going to do you a favor and ask that you leave now. You would break in ten minutes here and you probably wouldn’t even be the first.
Gary Smith: …
Gary Smith: Is that a request or an order?
Agent White: …
Agent White hits his intercom button.
Agent White: Agent Orange, could you step inside, please?
Agent Orange, a hulking mutated alligator, enters the room.
Agent Orange: Greetings, mammals! Mammal-White, Mammal-Smith.
Agent White: Sir, could you please describe to Mr. Smith what your job is here?
Agent Orange: Indeed! I’m the head recruiter and trainer. I determine who enters training and then how best to systematically destroy them. We’ve reduced our mortality/psychosis rate to a historically low 6%!
Agent White: Mr. Smith, so far Agent Orange has broken six Navy SEALS, five Force Recons, ten Army Rangers and so many Special Agents we’ve stopped counting.
Gary Smith: But no accountants, I bet.
Agent Orange: …
Agent Orange: When are you available to start?
Apr 05 2008
“I only gradually realized that Gary Smith was wily for a mammal. That should have been obvious. He was an accountant and, as a rule, accountant-mammals are masters of chicanery and deception. (That is why they, like lawyers and journalists, receive graduate degrees: it takes years to learn the arts of subterfuge).”
–Agent Orange
Mar 26 2008
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!
Mar 23 2008
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: …!
Mar 17 2008
At the Office of Special Investigations, March Madness can get heated pretty quickly.
Agent Black: Are you doing a bracket this year?
Agent Orange: I spit on your vile brackets. The NCAA was obviously embarrassed that the Florida Gators had humiliated the whole of mammal-kind two years in a row. And, last year, the Gators swept the national championships in football and basketball, so it was inevitable that the Vast Mammalian Conspiracy would keep us from the tournament.
Agent Black: It’s too bad you’re not doing a bracket. Guess who I’ve got winning it all.
Agent Orange: A wholly unqualified and helpless mammal team?
Agent Black: The Georgia Bulldogs!
Agent Orange: Gah! Mammal… conspiracy… vicious mammal conspiracy.
Agent Black: Hey, hey. Relax. Just because we had an “amazing run” and “reached heights no one could imagine” doesn’t mean you have to cry about it.
Agent Orange: Georgia’s presence is indisputable proof that gator-haters are conspiring against us. Georgia placed in the Western conference. Notre Dame, a team notoriously close to a mammal renowned for driving snakes and other innocent reptiles from Ireland, got into the Eastern conference. And Stanford, that crazy-eyed bastion of basketball-playing trees, got into the Southern conference. Portland—Portland!– made it into the Midwestern conference.
Agent Black: Portland played great basketball.
Agent Orange: That’s not the point. Portland is not in the Midwest, any more than Notre Dame is Eastern or Georgia is Western. The standings have been rigged by a bunch of deranged gator-haters to ensure that we will not be allowed to thrash their beloved trees and bulldogs.
Captain Carnage walks in.
Captain Carnage: Hey, Orange. I heard a joke today. What’s the difference between an alligator and a longhorn?
Agent Orange: One is a reptilian carnivore and the other goes great with tabasco sauce?
Captain Carnage: The Longhorns are in it to win it!
Agent Black: Ooh, nice one.
Agent Orange: …
Agent Orange: Mammals!
Mar 12 2008
Agent Orange: Greetings, mammals! I have a question.
Captain Carnage: (Unfortunately, Agent Black, I have an alibi. Just now, I realized I was due at the Capitol two hours ago).
Agent Black: (I hate you).
Agent Orange: Yesterday, National Geographic claimed that grizzly bears can eat five times their own body weight. Is that true?
Agent Black: Why wouldn’t it be true?
Agent Orange: Frankly, it sounds like mammalian propaganda. Five times their own body weight? That would be like me suddenly eating a ton and a half: you, Captain Carnage, the Beatles, and a golf-cart.
Agent Black: I’m not supposed to tell this to non-mammals…
Agent Orange: No, I must know!
Agent Black: Grizzly bears can eat a hundred times their own body weight. National Geographic lied to you to lure you into a false sense of security.
Agent Orange: The fiends!
Agent Orange: …
Agent Orange: … but that would be like me eating 75,000 racks of ribs. Waitresses already give me weird looks when I order eight!
Agent Black: I’m not supposed to tell this to non-mammals, either… but all mammals can eat a hundred times their own weight.
*Agent Orange gasps*
Agent Black: So, if you’re 600 pounds, that means that any mammal that weighs six pounds could theoretically eat you.
Agent Orange: But, but I’ve seen rats in the basement that must have been six pounds heavy! The Gator Gods would curse me for all time if I allow one to devour me. I thank you for your assistance, mammal-Black.
Agent Orange stalks off.
Agent Black pulls out his cell-phone and calls Captain Carnage’s voice-mail.
“Black here. I think I just solved the rodent problem.”
Mar 11 2008
Agent Black: I’ve resolved to do a marathon this year.
Agent Orange: A marathon? That‘s your New Year’s Resolution?
Agent Black: Yeah. And what are you doing? Remember, resisting the feminine wiles of Alberta the Florida Gator doesn’t count.
Agent Orange: My resolution wallops your mammalian marathon and makes it cower in the corner. I’m applying to college!
Agent Black: Do you have a high school degree?
Agent Orange: Nope.
Agent Black: Or a GED?
Agent Orange: …that’s why I’m applying to college.
Agent Black: No, a GED is… never mind. You’re hopeless. I don’t suppose you’ve taken the SAT yet?
Agent Orange: Squad Assault Training?
Agent Black: Never mind. So, uhh… what does your admissions strategy look like?
Agent Orange: Affirmative action.
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: I don’t think many schools offer affirmative action for reptiles, mutated or otherwise.
Agent Orange: No, you dummy! Everyone knows that alligators are inherently awesome. If I were stupid enough to mark the species box, they’d penalize me to make humans feel more adequate.
Agent Black: I don’t think there’s a species box. I guess you’d just mark ‘Other’ in the race box.
Agent Orange: I spit on your ‘Other’ box! Everybody knows that it is a dark plot against reptiles and I’ve already established that I am inherently awesome rather than stupid. Instead, I wrote ‘NOT’ next to every race but Aleut/Eskimo to throw them off my tail.
Agent Black: Why Eskimos?
Agent Orange: I reasoned that anyone that lives among the succulent and juicy caribou is assuredly among the Chosen Ones of the Gator Gods, even though they are technically closer to Canada than Florida.
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: …I don’t think that… never mind. So you didn’t check anything in the racial box. You can’t get affirmative action unless you check off some underprivileged boxes.
Agent Orange: Florida offers public housing preferences.
Agent Black: You’ve lived in public housing?
Agent Orange: Sure. I spent twenty years a few blocks away from the worst slums of Washington, DC. During my stay, four of my land-lords were shot, two fatally.
Agent Black: Sweet Christ, that sounds horrific.
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: …
Agent Black: Did you just claim that the White House’s security quarters counted as “public housing?”
Agent Orange: I’m a shoo-in!