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 18 2008
Agent Orange, everybody’s favorite mutated alligator, offers this comparison of dogs and gators as pets.
Why should you buy a gator? For the same reasons that buying a dog makes you look foolish and weak.
When a human buys a Chihuahua, he is saying “I value the company of small and conspicuously useless mammals.” Not surprisingly, his friends will quickly surmise that he thinks of them as small and useless. This is why Chihuahua-owners rarely have friends. Conversely, anyone who befriends a gator boldly declares that his taste and judgment of character are nothing less than superlative. That is why even walking a gator down to the park will garner the respect and awe of nearby humans. Also, everybody loves gator parties.
Anyone who does not like gators is probably an idiot, a Louisianan or a drug dealer. Since you do not want to meet any of those people, a “Beware of Gator” sign is sure to make your home a friendlier and happier place. In fact, the only better thing for your home is a “Beware of Gators” sign. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
In addition to drug dealers and Louisianans, gators will protect you from squirrels. These predatory vagrant-mammals lurk in public areas, hoping that their bushy tails will distract you long enough to attack. Too often, this ruse is successful. That’s why violent crime rates are highest in cities, the areas typically hardest hit by squirrels. Fortunately, gators are wise to the squirrel threat. This is why squirrels will never approach a gator.
Gators will also protect humans from their worst instinct: playing golf. Golf-playing may stem from the mammalian affinity for holes (also demonstrated by the obsessive digging tendencies of gophers, squirrels and Boston). However, it is a peculiarly human trait to see a hole and think that it would be enjoyable to hit a ball into it. Fortunately, gators are a natural and 100% effective cure for this defect. This is why the presence of an alligator on a golf course immediately causes all play to cease. This also explains why golf course owners hate gators so much.
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.
Jun 06 2008
Agent Orange: The British are delightfully odd. They all buy cars that run on “petrol,” which works just as well as gasoline but costs thrice twice as much. And they think they’re smarter than us.
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 08 2008
The biggest suckers in football are the Jets. In basketball, the refs. In soccer, the spectators.
– Agent Orange
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 06 2008
Soccer can teach us a lot about Europe. There’s a lot of running but precious little action, and violence is always liable to break out at any moment.
– Agent Orange
May 04 2008
The root of evil is not money. It is the metric system, a strange cult that worships the number ten. It starts with a meter here and a newton there, and soon enough you’re selling kilos of crack to kids.
–Agent Orange
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 30 2008
For an explanation of the Jimmy Carter killer rabbit attack, please see here.
If you would like this bumper-sticker on your car, you can look at it here. We’re selling it for $4, of which $.45 goes to the “Save the Starving English-Major Fund.” No pressure! Five will buy us a McDonald’s fish sandwich, 15 will buy us a Chipotle burrito, and 25 will buy us a panini sandwich and a glass of orgo-soy milk. [B. Mac adds: anyone that spends $3 on a glass of milk, let alone FAKE milk, deserves to starve].
Perhaps you’ve heard the proverb that teaching a man to fish goes farther than giving him a fish sandwich. That’s true. “So how can I teach a starving English-major to feed himself, Cadet Davis?” Well… if you’re feeling especially generous and have a large vehicle (like a hummer or an aircraft carrier), I’d estimate that I’m 250,000 249,998 bumper-stickers south of an English degree. At that point, I still won’t be able to pay for my own food, but at least I’ll know how to write grant proposals.
[B. Mac adds: hey, don't forget the Starving Political-Scientist Fund! These bumper-stickers don't write themselves, you know. *winks*]
Apr 29 2008
Agent Orange Campaign Poster: BELIEVE
This poster is a sendup of Shepard Fairey’s campaign posters for Barack Obama.
This poster can be purchased for $10 here. (Our art may LOOK communist, but we’re not).
Apr 25 2008
Science plays heavily in many superhero stories. So, today, instead of coming up with some pithy quote about science, we’ve used others to do so for us.
What is science?
Hocus pocus, but with less hand-waving.
– Agent Orange
Always being within a carton of baking soda of a doomsday device.
– Dr. Darpa
Like Hollywood, except without the beautiful women, oversized budgets and snappy outfits. Actually, it’s not like Hollywood at all, besides the explosions.
–Dr. Savant
A series of triumphs over unpleasant realities.
– Jacob Mallow
Pretty awful. Stick to game theory.
– Catastrophe
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.