Picture courtesy of the US War Dogs Association.

“Truth is the glue that holds government together.” — Gerald Ford

“If you want to live under something held together by glue, you probably wouldn’t make much of an architect.” — Mike, Director of the Office of Special Investigation’s RETCON branch.

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?

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

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!

Agent Orange, the mutated alligator, has a conversation with Agent Black about a firearm he purchased from Jim’s Gunz and Mattresses.

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Dr. Darpa: I heard that Russia is now patrolling its nuclear-armed bombers 24 hours a day now.

Captain Carnage: That’s right.

Dr. Darpa: That could destabilize US-Russian relations, if we thought there were any conceivable chance Russian bombers could get close enough to attack Chicago or Seattle.

Captain Carnage: I’d say at least 50%.

Dr. Darpa: 50%, hah! Not after you see what I’ve been working on: Project Unmutually Assured Destruction. It’s the largest surface-to-air missile site ever built. It was so colossal that I could only fit it in Yosemite National Park.

Captain Carnage: An antiballistic missile site in a national park?

Dr. Darpa: Now, the only remaining task is to name it. I present to you: the Yosemite SAM Site.

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

This is an excerpt from an interesting article on college.

I assigned a research paper. This time around, the students were to elucidate the positions of scholars on two sides of a historical controversy. Why did Truman remove MacArthur? Did the United States covertly support the construction of the Berlin Wall? Their job in the paper, as I explained it, was to take my arm and introduce me as a stranger to scholars A, B, and C, who stood on one side of the issue, and to scholars D, E, and F, who were firmly on the other—as though they were hosting a party.

A future state trooper snorted. “Some party,” he said.

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.

AGENT ORANGE: Greetings, Mammal-Black! Do you remember that time I seized your driving wheel when we were set upon by hoodlums armed with rocket launchers?

AGENT BLACK: That time you nearly destroyed half of Washington from the passenger seat of a government-issued sedan? Yeah. That was last week.

AGENT ORANGE: (If your reflexes were as sharp as your memory, perhaps you could drive next time). In any case, it has come to my attention that the Vatican has named me a Defender of the Faith.

AGENT BLACK: I didn’t know that you were Catholic.

AGENT ORANGE: Indeed. My heart beats only for the Gator Gods.

AGENT BLACK: So how…

AGENT ORANGE: I’m an 100% effective cure for atheism!

AGENT BLACK: …

AGENT BLACK: What?

AGENT ORANGE: Well, when I took the wheel apparently everybody prayed.

The US government has introduced a fitness test for adults. Did you know that the government thinks it’s “normal” to have a 500-inch waist circumference?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you have a 500 inch waist, you probably do not have a 24.1 BMI.

In Britain, a man dressed as Darth Vader has been spared jail-time for drunkenly attacking two Star Wars fans (“Jedi worshippers”) with a metal crutch.  Ah, Britain.

And other strange, strange news from the heartland.

• The “Funeral Day Burglar” has been caught in Platt City, Missouri.  He targeted his victims by checking the obituaries and funeral schedules, figuring that the homes of the deceased would be vacant during their funerals.  No word yet on whether his home will receive unexpected visitors during his arraignment.
• A Pennsylvania judge has banned four women from Pennsylvania malls after saying “they descended on Pennsylvania like a plague of locusts.” Fortunately, West Virginia and Ohio, those lands flowing with milk and honey and lightly guarded shopping malls, are still open to them.  But will the judge let those people go?

The biggest suckers in football are the Jets. In basketball, the refs. In soccer, the spectators.

— Agent Orange

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!

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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

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.

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Yetisburg

Pro: More respectable than Battle Cattle.

Con: What!?!

Hat-tip to Progressive Ruin.

The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln

Pro: Cool concept?  It looks substantially less weird than Yetisburg, in any case.

Con:  It looks like the cover was done in about 2 hours.  And the replacement of Abe’s head with his presidential portrait was not a good move.

Hat-tip to Scott McCloud.

Santa Cthulhu

Pro:  Obviously awesome.

Con:  Nothing I can think of.

This is part of a life insurance ad that I found very amusing.

Someone used The Sims 2 to make a music video for the Men in Black theme. Normally, I think efforts like this are hackish. But this one was quite funny, particularly from :48-55. If you were writing the script for the music video, it would be like casting IRS agents as dancers and then telling them to improvise Thriller.

I also found the series of bunny hops at around 1:25 perversely amusing.

Superheroes should never ask “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” The answer is never helpful.

But where could you find that much nitroglycerin at this hour?

–Dr. Darpa

Unless your IQ has tripled since we’ve last spoken, probably not.

–Catastrophe

You are now.

–Mr. Mental

Don’t flatter yourself.

–Paingod

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

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.

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Somehow, I suspect that the individual who got to Superhero Nation by Googling Air Force Office of Special Investigations business cards didn’t stay very long. [I hope he wasn’t at work– B. Mac]

We also got a query for do alligators have thumbs? . Turning to our resident reptologist, P.G…

No. Although alligator feet bear some superficial resemblances to human hands, they aren’t really used for much except traction.

FROM [name removed]
ABIDJAN COTE D IVOIRE
EMAIL [removed]

URGENT BUSINESS

DEAR B. MAC,

I GOT YOUR CONTACT FROM NANOWRIMO.ORG I KNOW YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISE SEEING MY MAIL I AM [name] , FROM ABIDJAN COTE DIVOIRE IN SOUTH AFRICA. AND I AM SOLICITING FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO HELP ME TRANSFER THE SUM 7.5MILLION EURO PRESENTLY DEPOSITED IN A SECURITY COMPANY IN EUROPE. IF YOU SIGNIFY YOUR INTREST I WILL GIVE YOU THE FULL DETAILS OF THE TRANSACTION INCLUDING THE DOCUMENTS BACKING THIS DEPOSIT AND FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE 15% OF THE TOTAL SUM IS FOR YOUR COMPENSATION.

From B. Mac
Washington, DC

Dear [Name]

As luck would have it, I’ve been waiting for just the right venture partner, a canny operator that properly appreciates the value of randomly soliciting business partners through amateur writing contests.  I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather involve in a 7 digit* transaction than someone who identifies himself by an initial and writes under the login name “SuperheroNation.”
(*8, if you use real money).

I have enclosed the deposit information for my Paypal account. Please deposit the 7.5 million and I will see to it that you receive your 85%.

Yours,
B. Mac

P.S. Isn’t Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa?

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.