Good salesmanship involves a call to action: do this and you will get that.

The Zombie Defense Coalition probably has the best call to action I’ve ever seen. “Join us and survive the undead hordes.” YES.

Agent Orange, paraphrasing Groucho Marx: “Outside of an alligator, a rocket launcher is certainly your best friend. Inside of an alligator, I’d recommend a gun.”

Web Gumbo provides a great picture of his unit mascot. You might wonder what a Marine mascot does. Deliver pep talks? Rally the fans? Please.

Agent Orange, our mutated alligator, says that “it’s not surprising that they turned to an alligator when they needed someone to scare and bond with Marines. Here you can see the gator playing Marco Polo with a Marine that is obviously enjoying the gator’s friendly and sociable company.”

Lash retorts retorts that “if the guy’s actually enjoying anything, it’s probably the thought that he will soon not be dangling over a watery grave.”

“A leader who is poor is a poor leader.”

— Carlos Gonzalez

“If you were a good leader, you wouldn’t need any money.  Worshipers and soldiers–ones worth having, anyway– cannot be purchased.  If you think the difference between a real military force and a gang is shiny tanks and well-pressed uniforms, you might as well shoot yourself and spare us the trouble.”

–Paingod

My opponents have claimed that I’m an “evil, reptilian kitten-eater from another planet.” Well, I’m not evil. It attacked me.

–Agent Orange, mutated alligator and self-defending ailurophage

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?

“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

“Life is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”  — Thomas Edison

“Success is 1% swagger and 99% dagger.”  — Cadet Davis

9 out of 10 writers (good ones, anyway) agree that anything will become better if you add zombies. That’s why Maureen Johnson has expanded her Insert a Zombie contest, where you write a paragraph up to 250 words that takes someone else’s scene and adds some brain-eating.

Scott Westerfeld offers us this take on Charles Dickens. In fact, it is probably the only good thing to ever come of Charles Dickens.

It was the best of apocalypses, it was the worst of apocalypses. It was an age of brain eating, it was an age of shotguns. It was the epoch of damaging the head, or of removing it from the body. It was the season of light infantry weapons, it was the season of dark pursuits through abandoned sewers. We had everything at the local mall before us, but there were too many zombies in the way. In short, the period was so far like the present period—except for, you know, all the frickin’ zombies.

He who has the gold makes the rules, but he who has the golden gun enforces them.

–J.M.

I’d like to add that creating witty lines is terribly difficult for me. B. Mac had damn well get better soon; this is killing me.

“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

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

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: …!

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.

“In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate groups: local cops, who investigate crimes like jaywalking and double-parking, and federal agents, who investigate crimes that the people care about.” — Agent Orange

An alligator was found in a NASA building.

“Navi-gator! I said I needed a navigator!”

After politely explaining to the alligator that “public facility” actually meant “intruders-will-be-shot” didn’t work, they quickly showed Mr. Gator the door.

I have no evidence to suggest that this was in any way related to aliens posing as mutated alligators, but then again they’re usually pretty good about covering their tracks…

“Surf City’s hottest new bar is open, Blue’s Brewz!  Give us a shot and we’ll return the favor.”

Just to show that Florida doesn’t have any hard feelings about being cruelly rejected to the NCAA tournament…

(I got the picture from Lolcats).

This is a brief series of questions designed to help you write character voices.

1. When your characters talk, do they actually sound different? If you’re not sure, try this thought experiment. If you were to write a transcript of a dialogue and remove the names, could readers figure out who said what? If so, then you’ve done a good job of voicing the characters.

2. If your characters do not have distinct voices, try this. Take an index card for each of your recurring characters and write a sentence or two describing how a strange might identify the character from a nameless transcript. Some ways you might vary the character’s manner of speech include the length of his sentences, his tendency to use long words, his use of contractions and incorrect speech, and then his invented words/jargon. Also, what’s his personality like? Is his conversational style very confrontation, very clipped, cryptic, etc?

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!

What’s at the top of supervillain to-do lists for 2008? (Hint: not saving money or losing weight). Here’s a sample.

1. [Paingod] Attain absolute power in at least one country. My first act will be to ask Evil Overlord to be my chief of police. If he says no, I’ll kill him. If he says yes, I’ll poison him so that he can live by earning regular doses of the antidote.

2. [Chronic] Develop a time machine and get advanced technologies from a future version of myself. But I know that he will see an opportunity to exploit his foreknowledge and technology by replacing me. So I’ll kill him first.

3. [Gangrene] Surf City’s been a bust. The cop-to-plant ratio is far too high. This year, I have a better idea. I call it Plan Colombia.

4. [The Colombian] Cooperate with Gangrene to develop hardier drug crops. Then I’ll kill him.

5. [Jihad Joe] Anything. I’m still relevant, dammit!

“Know thyself”– some famous philosopher, probably someone both you and I have heard of.

I’ve learned today that– gasp!– I’m really bad on both sides of the camera. Clearly  I was voted most likely to be an Abercrombie and Fitch centerfold more for my latent sex appeal than my ability to strike a pose.

“Life is a tragedy to those that feel and a comedy to those that think.”– Horace Walpole

Whether you think or feel, if your name is Horace Walpole, your life is probably a tragedy.

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.”

“Is the University of Florida a better university because the school’s basketball team won back-to-back NCAA championships?”  — George Leef

“Not merely a better university, the best university.”– Agent Orange, everybody’s second-favorite Florida Gator.  (After Albert, obviously).

“When you’re this good, you need to stand out.  That’s why I wear a lab-coat.”

–Catastrophe

Agent Orange:

“English-speaking mammals instinctively understand that gators are friendly and helpful. It’s no accident that, when you are lost, you call for a navi-gator. When you need to solve a mystery, you call an investi-gator. When you need to inflict unspeakable harm and misery upon your enemies, you call a liti-gator. English-speakers are similarly perceptive about crocodiles. For example, you might hear the phrase ‘what a crock’ used to describe something that is entirely without merit (see also ‘crock of shit’).”

“Kind of deep, and totally off the deep end.”

–a creative writing peer