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

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.

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).

“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

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

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!

“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.”

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

–Catastrophe

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

–a creative writing peer

In theory, the Office of Special Investigations employs all of the US government’s supernatural employees. Several examples suggest otherwise. In WWII, Sgt. Audie Murphy found 80 Nazis and took them as prisoners of war – alone. Several DEA agents can smell narcotics through layers of clothing and, in one case, a Mr. Potato Head toy. And everyone knows about the Navy SEALS, whose “Hell Week” is the single best argument that only mammals can be ninjas.

However, in only does one agency– the US Secret Service– does the presence of undeniably unnatural agents shape agency procedures and contingency plans, particularly regarding the Football, the laptop with the President’s nuclear launch codes. SS regulations require that the agent protecting the Football must flee if the President is attacked. Furthermore, statutes require that the Football always be within 30 seconds of the President.

One wonders what’s the point of fleeing if the agent plans to stay within 30 seconds of the President. He would presumably be within 30 seconds of the attackers, right?

That’s where RB (pronounced Arby) comes in. We haven’t bothered measuring what his land-speed is. What we know is that’s he fast. Really fast. In a test-run, he went from the Oval Office to Arlington, VA in approximately three seconds. (He blames most of that on closed doors). The Secret Service and relevant Air Force bodies have constructed safehouses within 30 seconds of the White House. Although they had not anticipated building such sites in Colorado or Montana, no one is disappointed.

The problem is that RB only works twelve hours a day, seven days a week. For the other half of the workweek, QB (cuby) controls the Football. He’s a Ph. D in particle physics and he looks more like one of the guys that designed the Football than one of the agents that guards it. However, he does have the ability to teleport… However, his teleportation has a roughly five percent chance of destroying everything within a hundred miles of his “landing zone.” Accordingly, contingency sites have been constructed in American Samoa…

–Captain Carnage

I don’t mean to demean the risks of a terrorist attack or chain-saw murder spree, but Americans have generally discounted the threat of a death by face-leech. There are worse deaths than a face-leeching, but most involve IRS audits.  And blenders.

–Agent Orange

Today we have a delightfully bizarre picture featuring TallyGator’s pet alligator and an awfully curious choice of nail-polish. I wonder what the gator thinks…

What’s the pencil for?

Not surprisingly, mammals usually drink beer when watching football.  If I had to root for a team like the Golden Gophers, I’d also want to drink myself into a stupor.

–Agent Orange, Superhero Nation’s resident mutated alligator (and football afficionado)

Ultimately, governments do two things: take taxes and kill things.  Do I look like I’m from the IRS?

–Agent Orange

Doctor:  Well, I’ve never seen any case remotely as exotic as this one.  But it could be worse.  Gregor Samsa turned into a cockroach.

Catastrophe:  You’re not helping.

Catastrophe:  In Texas hold’em, a pocket pair of aces is known by many names, including “the rockets”, “a good time”, and “FINALLY”.

Captain Carnage: “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are not a bureau…they’re a fine night.”

“Love demands infinitely less than friendship…” — George Nathan

“…but costs infinitely more.” — Agent Black

Some people see things that are and ask “why?”  But, at the Office of Special Investigations, we only care about who and where. — Captain Carnage

“If you don’t have enemies, you don’t have character.” — Paul Newman

“If you do have enemies, you’re not shooting fast enough.” — Captain Carnage