Feb 13 2008
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.
Feb 11 2008
Right now I’m working on a piece on character voice. What sort of character voices do you enjoy reading the most? What sort of character voice issues concern you the most when you are reading or writing? If you have any thoughts, please e-mail at superheronation… at…. gmail.com . (I’ll credit you unless you say otherwise).
Feb 11 2008
Catastrophe: In Texas hold’em, a pocket pair of aces is known by many names, including “the rockets”, “a good time”, and “FINALLY”.
Feb 10 2008
Captain Carnage: “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are not a bureau…they’re a fine night.”
Feb 09 2008
Since I wrote yesterday, the value of an Intrade Romney bid to win the nomination has doubled to $.08, which means a 125:1 payout if it happens. (Remember, the payout for each winning share is $10).
Feb 09 2008
One of the Google searches that brought someone to Superhero Nation today was “why people don’t like their bankers.” Hmm, this is a tough one…
Feb 04 2008
“Love demands infinitely less than friendship…” — George Nathan
“…but costs infinitely more.” — Agent Black
Feb 03 2008
The Game: Awesome. Ridiculous. This will likely be the highest-watched Superbowl thus far.
The Show: I was elated to see that it was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but it confuses and enrages me that “Won’t Back Down” and “Free-Falling” made the cut and “Last Dance with Mary Jane” did not (because it’s possibly narcotic?). After around five seconds of Free-Falling, I was ready for Tom Brady and the (New York) Heartbreakers.
The Ads: From bad to worse. I enjoyed a spot that featured salamanders dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but in an objective sense I realize that the ad is only funny to people that think that dancing salamanders are funny.
Best Use of Copyrighted Character: Terminators doing battle with the NFL robot guys to showcase the unbelievably bad Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Worst Use of Copyrighted Character: Hard to say, but probably the Coke (Pepsi?) commercial that used Stewie from Family Guy.
Best Use of Athlete: American Idol’s use of Ben Rothlisberger.
Second Best Use of Athlete: Chad Johnson in “Moment of Truth”.
Feb 03 2008
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
Feb 02 2008
McCain is advertising on the International Society of Supervillains website. I guess it’s because the New York primary is this Tuesday.
Feb 02 2008
“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
Jan 31 2008
One of the Google searches that brought someone to Superhero Nation was “what do alligators do all day?” Agent Orange, our resident mutated alligator, provides his daily schedule.
1 AM: I respond to a WMD scare in Surf City. (It was just a death ray).
2: A purported representative of the British government calls, asking for urgent help “to stop an impending act of anti-supervillain activity.” Terrorist! I hang up.
2:30: Britain reports that Doctour Nefarious just carried out “anti-supervillain activity” at Big Ben. The reports don’t mention which supervillain he acted against, but I’m betting Jihad Joe or Paingod.
2:35: I call the Ministry of Defense and ask them to pass along my congratulations to Nefarious for turning on his evil compatriots. They swore and hung up on me. (And they wonder why we declared independence).
3: A genetically-engineered slime monster attacks Surf City. Dr. Darpa suggests that a salt-spray will kill it, but he doesn’t mention that salting it will send slime shooting for blocks in every direction.
3:10: Showering.
3:30: Still showering.
3:45: I get dressed. I’m feeling dangerous today, so I reach for a black tie instead of my usual navy blue.
4: I brush my teeth. (Yeah, I brush my teeth, too—it just takes more time).
4:30: Still brushing.
4:45: I check my voice-mail. IRS Agent Percy Leguin called again to complain that the Office of Special Investigations is doing too much “showboating,” by which he means investigating crime that Americans actually care about. The bitch insinuates that OSI agents couldn’t handle IRS work.
5: A citizen that incorrectly filled out a 1040-DX Schedule ECQ gets a very special no-knock home visit about why filling out a proper 1040-DK Schedule FIS is important. I’m sure it’s a mistake he won’t make again.
6: Downstairs, I encounter Agent Black and Captain Carnage discussing female-mammals. For reasons unclear to me, talking about mammalian matters makes Agent Black pathologically forgetful. Unsurprisingly, as soon as he sees me, Black mentions that he’s forgotten his ammo. When I offer to go find some for him, he smiles. (I’m so helpful).
6:30– I come back with the ammo, but Black’s gone. (Mammals). I’ll find him later.
7– As part of the ongoing Friendly Skies program, I get a free ticket to New York. Having a uniformed federal agent on a plane tends to terrify mammals, so I just told anyone within earshot that I was just scamming a first-class ticket. That calms them down considerably. (Mammals).
7:45– Mike is also on the plane with me! He is conspicuously surly and says that “I’m going to carpet-bomb your neural nodes if you ask about the Gators game again.” I don’t remember having spoken to the mind-wiper earlier today. I decide that until Mike gets unsurly, he doesn’t deserve to talk about the Gators.
8– On my way to the office, I stumble upon two gunmen attempting to rob a Caribou Coffee. They are not successful.
8:05– Waiting for NYPD.
8:10– Still waiting.
8:15– I assume that I’ll be here a while. I ask the cashier which species of caribou they have on hand. I’m especially partial to Rocky Mountain caribou, but even Alaskan elk are better than whatever else you can find in New York.
8:17– The cashier admits to me that Caribou Coffee does not actually sell caribou. I make a note to inform the Better Business Bureau of bait-and-switch advertising– they lure in unsuspecting customers with promises of caribou and then sell them coffee instead. (Mammals). Two NYPD officers walk in; I trust that they will take care of this criminal cesspool of deception and lies.
8:45– I reach the local police station and start filling out paperwork related to the coffeeshop arrest.
10– Still paperworking.
10:30– A detective asks me if I’d like some coffee or something. Unless coffee means caribou, no.
10:45– A captain interrupts me. Space slugs are clogging the Hudson again. I tell him that I’m still doing paperwork, but he calls my bluff by offering to handle the paperwork himself. I ask which way it is to the Hudson.
10:55—Goddamn. This was a new suit.
11: I walk down to the Office’s New York branch. Raul, our lobby guard, starts quizzing me with questions designed to weed out potential shapeshifters.
11:05: “Raul, I am coated in slug slime. Let me in immediately or you will regret it.” “What does the 5th amendment say, sir?” “Here’s the abridged version. No person shall be deprived of life or limb without due process of law. Without due process, Raul.” He lets me in.
11:45– Still showering.
12 PM: The University of Florida calls. They want help creating a tagline for Albert the Florida Gator’s new clothing line. They like “Prepare to Get Swamped” but think that “Chomping Your Ass Since 1908” sends mixed messages.
12:15: They don’t like “Be a Gator, Not a Hater” either.
12:30—I walk down to the cafeteria and find… Agent Black! I hand him his ammo. He gives me a confused look. He has not only forgotten his ammo, he has forgotten that he has forgotten it. I swear! He’d forget his tail if he had one.
12:35—“He’d forget his tail if he had one.” Aha! I’ve stumbled onto the reason that Agent Black doesn’t have one.
Jan 30 2008
Hello. Are you interested in getting professionally published? We’d love to look at your work, but please keep these guidelines in mind.
Jan 30 2008
the one person that has ever gotten to Superhero Nation by searching for Human Resources superheroes bounces.
Jan 30 2008
I just took the Jeopardy test. I don’t think that I did well enough, but I did better than what I imagine was an abysmal performance last year. There was one science question (“this plant reaction rhymes with soto-synthesis”). The many questions on literature, the theater and movies were the trivia equivalent of a kick in the teeth.
Americans living west of the eastern time zone can participate on Wednesday and Thursday. Central/Mountain states at Wednesday at 8:00 PM CST/7:00 PM MST and Pacific Coast states (including Alaska and Hawaii) on Thursday 8:00PM PST.
Jan 29 2008
Agent Orange: This has been troubling me for weeks: humans are obviously tail-deficient but claim to have a “tailbone.” Why is that?
Agent Black: Beats me. Whenever something about mutated alligators confuses me, it’s usually just because we’re hundreds of millions of years ahead of you evolutionarily.
Orange: …!
Orange: Tails are really useful. You’re jealous you don’t have one.
Black: Quoteth Calvin to Hobbes: they’re neckties for the ass.
Orange: Neckties that can strangle someone, an important distinction.
Black: I’m sure there’s scientists somewhere that deal with random shit like this. Just call one of them. And, while you’re at it, a psychiatrist.
The next day
Orange: Reptologists are friendly and helpful, like their area of research. They can answer any reptilian question, like why crocodiles are alligator-rejects.
Black: I thought your question was about humans.
Orange: I’m getting to that! I called several mammologists and I’ve concluded that mammologists are part of a vast conspiracy to conceal the truth about mammalian “tailbones” from reptiles.
Black: …
Black: They obviously didn’t do such a good job concealing the truth if you uncovered it anyway.
Orange: I was far too clever for them. I asked one what mammalogists were good for besides wasting oxygen and she blabbered about providing “mammo-grams.” That response was so inane that I knew right then it was an attempt at deception.
Black: Uhh, a mammogram is…
Orange: Not merely a unit of mass, it’s British mass. And the problem here is not that I have too little mammalian mass (British or otherwise) but rather that humans have a dishonestly marketed bone. Perhaps if y’all got a few repto-grams, you might have a real tailbone.
Captain Carnage walks in.
Captain Carnage: Am I interrupting something?
Black: No, I think it’s almost over.
Orange: Yours is a very wacky species.
Jan 29 2008
I attend a university whose many strengths definitely do not include a high wealth-to-tipping ratio. How stingy are students here?
Six strangers got into a van from the airport to campus. It cost $3 each. We all handed over a $5. Four people asked for a dollar back. I was really taken aback by that outlandish pettiness, so I handed over a $10 and took no change back, more to make them feel bad about themselves than because I’m innately generous. After I tipped, two of them asked for another dollar back.
Understandably, few cabbies do the airport-to-campus line, even though the trainstop there produces a lot of cab passengers. So there’s often some jostling to get to the cabs. I’m not much of a jostler– my bag is heavy as hell– so I didn’t even try to go for the first wave of cabs.
One of the cabs started to drive away, jerked suddenly and pulled a 180 degree turn.
The cabbie rolled down his window, pointed wildly and screamed “YOU!” Then he made the girl in the passenger seat get out to make room.
Jan 29 2008
The gist of the lawsuit is that Heroes supposedly ripped off a preexisting plotline that where an artist painted the future and included the (possible) destruction of two New York City landmarks.
If this lawsuit works out, I’m going to sue every romance publisher because they’ve all ripped off a story I wrote last year where a guy and a girl struggle through adversity and finally get together.
(Wait a minute…)
I’m not sure I can think of a superhero story set in the real world where a New York landmark isn’t endangered. In fact, superhero stories are probably more likely to endanger NYC landmarks than romances are to show guys and girls getting together, because some romances are tragedies).
As as for the supposed ripping-off of a superpower (painting the future), again pretty much every superpower is a direct and blatant ripoff of something that’s already been used. Some of the superpowers used on Heroes are…
Superstrength
Regeneration
Flying
Mind-reading
Groundbreaking stuff there!
Jan 28 2008
The lede for my article today is “Notre Dame has many Resident Assistants, but very few that can make a defensive tackle cry.” (Our dorm pet was, for some reason, listed in the directory as an RA. Unfortunately, he recently passed away and I’m writing an article on him).
Jan 28 2008
The [NY] Knicks need to let Isiah Thomas go. To quote Ozzy Ozbourne, the Knicks have been “going off the rails on a crazy train” for the past four years, and Thomas is the conductor. It’s time to cut this ride short.
–Mr. Andrews
Jan 28 2008
I got a kick out of this quote.
“A few years back, I suggested a new rule that no male writer should be allowed to write a female protagonist unless he had dated a woman at least once in his life.”
That’s fine, but that’s probably why there are so few (clothed) females in comic books.
Jan 28 2008
This is a glossary of terms related to comic books. (See the Superhero Nation-specific glossary here).
Jan 27 2008
Sigh. Apparently the Office of Special Investigation’s Agent Orange is not the only federally employed Agent Orange. It appears the FBI also has one. The OSI’s Agent Orange, the free-wheeling reptile, has more.
Jan 26 2008
“who do you think you are?”, slit your eyes at him and announce that you’re Batman. It works every time.
Jan 26 2008
I’ve been using some random story generators. Usually I like laughing at how strange these get, but almost invariably I get something that’s uncannily like my writing and it makes me feel bad. The worst is that it usually starts off far enough away that you can laugh at it, but then it inches more and more towards Superhero Nation.
The story is about a secret agent who is in debt to an artificial life form. It starts in a large nation on a war-scarred planet. The story begins with someone giving a test and ends with smuggling. The side effects of faster-than-light travel play a major role in the story.
This is an action adventure. The story is about a crazed football fan who is actually an alien entity. It starts on a dying planet. The issues surrounding first-contact with an alien species is a major element of the story.
The story is a screwball comedy about a secret agent who is best friends with an investor. It starts in a solar-system-spanning nation. The effect of technology on humanity is a major element of the story.
This is a tale about confusion. The story is about a lawman. It takes place in a global empire [hey!]. The story begins with someone questioning authority.
This is a story about questing. The story is about a starship security agent and a dispirited CFO [close enough]. It starts in a solar-system-spanning technocracy. The story ends with someone writing a book.
The story is set in a ghetto. The story takes place ten years in the past. The story must have a drug cartel involved in the middle. The story must have a cube appear in the end. A character robs someone.
(What do you think this is, Everybody Dies?).
Character Generators
Note: not all of these are gramatically correct. Deal with it!
The upper-class fop is on the run from a government conspiracy run by wacky but innocent football players. [Lash].
The rare good member of an otherwise irredeemably violent race somehow manages to be a superhero. [Agent Orange]
The morally ambiguous brilliant scientist is driven insane by their strange powers and needs a friendly alien to find meaning. [Jacob Mallow]
The wacky yet emotionally detached chemist who is given superhuman powers in an illegal scientific experiment and is just this side of crazy [Dr. Berkeley/Catastrophe]
The philosopher is a secret horror in the shadows of society that works as an assassin against The Man. [Gigas]
The loveable cop meddles in things Man was not meant to know. [Agent Black]
The gung-ho military officer is forced by a government conspiracy to only pretend to be incompetent. [Captain Carnage]
The beautiful nerd girl no one notices because she has glasses who is a softy at heart and whose scientific endeavors have guided the heroes on their quest with weapons of mass destruction. [Dr. Darpa]
The friendly bureaucrat acts as an assassin against the forces of darkness. [Nope. But I’m thinking about it now.]
Jan 26 2008
I came across the Dragon Name Generator. You type in a name and it gives you a “totally original name.” I typed in Agent Orange and got (I kid you not) Bucky the Flaming. Agent Orange responds.
&*(# you and your Wisconsin football too. I’ll give you flaming Bucky.
“He was like that when I found him, officer.”
Any “Dragon Name Generator” that gives overwhelmingly mammalian names like Bucky is highly dubious.
Then I put in “Jacob Mallow,” just for kicks. It gave me “Lady Predash the Weak.”
Acceptable.
I also approve of the Singapore Idol Stagename Generator, which turns Agent OJ into the appropriate “Quick End” and Courtney McMaster into “Empty Vessel.” However, it turns Captain Carnage into “Disco Boy.” To its credit, that is only a few letters away from the correct “Destruction Boy.”
And I also enjoyed the Science Fiction name generator, but its Alien Name Genator is awful. Its Cyberpunk feature is far superior, not least of which because it spat out Clockwork Orange once. >”-[ [ [ [ ~~~ (that’s a smiling alligator in case you couldn’t tell… nimrod).
Jan 26 2008
Comic book readers have often wondered what is it about New York City that causes so much bizarreness to happen there. Superhero Nation finally answers this question by turning to the New York Historical Society.
Which leads us to our quote of the day.
In 1626, either the Shinnecock or Canarsee Indians sold present-day NYC, a spirit-cursed mosquito pit, to the Dutch for $24. One of the strongest misconceptions in American history is that it was the Indians that got swindled.
— Agent Orange
Jan 25 2008
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
–Diogenes
Sir? I still need to see your passport.
–an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official
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