Superhero Tryouts: The Fire Tosser

“I am Mother Earth and I call myself a cracker. I can get into any computer system in less than a second and I will help you in any adventures you might have – if you are accepted.”

“So I’ll only see this image of you on a computer while you hide safely wherever you are?”

“That’s it, but half the reason I am doing tryouts is to try to ensure that you are capable enough to handle the criminal element without too much danger to your person.

“You go by the name of The Fire Tosser. I must question the lethalness of your power. I assume you somehow throw fire. How can you subdue a criminal without killing or almost killing him?”

“Well I could surround him with a ring of fire-”

“You’d have to get all around him to do that. Or fly above him but you don’t fly. Do you?”

“No, but I could weld the doors shut of the building he’s trying to rob-”

“He’ll break through the window.”

“It might be a windowless vault. Or I could weld shut his getaway vehicle’s doors.”

“Perhaps you might be of some use. Your name says tosser. Does that mean you throw fire by your hands in some way? How would fire be generated?”

“Toss doesn’t have to mean you throw by hand. That would be more complex.”

“I hope you mean you are a fire breather. Tell me it is your mouth that generates the fire.”

“Why of course the mouth generates it. I have to eat a full pail of beans before I am capable of generating my fire!”

“Does that mean-”

“Yes. There is a reason that my costume doesn’t have a cape. That would be dangerous.”

“So how do you ignite your farts?”

“I have a sparker.”

“And there’s a smell.”

“Of course there is but you wouldn’t ever smell it in your video form.”

“I have others that I might work with. I hope that they would work with me more than once. Next!”

“I should have known that a female superhero would be too prissy,” Fire Tosser grumbled as he went out the door.

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Tail: The Aftermath of the First Patrol

Police Chief Summers watched as some kind of member slid open the 2nd floor window to his office. The chief knew not to go to it. The strange member came in further and then flexed and in a second the masked vigilante, Tail, was in the office.

“I see that the broadcasters alerted you to my wish to see you.”

“Yes,” said Tail, grabbing a seat.

“We can’t have vigilantes in town.” Tail looked more than skeptical. “I am going to show you from just your first patrol example.”

“Everyone was obviously guilty!” protested Tail.

“Those first two women that you apprehended were not drunk and disorderly.”

“But I saw them both puke for no reason.”

“They claim it was a reaction to-” Summers almost puked a little just thinking about it – “your tail.”

“That’s just wrong and biased!”

“My officers did due diligence. We made them both take a breathalyzer and take impaired tests. They both passed and were not impaired in any way. I would trust them to drive immediately after we released them.”

Tail slammed his fist against the desk. “Such a reaction is not possible because of someone’s appear-”

A much louder sound from outside the office reached the pair’s ears, “SUUUUUUUU WEEE! WEEE! WEEE! WEEE!”

“Don’t look!” warned Police Chief Summers. But Tail opened the door just enough so both could see.

A man who was being held by a very shocked and surprised cop let out another, “SUUUUUUU WEEE! HERE PIGGY, PIGGY, PIGGY!”

As one, every spare cop in the whole station charged the hog caller. The shock wore off for the attendant cop and she attempted to throw the man to the ground. This almost worked and the first couple extra cops got him down and pinned him to the floor. But his mouth was free and out came, “SUUUUUU WEEE! WEEE! WEEE! WEEE!”

Fists started flying and the man stopped making the offending sounds.

“It was an honest mistake,” said Tail looking away from the scene.

“Yes, yes,” said the police chief still staring in shock.

“I mean my detention of the two women.”

“Oh.”

“An officer can make a mistake just as easily. Do we have an understanding?”

“Uh, I guess.”

Tail easily disappeared from the presence of the distracted police chief.

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I Have to Side With the Adults in the Movie ET

There are two major scenes that made up my mind against E.T. But just think of the idea that these creatures glow in the dark. Obviously they have lorded it over all the other animals on their homeworld and for a long time. The two scenes I want to discuss give some idea of what we’re dealing with here.

The scene where E.T. is in the kitchen and the mother is unloading groceries turned me against E.T. This scene is played for laughs but I wasn’t laughing in my new found understanding of what was really going on.

Firstly E.T. is walking randomly in the kitchen totally out of touch with the idea that the mother will likely out him to the rest of the adults. Either this creature that jumps from star to star is really stupid at this point or has an ace up his nonexistent sleeve. E.T. wanders aimlessly around the kitchen and the mother, who seems to look everywhere else, never looks at E.T.

I think E.T.’s erratic movements are because he isn’t concentrating on himself too well. I think he is inside the brain of the mother making certain that she doesn’t look his way. Yes I believe that E.T. is telepathic and his powers extend beyond just communicating. If you can send messages to the language centre of the brain, can’t you also send orders to the movement centres of the brain as well? I believe E.T. had total control of the mother for this scene.

The other scene is when all the kids take flight on their bicycle to get away from the adults. My first thought was that E.T. , as well as being a powerful telepath, is also telekinetic and can move objects with his mind. But maybe this was just his telepath skills expanded. Perhaps he can telepath a hallucination that hundreds saw as real. It doesn’t matter. Either way E.T. is one scary dude.

It is my belief that one E.T. could likely control 1 000 earthlings. More if they use the violence of dictators. It wouldn’t take many E.T.’s to take over the earth. This is a dictatorship I doubt we would ever get out of. That is why E.T. scares me and why I side with the adults.

Remember also that E.T. faked his own death. Even the more wised up adults fell for this one and let E.T. get away. This is what one lone E.T. did. Let’s not glorify it and call this a movie with a happy ending. It is a movie with a tragic ending. Now all the Earthlings in this movie must just sit back and wait to be controlled by the returning aliens.

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Best Posts of the Decade

This is post number 670 for those of you who care. I do – I’m trying to catch up with the number of episodes of the Simpsons. Hallowe’en either a year ago or two years was episode 666 so I am getting there and publish a new post at twice the rate the Simpsons does.

From 2010, my favourite post was The Horny Shower Curtain. Honourable mention goes to What I Don’t Like About Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics. It’s not every day that you can make a famous series look bad. As well, Hard SF writer Mike Brotherton linked to it from his blog.

I’ve long been annoyed with the almost always positive treatment of Baby Boomers so I wrote The Herd Mentality of Baby Boomers. In 2012 I aimed at vampires and got The Case for Vampires Staking Vampires, In 2013, I had fun with The Masked Asphalt Chewer.

In 2014 I envisioned Cursive Code to talk behind the backs of youngins. In truth and in jest in 2015 I suggested Let’s Chuck the Royal Family. I felt sorry for dogs and the way they are named in Naming Animals by Sex That Are Closest to Us.

In 2017, I liked the Canadian Duel. In 2018 I was fascinated by 7 League Boots. This year I picked Lovecats as my favourite post. Yes it really did happen.

So I hope we see the world in 2020 vision next year. (You knew someone was going to say it before the new year!)

 

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10th Anniversary of This Blog – That’s a Lot of Ranting

The true anniversary of this blog is on December 20th. My admittedly poor memory thought it was after Christmas in 2009 when I started but it was really before. So it is actually 10 years and a week old.

First I will dredge up my favourite 6 posts from this year and tomorrow I will link to my favourite 10 posts of the decade. This decade I like to call the teens.

In January, I finally got to vocalize a long held belief – that Stevie Nicks bleats like a sheep. In March I had an idea for a lucrative business for plastic surgeons. May had the mind bending title: This is a Work of Fiction.

August had Lovecats and the machinations of Robert Smith. October saw a way to ruin the learning time of more students.

November opened up a new superhero duo that I intend to write more of in the new year. Visitor wise the superhero bits don’t do as well. It’s just that it is a new avenue for me with many ideas to come. The fact that this December and last December I wrote 2 posts about the same use of the words scrooge and grinch. I need to use what ever new avenues I can find or else I will stagnate.

Till tomorrow, then.

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Don’t Scrooge the Grinch or Grinch Scrooge

The people in charge of our words look like they don’t know the story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas or The Christmas Carol. The biggest take away from these two stories is that the Grinch is now one of the most avid celebrators of Christmas, as is Scrooge.

Their names, if they must be used as words, should mean a person (or creature) who celebrates Christmas fervently. “You scrooge so well, Brenda that you won the lighting contest for our city. I don’t know how you came up with the money for your electrical bill!” Or, “Way to grinch the charity, John, by donating so many, many toys to the needy.”

There are other words in English that can mostly get at what scrooge or grinch mean. “He’s a Christmas miser!” Or “she tries to steal the fun of Christmas!” But no we have to go to the grinch and scrooge untruths.

Perhaps we can say we mean the proto scrooge or the early grinch. Let’s try them out. “You are a proto scrooge for not getting me tons of stuff for Christmas!” Or “You early grinch for not giving to the Christmas charity that once helped you, now that you can give back!”

But proto sounds like the speaker means way back to a fetus or even a parent. And the early grinch sounds like he gets the worm. We are going to have to be even more precise.

So you might have quite the time spitting out “You dishonour Christmas with your early scrooge philosophy on life.“ Yes, that has the ring of truth about it. Or “You are as the proto grinch with your illegal anti Christmas actions.”

Finally the current Scrooge and the current Grinch will enter their proper places in our vernacular. It will be a third Christmas miracle!

OOPS! I wrote this topic last year! See the differences.

Here I was going to celebrate next post as my 10th anniversary of blogging. This dampens that a little. Live. Learn.

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BC Has the Lowest Per Capita Marijuana Retail Sales in Canada

British Columbians have a reputation in Canada as being the biggest pot smokers in the country. This reputation was built over the last few decades at least. It was no surprise to Canadians that gold medal winning snowboarder, Ross Rebagliati tested positive for THC from marijuana at the Nagano Olympics and he is a native British Columbian.

His excuse was classic. The positive drug result was from him inhaling second hand smoke at a party where friends were smoking marijuana. Whether he did or didn’t smoke up, he kept the gold medal because marijuana wasn’t a banned substance for Olympian performance, yet. It is banned, now, but at higher concentrations than the reading at Nagano.

Whether Ross’s story is true or not I will leave up to you but he has been financially involved with medical marijuana companies since that test.

That aside, ask a Canadian to give qualities of a British Columbian. I bet “stoner” or the equivalent is in the top 5.

So the title of this post is funny. It’s just that it is also true. So what’s going on here?

Obviously British Columbians are staying with their pushers. Perhaps it was such a common pastime and pot pushing was so common that the price on the black market is as low as possible already. Or the local pusher is closer than the nearest pot store.

The pushers have the market saturated and the only retail customers that the pot stores attract are those that are trying it for the first time and lack a pusher.

Regardless, if the British Columbian government wants to get rid of the black market, they are going to have to try harder. After all, they have quite possibly the biggest per capita market to tax. I see dollar signs appearing in the government’s eyes. Perhaps they will realize the mistakes they’ve made and become more competitive.

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Superhero Hunt

Mother Earth had seen and “heard” what had gone on in Tail’s attempt to snag Varmint, but Tail had only ended up losing his guns. Mother Earth was very worried that this was the end of Tail.

But Varmint kept his nose pointed in the air and Mother earth saw him say, “Because of you inviting me to join you with our noses pointing up, I am going to give you a thirty second head start before I hunt you.”

Tail said nothing and ran toward a house that had a woods out back. Mother Earth timed Tail and he took 20 seconds to have the building between him and any shots from Varmint. Varmint remained still until he counted out the full thirty seconds.

Now Mother Earth had a choice. She could follow Tail or Varmint with the scope. She had planned out that she would follow Varmint. Varmint was slower than Tail; it’s just that he had that amazing endurance and would easily catch Tail at the end of the day.

She told the spy satellite to change to infrared as Varmint came up to the woods. This enabled her to track him. She knew her tracking would be okay as long as he didn’t go into a building. Confident of her abilities she began thinking ahead.

She got a Russian translating app off of the Pentagon computers. She then went into the Kremlin’s computer system. It took less than a second to get in.

She had actually used that brag to Tail. She had said she could get into any computer system in less than a second. But really, it was less a brag and more an assertion of ability.

The translating slowed her down a bit but eventually she found the link up to all the submarines at Russia’s disposal. She had hoped for one in Hudson’s Bay but was happy to find one even closer – in James Bay off Moosonee. She gave the order and it rose to the surface.

There were various missiles it could launch but she was happier to find a long range drone on board. She took over it’s electronics and then launched it. At the pace it was going she estimated that it would get to Varmint in two hours.

So she bided her time following Varmint. Who in turn was following Tail. On the other side of the woods, Varmint broke into a house that Tail must have broken into earlier. This worried Mother Earth for a few moments as she could not see Varmint. But he came out a different door sneezing. Mother Earth decided Tail had put pepper on his scent trail and Varmint didn’t realize it until too late.

In the two hours, Varmint passed at least 5 cars. Since Tail hadn’t hotwired any of these she realized that’s a skill that he probably didn’t have. If he ever got out of this alive, that lack of skills would need to be addressed.

Finally the two hours were up and Mother Earth could also see Varmint through the drone’s camera. She came in low with it and began shooting.

Varmint started doing the “dance of death” as every bullet made his body twitch a bit. He could still move because of his bullet proof outfit. He ran immediately to a house as he figured out that the bullets were coming from the sky. The drone circled and circled and Mother Earth guessed that Varmint wasn’t coming out for any reason. At first Mother Earth hoped that Varmint would come close to a window so she could snuff him out with the whole drone crashing into him. Wherever in the house Varmint was, he wasn’t near a window.

There was, however, a propane tank in a barbecue right beside the house. Mother Earth tried shooting at it until she was out of bullets. She was desperate now and launched the full drone into the barbecue and wall.

From high up she could see the explosion. The house burnt up in minutes. There was no sign of Varmint leaving. She watched until the volunteer fire department showed up. They sprayed water on it from a tanker truck but really it was too late for the house.

That night Mother Earth still hadn’t heard from Tail. But still she couldn’t say he was safe, anyway.

The next day the fire department had found the body of an adult male burnt to death. Mother Earth breathed a sigh of relief. Still, where was Tail? He was still on the run. Perhaps he had run out on the whole idea of being a hero. Mother Earth needed a superhero to be a superhero herself. Maybe she would have to look elsewhere.

THE END (for now!)

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Are Superheroes Snobs?

The current Tail mobile stopped just outside of its destination of Punkeydoodle Corners. The flashing blinkers came on while the vehicle reversed on the shoulder of the road. After half a minute of reversing it came to a stop.

Inside the car, Tail asked, “Can you hear me now?” to his car’s dash that contained his smart phone.

“Yes,” said the female image for Mother Earth but Tail had never met her in person so he was not sure that was the actual Mother Earth’s image.

“Good, it’s still a half hour before I have to meet Varmint. Do you still think that I am going off half cocked with only my tail, rifle and handgun to meet him?”

“You know the risks and what you’re capable of. But if I might lose you, could I at least watch your demise?”

“You’re sick, Mother Earth.”

“I think Varmint might go after me once you’re gone. It’s self preservation, I assure you.”

“How are you going to watch with smartphones not working?”

“I’ve been all in the Pentagon’s computer systems for the last few hours. And I think I can link to visuals from one of their spy satellites.”

“Surely that can’t see Varmint and myself.”

“They would never let it get public but the largest space telescope is pointed down and it has adaptive optics. That’s where they use lasers to measure all the perturbations in the atmosphere and adapt the optics of the spy satellite’s scope to change for optimal seeing. I’m in, right now. Wave out the car window so I can confirm it’s you.”

Tail did just that.

“Perfect. Of course I would like to “hear” what you’re saying and the scope is almost straight up from Punkeydoodle Corners. Could you lift your face while you talk so I can use a program to read your lips?”

“But then I either give away that I’m being tracked or I look like I’m being a snob to Varmint.”

“You’re worried about looking like a snob? He’s trying to kill you.”

It was about time so Tail drove into the hamlet and pulled up to the corner he was to get the coordinates from. He glanced at his watch as it was almost noon. Then he got out of the car and wondered how he would get coordinates when his smartphone wouldn’t work out here. He stood at the corner. There were only 5 houses visible so he eyed them one by one.

Suddenly his eye caught motion. One of the house’s blinds came down and on it were coordinates.

Instead of writing them down, Tail ran toward the house and got to it’s back exit. Varmint was leaving it and froze when he saw Tail.

“I’m not as slow as you must have thought,” said Tail, as much to the sky as to Varmint.

“It figures,” said Varmint. “You would have your nose in the air just to be snobbish around me.”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Varmint. Put your nose in the air, too. I’m not offended and it’s not a special club.”

Varmint stuck his nose in the air tentatively. “That’s not so bad. I see you have a rifle and handgun, too.”

“Yes, I wanted to meet you on–” Tail’s tail had gone between his legs and Varmint’s as well and had started up Varmint’s back when there was a ‘Clang!’ This was followed by a whimper from Tail.

“I thought you might try a rear attack with that tail of yours. How do you like a leg hold trap?”

It was hurting Tail so much that he diverted his attention and hands to take it off. Varmint scooped up Tail’s rifle and handgun.

Tail was relieved physically while now being taxed mentally with the danger of losing his life. Still he couldn’t resist saying, “So you use the guns and traps that kill other varmints!”

TO BE CONTINUED

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Can a Superhero Be Inbred?

Soon after the reveal of his mysterious partner, Mother Earth, Tail was challenged on much of social media by a terrifying new supervillain.

“That’s right, Tail, I am Varmint and I am hunting you,” started the various messages. “Now I am American by choice but I think I had better get you before you’re called in to get me. So I am traveling up there to meet you. I plan to be in the area of Punkeydoodle Corners. It will be outside of the hamlet so you can’t set a trap for me. I will send you precise coordinates next Tuesday at noon.

“Why have I picked such a lonely, out of the way location for our meeting? Well I am trying to trap you in my web, of course. And I think that you may be comfortable in a place that’s so remote and inbred. After all, I bet your mighty, super strong tail has come about by the power of heavy inbreeding. I intend to defeat you by using your inbred features against you.

“If you don’t show up I will hunt down your sorry tail while I am up here in your neck of the woods. Be afraid, Tail, be very afraid. Do not bring your mysterious crime fighting partner, Mother Earth. I am coming alone so I expect you to be alone as well. Varmint out.”

When Tail finally saw this invitation he was first dismayed that he couldn’t bring Mother Earth. Then he did some searches to find out what this Varmint was really all about. The information was all sketchy – no one source knew everything at all but tail gleaned that Varmint was styling himself after a wolf.

Varmint was supposed to have the great smelling and hearing of a wolf (which is also attributable to dogs). He had rigged up an exoskeleton that made him have the endurance to go 150 kilometers in a day.

But Varmint realized the one very major setback of a wolf. They never shoot guns. Thus Varmint outfitted himself with a rifle and a handgun. As well he wore bullet proof clothing.

Now the bullet proof clothing would likely leave a welt or worse if it were actually shot on that area. So Varmint had a large bulletproof helmet made of more solid material that would deflect most shots. He had a smaller and not see through cup for between his legs.

Tail made a social media reply. “I will be ready for you, Varmint. I’ll be on the corner of Punkeydoodle Corners on Tuesday at noon, awaiting the coordinates where we are to meet.

“And must I remind you that esteemed lords, ladies, kings and queens are also inbred. Tail out.”

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