* Good mother of !@#$ my head feels like a hippo !@#$ in it. Where in the !@#$ are my tjbang sticks? Coffee! More !@#$ beer!
* Better. More beer. More coffee. Throw entertainment out.
* No, wait. You. You can stay. Hold my towel while I shower. !@#$
* Shower. !@#$. Pretend to shave. Stay awake, !@#$ it. Just keep it together. Do not look at the bed. Do not look at entertainment. Do not look at the bed and the entertainment. Do not...
* (CENSORED)
* Oh my !@#$ God look at the time! !@#$!
* Do not tell me not to !@#$ panic! It's the tenth annual J. Edgar Hoover Gay Republican Drag Revue Lost Weekend and I finally get to emcee the !@#$ thing. 72 hours of dancing and partying and I can't find my clothes! !@#$! !@#$.
* Yes, you can go now! !@#$! METALMAID? Can you show this lovely ladyboy out before I shoot her a new !@#$? Thank you...
* "I will not panic. I will feel no panic. Panic is for the weak, the unprepared, and the enemy. I do not panic. I cause panic." (Repeat)
* Where the !@#$ are those black pumps? The ones that scream "I'm a ten million dollar replicant tranny whore from Titan who can stop time with a wink"? Don't tell me I threw those away the last time I felt Catholic...
* Lime green heels with rockets. Black Stilettos with built in blades. Copper goldfish bowl pumps... no weapons. Armageddon tabi. No No No.
* "I will not panic... will not... !@#$ !@#$ !@#$" (Repeat)
* Aha! Hiding under the dress I was going to wear tonight, draped over the easy chair in the living room. It's like I planned it or something. Really.
* Okay. Issy Miyake black inflatable trashbag origami dress with all the zips, bangs, and whistles? Check. Black destructopumps? Check. Properly accoutered belt of tricks? Check. Black B-52s bouffant wig? Check. Best damn black lipstick, eyeshadow, mascara, and little black stars that an unlimited government black budget can get you? Check. Check, check, doublecheck.
* Fully gassed up flying car that's going to just get me to Studio 54.1 before it sputters out and has to be refueled at significant taxpayers' expense? !@#$ me check.
* Yeah, call me just as I'm leaving... I'm on my !@#$ way, Mitzi! Jesus !@#$ Christ in an off-broadway production of 'Arsenic and Old Queens' could your timing be any worse?
* What? Yes of course I arranged for the music. What do you mean they're going to be late? You tell them if they don't show on time I'll have them sent to Mars and forced to blow the entire royal family!
* !@#$ amateurs. I sure hope I talked to the FAA about this or I'm going to have black helicopters in my face again...
* Okay, almost there. No call-outs. Must have called them somewhere in the first or second blackout.
* Anywhere to park? Of course not. Anyone been parked overnight illegally? Oh yes. And look, it's got one of the President's bumper stickers on it! Just the thing this disintegrator ray was built for... 'See a commie a nuke a commie!'
* Yeah, yeah, tell it to a cop, lady. Oh wait, I am a cop. Here's a black card. Go buy yourself a better pair of wheels. And don't park it overnight!
* Okay, long line of people waiting to get in. Good thing I'm actually emceeing this party or I'd be out there until Sunday.
* What? I'll show you ID, mother!@#$. Does this look SPYGOD's gun to you? Yes? Then you get your bald steroid-junkie dysmorphic ass out of my way or I will !@#$ it with this very weapon! Yes I will. Thank you. Better. Thank you.
* Jesus H. Christ Mother!@#$. This is worse than getting on a plane with an ostomy bag.
* Oop! Game face. Smiles and waves. Smiles and waves. (Repeat)
* Yes, I love you too... you little mincing right wing !@#$bags.
* Get up on stage. Give prepared remarks. Ten great years of being gay, out, Republican. Tired of being pigeonholed as liberals because some idiots in the party can't get over what goes on in our love lives. Smaller government means out of pocketbooks and bedrooms. (applause)
* Make small talk and sing my way through something by Dusty Springfield. Hope backup band can carry my tune in their bucket.
* (Still sound like Pete Burns. !@#$.)
* Wave and flee stage. Down water. Toot a line of amyl nitrate, coke, and speed as long as my leg. See God for two very amazing minutes without having to look in a mirror.
* !@#$ God looks kind of Hindu today. All those arms and legs following after. Oh, wait, that's everyone. What the !@#$ was in that line?
* Tjbang sticks. Oh !@#$. Left them back at The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. No safety net here, SPYGOD. Have a drink and roll with it.
* Have a drink. Another drink. Another. Another. (Repeat)
* The Rhythm. The Rhythm. The Rhythm / I should have changed that stupid lock. I should have thrown away the key / One you lock the target. Two you bait the line / I travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody's looking for something /
* What, is it Saturday morning already? Holy !@#$ what was in that line? And are they offering another?
* Breakfast time! Shower on the premises. Crazytime going on in the executive suite but I am not going in there as the mere sight of my alien love god penis has been known to atomically explode such happy occasions. Do not need a repeat of last year. No no no.
* Yes. Yes. !@#$ me Yes. PENIS!
* Wait, no one's running away. Why is no one... what? They're all dead?
* No, just paralyzed. Someone's hit them with curare gas. I can still smell the treefrogs, or whatever the !@#$ they make it from. Can't remember now. Probably bought it at Gimmicks R Us.
* No wait, that's not curare. That's melted glass. Window's got a hole in it. Melted clean through. Must have done it while I was showering. Sneaky bastards.
* Using SPYGOD VISION now. Not too !@#$ up from the line earlier, though I'm seeing footprints in triplicate. Oh, but the fresh ones are going out the door... down the hall... down onto the crowded dance floor... oh !@#$... and I'm naked.
* Now they're running from the magnificence of the alien love god penis. Of course. All except for one man.
* Okay, weirdo. Who are you and why are you dressed like Paul Revere's flaming skeletal twin brother? And what are you doing with that flintlock pistol that's got a smoking skull face on the business end of it?
* Skull Face pistol shoots fireballs. He's shooting it at me. Great.
* Dodge dodge dodge (Repeat)
* Oh great, a monologuer. Calls himself the Flaming Patriot. Hates the gay. Doesn't get the irony.
* Also, he's here for me, specifically, and will kill everyone here to get to me.
* Son of a !@#$ just melted Mitzi's falsies. This means war.
* Not enough time to kill him with !@#$. Alien love penis god pellets probably won't work. No weapons but bare hands but he'll fry me between here and there.
* Dodge dodge dodge (Repeat)
* Okay, okay. Improvisational time. Jump into the rafters. Run along the ceiling. Hope it holds when he's shooting it out but not too long. Just enough for him to shoot out the supports above where he is and... aha! Guess who flunked architecture in supervillain school?
* Well that was one short career. Lemme see who's under the mask... um, wait... flashing lights are never a good thing. EVERYONE OUT!
* Okay, sneaky doofus primed himself to pop. Good thinking. Sneaky doofus also has redundant trips. Good thinking. Sneaky doofus didn't count on my numerous decades of bomb-defusing expertise. Bad thinking.
* Oh man, how close can we !@#$ cut it? Ten seconds? Nothing to freeze it with. Nothing to... wait, this is all wires and C4. And C4 burns.
* Pistol still working! Yes! Light son of a !@#$ on fire! Yes! Everything melts before it detonates! Yes!
* Forgot to take his head off before I lit him on fire for later identification. !@#$.
* Oh well. Okay, EVERYONE BACK IN! Let's get this party restarted! Come on, don't let the haters ruin your good time! What's a charred corpse and half the ceiling support gone? There's dancing to be done!
* Oh for !@#$ sake! If you don't get back here and start trying to party and get laid, right here and now, the terrorists win! How about that?
* Heh, just gotta remember how to talk to a Neo Yorker.
* One nation under a groove. Getting down just for the funk of it / They've got everything from a bed to a toy. You can hang out with all the boys / You got lots of energy. Come and give that energy to me yeah / Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who cares / It's alright. Don't get uptight /
* Man, maybe shouldn't have had three more of those lines. It's Sunday afternoon already and I can't move any further that this couch we moved the dead body to. Gonna have to explain to the NYPD why we didn't report it earlier but I'm sure I can tell them to !@#$ off and let me deal with it... once I get my clothes back on.
* You know, this is the second time someone's tried to kill me using Family while I'm in town. Can't help but think some homophobic evil genius has it out for me.
* Another mystery for another day. Goodbye one of the worst Julys in history (apart from SPYGOD SCOUT SATURNALIA). Hello August. Please be good to me.
* ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz
(SPYGOD is listening to Bump (Fun Lovin Criminals) and drinking Dark Horse Raspberry Ale.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
7/28/11 Crass Commercialism Makes the World Go Round
Got yet another phone call from the merchandising people about that !@#$ cartoon show they seem !@#$-bent to foist upon the unsuspecting brains of America's youth. All this in spite of every attempt on my part to stop it, just short of using SPYGOD vision over the phone on the poor, chirpy kid they forced to call me.
Apparently, Adult Swim is all set to make it happen. They're going to do it Johnny Quest style, using flash animation and some of their best voice actors. They will not be making kids action figures for the show, unfortunately, but Todd McFarlane's been on the line all day long and is putting together some prototypes.
So yes, it would seem I am doomed to once again have my sneering face plastered upon something that should not be. I can command the secret armies of the world, ignore Presidential orders, take on super-Nazis, and atomize entire countries (so long as they're small and mostly evil, or anti-capitalist) but I cannot stop the wheels of capitalism from running my hot, leather-clad ass over in mid-stride.
The irony is... well, pretty ironic. Words truly fail in the face of such malarkey.
But it wouldn't be the first time my unique, world-shattering likeness was approproiated to sell things no one really wants or needs. It seems like every time I turn around, there's another SPYGOD product out there, making money I don't require on behalf of people who should really be forced to devote their lives to charity.
Remember SPYGOD CEREAL? "Crispy bite-sized assault rifles that go BANG in milk!" It came in gunmetal (chocolate) bloody (strawberry) and desert camo (banana) flavors. Had a lack of nutrition warning right on the box, thus ensuring everyone would buy it.
Remember that awful Nintendo game they did of me where I was side-scrolling and shooting mutant nazis in outer space? It was voted one of the worst games ever, right up there with "E.T." for the Atari. (And I'm the one who ensured that the voting was fixed, thank you very much.)
And I'm sure you remember that awful line of "combat wear" clothing they had me hawking back in the late 80's, trying to leapfrog off of Michael Jackson's inspired fashion touches. Why settle for zippers and tugs when you could have holsters and knife sheaths instead? "Clothes for the discerning suburban warrior," I think they said.
End result? They were banned in every school in the lower 48 for obvious reasons, and became the unofficial gear of SPYGOD SCOUTS everywhere. All I could say was "good work, America."
That and sneak into the house of the person responsible and threaten to shoot him in the junk if he ever did something like that again.
It's not that I mind giving my likeness away, of course. But I'd rather do it for worthy causes, or charities that mean a !@#$.
I'm sure you remember the anti-rape campaign we did for Neo York City back in the late 90's? I did the "Whistles Are For Victims -- PACK HEAT" spots with women and men who'd dropped their would-be attackers with well-placed body shots. People still talk about that one.
There was also that benefit CD to raise money for the victims of the Computer Hell Plague. I was later told by no less than Holly Johnson that I should have been a singer, even if my delivery was too raw for MTV. The only problem is that, given my voice, most people think my cover of "Love Gun" was done by Dead Or Alive, so whenever I look it up on Youtube, I can't find it under my own name.
(Pete Burns still sends Christmas cards, along with photos of his latest plastic surgery disasters. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.)
So that's commercialism for you, son. You can't win unless you play, but they don't always ask you if you're sitting this one out or not, and sometimes they don't let you take credit when you make the home run.
All you can hope at the end of the day is that your likeness isn't being put on shirts in some awful sweatshop, somewhere. Which would be very unwise for someone to attempt to do.
Fair Warning.
(SPYGOD is listening to Moneygrabber (Fritz and the Tantrums) and drinking a Gringo Dollar)
Apparently, Adult Swim is all set to make it happen. They're going to do it Johnny Quest style, using flash animation and some of their best voice actors. They will not be making kids action figures for the show, unfortunately, but Todd McFarlane's been on the line all day long and is putting together some prototypes.
So yes, it would seem I am doomed to once again have my sneering face plastered upon something that should not be. I can command the secret armies of the world, ignore Presidential orders, take on super-Nazis, and atomize entire countries (so long as they're small and mostly evil, or anti-capitalist) but I cannot stop the wheels of capitalism from running my hot, leather-clad ass over in mid-stride.
The irony is... well, pretty ironic. Words truly fail in the face of such malarkey.
But it wouldn't be the first time my unique, world-shattering likeness was approproiated to sell things no one really wants or needs. It seems like every time I turn around, there's another SPYGOD product out there, making money I don't require on behalf of people who should really be forced to devote their lives to charity.
Remember SPYGOD CEREAL? "Crispy bite-sized assault rifles that go BANG in milk!" It came in gunmetal (chocolate) bloody (strawberry) and desert camo (banana) flavors. Had a lack of nutrition warning right on the box, thus ensuring everyone would buy it.
Remember that awful Nintendo game they did of me where I was side-scrolling and shooting mutant nazis in outer space? It was voted one of the worst games ever, right up there with "E.T." for the Atari. (And I'm the one who ensured that the voting was fixed, thank you very much.)
And I'm sure you remember that awful line of "combat wear" clothing they had me hawking back in the late 80's, trying to leapfrog off of Michael Jackson's inspired fashion touches. Why settle for zippers and tugs when you could have holsters and knife sheaths instead? "Clothes for the discerning suburban warrior," I think they said.
End result? They were banned in every school in the lower 48 for obvious reasons, and became the unofficial gear of SPYGOD SCOUTS everywhere. All I could say was "good work, America."
That and sneak into the house of the person responsible and threaten to shoot him in the junk if he ever did something like that again.
It's not that I mind giving my likeness away, of course. But I'd rather do it for worthy causes, or charities that mean a !@#$.
I'm sure you remember the anti-rape campaign we did for Neo York City back in the late 90's? I did the "Whistles Are For Victims -- PACK HEAT" spots with women and men who'd dropped their would-be attackers with well-placed body shots. People still talk about that one.
There was also that benefit CD to raise money for the victims of the Computer Hell Plague. I was later told by no less than Holly Johnson that I should have been a singer, even if my delivery was too raw for MTV. The only problem is that, given my voice, most people think my cover of "Love Gun" was done by Dead Or Alive, so whenever I look it up on Youtube, I can't find it under my own name.
(Pete Burns still sends Christmas cards, along with photos of his latest plastic surgery disasters. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.)
So that's commercialism for you, son. You can't win unless you play, but they don't always ask you if you're sitting this one out or not, and sometimes they don't let you take credit when you make the home run.
All you can hope at the end of the day is that your likeness isn't being put on shirts in some awful sweatshop, somewhere. Which would be very unwise for someone to attempt to do.
Fair Warning.
(SPYGOD is listening to Moneygrabber (Fritz and the Tantrums) and drinking a Gringo Dollar)
Thursday, July 28, 2011
7/27/11 - Frenemy Mine
They say you never forget your first true nemesis. This is true.
He and I first met at the camp in Korea. I was a prisoner of a war we were trying to pretend wasn't happening, yet. He was on the other side, observing the man they'd all been so scared of, but now had in chains.
(Well, a really complicated set of paralytic, power-negating manacles supplied by their friends in Beijing, but let's not get technical.)
The guards were all agog and amused. This was the man that killed Hitler? You must be joking. He looks like any other GI, here. Dirty and humbled and afraid.
He looked at me differently, though. He sized me up, and knew that I was not afraid. I was just acting, watching, biding my time.
He took one look at me and knew me. Who I was. What I was.
What I was going to do.
He claims he didn't smile. I know he did. That little upturn at the corner of his mouth as he looked askance and walked away, knowing full well what was going to happen next, and not wanting to be there when it did? That's how he smiles.
That is exactly how the dragon smiles.
I killed 52 men with my bare hands in ten minutes, not half an hour later. I'd have tried to kill him, too, but The Dragon was already winging it back to China with his confederates and subordinates. When he got there he warned his superiors that America had, indeed, employed strategic talents in the theater, and that if they wanted to see the matter through they had better do the same.
The rest was history, and for ten years after that I hated The Dragon with every fiber of my being, and imagined he felt the same way about me.
It wasn't a difficult leap, given our careers. Every time I turned around, he was there, somewhere, pulling invisible strings and pushing deadly levers. There were plans within plans, traps within traps, and an endless supply of silk screens and false fronts designed to send me every which way but towards him. Death trotted along behind him like an evil, obedient dog, and he had no worries about where the thing might !@#$.
I hated him, but he only ever thought I was a distraction. One of many, as it turned out.
In the sixties things changed. The Soviet Union and China weren't friends, anymore, and The Dragon and I actually found ourselves working towards similar goals from different sides from time to time. Our people kept tripping over each other, and soon we were face to face again, trading punches and one-liners as our mutual plans came crashing down around the transparent architecture of each other's tradecraft.
Friendships were fluid, as were allegiances and alliances. Sometimes he worked with HONEYCOMB and SQUASH (never ABWEHR, to his credit). Sometimes he sold them out, and often for what seemed a laugh. If there was a plan I never figured out what it was. For all I know he was making it up as he went along, day by day, just to insure that China came out on top, and remained "inscrutable."
But I went from a distraction to the distraction, then. This I know.
Then it was the 70's. Nixon went to China, and we all followed suit. Handshakes and wary glances. "Oh, have you met...?" "Oh yes, we have." "A pleasure to once again make your acquaintance." "Likewise." blah blah blah.
All the while, in that little room, with the President on one end and the Premier on the other. Looking only at one another while pretending not to. Subtle chuckles at mistakes in translation. Knowing nods when there was promise of progress.
That little smile.
Thereafter, we were no longer enemies on paper, but rivals. In reality it didn't change a !@#$ thing, but it was amusing to pretend, sometimes. All it meant was that the real throw-downs went down in private, and not out in the streets where other strategic talents (or, more importantly, the Soviets) might see.
We lived that Chinese curse, he and I. Interesting times and all that. Sometimes we saved each other, sometimes we saved the world, and sometimes he held out a hand only to yank it back and try and shoot me with what was in the other.
He was The Dragon, after all. He had a reputation to uphold, and superiors to please. He could behave no other way, or so he insisted.
But again, that little smile.
In the 80's, he hated me with every fiber of his being. That was because of some amusing things The COMPANY did in and around Asia, most of which are still so above-to-secret I'm not even supposed to remember them. The deathtraps and plans got really outrageous, then. Really personal, too.
He even contracted out to Japan, of all places, and I had ninjas attacking me every time I turned around. I don't think they were too happy when they found out who was hiring them, but for a while I had the satisfaction of kicking ninja ass every other week. Often when least expected.
I'd gone from the distraction to the obsession. The smile turned into a sneer.
And then, in the 90's, the obsession petered out and he pretended I didn't exist. That was just fine by me, quite frankly. The ninjas were getting boring, and so were the crazy, cyborg mercenaries that had replaced them. I had other, bigger fish to fry, too, now that the Soviets were done with but the time bombs they'd left behind were still going.
We met, one time, entirely by accident. It was an Outland, back in 1995. I don't know what he was doing there. For once I was genuinely surprised to see him, which is saying something.
And when he looked at me, I got that old smile back. So I abandoned reason, walked over, and offered him a drink. He accepted, and offered a cigarette. I accepted.
We talked for hours. Like soldiers. Like men. He told me some things I'd never guessed at. I confessed a few things, too. It seemed the genteel and correct thing to do, given the circumstances.
"So what was up with that smile, back in the camp?" I asked after the First Church of Jesus Christ, Supervillain, walked by.
"What smile?"
"The smile you smiled when I was locked up in that !@#$ manacle you brought them."
"That was no smile. That was... it doesn't translate very well into English. It was a mark of respect. And something more."
"I still get that mark?"
"We're talking, aren't we?"
"True, but you've tried to poison me three times."
He laughed: "And you have a gun aimed at me under the table."
"That's no gun."
"Are you, as they say, happy to see me?"
He looked at me. I looked at him. Again that smile.
Clocked.
We still run into each other, now and again. He's under house arrest, supposedly. He's no longer in official favor for some weird slight of party politics that no one will ever fully understand or know the details of. I'm not even sure of all the specifics, myself, but I think it's nothing to do with him or me.
It's all to do with the changes that have happened, there, in the last few years. Their days of "cowboy diplomacy" are coming to an end. They know they're poised to be the economic superpower as soon as America trips over its debt shoelaces and breaks its jaw on the pavement.
And people like The Dragon are just an embarrassment. A sad reminder that once they had to resort to under-the-table dealings and unsavory allies to stay ahead, instead of being smarter with their money than everyone else.
Every so often he drops me a line, which looks like a lot of bull!@#$ but is actually a special code he knows I broke. In it, he tells me how things are, and what he does. What he reads and watches. What he'd like to be doing.
He always tells me how boring it is to no longer have a friend for an enemy, and every so often I write back and tell him he just has to send me word and I'll have him extricated in seconds. No strings, no deals, no conditions, no !@#$%. Just him on a transport and a new life over here, guaranteed.
But he never sends it.
(SPYGOD is listening to The Power of Love (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and drinking a Cheerday, with an extra glass for an absent friend.)
He and I first met at the camp in Korea. I was a prisoner of a war we were trying to pretend wasn't happening, yet. He was on the other side, observing the man they'd all been so scared of, but now had in chains.
(Well, a really complicated set of paralytic, power-negating manacles supplied by their friends in Beijing, but let's not get technical.)
The guards were all agog and amused. This was the man that killed Hitler? You must be joking. He looks like any other GI, here. Dirty and humbled and afraid.
He looked at me differently, though. He sized me up, and knew that I was not afraid. I was just acting, watching, biding my time.
He took one look at me and knew me. Who I was. What I was.
What I was going to do.
He claims he didn't smile. I know he did. That little upturn at the corner of his mouth as he looked askance and walked away, knowing full well what was going to happen next, and not wanting to be there when it did? That's how he smiles.
That is exactly how the dragon smiles.
I killed 52 men with my bare hands in ten minutes, not half an hour later. I'd have tried to kill him, too, but The Dragon was already winging it back to China with his confederates and subordinates. When he got there he warned his superiors that America had, indeed, employed strategic talents in the theater, and that if they wanted to see the matter through they had better do the same.
The rest was history, and for ten years after that I hated The Dragon with every fiber of my being, and imagined he felt the same way about me.
It wasn't a difficult leap, given our careers. Every time I turned around, he was there, somewhere, pulling invisible strings and pushing deadly levers. There were plans within plans, traps within traps, and an endless supply of silk screens and false fronts designed to send me every which way but towards him. Death trotted along behind him like an evil, obedient dog, and he had no worries about where the thing might !@#$.
I hated him, but he only ever thought I was a distraction. One of many, as it turned out.
In the sixties things changed. The Soviet Union and China weren't friends, anymore, and The Dragon and I actually found ourselves working towards similar goals from different sides from time to time. Our people kept tripping over each other, and soon we were face to face again, trading punches and one-liners as our mutual plans came crashing down around the transparent architecture of each other's tradecraft.
Friendships were fluid, as were allegiances and alliances. Sometimes he worked with HONEYCOMB and SQUASH (never ABWEHR, to his credit). Sometimes he sold them out, and often for what seemed a laugh. If there was a plan I never figured out what it was. For all I know he was making it up as he went along, day by day, just to insure that China came out on top, and remained "inscrutable."
But I went from a distraction to the distraction, then. This I know.
Then it was the 70's. Nixon went to China, and we all followed suit. Handshakes and wary glances. "Oh, have you met...?" "Oh yes, we have." "A pleasure to once again make your acquaintance." "Likewise." blah blah blah.
All the while, in that little room, with the President on one end and the Premier on the other. Looking only at one another while pretending not to. Subtle chuckles at mistakes in translation. Knowing nods when there was promise of progress.
That little smile.
Thereafter, we were no longer enemies on paper, but rivals. In reality it didn't change a !@#$ thing, but it was amusing to pretend, sometimes. All it meant was that the real throw-downs went down in private, and not out in the streets where other strategic talents (or, more importantly, the Soviets) might see.
We lived that Chinese curse, he and I. Interesting times and all that. Sometimes we saved each other, sometimes we saved the world, and sometimes he held out a hand only to yank it back and try and shoot me with what was in the other.
He was The Dragon, after all. He had a reputation to uphold, and superiors to please. He could behave no other way, or so he insisted.
But again, that little smile.
In the 80's, he hated me with every fiber of his being. That was because of some amusing things The COMPANY did in and around Asia, most of which are still so above-to-secret I'm not even supposed to remember them. The deathtraps and plans got really outrageous, then. Really personal, too.
He even contracted out to Japan, of all places, and I had ninjas attacking me every time I turned around. I don't think they were too happy when they found out who was hiring them, but for a while I had the satisfaction of kicking ninja ass every other week. Often when least expected.
I'd gone from the distraction to the obsession. The smile turned into a sneer.
And then, in the 90's, the obsession petered out and he pretended I didn't exist. That was just fine by me, quite frankly. The ninjas were getting boring, and so were the crazy, cyborg mercenaries that had replaced them. I had other, bigger fish to fry, too, now that the Soviets were done with but the time bombs they'd left behind were still going.
We met, one time, entirely by accident. It was an Outland, back in 1995. I don't know what he was doing there. For once I was genuinely surprised to see him, which is saying something.
And when he looked at me, I got that old smile back. So I abandoned reason, walked over, and offered him a drink. He accepted, and offered a cigarette. I accepted.
We talked for hours. Like soldiers. Like men. He told me some things I'd never guessed at. I confessed a few things, too. It seemed the genteel and correct thing to do, given the circumstances.
"So what was up with that smile, back in the camp?" I asked after the First Church of Jesus Christ, Supervillain, walked by.
"What smile?"
"The smile you smiled when I was locked up in that !@#$ manacle you brought them."
"That was no smile. That was... it doesn't translate very well into English. It was a mark of respect. And something more."
"I still get that mark?"
"We're talking, aren't we?"
"True, but you've tried to poison me three times."
He laughed: "And you have a gun aimed at me under the table."
"That's no gun."
"Are you, as they say, happy to see me?"
He looked at me. I looked at him. Again that smile.
Clocked.
We still run into each other, now and again. He's under house arrest, supposedly. He's no longer in official favor for some weird slight of party politics that no one will ever fully understand or know the details of. I'm not even sure of all the specifics, myself, but I think it's nothing to do with him or me.
It's all to do with the changes that have happened, there, in the last few years. Their days of "cowboy diplomacy" are coming to an end. They know they're poised to be the economic superpower as soon as America trips over its debt shoelaces and breaks its jaw on the pavement.
And people like The Dragon are just an embarrassment. A sad reminder that once they had to resort to under-the-table dealings and unsavory allies to stay ahead, instead of being smarter with their money than everyone else.
Every so often he drops me a line, which looks like a lot of bull!@#$ but is actually a special code he knows I broke. In it, he tells me how things are, and what he does. What he reads and watches. What he'd like to be doing.
He always tells me how boring it is to no longer have a friend for an enemy, and every so often I write back and tell him he just has to send me word and I'll have him extricated in seconds. No strings, no deals, no conditions, no !@#$%. Just him on a transport and a new life over here, guaranteed.
But he never sends it.
(SPYGOD is listening to The Power of Love (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and drinking a Cheerday, with an extra glass for an absent friend.)
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
7/26/11 - Kiss Kiss Tjbang Bang
Yes, I know. You're curious. That's what they all say.
I can't blame you, son. I mention them all the time. I chew them all the time, use them to stir my coffee. Sometimes I even throw them at people, just to see if they stick.
Tjbang sticks. 'What are they?' you might well ask.
I'll tell you what they are, son. They're death.
A long time ago, in Asia, there was a cult of rogue Buddhists who took their master's words a little out of context. They created the recipe for Tjbang sticks for their Arhats, who took them in order to quietly slip away from their lives.
Suicidal Buddhists? I know, son, it sounds like one of those !@#$ lousy West Coast punk bands. But I assure you this is all historical fact.
Now, the important thing to understand here is that Buddhism doesn't exactly frown on suicide, per se. It just explains why you might want to go through with it, and what the consequences for doing it will be.
(Little hint: this !@#$ happened before, and will !@#$ happen again and again. Life sucks. Wear a hat.)
Having said that, there's a slight, almost anecdotal precedent for those who've achieved total (or near-total) enlightenment to go ahead and do it, under certain circumstances. Call it a perk of sitting on your ass contemplating a big bowl of vanilla ice cream for most of your adult life.
So these folks, after consulting various now-lost Alchemical treatises, came up with the ultimate poison. Ten times deadlier than the Disneyland Octopus, and easily twenty times as fast.
They distilled it and soaked it into small pieces of the bark of a special kind of tree that grows near the monastery. It has an odd, cherry taste and pleasant texture, which the poison doesn't affect at all.
What it does is turn the bark bright red, like arterial blood. That and make it as poisonous as above described. They strips can't even be handled by naked skin before they're properly cured, or they'll cause blistering, open sores, and a slow, lingering demise. And you'd better not have wet or sweaty hands when you handle the cured ones, or you're in a world of hurt.
But pop one of the cured sticks into your mouth and chew it, and you'll be dead in microseconds. Your tongue won't even have time to swell, and you'll leave the world tasting of cherries and smelling of sweet-scented wood.
Tjbang has no real meaning, and does not denote the tree, bark, the color of red, or the poison. It doesn't even mean "deadly as living !@#$" in their otherwise descriptive dialect of Chinese.
Tjbang is onomatopoeic, which is a fancy, ten !@#$ dollar word for "it is what it sounds like," like "bang," "Splat," "barf," or "woosh."
Tjbang is the sound of a metal bowl hat hitting the stone floor of a monastery after its "owner" keeled over, still smiling, from chewing one of those sticks. Tjbangggg-g-g-g-g-g
Which brings us to yours truly, and his propensity to buy Tjbang sticks by the bushel from the monastery, which is still around and still makes the !@#$ things. The reason they do is to keep the Chinese government from messing with them, because they alone have the secret to making the stuff, and the Chinese are all too happy to buy it for their own uses.
Me? I chew them to stop my heart.
They don't do it for very long, obviously. That's the immortality thing getting in the way of a good-tasting death.
But when I'm coming up on a massive drugs binge, coming down from a near-terminal caffeine overdose, or stumbling sideways through time and space after drinking twice my weight in alcohol of suspicious character and uncertain vintage, one of these babies will sober me right the !@#$ up, like a reset button. Sometimes you need that in the field, or office. Sometimes you need it at home, or in bed.
And sometimes I just chew them like licorice whips because, Gods help me, they taste !@#$ good.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle, or so they say. The other half is knowing to not eat anything you might find in my utility belt.
(SPYGOD is listening to Bang Bang (Dead or Alive) and drinking Lucid Absinthe)
I can't blame you, son. I mention them all the time. I chew them all the time, use them to stir my coffee. Sometimes I even throw them at people, just to see if they stick.
Tjbang sticks. 'What are they?' you might well ask.
I'll tell you what they are, son. They're death.
A long time ago, in Asia, there was a cult of rogue Buddhists who took their master's words a little out of context. They created the recipe for Tjbang sticks for their Arhats, who took them in order to quietly slip away from their lives.
Suicidal Buddhists? I know, son, it sounds like one of those !@#$ lousy West Coast punk bands. But I assure you this is all historical fact.
Now, the important thing to understand here is that Buddhism doesn't exactly frown on suicide, per se. It just explains why you might want to go through with it, and what the consequences for doing it will be.
(Little hint: this !@#$ happened before, and will !@#$ happen again and again. Life sucks. Wear a hat.)
Having said that, there's a slight, almost anecdotal precedent for those who've achieved total (or near-total) enlightenment to go ahead and do it, under certain circumstances. Call it a perk of sitting on your ass contemplating a big bowl of vanilla ice cream for most of your adult life.
So these folks, after consulting various now-lost Alchemical treatises, came up with the ultimate poison. Ten times deadlier than the Disneyland Octopus, and easily twenty times as fast.
They distilled it and soaked it into small pieces of the bark of a special kind of tree that grows near the monastery. It has an odd, cherry taste and pleasant texture, which the poison doesn't affect at all.
What it does is turn the bark bright red, like arterial blood. That and make it as poisonous as above described. They strips can't even be handled by naked skin before they're properly cured, or they'll cause blistering, open sores, and a slow, lingering demise. And you'd better not have wet or sweaty hands when you handle the cured ones, or you're in a world of hurt.
But pop one of the cured sticks into your mouth and chew it, and you'll be dead in microseconds. Your tongue won't even have time to swell, and you'll leave the world tasting of cherries and smelling of sweet-scented wood.
Tjbang has no real meaning, and does not denote the tree, bark, the color of red, or the poison. It doesn't even mean "deadly as living !@#$" in their otherwise descriptive dialect of Chinese.
Tjbang is onomatopoeic, which is a fancy, ten !@#$ dollar word for "it is what it sounds like," like "bang," "Splat," "barf," or "woosh."
Tjbang is the sound of a metal bowl hat hitting the stone floor of a monastery after its "owner" keeled over, still smiling, from chewing one of those sticks. Tjbangggg-g-g-g-g-g
Which brings us to yours truly, and his propensity to buy Tjbang sticks by the bushel from the monastery, which is still around and still makes the !@#$ things. The reason they do is to keep the Chinese government from messing with them, because they alone have the secret to making the stuff, and the Chinese are all too happy to buy it for their own uses.
Me? I chew them to stop my heart.
They don't do it for very long, obviously. That's the immortality thing getting in the way of a good-tasting death.
But when I'm coming up on a massive drugs binge, coming down from a near-terminal caffeine overdose, or stumbling sideways through time and space after drinking twice my weight in alcohol of suspicious character and uncertain vintage, one of these babies will sober me right the !@#$ up, like a reset button. Sometimes you need that in the field, or office. Sometimes you need it at home, or in bed.
And sometimes I just chew them like licorice whips because, Gods help me, they taste !@#$ good.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle, or so they say. The other half is knowing to not eat anything you might find in my utility belt.
(SPYGOD is listening to Bang Bang (Dead or Alive) and drinking Lucid Absinthe)
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
7/25/11 - Toon Like Me - Pt. 4
Morning again. Looking out over the parapet of The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G., starting the morning ritual of coffee, alcohol, tjbang sticks, and occasional blackouts.
Behind me, METALMAID is showing last night's entertainments to the elevator and is being way too cheery about it. (Note to self: diagnostic the metal !@#$ as soon as Dr. Yesterday gets back from Antarctica) The ladyboys are sore and complaining but have been well paid for their time and trouble.
Poor dears. I'm not usually that excitable, son. It's just that, after what happened to me, I need to know that I'm real again.
Reality is what you make of it, of course. But when you've been zapped by a rogue scientist that used to work for a "hospital" (read: prison) for cartoon characters whose grip on our reality ended over twenty years ago, and can't get back where they came from, you'd probably be more than a little excitable once you got your ability to eat, drink, !@#$, and use complex machinery and electronics again.
Gods know I sure have.
I spent two days in Bridgewater. After my first night, which sucked, even with the massive, pillow-sized earmuffs I pulled out of my belt of tricks, I woke up still Tooned.
I showered under guard, lest the patients try and mess with me. Not that I was even remotely worried, of course, but I walked out with an unbloodied nose and non-molested bunghole, still a Toon.
I had breakfast, still under guard, in their crappy kitchen. Cartoon eggs and bacon, much to the consternation of certain porcine Toons. It was rather amusing and sad to hear one of them stutter his way through an attempted riot, put down with eerie efficacy and ghoulish enthusiasm by the Toonified guards.
And when I was done and begging for a proper cup of coffee, which they would not !@#$ give me for "medical reasons," I was still just a Toon.
However, unlike the other Toons, I might someday turn back to normal again. As such, I was not a patient (read: inmate) and could therefore go where I wanted, though not without guards.
That said, after I got the general layout of the place I wanted to be on my own, so I bribed the guards to let me have the run of the extremely creepy central yard. I told them I'd call them when I needed them, and to expect it to be a while.
I had some business to do, which I didn't want the guards around to !@#$ up.
You want to know what a place is really like? You find a native. So if you're stuck in a hospital, or a prison masquerading as one, it's the same story. Find the one who's been there the longest, or as long as anyone, and you've got the map you never knew about. .
My guide turned out to be a familiar face. A blue dog with an off-kilter hat, bowtie, and a lazy Southern drawl took one look at me, nodded, and walked me where I needed to go.
What he showed me made me genuinely sad, which is saying something. I've never seen so many dead-eyed people outside of a medical evac center after a terrorist bombing. Shell shock and disbelief mixed with dread and the surreal wonder that you're still alive after it all.
And when you don't believe you're alive, anymore, self-destructive behaviors become a new way of life. (Not that SPYGOD would know anything about that, son. But I digress.)
The non-haunted parts of the basement were the worst. The ghosts were so !@#$ scared of what was going on down there that they stayed out. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and sexual predators were rampant, all done with the knowledge and aid of guards clearly on the take.
It makes sense, as my guide was kind enough to explain. Bridgewater's other claim to fame is that it's the only facility (apart from the lair of the evil Doctor Feelgood) that has the unique and sophisticated equipment needed to turn real things into cartoons, so "animated persons" could use them. It also allows human guards to be turned into cartoons for a couple hours at a time (what they call "getting a Toon-Up") so they can fully interact with their charges.
So who's to know if a human guard takes along a few bottles of hooch, some dope, or something else special along for the ride? That's just between them and the Toons they sell it to.
Money? Oh yes. You see, the Toons all have access to the money they got from that settlement. But they can't spend it in here, so they have guards spend it for them, and I have no doubt they're taking more than expected off the top.
The Toons even have gang wars in here, except they're based on weird, homemade religions revolving around the magic television they came out of. As near as I could tell from what my guide told me, half the patients think the magic television needs to be returned to, and the other half think they can remake the world to match what they had back at home.
My guide said there were other, weirder notions floating around, but by then I'd had enough. I'd seen a group of guards smack the !@#$ out of a patient just for laughs. I'd seen a talking shark nodding off in the basement, surrounded by the screaming ghosts of long-dead mental cases and not caring. I'd seen three bears hold down a dog for a cat who wanted to make a point about "respect."
(Note for the uninitiated: cat sex hurts)
And to top it off, I'd been !@#$ing unable to vomit the entire time, watching this near-perfect system of !@#$ unfold itself around me like a body does when you cram lit dynamite up its !@#$.
So I grabbed my guide, slammed his blue face up against the wall, and asked him how dare he, how !@#$ing dare he, not do something about this? Me, I might change back any moment and thereby get out. But he was here for the duration, and how in the name of happy unholy !@#$ could he just let this happen around him?
This had been going on for thirty years. Did he not realize this? Most drug pushers get out after ten. Did he not realize that?
What in the Gods' name did he imagine he was being punished for?
Blue dog whimpered and stammered something about me not understanding. And I smacked him upside the head with my free hand and explained that, no, I did understand. I'd been in prison before. I understood how control mechanisms and feedback looks worked.
I know what it's like to get eight-balled into something awful, and to tell yourself that, as bad as it is, it's just the way it is. And you have to accept it because it's just the way it is. And it isn't going to get any better.
And you know what? You're right, little doggie. It doesn't get any better.
Not until you make it better.
"I'm not going to fix your problems for you," I said, letting his blue ass drop: "But if you don't fix this, no one else will. You got the power, (NAME REDACTED). You've always had it. Use it."
Of course, he had to holler after and insist that I was a dirty !@#$ !@#$ son of a !@#$ with my head up my !@#$ and no !@#$ understanding of the true !@#$ of the !@#$. But every time he cursed it was with less conviction. I knew he'd heard what I'd said. I knew he'd felt the truth of those words.
I knew the die was cast.
I blew off my guards, stole some water and bread, went back to my room, upended the desk against the door frame as best as I could, and put the bed between it and the wall so no one would be getting in without a fight.
Then I spent the next day and a half reading the Bible according to (NAME REDACTED), and listening to the riot outside. For a little while I was worried they might lose their nerve, but I guess the realization of being stuck in a hellhole for almost 30 years "for their own good" must have struck like a brick to the jimmy.
I heard screams, but this time they were human, and I smiled.
On the second day, I went to sleep and woke up as myself, again. I ventured out into bloody and burned hallways and the sight of "real" cartoons herding corrupt guards into the central area. The caregivers had been let out as soon as the riot went off, as they weren't the real targets.
The guards on the other hand, oh my gods. Hell has no fury like a pissed-off Toon.
It was elementary, really. If the tooninators could turn real things into cartoons for a few hours, then it could turn Toons into real people for the same amount of time. That's probably why the guards had so many keys and locks on them.
Too bad they didn't expect a fight, anymore. If they had, they might have survived. But at least they died rich.
(Eating money is bad for you, though.)
The Toons saw me as I came in. I nodded to the guide and the doc and kept walking. They parted and let me.
I also made some calls and told the agency that oversaw the Institute that they were not to interfere. This was now a COMPANY matter, and as far as the COMPANY was concerned, it had to play out the way it was meant to.
(That's the more genteel way of putting it, of course. My version involved a lot of anger, profanity, and threats to use SPYGOD VISION over the telephone.)
That was a day ago. Now I'm looking across the river at Bridgewater and seeing it burn. My Agents tell me the All Stars left some time ago, taking the equipment with them. They left the money they didn't stuff down the guards' gullets behind, but something tells me they won't be needing it where they're going.
Researchers who specialized in breeding rats for experimental studies eventually discovered that, once the population had stabilized, and was working perfectly, all you had to do to !@#$ things up was introduce one more rat. Just one more, and the perfect system collapsed around itself.
Sometimes they even did it for fun.
Am I the bad rat or the good rat, this time? I can't say. All I know for sure is that, unlike the big government that helped spawn that nightmare, I didn't micromanage a gods!@#$ thing, thus condemning those poor, funtastic folks to yet another U-bend of dependency, decadence, and devastation.
I just did what I do best: !@#$ !@#$ up, for America, at taxpayers' expense. The rest is between me, the Gods, and the Hoboken fire department.
(SPYGOD is listening to Welcome Home (Metallica) and drinking coffee like it's going out of style)
Behind me, METALMAID is showing last night's entertainments to the elevator and is being way too cheery about it. (Note to self: diagnostic the metal !@#$ as soon as Dr. Yesterday gets back from Antarctica) The ladyboys are sore and complaining but have been well paid for their time and trouble.
Poor dears. I'm not usually that excitable, son. It's just that, after what happened to me, I need to know that I'm real again.
Reality is what you make of it, of course. But when you've been zapped by a rogue scientist that used to work for a "hospital" (read: prison) for cartoon characters whose grip on our reality ended over twenty years ago, and can't get back where they came from, you'd probably be more than a little excitable once you got your ability to eat, drink, !@#$, and use complex machinery and electronics again.
Gods know I sure have.
I spent two days in Bridgewater. After my first night, which sucked, even with the massive, pillow-sized earmuffs I pulled out of my belt of tricks, I woke up still Tooned.
I showered under guard, lest the patients try and mess with me. Not that I was even remotely worried, of course, but I walked out with an unbloodied nose and non-molested bunghole, still a Toon.
I had breakfast, still under guard, in their crappy kitchen. Cartoon eggs and bacon, much to the consternation of certain porcine Toons. It was rather amusing and sad to hear one of them stutter his way through an attempted riot, put down with eerie efficacy and ghoulish enthusiasm by the Toonified guards.
And when I was done and begging for a proper cup of coffee, which they would not !@#$ give me for "medical reasons," I was still just a Toon.
However, unlike the other Toons, I might someday turn back to normal again. As such, I was not a patient (read: inmate) and could therefore go where I wanted, though not without guards.
That said, after I got the general layout of the place I wanted to be on my own, so I bribed the guards to let me have the run of the extremely creepy central yard. I told them I'd call them when I needed them, and to expect it to be a while.
I had some business to do, which I didn't want the guards around to !@#$ up.
You want to know what a place is really like? You find a native. So if you're stuck in a hospital, or a prison masquerading as one, it's the same story. Find the one who's been there the longest, or as long as anyone, and you've got the map you never knew about. .
My guide turned out to be a familiar face. A blue dog with an off-kilter hat, bowtie, and a lazy Southern drawl took one look at me, nodded, and walked me where I needed to go.
What he showed me made me genuinely sad, which is saying something. I've never seen so many dead-eyed people outside of a medical evac center after a terrorist bombing. Shell shock and disbelief mixed with dread and the surreal wonder that you're still alive after it all.
And when you don't believe you're alive, anymore, self-destructive behaviors become a new way of life. (Not that SPYGOD would know anything about that, son. But I digress.)
The non-haunted parts of the basement were the worst. The ghosts were so !@#$ scared of what was going on down there that they stayed out. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and sexual predators were rampant, all done with the knowledge and aid of guards clearly on the take.
It makes sense, as my guide was kind enough to explain. Bridgewater's other claim to fame is that it's the only facility (apart from the lair of the evil Doctor Feelgood) that has the unique and sophisticated equipment needed to turn real things into cartoons, so "animated persons" could use them. It also allows human guards to be turned into cartoons for a couple hours at a time (what they call "getting a Toon-Up") so they can fully interact with their charges.
So who's to know if a human guard takes along a few bottles of hooch, some dope, or something else special along for the ride? That's just between them and the Toons they sell it to.
Money? Oh yes. You see, the Toons all have access to the money they got from that settlement. But they can't spend it in here, so they have guards spend it for them, and I have no doubt they're taking more than expected off the top.
The Toons even have gang wars in here, except they're based on weird, homemade religions revolving around the magic television they came out of. As near as I could tell from what my guide told me, half the patients think the magic television needs to be returned to, and the other half think they can remake the world to match what they had back at home.
My guide said there were other, weirder notions floating around, but by then I'd had enough. I'd seen a group of guards smack the !@#$ out of a patient just for laughs. I'd seen a talking shark nodding off in the basement, surrounded by the screaming ghosts of long-dead mental cases and not caring. I'd seen three bears hold down a dog for a cat who wanted to make a point about "respect."
(Note for the uninitiated: cat sex hurts)
And to top it off, I'd been !@#$ing unable to vomit the entire time, watching this near-perfect system of !@#$ unfold itself around me like a body does when you cram lit dynamite up its !@#$.
So I grabbed my guide, slammed his blue face up against the wall, and asked him how dare he, how !@#$ing dare he, not do something about this? Me, I might change back any moment and thereby get out. But he was here for the duration, and how in the name of happy unholy !@#$ could he just let this happen around him?
This had been going on for thirty years. Did he not realize this? Most drug pushers get out after ten. Did he not realize that?
What in the Gods' name did he imagine he was being punished for?
Blue dog whimpered and stammered something about me not understanding. And I smacked him upside the head with my free hand and explained that, no, I did understand. I'd been in prison before. I understood how control mechanisms and feedback looks worked.
I know what it's like to get eight-balled into something awful, and to tell yourself that, as bad as it is, it's just the way it is. And you have to accept it because it's just the way it is. And it isn't going to get any better.
And you know what? You're right, little doggie. It doesn't get any better.
Not until you make it better.
"I'm not going to fix your problems for you," I said, letting his blue ass drop: "But if you don't fix this, no one else will. You got the power, (NAME REDACTED). You've always had it. Use it."
Of course, he had to holler after and insist that I was a dirty !@#$ !@#$ son of a !@#$ with my head up my !@#$ and no !@#$ understanding of the true !@#$ of the !@#$. But every time he cursed it was with less conviction. I knew he'd heard what I'd said. I knew he'd felt the truth of those words.
I knew the die was cast.
I blew off my guards, stole some water and bread, went back to my room, upended the desk against the door frame as best as I could, and put the bed between it and the wall so no one would be getting in without a fight.
Then I spent the next day and a half reading the Bible according to (NAME REDACTED), and listening to the riot outside. For a little while I was worried they might lose their nerve, but I guess the realization of being stuck in a hellhole for almost 30 years "for their own good" must have struck like a brick to the jimmy.
I heard screams, but this time they were human, and I smiled.
On the second day, I went to sleep and woke up as myself, again. I ventured out into bloody and burned hallways and the sight of "real" cartoons herding corrupt guards into the central area. The caregivers had been let out as soon as the riot went off, as they weren't the real targets.
The guards on the other hand, oh my gods. Hell has no fury like a pissed-off Toon.
It was elementary, really. If the tooninators could turn real things into cartoons for a few hours, then it could turn Toons into real people for the same amount of time. That's probably why the guards had so many keys and locks on them.
Too bad they didn't expect a fight, anymore. If they had, they might have survived. But at least they died rich.
(Eating money is bad for you, though.)
The Toons saw me as I came in. I nodded to the guide and the doc and kept walking. They parted and let me.
I also made some calls and told the agency that oversaw the Institute that they were not to interfere. This was now a COMPANY matter, and as far as the COMPANY was concerned, it had to play out the way it was meant to.
(That's the more genteel way of putting it, of course. My version involved a lot of anger, profanity, and threats to use SPYGOD VISION over the telephone.)
That was a day ago. Now I'm looking across the river at Bridgewater and seeing it burn. My Agents tell me the All Stars left some time ago, taking the equipment with them. They left the money they didn't stuff down the guards' gullets behind, but something tells me they won't be needing it where they're going.
Researchers who specialized in breeding rats for experimental studies eventually discovered that, once the population had stabilized, and was working perfectly, all you had to do to !@#$ things up was introduce one more rat. Just one more, and the perfect system collapsed around itself.
Sometimes they even did it for fun.
Am I the bad rat or the good rat, this time? I can't say. All I know for sure is that, unlike the big government that helped spawn that nightmare, I didn't micromanage a gods!@#$ thing, thus condemning those poor, funtastic folks to yet another U-bend of dependency, decadence, and devastation.
I just did what I do best: !@#$ !@#$ up, for America, at taxpayers' expense. The rest is between me, the Gods, and the Hoboken fire department.
(SPYGOD is listening to Welcome Home (Metallica) and drinking coffee like it's going out of style)
Monday, July 25, 2011
7/24/11 - Toon Like Me - Pt. 3
So I got zapped by a Tooninator and turned into a living cartoon, and, for some strange reason, I did not turn real again after the requisite ten minutes of being forced to live out a Warner Brothers featurette. Seeing as how I could no longer properly interact with the real world (and our super-genius is "trying" to jimmy a big !@#$ door down at the South Pole, and can't be here to help me) it was decided that it's "best" if I go to the Bridgewater Institute in scenic Hoboken, where they can help me with my "Animation Sickness."
In other words, they sent me to same place they sent the Cartoon All-Stars, back when our reality decided it'd had enough of them using their madcap physics inside of it. The Toon Ghetto, in other words.
Possibly one of the worst places I have ever been, son. And yours truly has been in and around some very awful institutions. Like that prison camp in Korea, the Ice Palace, and Tokyo Disneyland.
Hell, even the Louve was better than this place. If you were going to film scout a place to shoot some horrible, camera-jerk fright movie where people were fighting for their lives inside a haunted mental hospital, you couldn't do any better than Bridgewater.
The place actually was a lunatic asylum, back in the 19th century, and home to some of the most barbaric "treatment" methods ever devised. Example: they used to pack loonies into tight rooms in the basement for days at a time, without showers, access to the outhouse, or proper feeding, in order to "resocialize" the patients.
That the "resocializing" usually caused the expiration of five or more patients each attempt was beneath their notice. Omelets and eggs, they said, in their quaint, 19th century kind of way.
I hear Hoboken practically had a party when they finally shut the !@#$hole down. But no one could figure out what to do with it, other than try and turn it into a real hospital (failed due to haunting), and then a museum (ditto).
It was then the stately home of a very eccentric occultist who liked being surrounded by ghosts as he did his work. They say that every day he looked a little more pale and a little less there, even to the point where daylight shone right through him.
One day his servants found his clothes flopped in front of his desk, as though he'd just slipped them off and vanished. They took this as permission to raid his safe, take their final paychecks, and run like !@#$.
That was 1978. Five years and one professional technological exorcism later, the building was snatched up by the government on behalf of the Cartoon All Stars. It was staffed by a number caregivers (mostly psychologists, nurses, and doctors), and twice that number of out of work prison guards, all there to make sure the patients didn't try and escape.
These days it's three times the guards to caregivers. That's because the inmates are constantly trying to escape, given their sorry plight and the outright sadism of the guards, which creates a vicious cycle of infraction, punishment, and retaliation.
When I got in, some poor bear with an afro was being clubbed in the courtyard. He'd tried to go over the wall, crying that the television was still out there, somewhere. They could fix it if they just tried. If they just believed.
I don't know which was sadder, the blank looks on his fellow patients' faces, or the fact that the tooninated guards were clearly enjoying this. I didn't get a chance to see any more, though, as I was quickly whisked away in advance of a "brewing riot" that clearly was not going to come anytime this millennium.
Cut to the medical wing, where I got a test or two, performed by one of the toons who actually has something approaching a medical degree. When I made the mistake of telling him I used to watch his show, back in the day, he gave me some excellent advice:
"Shut the !@#$ up with that !@#$ if you want to live, buddy," he hissed, quietly: "This ain't no fan club, and it ain't even a petting zoo. We don't want to be reminded of what we had. We want to be free. And we ain't getting it."
Then he jabbed me in the ass with a very large, very cartoony syringe full of black stuff. I asked what it was for. He shrugged and said "I never know. Might be handy later."
After getting a criss-cross bandage across my butt, they waltzed me down an endless hall and into my room, which was not a cell, but had the horrible feeling of being in one. The window was bricked over, and the door could only be locked from the outside. A naked bulb flickered in the ceiling, and was being used as a singles bar for flies.
Furniture-wise, I had a bed with no sheets, a desk with no chair, and a bookshelf that had cartoon copies of the Bible (courtesy of the Gideons) and Atlas Shrugged (Courtesy of Rappin Ronnie). The Bible'd been gone over with a pen and a florid imagination, so, after a while I took to reading that for laughs.
I needed them. The screaming and crying at night was awful. It would start at one end of the hall and make its way down, one room at a time, with occasional counterpoints from cranky toons telling people to shut the !@#$ up with that !@#$ing noise.
(The ghost of Doctor Boswell Chase walking down the halls did not help, either. Every time he whispered by, mumbling arcane formulas under his breath, he made the temperature drop and the lights flicker. It did get the moaners to shut up for a minute, though. Small favors and all that.)
It took me a few hours and a few suppressed homicidal impulses, but I finally realized that, given my situation, I had an unfair advantage. My bag of tricks around my belt had been Toonified along with me, which meant that I probably had everything I didn't need in the field in them.
So, after a few minutes of frenzied searching, and coming up with every useless gadget under the Sun, I found that I did, indeed, have a pair of earmuffs in there. They were the size of pillows, and miraculously blocked out all concieveable noises.
Relived, I closed my eye and made a line of Zs all night long, hoping that I might wake up in better circumstances. But a bang on the door at 7 in the AM revealed me to still be a Toon.
(SPYGOD is listening to Prison Sex (Tool) and drinking even more Midori)
In other words, they sent me to same place they sent the Cartoon All-Stars, back when our reality decided it'd had enough of them using their madcap physics inside of it. The Toon Ghetto, in other words.
Possibly one of the worst places I have ever been, son. And yours truly has been in and around some very awful institutions. Like that prison camp in Korea, the Ice Palace, and Tokyo Disneyland.
Hell, even the Louve was better than this place. If you were going to film scout a place to shoot some horrible, camera-jerk fright movie where people were fighting for their lives inside a haunted mental hospital, you couldn't do any better than Bridgewater.
The place actually was a lunatic asylum, back in the 19th century, and home to some of the most barbaric "treatment" methods ever devised. Example: they used to pack loonies into tight rooms in the basement for days at a time, without showers, access to the outhouse, or proper feeding, in order to "resocialize" the patients.
That the "resocializing" usually caused the expiration of five or more patients each attempt was beneath their notice. Omelets and eggs, they said, in their quaint, 19th century kind of way.
I hear Hoboken practically had a party when they finally shut the !@#$hole down. But no one could figure out what to do with it, other than try and turn it into a real hospital (failed due to haunting), and then a museum (ditto).
It was then the stately home of a very eccentric occultist who liked being surrounded by ghosts as he did his work. They say that every day he looked a little more pale and a little less there, even to the point where daylight shone right through him.
One day his servants found his clothes flopped in front of his desk, as though he'd just slipped them off and vanished. They took this as permission to raid his safe, take their final paychecks, and run like !@#$.
That was 1978. Five years and one professional technological exorcism later, the building was snatched up by the government on behalf of the Cartoon All Stars. It was staffed by a number caregivers (mostly psychologists, nurses, and doctors), and twice that number of out of work prison guards, all there to make sure the patients didn't try and escape.
These days it's three times the guards to caregivers. That's because the inmates are constantly trying to escape, given their sorry plight and the outright sadism of the guards, which creates a vicious cycle of infraction, punishment, and retaliation.
When I got in, some poor bear with an afro was being clubbed in the courtyard. He'd tried to go over the wall, crying that the television was still out there, somewhere. They could fix it if they just tried. If they just believed.
I don't know which was sadder, the blank looks on his fellow patients' faces, or the fact that the tooninated guards were clearly enjoying this. I didn't get a chance to see any more, though, as I was quickly whisked away in advance of a "brewing riot" that clearly was not going to come anytime this millennium.
Cut to the medical wing, where I got a test or two, performed by one of the toons who actually has something approaching a medical degree. When I made the mistake of telling him I used to watch his show, back in the day, he gave me some excellent advice:
"Shut the !@#$ up with that !@#$ if you want to live, buddy," he hissed, quietly: "This ain't no fan club, and it ain't even a petting zoo. We don't want to be reminded of what we had. We want to be free. And we ain't getting it."
Then he jabbed me in the ass with a very large, very cartoony syringe full of black stuff. I asked what it was for. He shrugged and said "I never know. Might be handy later."
After getting a criss-cross bandage across my butt, they waltzed me down an endless hall and into my room, which was not a cell, but had the horrible feeling of being in one. The window was bricked over, and the door could only be locked from the outside. A naked bulb flickered in the ceiling, and was being used as a singles bar for flies.
Furniture-wise, I had a bed with no sheets, a desk with no chair, and a bookshelf that had cartoon copies of the Bible (courtesy of the Gideons) and Atlas Shrugged (Courtesy of Rappin Ronnie). The Bible'd been gone over with a pen and a florid imagination, so, after a while I took to reading that for laughs.
I needed them. The screaming and crying at night was awful. It would start at one end of the hall and make its way down, one room at a time, with occasional counterpoints from cranky toons telling people to shut the !@#$ up with that !@#$ing noise.
(The ghost of Doctor Boswell Chase walking down the halls did not help, either. Every time he whispered by, mumbling arcane formulas under his breath, he made the temperature drop and the lights flicker. It did get the moaners to shut up for a minute, though. Small favors and all that.)
It took me a few hours and a few suppressed homicidal impulses, but I finally realized that, given my situation, I had an unfair advantage. My bag of tricks around my belt had been Toonified along with me, which meant that I probably had everything I didn't need in the field in them.
So, after a few minutes of frenzied searching, and coming up with every useless gadget under the Sun, I found that I did, indeed, have a pair of earmuffs in there. They were the size of pillows, and miraculously blocked out all concieveable noises.
Relived, I closed my eye and made a line of Zs all night long, hoping that I might wake up in better circumstances. But a bang on the door at 7 in the AM revealed me to still be a Toon.
(SPYGOD is listening to Prison Sex (Tool) and drinking even more Midori)
Sunday, July 24, 2011
7/23/11 Toon Like Me - Pt. 2
Would have written more about the last 48 hours, except that I drank myself under the table in the process. I had so much Midori that my alien love penis turned green, which brought back some nasty flashbacks to my time as an actual cartoon.
So I drank myself under another table, chewed enough tjbang sticks to kill a horde of Mongolian bison on speed, and played Russian Roulette with live grenades. After losing about ten times I finally got some well-deserved sleep, and sometime in the AM I actually hallucinated myself back into wakefulness.
Is this real or a dream? I can't say for certain, son. All I know is that, for two whole days, I was caught in a surreality effect. And in that time as a victim of "Animation Sickness" I learned more about the meaning of life and hell than I have in almost three-quarters of a century.
The Toon Ghetto, otherwise known as the Breakwater Institute of scenic Hoboken, New Jersey, is a massive reminder of the fact that big government often fails us. It's also the site of one of our less proud moments as a free society.
If I asked you how much you remember of the 70's, and some of the crazy things that happened back then, the Cartoon All Stars might or might not ring a bell. A lot of people chalk up their relatively brief time in the spotlight to crazy-quilt advances in video technology, the animation boom, or way too much LSD.
But they were real. Gods help us all, live cartoons once walked amongst us, fighting crime on the streets of New York City.
How did it happen? Well, there's two stories.
Story number one involves a boy named Tommy, a girl named Suzy, and a large television set that once belonged to their crazy Uncle Kermit, who used to invent weird things. The television was magic, and let them enter their favorite shows and interact with them. It also let their cartoon friends enter our world, though they didn't venture out too far.
But then something evil got out of the set, and broke it slightly on its way out, trapping the kids on that side. Fortunately, their cartoon friends could still come into our world, and set out in search of the bad thing that'd gotten out. Meanwhile, they fought crime in their own, cartoony way.
"And so was a legend born..."
Story number two has it that, in a secret government lab, Doctor Kermit (REDACTED) invented an interactive television. The idea was that our agents could walk into them, and then watch and listen in to our enemies at their homes after the interactive television they'd walked into had been swapped out for the target's. The agents would appear as background characters in the target's favorite shows, and, if necessary, step out of them in order to search the premises, do wetwork, or engage in other top secret superspy business.
The only problem was that the television did not work. Agents who went into it either died the moment they entered fictional reality, were attacked by the television shows they entered like bacteria in the bloodstream, or couldn't get out and starved to death. After wasting about ten good agents in this fashion, the powers that be told Doctor K to shove the Interactive Television up his !@#$, and put him to work on something else.
The television in question got tossed out with the junk by an angry, jilted Doctor K. One of the handymen picked it up, took it home, and let his kids watch it. They liked to watch cartoons, as you might expect, and one magical Saturday morning, while flipping channels, the cartoons came out to play.
"... and so was a legend born."
Which story is true? How about "both" and "neither"? You know how SPYGOD works by now, son.
Whichever way it actually happened, the Cartoon All Stars were !@#$ing real.
They could affect us, and be affected by us. But in full allowance of the cartoon physics they brought along with them they couldn't be seriously hurt or killed, or do any serious hurting or killing of their own. The worst they could do was put someone in an overly-overdone body cast with little, criss-cross bandages all over their bodies, and even that was mostly for show.
So, for a time, the streets of New York City were even more !@#$ surreal than usual. You'd be walking through the park, minding your own business, when a cartoon biplane would come zooming in, shooting at a flying squirrel with what might have been a large moose dangling from its feet. A green van would appear at crime scenes to help solve the mystery, a blue hound dog would try and bum a quarter from you, and a talking shark and his retro-futuristic rock band went on tour with KISS.
So what happened? The eighties happened. You know what Rappin' Ronnie did to Wonderwall, then you can only guess what happened to a bunch of walking cartoons.
(And, yes, SPYGOD is also aware of the cosmic irony in that statement. Let's just move on, shall we?)
The good news is that, in spite of certain corporate interest groups' best attempts, the Supreme Court eventually declared these cartoons persons, rather than corporate property. They also won punitive damages against the government for rounding them up in advance of that attempted corporate takeover, though they had no idea at the time what they were going to do with the millions they received.
The bad news is that, when the television they came from stopped working (as televisions eventually do) their ability to interact with the world around them stopped working. They couldn't affect us, anymore, which meant they couldn't eat our food, drink our water, or operate anything with more than two moving parts.
So what do you do with a bunch of starving heroes who can't go back where they came from, anymore? Get them off the streets and get them into high tech therapy, of course. Fortunately, some scientists (like ones who worked with the aforementioned Doctor K) were able to invent the tooninator, which turned real things into cartoons for a short period of time. Such things included cheeseburgers and water, which kept the All Stars from turning into the All Starved.
But in terms of being able to get them to fully interact with the real world? Not a whole lot, son. There was some talk of interaction fields or fiction suits, but the science just was not there in the early 80's. They couldn't even repair the television they came out of, as Doctor K burned all his notes after the last project he worked on, prior to his mysterious death.
All they could do with these wondrous, funtastic folks was to warehouse them, like coma patients. Keep them fed, entertained, and comfortable. Keep them docile as their minds broke down in the face of what could only be a living hell.
Enter Breakwater.
And, the day before yesterday, enter me.
(SPYGOD is listening to Cartoon Heroes (Aqua) and drinking even more Midori.)
So I drank myself under another table, chewed enough tjbang sticks to kill a horde of Mongolian bison on speed, and played Russian Roulette with live grenades. After losing about ten times I finally got some well-deserved sleep, and sometime in the AM I actually hallucinated myself back into wakefulness.
Is this real or a dream? I can't say for certain, son. All I know is that, for two whole days, I was caught in a surreality effect. And in that time as a victim of "Animation Sickness" I learned more about the meaning of life and hell than I have in almost three-quarters of a century.
The Toon Ghetto, otherwise known as the Breakwater Institute of scenic Hoboken, New Jersey, is a massive reminder of the fact that big government often fails us. It's also the site of one of our less proud moments as a free society.
If I asked you how much you remember of the 70's, and some of the crazy things that happened back then, the Cartoon All Stars might or might not ring a bell. A lot of people chalk up their relatively brief time in the spotlight to crazy-quilt advances in video technology, the animation boom, or way too much LSD.
But they were real. Gods help us all, live cartoons once walked amongst us, fighting crime on the streets of New York City.
How did it happen? Well, there's two stories.
Story number one involves a boy named Tommy, a girl named Suzy, and a large television set that once belonged to their crazy Uncle Kermit, who used to invent weird things. The television was magic, and let them enter their favorite shows and interact with them. It also let their cartoon friends enter our world, though they didn't venture out too far.
But then something evil got out of the set, and broke it slightly on its way out, trapping the kids on that side. Fortunately, their cartoon friends could still come into our world, and set out in search of the bad thing that'd gotten out. Meanwhile, they fought crime in their own, cartoony way.
"And so was a legend born..."
Story number two has it that, in a secret government lab, Doctor Kermit (REDACTED) invented an interactive television. The idea was that our agents could walk into them, and then watch and listen in to our enemies at their homes after the interactive television they'd walked into had been swapped out for the target's. The agents would appear as background characters in the target's favorite shows, and, if necessary, step out of them in order to search the premises, do wetwork, or engage in other top secret superspy business.
The only problem was that the television did not work. Agents who went into it either died the moment they entered fictional reality, were attacked by the television shows they entered like bacteria in the bloodstream, or couldn't get out and starved to death. After wasting about ten good agents in this fashion, the powers that be told Doctor K to shove the Interactive Television up his !@#$, and put him to work on something else.
The television in question got tossed out with the junk by an angry, jilted Doctor K. One of the handymen picked it up, took it home, and let his kids watch it. They liked to watch cartoons, as you might expect, and one magical Saturday morning, while flipping channels, the cartoons came out to play.
"... and so was a legend born."
Which story is true? How about "both" and "neither"? You know how SPYGOD works by now, son.
Whichever way it actually happened, the Cartoon All Stars were !@#$ing real.
They could affect us, and be affected by us. But in full allowance of the cartoon physics they brought along with them they couldn't be seriously hurt or killed, or do any serious hurting or killing of their own. The worst they could do was put someone in an overly-overdone body cast with little, criss-cross bandages all over their bodies, and even that was mostly for show.
So, for a time, the streets of New York City were even more !@#$ surreal than usual. You'd be walking through the park, minding your own business, when a cartoon biplane would come zooming in, shooting at a flying squirrel with what might have been a large moose dangling from its feet. A green van would appear at crime scenes to help solve the mystery, a blue hound dog would try and bum a quarter from you, and a talking shark and his retro-futuristic rock band went on tour with KISS.
So what happened? The eighties happened. You know what Rappin' Ronnie did to Wonderwall, then you can only guess what happened to a bunch of walking cartoons.
(And, yes, SPYGOD is also aware of the cosmic irony in that statement. Let's just move on, shall we?)
The good news is that, in spite of certain corporate interest groups' best attempts, the Supreme Court eventually declared these cartoons persons, rather than corporate property. They also won punitive damages against the government for rounding them up in advance of that attempted corporate takeover, though they had no idea at the time what they were going to do with the millions they received.
The bad news is that, when the television they came from stopped working (as televisions eventually do) their ability to interact with the world around them stopped working. They couldn't affect us, anymore, which meant they couldn't eat our food, drink our water, or operate anything with more than two moving parts.
So what do you do with a bunch of starving heroes who can't go back where they came from, anymore? Get them off the streets and get them into high tech therapy, of course. Fortunately, some scientists (like ones who worked with the aforementioned Doctor K) were able to invent the tooninator, which turned real things into cartoons for a short period of time. Such things included cheeseburgers and water, which kept the All Stars from turning into the All Starved.
But in terms of being able to get them to fully interact with the real world? Not a whole lot, son. There was some talk of interaction fields or fiction suits, but the science just was not there in the early 80's. They couldn't even repair the television they came out of, as Doctor K burned all his notes after the last project he worked on, prior to his mysterious death.
All they could do with these wondrous, funtastic folks was to warehouse them, like coma patients. Keep them fed, entertained, and comfortable. Keep them docile as their minds broke down in the face of what could only be a living hell.
Enter Breakwater.
And, the day before yesterday, enter me.
(SPYGOD is listening to Cartoon Heroes (Aqua) and drinking even more Midori.)
Saturday, July 23, 2011
7/22/11 Toon Like Me - Pt.1
And that, son, was yet another extremely bewildering episode. Also very enlightening, which is saying something. So much so that I plan to get absolutely !@#$faced for 24 hours and attempt to forget everything I learned over the last couple days.
Because those were some !@#$ painful times.
Jump back to two days ago, and SPYGOD is in the middle of trying to get back into the pre-NAZISMASH routine. As you might expect, this involves a lot of drinking, chewing tjbang sticks, and shooting at people, occasionally interspersed with spywork, saving the world, and getting some hot Thai ladyboy action after hours, at taxpayers expense, of course.
So it's late and I'm out in my flying car, doing my usual Bangkok Eight/Katooey Alley run, when, halfway between the takeout and the cruising grounds, I get caught in one of those rolling superhero/supervillain dustups that Neo York is famous for. Some massive capes and robbers fiasco that started at a bank, with only two combatants, but quickly attracted the full attention of an entire team of heroes, then a couple of the robber's friends, and eventually made its way down to my part of town.
Now, normally SPYGOD stays the !@#$ out of these kinds of things. They tell me I'm not "on message" in my expert handling of such matters. Apparently the spandex and underwear set would rather subdue or arrest such miscreants, thus sending them back to super-prison to learn how to better ply their trade, rather than introduce them to the concept of the 50. caliber retirement plan.
(And if that doesn't work, this car's got !@#$ under the hood that will kill gods.)
However, it had been a very trying day. The President was doing his best to not-so-subtly remind me that he'd yanked me out of the Ice Palace for not playing nice with the UN. I obviously cannot curse at my Commander in Chief, so I shot my gun under my desk until the need to shoot out the screen subsided, which took the better part of an hour and most of the floor. And things did not improve much from there.
So I looked at the takeout, looked at the fight, looked back at the takeout, thought about the President's special smirk, said "!@#$ it," grabbed every gun I had in easy reach (about 25), and strode out into the dust cloud to shoot some !@#$ in the balls.
Big. !@#$ Mistake.
I don't get three shots off (all confirmed kills, I might add) before I get zapped by a technicolor beam of weird !@#$ from some guy who looks like he escaped from a toy factory. Suddenly I feel woozy and funny, but then nothing. I shoot back, aiming for the sweet spot just over and to the left of the right eye.
My gun goes BANG!, like it's supposed to do. But then a little flag flies out of the barrel and unfurls, saying the word "BANG!" which is it definitely not supposed to do.
Puzzled, I pull the trigger three more times. BANG! BANG! BANG! The flag unfurls three more times, revealing "BANG!" "BANG!" "BANG!"
Mystified, I grab another gun. It's pink and has a rubber chicken sticking out the end.
Horrified, I look at the formerly kick-!@#$ arsenal I'd brought along with me and see that it's been reduced to silly and impossible guns, rubber mallets, toilet plungers, and a very small cannon.
And then, still unbelieving, I take a good look at myself, and discover that not only are my hands pasty white, and possessing of only three fingers, but I'm clearly wearing a frilly pink dress over my uniform.
I suddenly realize that I have become a !@#$ cartoon.
Someone runs by and tells me that Doctor Playgood just zapped me with his Tooninator. Sit it out, take a deep breath, and I'll be back to normal in ten minutes or so. It happens every time he busts out of prison. Really.
Well !@#$ that, say I. I grab the most lethal things I still have left (my hands, of course) and leap into the nearest fray to grab someone's balls and shove them down someone else's throat.
But nothing happens, son. I can't even land a punch that hurts anyone. I think I hear the person who told me what had happened laughing at my expense, but in the red hot rage that consumed me from that point on I'm not 100% sure of anything that happened for a significant period of time.
(CCTV footage has me blowing smoke clouds out my ears, screaming, blowing up like a bomb, and then standing there, black and shriveled and smoking for a few moments before magically returning to "normal." I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, later.)
The battle continued on without any real contributions from yours truly. I sat there, angry and impotent, getting redder and hotter with each growing second until I exploded, again and again, like a supposedly banged-out firecracker that still has some gunpowder in it.
But then the battle was over. And once the villains were in custody (except for the three I'd dirt napped) that same someone was back, asking aloud why I hadn't changed back yet.
Why indeed.
This obviously called for a trip to Dr. Yesterday's lab and a remote examination, courtesy of those creepy sex dwarfs he keeps around the place. But after being one hour into the "should have changed back by now" column, we were still nowhere in the "why hasn't that happened yet?" explanation. The fact that the dwarfs high-tech hinkey-flubber devices do not work on me, and can not even detect that I'm !@#$ there, is not helping anything at all.
All he can tell me, from the safe confines of his office in the Ice Palace, is that the Chandra Eye, or my powers, or the combination of the both, may have reacted strangely with the Tooninator. I might change back in a few hours, a day, a week, or maybe never.
Cue another explosion. Then I need a drink. I go to grab something nasty and alcoholic looking from the doc's secret, under the table stash, but the bottle does not satisfy. I might as well be drinking air.
Doctor Yesterday calmly informs me that, in my current condition, I'm going to need "special help." It just so happens that the Breakwater Institute is over in Hoboken, and they're the best equipped to deal with people suffering from "animation sickness."
In other words, I'm being sent to the Toon Ghetto. I'd ask if I could pack some jammies, first, but something tells me they don't fit, anymore.
(SPYGOD is listening to Hall of Mirrors (Kraftwerk, by way of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and having a Midori)
Because those were some !@#$ painful times.
Jump back to two days ago, and SPYGOD is in the middle of trying to get back into the pre-NAZISMASH routine. As you might expect, this involves a lot of drinking, chewing tjbang sticks, and shooting at people, occasionally interspersed with spywork, saving the world, and getting some hot Thai ladyboy action after hours, at taxpayers expense, of course.
So it's late and I'm out in my flying car, doing my usual Bangkok Eight/Katooey Alley run, when, halfway between the takeout and the cruising grounds, I get caught in one of those rolling superhero/supervillain dustups that Neo York is famous for. Some massive capes and robbers fiasco that started at a bank, with only two combatants, but quickly attracted the full attention of an entire team of heroes, then a couple of the robber's friends, and eventually made its way down to my part of town.
Now, normally SPYGOD stays the !@#$ out of these kinds of things. They tell me I'm not "on message" in my expert handling of such matters. Apparently the spandex and underwear set would rather subdue or arrest such miscreants, thus sending them back to super-prison to learn how to better ply their trade, rather than introduce them to the concept of the 50. caliber retirement plan.
(And if that doesn't work, this car's got !@#$ under the hood that will kill gods.)
However, it had been a very trying day. The President was doing his best to not-so-subtly remind me that he'd yanked me out of the Ice Palace for not playing nice with the UN. I obviously cannot curse at my Commander in Chief, so I shot my gun under my desk until the need to shoot out the screen subsided, which took the better part of an hour and most of the floor. And things did not improve much from there.
So I looked at the takeout, looked at the fight, looked back at the takeout, thought about the President's special smirk, said "!@#$ it," grabbed every gun I had in easy reach (about 25), and strode out into the dust cloud to shoot some !@#$ in the balls.
Big. !@#$ Mistake.
I don't get three shots off (all confirmed kills, I might add) before I get zapped by a technicolor beam of weird !@#$ from some guy who looks like he escaped from a toy factory. Suddenly I feel woozy and funny, but then nothing. I shoot back, aiming for the sweet spot just over and to the left of the right eye.
My gun goes BANG!, like it's supposed to do. But then a little flag flies out of the barrel and unfurls, saying the word "BANG!" which is it definitely not supposed to do.
Puzzled, I pull the trigger three more times. BANG! BANG! BANG! The flag unfurls three more times, revealing "BANG!" "BANG!" "BANG!"
Mystified, I grab another gun. It's pink and has a rubber chicken sticking out the end.
Horrified, I look at the formerly kick-!@#$ arsenal I'd brought along with me and see that it's been reduced to silly and impossible guns, rubber mallets, toilet plungers, and a very small cannon.
And then, still unbelieving, I take a good look at myself, and discover that not only are my hands pasty white, and possessing of only three fingers, but I'm clearly wearing a frilly pink dress over my uniform.
I suddenly realize that I have become a !@#$ cartoon.
Someone runs by and tells me that Doctor Playgood just zapped me with his Tooninator. Sit it out, take a deep breath, and I'll be back to normal in ten minutes or so. It happens every time he busts out of prison. Really.
Well !@#$ that, say I. I grab the most lethal things I still have left (my hands, of course) and leap into the nearest fray to grab someone's balls and shove them down someone else's throat.
But nothing happens, son. I can't even land a punch that hurts anyone. I think I hear the person who told me what had happened laughing at my expense, but in the red hot rage that consumed me from that point on I'm not 100% sure of anything that happened for a significant period of time.
(CCTV footage has me blowing smoke clouds out my ears, screaming, blowing up like a bomb, and then standing there, black and shriveled and smoking for a few moments before magically returning to "normal." I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, later.)
The battle continued on without any real contributions from yours truly. I sat there, angry and impotent, getting redder and hotter with each growing second until I exploded, again and again, like a supposedly banged-out firecracker that still has some gunpowder in it.
But then the battle was over. And once the villains were in custody (except for the three I'd dirt napped) that same someone was back, asking aloud why I hadn't changed back yet.
Why indeed.
This obviously called for a trip to Dr. Yesterday's lab and a remote examination, courtesy of those creepy sex dwarfs he keeps around the place. But after being one hour into the "should have changed back by now" column, we were still nowhere in the "why hasn't that happened yet?" explanation. The fact that the dwarfs high-tech hinkey-flubber devices do not work on me, and can not even detect that I'm !@#$ there, is not helping anything at all.
All he can tell me, from the safe confines of his office in the Ice Palace, is that the Chandra Eye, or my powers, or the combination of the both, may have reacted strangely with the Tooninator. I might change back in a few hours, a day, a week, or maybe never.
Cue another explosion. Then I need a drink. I go to grab something nasty and alcoholic looking from the doc's secret, under the table stash, but the bottle does not satisfy. I might as well be drinking air.
Doctor Yesterday calmly informs me that, in my current condition, I'm going to need "special help." It just so happens that the Breakwater Institute is over in Hoboken, and they're the best equipped to deal with people suffering from "animation sickness."
In other words, I'm being sent to the Toon Ghetto. I'd ask if I could pack some jammies, first, but something tells me they don't fit, anymore.
(SPYGOD is listening to Hall of Mirrors (Kraftwerk, by way of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and having a Midori)
Thursday, July 21, 2011
7/20-21/11 - GORGON: No Hat, No Rabbit
When I was a child, I was traumatized by many things. One was my crazy uncle's forced trip to such a magic show, and the requisite pulling of a rabbit from a hat. I always wondered where the rabbit went to when the hat was worn.
I asked my uncle, but he told me to shut up and enjoy the show. "It's not fun if there's no mystery, (NAME REDACTED)" he said, as though I'd asked him how God and the Virgin Mary had done the deed.
So I imagined the answer. I thought there might be some little house for the poor fellow, tucked away inside that tall hat. He smiled to think that he might sit there, surrounded by rabbit-sized furniture like the animals in the illustrations from Wind in the Willows, eating carrots, !@#$ing, and generally looking as stupid as a Democrat who's lost his protest sign.
A week later we passed by the same theater. Someone took a trash can out and on the top was the same rabbit, dead. Flies were playing gin rummy across its pink eyes and looking for nice, moist places to drop their worm-babies.
You could have knocked me over with a lovetap. As it was, my uncle just boxed my ear and told me not to dawdle. This was the bad part of town, apparently.
So no, I never liked magic shows. They remind me of real life just a little too much. Only real life has a lot more blood and horror.
In real life you saw through the box and the pretty girl's in pieces, instead of grinning with her legs tucked up under her chin. In real life generals and majors say "abracadabra" or "presto" when they push the button down on nasty toys that kill thousands. (No joke.)
In real life the show stopper really does what it says it does, and applies it to entire countries.
That and I never ever trusted a tall, smiling man with a black tophat. My analyst would say that's psychic debris left over from the costumed villains we used to fight after the War, but my analyst also says I should be ten kinds of medication and in aversion therapy.
(That's why I shot him in the face with alien love god penis pellets the last time I saw him, about ten years ago. I wonder if he ever got over that psychic debris? Must remember to visit him where he's hiding, in Miami.)
You may be wondering why I'm bringing all this stuff up, son. Well, it's because while SPYGOD was off at SPYGOD SCOUT CAMP, the folks at GORGON decided to pull out of West Papua.
I had some people there, keeping an eye on things (if you'll pardon the triple entendre there) and, about last Wednesday or so, moving day occurred. Thousands of people who'd clearly been False Faces just vanished, leaving some towns and villages almost completely deserted. Sometimes they killed their families, friends, and neighbors on the way out, sometimes they left without leaving a mark.
On Thursday morning, about 8:45 in the AM, the sea boiled open with dozens of large submarines of uncertain make and model. Streams of dangerous-looking folks drove their high-tech personnel carriers through the streets of Erwang, on the Southern coast.
And when they had left, and authorities moved in, the entire town was full of human shapes with no minds or memories left. I think we know what that means, don't we?
So they're gone. Again. Which makes me wonder if they were ever really there. Was this entire episode just a feint after I pointed my finger at them and said "bang"? Or were they really in West Papua all along, but when I went after ABWEHR, instead, they had enough time to bug out?
This is the problem with this kind of work. You try and stay ahead of the doom curve, but most of the time you never know the full truth until it's either too late or academic.
You never know where the rabbit meets the hat until the poor bunny's flopped over a bushel of rotting carrots in a greasy alley, somewhere.
Not that this is a dead end, of course. I have allies under the sea. They couldn't move that many subs around without someone noticing. There will be a round two.
I just hope I'm not too late to stop whatever they've got planned next. If they had that many people false-faced in West Papua of all places, I shudder to think how many people they've got elsewhere, and who.
And if I'm worried, you should be petrified.
(SPYGOD is listening to Abracadabra (Steve Miller Band, remixed) and having some very strong coffee)
I asked my uncle, but he told me to shut up and enjoy the show. "It's not fun if there's no mystery, (NAME REDACTED)" he said, as though I'd asked him how God and the Virgin Mary had done the deed.
So I imagined the answer. I thought there might be some little house for the poor fellow, tucked away inside that tall hat. He smiled to think that he might sit there, surrounded by rabbit-sized furniture like the animals in the illustrations from Wind in the Willows, eating carrots, !@#$ing, and generally looking as stupid as a Democrat who's lost his protest sign.
A week later we passed by the same theater. Someone took a trash can out and on the top was the same rabbit, dead. Flies were playing gin rummy across its pink eyes and looking for nice, moist places to drop their worm-babies.
You could have knocked me over with a lovetap. As it was, my uncle just boxed my ear and told me not to dawdle. This was the bad part of town, apparently.
So no, I never liked magic shows. They remind me of real life just a little too much. Only real life has a lot more blood and horror.
In real life you saw through the box and the pretty girl's in pieces, instead of grinning with her legs tucked up under her chin. In real life generals and majors say "abracadabra" or "presto" when they push the button down on nasty toys that kill thousands. (No joke.)
In real life the show stopper really does what it says it does, and applies it to entire countries.
That and I never ever trusted a tall, smiling man with a black tophat. My analyst would say that's psychic debris left over from the costumed villains we used to fight after the War, but my analyst also says I should be ten kinds of medication and in aversion therapy.
(That's why I shot him in the face with alien love god penis pellets the last time I saw him, about ten years ago. I wonder if he ever got over that psychic debris? Must remember to visit him where he's hiding, in Miami.)
You may be wondering why I'm bringing all this stuff up, son. Well, it's because while SPYGOD was off at SPYGOD SCOUT CAMP, the folks at GORGON decided to pull out of West Papua.
I had some people there, keeping an eye on things (if you'll pardon the triple entendre there) and, about last Wednesday or so, moving day occurred. Thousands of people who'd clearly been False Faces just vanished, leaving some towns and villages almost completely deserted. Sometimes they killed their families, friends, and neighbors on the way out, sometimes they left without leaving a mark.
On Thursday morning, about 8:45 in the AM, the sea boiled open with dozens of large submarines of uncertain make and model. Streams of dangerous-looking folks drove their high-tech personnel carriers through the streets of Erwang, on the Southern coast.
And when they had left, and authorities moved in, the entire town was full of human shapes with no minds or memories left. I think we know what that means, don't we?
So they're gone. Again. Which makes me wonder if they were ever really there. Was this entire episode just a feint after I pointed my finger at them and said "bang"? Or were they really in West Papua all along, but when I went after ABWEHR, instead, they had enough time to bug out?
This is the problem with this kind of work. You try and stay ahead of the doom curve, but most of the time you never know the full truth until it's either too late or academic.
You never know where the rabbit meets the hat until the poor bunny's flopped over a bushel of rotting carrots in a greasy alley, somewhere.
Not that this is a dead end, of course. I have allies under the sea. They couldn't move that many subs around without someone noticing. There will be a round two.
I just hope I'm not too late to stop whatever they've got planned next. If they had that many people false-faced in West Papua of all places, I shudder to think how many people they've got elsewhere, and who.
And if I'm worried, you should be petrified.
(SPYGOD is listening to Abracadabra (Steve Miller Band, remixed) and having some very strong coffee)
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
7/19/11 - SPYGOD SCOUTS: At Play in the Fields of an Absent God
One of my favorite Presidents once said that when you're in a horrible place inside, and everything around you's gone !@#$ over !@#$ in a boiling sea of !@#$, the best thing to do is grab some young folks, go out into the wilderness, and show them its wonders for a time.
That was Teddy Roosevelt, of course. He told me that not long after he'd killed two shape-shifting aliens masquerading as lions, and was still deciding whether to wash off their chartreuse blood or wear it back to camp like it was woad.
(He didn't know they weren't lions when he jumped them, armed with nothing but a bowie knife, a rock, and his teeth, but that's another story.)
So I guess that it was a stroke of cosmic luck that, after being unceremoniously relieved of my direct oversight of former supernazi territory by executive order, it just happened to be time for the annual SPYGOD SCOUT SATURNALIA.
(And look! I already had my bags backed and everything. Why thank you, Mr. President. Thank you so very !@#$ much.)
SPYGOD SCOUT SATURNALIA, I hear you asking? Surely you've heard of it. If the hills are alive with the sound of exploding insect repellent cans, badly drunk teenagers, and fast cars, then it can only mean that the Boy Scouts have been let loose, and you should lock up your girls.
If, on the other hand, you can't hear anything it all, that means we're in town.
All over the country, for a full week in July, thousands of bright-minded, young men and women converge on a spot picked less than 24 hours before (security purposes). After the requisite body scans, they enter the portal, and are allowed entry to the tesseract confines of B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P.3, where a week's worth of adventure, education, and fun await.
B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P.3 is a portable pocket dimension that's kept aboard The Flier most of the year. It roughly corresponds to the dimensions and environment of Earth, but seems to have no signs of habitation or previous civilization. It's essentially what the world would have been like if the dinosaurs had not died out, and the apes hadn't been around to evolve into us, which makes it both humbling and perfect for our needs.
(And, no, I'm not going to tell you what happened to B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P.s 1 and 2, son. That's well above your pay grade.)
What happens at the Saturnalia? Everything your parents warned you about, of course.
Hiking through unspoiled territory and building huge, lashed-together forts across its landscape for protection against cunning, prehistoric predators. Flying on the backs of tamed pterodactyls, dropping bombs on herds of ground creatures, and gliding down to the ground in bat suits.
Rafting and canoeing through dinosaur-infested waters, and shooting the living !@#$ out of anything that dares break the surface. Then bringing the fight to the underwater critters with snorkeling gear and harpoon guns, and feasting on the kill.
Learning to clean, dress, and cook things that haven't walked the Earth in millions of years. Discovering how to live off the land, even in extreme conditions.
Making your own still out of basic materials that can be found on any college campus or hardware supply store. Drug recipes that will get you safely and legally high on the cheap, or get others killed or bombed into submission.
The sharing of deadly martial arts, weapons, and pharmacological know-how that'll keep anyone in good stead for the rest of their lives, no matter what career they may need to go into. Linguistic martial arts that can be applied to everyday conversation, business rooms, political structures, or entire societies.
And above all, pride. Pride in country and patriotism. Pride in personal accomplishment. Pride in the team, the group, the whole.
Pride in one's self, and all the things that self encompasses.
I started SPYGOD SCOUTS in the early 80's, when it became shockingly clear to me that most organizations for America's youth were either communist-inspired attempts to mine their enthusiasm and energy for cheap labor, or paramilitary outfits that, in spite of their many good qualities, had no time or patience for the weird, the outcast, the socially maladjusted, or the gay.
It didn't take a clairvoyant to see what direction America's youth was headed at the time (though I do have a few on the payroll). Alienation and rage, coupled with stifling conformity, a failed education system that looked at collegiate ends rather than means and its overall mission, a medical industry all too eager to over-medicate the odd and different, and overreaching, paternalistic attitudes that would have made Ayn Rand !@#$ herself.
What does all that equal? Take any school shooting, any teen suicide, any gang banger, dropout, O.D., or youthful misfit turned self-destructive that doesn't make it in music or showbiz, and then you tell me.
Those kids could have been saved.
Someone could have taken them by the hand and told them that they were special. Told them that their lives meant something. Insisted that, regardless of what the jerks in Troop 200 told them late at night, when the adults were out smoking and playing poker, they had something to contribute other than being the designated stress relief or punching bag.
They could have been out there kicking ass in any number of professions, fixing the country's problems, defending its borders, or serving the common good. Instead they're on death row, or already past it.
So I got some strings pulled and made this organization, and still keep an eye on its running. Every year, at saturnalia, I am there to lead, but also to step back and let them step forward, singly or in groups. And I only intervene when things get out of hand.
(Like that one time that one kid made a gods-!@#$ tyrannosaurus rex stampede happen. Clever little !@#$. He makes six figures working for us on animal control projects, now. Live your dreams, kids.)
Of course, not everyone out there gets it. I get beefs from parents groups and religious organizations all the !@#$ time.
They complain about the alcohol? I tell them these kids are growing up understanding what it is, how to use it socially and responsibly, and will therefore be less likely to turn into lushes when they get to college.
Can they say the same? No.
They complain about the co-ed showers? I tell them these kids are growing up without as many body issues or unhealthy attitudes towards sex, and will therefore be less likely to make complete !@#$ fools of themselves when it comes to handling such matters.
Can they say the same? !@#$ no.
They complain about the guns, blood, and guts? I tell them that America was founded on the understanding that, when reason fails and the other guy is not going to listen to you, it's time to beat their face in with a big !@#$ rock. It's just that our rocks fire caseless ammunition at ludicrous speeds and pulp a mature stegosaurus in less than three seconds.
Can they say the same? You guessed it. !@#$ !@#$ the !@#$ no.
But I think the best sign that we're doing something good and right here is the most obvious one. Whenever someone high and mighty gets caught doing something down and dirty, and they're facing either the court of public opinion or the real thing (maybe both) the first thing out of anyone's mouth is one of two things. Either they say "oh, but he was a choirboy!" or "oh, but he was an Eagle Scout!"
Have you ever heard anyone say "Oh, but s/he was a SPYGOD SCOUT!"? No you have not. And that means that either we're doing the better job of creating America's future leaders, or we're teaching them how not to get caught.
Around the end of the week, as I watched team after team of suntanned, scraped, and amazingly happy young men and women tromp up with their accomplishments, and cheer all rivals on with genuine pride and enthusiasm, I thought about all the crazy, backbiting !@#$ I've had to put up with over the last couple years (some of which I started, admittedly) and realized that none of it means a !@#$ thing. Not in the face of this one, perfect week that always comes too slowly and ends too soon.
Unlike the dinosaur hooch, which leaves you with one !@#$ of a hangover but never fails to make you feel like a real human being.
GORGON might be the death of me yet, somehow. But standing there, trying not to cry like a little wuss when they all marched out into the real world, ready to bite its throat out with their teeth, I knew that it's all worth it. Every !@#$ bit.
(Kicking Robert Baden-Powell in the junk might have been a bit over the top, of course. But the bastard had it coming.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Sound of Sunday (Joonas Hahmo) and nursing a massive dinosaur hooch hangover. Bring Aspirin)
That was Teddy Roosevelt, of course. He told me that not long after he'd killed two shape-shifting aliens masquerading as lions, and was still deciding whether to wash off their chartreuse blood or wear it back to camp like it was woad.
(He didn't know they weren't lions when he jumped them, armed with nothing but a bowie knife, a rock, and his teeth, but that's another story.)
So I guess that it was a stroke of cosmic luck that, after being unceremoniously relieved of my direct oversight of former supernazi territory by executive order, it just happened to be time for the annual SPYGOD SCOUT SATURNALIA.
(And look! I already had my bags backed and everything. Why thank you, Mr. President. Thank you so very !@#$ much.)
SPYGOD SCOUT SATURNALIA, I hear you asking? Surely you've heard of it. If the hills are alive with the sound of exploding insect repellent cans, badly drunk teenagers, and fast cars, then it can only mean that the Boy Scouts have been let loose, and you should lock up your girls.
If, on the other hand, you can't hear anything it all, that means we're in town.
All over the country, for a full week in July, thousands of bright-minded, young men and women converge on a spot picked less than 24 hours before (security purposes). After the requisite body scans, they enter the portal, and are allowed entry to the tesseract confines of B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P.3, where a week's worth of adventure, education, and fun await.
B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P.3 is a portable pocket dimension that's kept aboard The Flier most of the year. It roughly corresponds to the dimensions and environment of Earth, but seems to have no signs of habitation or previous civilization. It's essentially what the world would have been like if the dinosaurs had not died out, and the apes hadn't been around to evolve into us, which makes it both humbling and perfect for our needs.
(And, no, I'm not going to tell you what happened to B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P.s 1 and 2, son. That's well above your pay grade.)
What happens at the Saturnalia? Everything your parents warned you about, of course.
Hiking through unspoiled territory and building huge, lashed-together forts across its landscape for protection against cunning, prehistoric predators. Flying on the backs of tamed pterodactyls, dropping bombs on herds of ground creatures, and gliding down to the ground in bat suits.
Rafting and canoeing through dinosaur-infested waters, and shooting the living !@#$ out of anything that dares break the surface. Then bringing the fight to the underwater critters with snorkeling gear and harpoon guns, and feasting on the kill.
Learning to clean, dress, and cook things that haven't walked the Earth in millions of years. Discovering how to live off the land, even in extreme conditions.
Making your own still out of basic materials that can be found on any college campus or hardware supply store. Drug recipes that will get you safely and legally high on the cheap, or get others killed or bombed into submission.
The sharing of deadly martial arts, weapons, and pharmacological know-how that'll keep anyone in good stead for the rest of their lives, no matter what career they may need to go into. Linguistic martial arts that can be applied to everyday conversation, business rooms, political structures, or entire societies.
And above all, pride. Pride in country and patriotism. Pride in personal accomplishment. Pride in the team, the group, the whole.
Pride in one's self, and all the things that self encompasses.
I started SPYGOD SCOUTS in the early 80's, when it became shockingly clear to me that most organizations for America's youth were either communist-inspired attempts to mine their enthusiasm and energy for cheap labor, or paramilitary outfits that, in spite of their many good qualities, had no time or patience for the weird, the outcast, the socially maladjusted, or the gay.
It didn't take a clairvoyant to see what direction America's youth was headed at the time (though I do have a few on the payroll). Alienation and rage, coupled with stifling conformity, a failed education system that looked at collegiate ends rather than means and its overall mission, a medical industry all too eager to over-medicate the odd and different, and overreaching, paternalistic attitudes that would have made Ayn Rand !@#$ herself.
What does all that equal? Take any school shooting, any teen suicide, any gang banger, dropout, O.D., or youthful misfit turned self-destructive that doesn't make it in music or showbiz, and then you tell me.
Those kids could have been saved.
Someone could have taken them by the hand and told them that they were special. Told them that their lives meant something. Insisted that, regardless of what the jerks in Troop 200 told them late at night, when the adults were out smoking and playing poker, they had something to contribute other than being the designated stress relief or punching bag.
They could have been out there kicking ass in any number of professions, fixing the country's problems, defending its borders, or serving the common good. Instead they're on death row, or already past it.
So I got some strings pulled and made this organization, and still keep an eye on its running. Every year, at saturnalia, I am there to lead, but also to step back and let them step forward, singly or in groups. And I only intervene when things get out of hand.
(Like that one time that one kid made a gods-!@#$ tyrannosaurus rex stampede happen. Clever little !@#$. He makes six figures working for us on animal control projects, now. Live your dreams, kids.)
Of course, not everyone out there gets it. I get beefs from parents groups and religious organizations all the !@#$ time.
They complain about the alcohol? I tell them these kids are growing up understanding what it is, how to use it socially and responsibly, and will therefore be less likely to turn into lushes when they get to college.
Can they say the same? No.
They complain about the co-ed showers? I tell them these kids are growing up without as many body issues or unhealthy attitudes towards sex, and will therefore be less likely to make complete !@#$ fools of themselves when it comes to handling such matters.
Can they say the same? !@#$ no.
They complain about the guns, blood, and guts? I tell them that America was founded on the understanding that, when reason fails and the other guy is not going to listen to you, it's time to beat their face in with a big !@#$ rock. It's just that our rocks fire caseless ammunition at ludicrous speeds and pulp a mature stegosaurus in less than three seconds.
Can they say the same? You guessed it. !@#$ !@#$ the !@#$ no.
But I think the best sign that we're doing something good and right here is the most obvious one. Whenever someone high and mighty gets caught doing something down and dirty, and they're facing either the court of public opinion or the real thing (maybe both) the first thing out of anyone's mouth is one of two things. Either they say "oh, but he was a choirboy!" or "oh, but he was an Eagle Scout!"
Have you ever heard anyone say "Oh, but s/he was a SPYGOD SCOUT!"? No you have not. And that means that either we're doing the better job of creating America's future leaders, or we're teaching them how not to get caught.
Around the end of the week, as I watched team after team of suntanned, scraped, and amazingly happy young men and women tromp up with their accomplishments, and cheer all rivals on with genuine pride and enthusiasm, I thought about all the crazy, backbiting !@#$ I've had to put up with over the last couple years (some of which I started, admittedly) and realized that none of it means a !@#$ thing. Not in the face of this one, perfect week that always comes too slowly and ends too soon.
Unlike the dinosaur hooch, which leaves you with one !@#$ of a hangover but never fails to make you feel like a real human being.
GORGON might be the death of me yet, somehow. But standing there, trying not to cry like a little wuss when they all marched out into the real world, ready to bite its throat out with their teeth, I knew that it's all worth it. Every !@#$ bit.
(Kicking Robert Baden-Powell in the junk might have been a bit over the top, of course. But the bastard had it coming.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Sound of Sunday (Joonas Hahmo) and nursing a massive dinosaur hooch hangover. Bring Aspirin)
Monday, July 18, 2011
7/18/11 - The Big !@#$ Story So Far
SPYGOD. Immortal. Superpowered. Drunk.
Highly conservative. Queer as !@#$. Out as Hell.
The man who killed Hitler with his bare hands, saved the lives of three Presidents (but had to shoot one), and safeguarded the world more times than he'd care to count. Really.
Leader of The COMPANY. Resident of The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. Head of SPYGOD SCOUTS.
Owner of METALMAID and one of the last few flying spy cars left in existence.
(Also, the one they call in when a "strategic asset" (read: Superhuman) has to take a dirt nap. Please do not remind him of this.)
For the last few decades since the War (read: World War II), SPYGOD has been a major player in the international spy game, overseeing the careful zero-sum dance that has kept the world from being annihilated in a nuclear holocaust, invaded by aliens, eaten by otherworldly entities, or worse.
This has largely involved a hideous kind of detente with the sort of organizations that, in a sane and rational world, would have been wiped out ages ago. However, that might cause consequences that could lead to the aforementioned annihilation, leading to the perverse equation that states it's better to lose dozens, maybe hundreds, of innocent lives each year than risk billions.
This year, he decided to !@#$ that !@#$ in the ear. With one very large explosion he put the world's science terrorist and supervillain organizations on notice that they were on the way to destruction.
All their asses are belong to him.
This controversial decision made him something of a hero pariah amongst the international spy community, but, seeing as he is who and what he is, SPYGOD gets what SPYGOD wants. Usually. Which is why, not long after pointing the finger, he took the first step towards a superterrorist-free world and invaded ABWEHR's Ice Palace in Antarctica.
Of course, taking territory is only a third of the battle. The other two are holding it, and convincing people back home it's worth having. SPYGOD's never been so good at those, which is why he was helped (read: undermined) by the United Nations, liaised with his personal nemesis, strategic talent Mr. USA.
(In the UN's defense, no one -- not even SPYGOD -- expected to find a genuine alien artifact, a hideous breeding program, and a super-shoggoth at the South Pole after the invasion. Maybe it would be better to let the world's scientists deal with these complications. Just don't tell SPYGOD we said this or he'll nuke our balls with SPYGODVISION or something)
While dealing with the remnants of ABWEHR, SPYGOD was busy planning the demise of the next organization on his hit list: GORGON. The chance discovery of a new secret power allowed him to find out that the group was routing its communications through the wondrous global defense platform codenamed Deep Ten. This knowledge, in turn, allowed him to "punk" them (as the kids say these days) thus tricking them into revealing their true location.
The only problem was that they were waiting for him to invade, and set out several nasty operatives to fight him.
It did not go well. Really. But somehow he survived, alone, to tell the tale.
There was no call for celebration this time, though. And when he got the letter that the President wanted him out of the South Pole, he was hardly surprised.
"What now?" We hear you asking. Always with the "What now?" !@#$ it.
Pay attention and you'll find out, one day at a time.
(SPYGOD is listening to Secret Agent Man (DEVO) and bombed out of his skull on bad homemade drugs)
Highly conservative. Queer as !@#$. Out as Hell.
The man who killed Hitler with his bare hands, saved the lives of three Presidents (but had to shoot one), and safeguarded the world more times than he'd care to count. Really.
Leader of The COMPANY. Resident of The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. Head of SPYGOD SCOUTS.
Owner of METALMAID and one of the last few flying spy cars left in existence.
(Also, the one they call in when a "strategic asset" (read: Superhuman) has to take a dirt nap. Please do not remind him of this.)
For the last few decades since the War (read: World War II), SPYGOD has been a major player in the international spy game, overseeing the careful zero-sum dance that has kept the world from being annihilated in a nuclear holocaust, invaded by aliens, eaten by otherworldly entities, or worse.
This has largely involved a hideous kind of detente with the sort of organizations that, in a sane and rational world, would have been wiped out ages ago. However, that might cause consequences that could lead to the aforementioned annihilation, leading to the perverse equation that states it's better to lose dozens, maybe hundreds, of innocent lives each year than risk billions.
This year, he decided to !@#$ that !@#$ in the ear. With one very large explosion he put the world's science terrorist and supervillain organizations on notice that they were on the way to destruction.
All their asses are belong to him.
This controversial decision made him something of a hero pariah amongst the international spy community, but, seeing as he is who and what he is, SPYGOD gets what SPYGOD wants. Usually. Which is why, not long after pointing the finger, he took the first step towards a superterrorist-free world and invaded ABWEHR's Ice Palace in Antarctica.
Of course, taking territory is only a third of the battle. The other two are holding it, and convincing people back home it's worth having. SPYGOD's never been so good at those, which is why he was helped (read: undermined) by the United Nations, liaised with his personal nemesis, strategic talent Mr. USA.
(In the UN's defense, no one -- not even SPYGOD -- expected to find a genuine alien artifact, a hideous breeding program, and a super-shoggoth at the South Pole after the invasion. Maybe it would be better to let the world's scientists deal with these complications. Just don't tell SPYGOD we said this or he'll nuke our balls with SPYGODVISION or something)
While dealing with the remnants of ABWEHR, SPYGOD was busy planning the demise of the next organization on his hit list: GORGON. The chance discovery of a new secret power allowed him to find out that the group was routing its communications through the wondrous global defense platform codenamed Deep Ten. This knowledge, in turn, allowed him to "punk" them (as the kids say these days) thus tricking them into revealing their true location.
The only problem was that they were waiting for him to invade, and set out several nasty operatives to fight him.
It did not go well. Really. But somehow he survived, alone, to tell the tale.
There was no call for celebration this time, though. And when he got the letter that the President wanted him out of the South Pole, he was hardly surprised.
"What now?" We hear you asking. Always with the "What now?" !@#$ it.
Pay attention and you'll find out, one day at a time.
(SPYGOD is listening to Secret Agent Man (DEVO) and bombed out of his skull on bad homemade drugs)
Saturday, July 9, 2011
NOTICE
SPYGOD will be on classified maneuvers until 7/17/11.
During that time he is not to be called, contacted, or handed new assignments.
Also, don't talk about him behind his back or he'll know.
During that time he is not to be called, contacted, or handed new assignments.
Also, don't talk about him behind his back or he'll know.
7/7-9/11 - Some Other Beginning's End
It's been a few days, but I have been genuinely busy.
Busy packing, that is.
It took a while, but I finally got the memo. It was sitting on my bed in the Ice Palace, wrapped in an official envelope and garlanded with all the official menace the President of the United States could embody in the "to" line.
Of course, it was being used by one of my "guests" to fan himself. "You got mail," he cooed, not realizing it meant the party was over.
What did it say? Four things: me; the Ice Palace; no longer; as soon as yesterday.
I can't say I haven't been expecting this. I knew it was in the cards as soon as Mr. USA got down here with the UN and, looking at what we'd been up to since we took it over, rolled his eyes so far back into his head it's a wonder he couldn't read his own !@#$ mind.
If anything, I'm surprised I didn't get recalled sooner. I figured we had less than a month, anyway, so being one week short isn't too terrible.
(I do owe Carl a fiver, though. He called it. Bastard.)
So it's time to clean up, then. Time to pack it up, put it away, tear it down.
Closing time, as the song goes.
Time to collect the cold weather gear and the guns. Put them in boxes. Account for every bullet fired, every piece of equipment used, abused, and lost.
Time to sweep up the bottles. Clean up the glass. Toss it somewhere to be recycled, knowing it'll be swirling in a trash vortex in the Pacific, this time next week.
Time to send the tranny hookers back to Jo'berg. Give them a last slap on the ass to say thanks. Maybe a few Hamiltons in the bra for the good ones.
Time to take our !@#$ out of the commissary. Toss our food out into the snow. Laugh quietly as the Blue Helmets learn to cook the exciting local cuisine on their own.
Time to figure out what we're going to do with the kids. I think the leftie commie pinko reporter I've collected is going to see about getting them to Neo York as part of the immersion process. I'll see he gets the way as greased as possible, but I won't tell him it was me that did it.
(SPYGOD likes doing things like that. Just don't tell anyone, son. They'll start to think I've gone soft in my old age.)
And then, finally, it'll be time to do the one thing I really !@#$ hate doing. I will personally see to the handing over of all relevant files, sensor logs, and information that The COMPANY collected before, during, and after our taking of the base.
All the evidence we've gathered, all the supernazi corpses we made, all the crazy science we trashed, and all the unofficial souvenirs we were planning on taking until the U-!@#$ing-N showed up to ruin the party. All cataloged, numbered, and handed over for posterity.
Finally-finally, I have to give Mr. USA everything we know about The Chamber, except for the one crucial thing we can't help them with. Namely, getting the damn door open again.
I know he'll demand to know what I do, but I'll tell him I know nothing. And I will say that knowing that he can't force me to tell him the truth because he's never been able to tell when I'm lying.
How do you see the falsehoods in a glass eye?
But I also know he's got a backup plan. Dr. Yesterday's already been contacted, and he and his family are doubtlessly already enroute to Neuschwabenland as we speak.
I'm sure that, given enough time, the world's greatest scientist will doubtlessly crack the case of The Chamber's door, just as he's cracked just about every other thing that America's placed on his desk.
Maybe. Or... maybe not.
You see, I know something that Mr. USA does not. Or, more accurately, I know something that Mr. USA has chosen not to remember. Something about another closing time, a long time ago, when we were bugging out of Europe and taking certain things and people with us.
Not all the people who left were the same people who arrived. Some changes were made to the manifest. Some alterations performed, both out of a sense of national security and human decency.
And some of those alterations, known only to a select few, are the sort of things that tend to engender extreme gratitude, resulting in the occasional large favor.
So yeah, I'm blackmailing a mega-genius into pretending his xeno-retro-engineering skills aren't up to this task. I don't know how long he can keep it up, or how long he'll have to. But so long as he can keep that door shut, I'll consider his debt to me paid in full.
(For now.)
One last stroll around my bachelor pad. One last piss out of the broken window onto the floor below. One last attempt to bean a Blue Helmet with pellets from my magnificent alien love god penis.
On the way out of Vietnam, the radio station said "Goodbye, and see you next war." We'll be back, somehow. We always do.
It's why I smile when Randolph Scott looks at me, as I walk past him and those kids, and asks "what now?" I could tell him, but then I'd have to kill him.
And where would be the fun in that?
Outside the blast doors, Antarctica is a sheet of bright, blinding light. SPYGOD vision changes the whiteout into distinct shapes, all buffeted by flashy motes in the wind. I chew on a tjbang stick, grin like the devil just sucked my !@#$ for a quarter, and leave.
For now.
(SPYGOD is listening to Closing Time (Semisonic) and drinking a flask of Regal Lemon Gin)
Busy packing, that is.
It took a while, but I finally got the memo. It was sitting on my bed in the Ice Palace, wrapped in an official envelope and garlanded with all the official menace the President of the United States could embody in the "to" line.
Of course, it was being used by one of my "guests" to fan himself. "You got mail," he cooed, not realizing it meant the party was over.
What did it say? Four things: me; the Ice Palace; no longer; as soon as yesterday.
I can't say I haven't been expecting this. I knew it was in the cards as soon as Mr. USA got down here with the UN and, looking at what we'd been up to since we took it over, rolled his eyes so far back into his head it's a wonder he couldn't read his own !@#$ mind.
If anything, I'm surprised I didn't get recalled sooner. I figured we had less than a month, anyway, so being one week short isn't too terrible.
(I do owe Carl a fiver, though. He called it. Bastard.)
So it's time to clean up, then. Time to pack it up, put it away, tear it down.
Closing time, as the song goes.
Time to collect the cold weather gear and the guns. Put them in boxes. Account for every bullet fired, every piece of equipment used, abused, and lost.
Time to sweep up the bottles. Clean up the glass. Toss it somewhere to be recycled, knowing it'll be swirling in a trash vortex in the Pacific, this time next week.
Time to send the tranny hookers back to Jo'berg. Give them a last slap on the ass to say thanks. Maybe a few Hamiltons in the bra for the good ones.
Time to take our !@#$ out of the commissary. Toss our food out into the snow. Laugh quietly as the Blue Helmets learn to cook the exciting local cuisine on their own.
Time to figure out what we're going to do with the kids. I think the leftie commie pinko reporter I've collected is going to see about getting them to Neo York as part of the immersion process. I'll see he gets the way as greased as possible, but I won't tell him it was me that did it.
(SPYGOD likes doing things like that. Just don't tell anyone, son. They'll start to think I've gone soft in my old age.)
And then, finally, it'll be time to do the one thing I really !@#$ hate doing. I will personally see to the handing over of all relevant files, sensor logs, and information that The COMPANY collected before, during, and after our taking of the base.
All the evidence we've gathered, all the supernazi corpses we made, all the crazy science we trashed, and all the unofficial souvenirs we were planning on taking until the U-!@#$ing-N showed up to ruin the party. All cataloged, numbered, and handed over for posterity.
Finally-finally, I have to give Mr. USA everything we know about The Chamber, except for the one crucial thing we can't help them with. Namely, getting the damn door open again.
I know he'll demand to know what I do, but I'll tell him I know nothing. And I will say that knowing that he can't force me to tell him the truth because he's never been able to tell when I'm lying.
How do you see the falsehoods in a glass eye?
But I also know he's got a backup plan. Dr. Yesterday's already been contacted, and he and his family are doubtlessly already enroute to Neuschwabenland as we speak.
I'm sure that, given enough time, the world's greatest scientist will doubtlessly crack the case of The Chamber's door, just as he's cracked just about every other thing that America's placed on his desk.
Maybe. Or... maybe not.
You see, I know something that Mr. USA does not. Or, more accurately, I know something that Mr. USA has chosen not to remember. Something about another closing time, a long time ago, when we were bugging out of Europe and taking certain things and people with us.
Not all the people who left were the same people who arrived. Some changes were made to the manifest. Some alterations performed, both out of a sense of national security and human decency.
And some of those alterations, known only to a select few, are the sort of things that tend to engender extreme gratitude, resulting in the occasional large favor.
So yeah, I'm blackmailing a mega-genius into pretending his xeno-retro-engineering skills aren't up to this task. I don't know how long he can keep it up, or how long he'll have to. But so long as he can keep that door shut, I'll consider his debt to me paid in full.
(For now.)
One last stroll around my bachelor pad. One last piss out of the broken window onto the floor below. One last attempt to bean a Blue Helmet with pellets from my magnificent alien love god penis.
On the way out of Vietnam, the radio station said "Goodbye, and see you next war." We'll be back, somehow. We always do.
It's why I smile when Randolph Scott looks at me, as I walk past him and those kids, and asks "what now?" I could tell him, but then I'd have to kill him.
And where would be the fun in that?
Outside the blast doors, Antarctica is a sheet of bright, blinding light. SPYGOD vision changes the whiteout into distinct shapes, all buffeted by flashy motes in the wind. I chew on a tjbang stick, grin like the devil just sucked my !@#$ for a quarter, and leave.
For now.
(SPYGOD is listening to Closing Time (Semisonic) and drinking a flask of Regal Lemon Gin)
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
7/6/11 - GODreads
One bad thing about being back at The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. for a layover, other than coming back to it covered in katooey brains, and then entertaining way too many bollywood boys to make up for it, is looking at the big damn stack of books I still haven't read, yet.
What does SPYGOD read, boys and girls? I'll tell you what I read. Not nearly as much as I should.
One of my many jobs is to look through the galley proofs of anything having to do with national security, strategic talents, and the weird overlapping field between the two, and give the publishers a yay or nay on those particular sections. Sometimes I suggest changes, sometimes I say to kill the whole paragraph, and sometimes I piss on the book, dump it in a plastic bag, and arrange to have it nailed to the editor's desk. From Orbit.
Some might call that censorship, but I call it a necessary evil. We don't put nuclear codes in the newspapers, we don't advertise troop movements to the enemy, and we sure as hell don't want people to know everything about everything that ever happened in our entire history. Knowledge is power, and too much power in the wrong hands is a bad, bad thing.
Are my hands really the "right" ones, then? Right wing, maybe. But if not me, given my firsthand experience with the whole thing, then who?
And if you think I'm a bastard, you should know that Mr. USA used to do this, back before he realized he really did not like to read anything that didn't involve sports, light history, or horse romances.
(Westerns to folks like you and me. Really.)
On average, I vet about fifty books a year, and about ten to fifteen squeak through with major or minor changes. When Mr. USA was doing it, he let about one through, and that's only because the President knew someone who knew someone who owed someone a favor.
That favor then translated to letting a highly expurgated, virtually emasculated version of that person's book be published. In the USA, at least. I have it on good authority that better and fuller foreign language editions are printed under the table in Russia, of all places.
(And before you ask, I have no idea who could have passed that over to Samizdat Press. Really.)
That's not to intimate that SPYGOD is some limp-necked softie who's going to champion the so-called rights of journalists and historians who want to make some cred and moolah off of our highly secretive fraternity, of course. It's just to say that I actually take the time out of my busy schedule to read these things and decide what can stay and what should go.
But that's not the only thing yours truly indulges in, when I actually have the time to do so. I have a soft spot for second-person, present tense, kitchen-sink-genre, circular think pieces that challenge the boundaries of language, gender, and plot. Unfortunately, there was only ever one person who really came close to writing the literature of the 24th century, today, and he died of a heart attack in 1997.
Thankfully, he left a very long body of work to draw from. He wrote something like 100 books, only fifteen or so of which have ever been published. I feel kind of guilty sitting on the remaining 85, but he left strict instructions that no one was to see these until a hundred years after his death.
And SPYGOD does fully and firmly keep at least some promises. (Really.)
Conversely, I've also gotten into something called flash fiction. They're really short stories, maybe 1000 to a hundred words, if that. The fewer the better, oddly enough. Just enough to kick you in the junk but not enough to drag you down.
I also like hint fiction. Can you, in 25 words or less, suggest a greater story hiding behind what you've written?
The man sat on the toy-strewn porch, cleaning his gun. Someday the right ice cream truck would pass by, with the right driver. Someday.
Short, snappy, and often darkly humorous. Just like I like my coffee the morning after.
And if I get really, really bored, I like to read screenplays of the movies I've seen. I'm always interested to see what was supposed to be in the script and what didn't make it to the screen for whatever reason. If you want a real treat, read the first draft of "Apocalypse Now," sometime. It's a wonder they let Coppola keep the name,
But I think my all time favorite "book" is the one that's written all around us, every day of our lives.
I'll sit out on the balcony, drink in hand, and cast my "ears" out into Neo York to listen to people typing away, late at night. If you don't try to listen to one single conversation, they all blend together, making a strange kind of mega-conversation in which all concepts, ideas, sentiments, and intentions blend together like dots in a pointillist painting.
Sometimes Neo York opens its nasty, old windowshades for me, and lets me see what's going on in her secret heart. Sometimes I'm happy to know. Sometimes not so much. But if you want a snapshot of the human condition that so many authors try to capture, but ultimately fail, you can't go wrong with going for the source.
What does SPYGOD read, boys and girls? I'll tell you what I read. Not nearly as much as I should.
One of my many jobs is to look through the galley proofs of anything having to do with national security, strategic talents, and the weird overlapping field between the two, and give the publishers a yay or nay on those particular sections. Sometimes I suggest changes, sometimes I say to kill the whole paragraph, and sometimes I piss on the book, dump it in a plastic bag, and arrange to have it nailed to the editor's desk. From Orbit.
Some might call that censorship, but I call it a necessary evil. We don't put nuclear codes in the newspapers, we don't advertise troop movements to the enemy, and we sure as hell don't want people to know everything about everything that ever happened in our entire history. Knowledge is power, and too much power in the wrong hands is a bad, bad thing.
Are my hands really the "right" ones, then? Right wing, maybe. But if not me, given my firsthand experience with the whole thing, then who?
And if you think I'm a bastard, you should know that Mr. USA used to do this, back before he realized he really did not like to read anything that didn't involve sports, light history, or horse romances.
(Westerns to folks like you and me. Really.)
On average, I vet about fifty books a year, and about ten to fifteen squeak through with major or minor changes. When Mr. USA was doing it, he let about one through, and that's only because the President knew someone who knew someone who owed someone a favor.
That favor then translated to letting a highly expurgated, virtually emasculated version of that person's book be published. In the USA, at least. I have it on good authority that better and fuller foreign language editions are printed under the table in Russia, of all places.
(And before you ask, I have no idea who could have passed that over to Samizdat Press. Really.)
That's not to intimate that SPYGOD is some limp-necked softie who's going to champion the so-called rights of journalists and historians who want to make some cred and moolah off of our highly secretive fraternity, of course. It's just to say that I actually take the time out of my busy schedule to read these things and decide what can stay and what should go.
But that's not the only thing yours truly indulges in, when I actually have the time to do so. I have a soft spot for second-person, present tense, kitchen-sink-genre, circular think pieces that challenge the boundaries of language, gender, and plot. Unfortunately, there was only ever one person who really came close to writing the literature of the 24th century, today, and he died of a heart attack in 1997.
Thankfully, he left a very long body of work to draw from. He wrote something like 100 books, only fifteen or so of which have ever been published. I feel kind of guilty sitting on the remaining 85, but he left strict instructions that no one was to see these until a hundred years after his death.
And SPYGOD does fully and firmly keep at least some promises. (Really.)
Conversely, I've also gotten into something called flash fiction. They're really short stories, maybe 1000 to a hundred words, if that. The fewer the better, oddly enough. Just enough to kick you in the junk but not enough to drag you down.
I also like hint fiction. Can you, in 25 words or less, suggest a greater story hiding behind what you've written?
The man sat on the toy-strewn porch, cleaning his gun. Someday the right ice cream truck would pass by, with the right driver. Someday.
Short, snappy, and often darkly humorous. Just like I like my coffee the morning after.
And if I get really, really bored, I like to read screenplays of the movies I've seen. I'm always interested to see what was supposed to be in the script and what didn't make it to the screen for whatever reason. If you want a real treat, read the first draft of "Apocalypse Now," sometime. It's a wonder they let Coppola keep the name,
But I think my all time favorite "book" is the one that's written all around us, every day of our lives.
I'll sit out on the balcony, drink in hand, and cast my "ears" out into Neo York to listen to people typing away, late at night. If you don't try to listen to one single conversation, they all blend together, making a strange kind of mega-conversation in which all concepts, ideas, sentiments, and intentions blend together like dots in a pointillist painting.
Sometimes Neo York opens its nasty, old windowshades for me, and lets me see what's going on in her secret heart. Sometimes I'm happy to know. Sometimes not so much. But if you want a snapshot of the human condition that so many authors try to capture, but ultimately fail, you can't go wrong with going for the source.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
7/5/11 - SPYGODMAIL - Go BANG
IT'S SPYGOD SCOUT MAIL TIME!
Today's mail comes to us from Super Scout Penworth G. Zhang of Santa Rosa, California
Dear SPYGOD:
My dad was in Spygod Scouts, too, and told me that, once, you told him that the secret to having an adventure was to, and I'm quoting him here, "sit on your ass and expect nothing to happen, at which point everything will."
Did you actually say that to my father? Or is he just bull!@#$ing me again?
Example: Last week he told me he invented stormchasing. Boy did I feel dumb when I tried to get him to come into my Meteorology 101 class to talk to my professor about his no-doubt epic experiences! It turns out...
Blah blah blah. Get to the point, son.
Okay, here's the scoop. Half the things SPYGOD says come out of my mouth but might as well come out of my ass, instead. The other half are deadly serious.
I pay my Agents a lot of money to be able to tell the difference with the lightning speed needed to avoid international, and sometimes cosmic disaster. You, fortunately, don't have to worry about that just yet.
You have the luxury of being able to nod and smile while I baffle you all with bull!@#$ thinly disguised as brilliance, insight, or at least a good campfire yarn. And since you're in the Super Scouts, those campfires aren't as hard to soak with good beer, cheap whiskey, and the weird substances you learned how to make during your Chemisty Action Badge.
And when SPYGOD grades your !@#$, I am likely to say all kinds of crazy things.
So yes, it's probably likely I told your dad all kinds of things when he was in Spygod Scouts. If he was in Spygod Scouts to begin with. It sounds like, from your clipped example, he likes to make !@#$ up as part of his perceived parental duties. And he wouldn't be half wrong, there.
But, yes, he is absolutely right, even if he is lying his head off. The trick to having an adventure is to be engaged in other plans at the time, and have one just drop into your arms like a nude, skydiving Katooey with a bomb strapped to his junk and a note informing yours truly "You have one minute to decide: disarm or disappear?"
So I bet you can guess how SPYGOD spent this afternoon.
The story is this: after spending the night drinking my favorite Vietnamese immigrant under his own table, after spending far too long clawing the sides of my chair at SuperCrapJunketParadeThing, I came back home to The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. to sleep it off. My plan was to spend the day with my darling cat, Margarita, take my car out for a spin to get some fresh and proper Thai from Bangkok Eight, and have some proper ladyboys up for a good time. Then I could return to the Ice Palace in good conscience, having committed what I consider a full convalescence after my trying ordeal in West Papua.
(On a related note, I think Metalmaid needs a tune-up. Everything in the penthouse seems fine and she's been performing her duties as programmed, but her responsometers seemed a bit... off. It was like she was trying not to say something when I talked to her. She has been a little jittery around me since the night I humped the television, though.)
When I woke up, maybe at 11 in the am, I was alerted that my good friends in the Neo York sanitation department had left another flaming bag of dog!@#$ and eviction notices on my front doorstoop, again. So I threw on my camouflage PJs, put my Captain Cody helmet on, took the elevator down, and pissed on the offending sack of crap, like normal.
Then I hear a gagged scream. Suddenly there's a stark naked Thai ladyboy falling towards me, wearing a blackbomb around his delicate little package. I do the obvious thing and leap up to catch him, at which point I read the note, and see the fear in his eyes.
And yes, the blackbomb is timing down from the moment it made contact with me. 60. 59. 58...
Blackbombs are nasty. They put them on people and key their activation to getting into contact with others, or a specific person. Half the time the other people have no idea they're carrying them because they've been made to look like something they normally have on them, like jewelry or even clothes. It's only when they run into the trigger person do they reveal themselves for what they are, and they secrete nasty, instant molecular glue that makes pulling them off without severely damaging the carrier a tricky thing indeed.
And the poor guy's got it on his balls.
What can I do? If I run, he's dead, and half the block is gone. If I rip it off he's probably dead or maimed, and I still can't get it away before half of another block is gone.
And if I disarm it we're all okay, but disarming these things are a real !@#$ bitch without some really expensive and big damn equipment. None of which I have on hand at the moment, or even in the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G., quite frankly.
So I grab the poor SOB and start running for the river. It's the only thing I can think to do. Jump in the river and try and drown the explosion. If I run like mad, jumping over every obstacle in my path, I might just make it.
Just.
!@#$ him and !@#$ me. It's us versus however many people live and work on my block, and that's a lot of people. So I run like mad, counting down in my head all the while, jumping over taxis, over traffic, into traffic, through gaggles of pedestrians...
And have I mentioned I haven't even had time to zip up, yet?
Finally, after far too long, I get to the river. The timer says I'm at 03, 02, 01. We jump the !@#$ in and I pray it's just enough time to get him deep enough to not hurt anyone else but us.
And then a really funny thing happens. The poor guy pees himself, and this somehow shorts out the blackbomb. That is not supposed to happen, but it does.
We stand by the edge of the river. He laughs, gagged. I laugh. No one else is, but !@#$ them.
And when I try to get the gag off his mouth so he can tell me how he came to be skydiving in the nude with a me-triggered bomb around his ladyboy parts, someone unceremoniously blows his head off with what had to have been a .50 caliber sniper rifle.
SPYGOD vision proves useless. I'm stuck babysitting a dead body with a bad-ass bomb wrapped around it until the Neo York PD can send over a bomb squad. And they take their sweet !@#$ time with that, let me tell you.
What the hell happened? Probably the clumsiest yet eerily almost-effective assassination attempt I've had pulled on me in a long time. It would have been airtight if the person who'd programmed the bomb hadn't forgotten to tell it to discard any secondary genetic material, so the poor Katooey's last fear pee wouldn't turn the whole show off.
But watching with a gun just to make sure dead men told no tales? Diabolical. They must have factored in the possibility that I would have done something entirely unexpected.
Needless to say, that put me completely off Thai. So I'm enjoying Indian, instead, and availing myself of some of these lovely Bollywood boys between courses. Metalmaid has been kind enough to fan us while we saunter about, which is kind of unnerving, but under the circumstances, not too unwelcome.
So there you have the secret to adventure. Wear something unpractical, go pee on official Neo York business, and look to the skies, son. Look to the skies.
(SPYGOD is listening to We Have Explosive (FSOL) and having a cold Kingfisher)
Today's mail comes to us from Super Scout Penworth G. Zhang of Santa Rosa, California
Dear SPYGOD:
My dad was in Spygod Scouts, too, and told me that, once, you told him that the secret to having an adventure was to, and I'm quoting him here, "sit on your ass and expect nothing to happen, at which point everything will."
Did you actually say that to my father? Or is he just bull!@#$ing me again?
Example: Last week he told me he invented stormchasing. Boy did I feel dumb when I tried to get him to come into my Meteorology 101 class to talk to my professor about his no-doubt epic experiences! It turns out...
Blah blah blah. Get to the point, son.
Okay, here's the scoop. Half the things SPYGOD says come out of my mouth but might as well come out of my ass, instead. The other half are deadly serious.
I pay my Agents a lot of money to be able to tell the difference with the lightning speed needed to avoid international, and sometimes cosmic disaster. You, fortunately, don't have to worry about that just yet.
You have the luxury of being able to nod and smile while I baffle you all with bull!@#$ thinly disguised as brilliance, insight, or at least a good campfire yarn. And since you're in the Super Scouts, those campfires aren't as hard to soak with good beer, cheap whiskey, and the weird substances you learned how to make during your Chemisty Action Badge.
And when SPYGOD grades your !@#$, I am likely to say all kinds of crazy things.
So yes, it's probably likely I told your dad all kinds of things when he was in Spygod Scouts. If he was in Spygod Scouts to begin with. It sounds like, from your clipped example, he likes to make !@#$ up as part of his perceived parental duties. And he wouldn't be half wrong, there.
But, yes, he is absolutely right, even if he is lying his head off. The trick to having an adventure is to be engaged in other plans at the time, and have one just drop into your arms like a nude, skydiving Katooey with a bomb strapped to his junk and a note informing yours truly "You have one minute to decide: disarm or disappear?"
So I bet you can guess how SPYGOD spent this afternoon.
The story is this: after spending the night drinking my favorite Vietnamese immigrant under his own table, after spending far too long clawing the sides of my chair at SuperCrapJunketParadeThing, I came back home to The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. to sleep it off. My plan was to spend the day with my darling cat, Margarita, take my car out for a spin to get some fresh and proper Thai from Bangkok Eight, and have some proper ladyboys up for a good time. Then I could return to the Ice Palace in good conscience, having committed what I consider a full convalescence after my trying ordeal in West Papua.
(On a related note, I think Metalmaid needs a tune-up. Everything in the penthouse seems fine and she's been performing her duties as programmed, but her responsometers seemed a bit... off. It was like she was trying not to say something when I talked to her. She has been a little jittery around me since the night I humped the television, though.)
When I woke up, maybe at 11 in the am, I was alerted that my good friends in the Neo York sanitation department had left another flaming bag of dog!@#$ and eviction notices on my front doorstoop, again. So I threw on my camouflage PJs, put my Captain Cody helmet on, took the elevator down, and pissed on the offending sack of crap, like normal.
Then I hear a gagged scream. Suddenly there's a stark naked Thai ladyboy falling towards me, wearing a blackbomb around his delicate little package. I do the obvious thing and leap up to catch him, at which point I read the note, and see the fear in his eyes.
And yes, the blackbomb is timing down from the moment it made contact with me. 60. 59. 58...
Blackbombs are nasty. They put them on people and key their activation to getting into contact with others, or a specific person. Half the time the other people have no idea they're carrying them because they've been made to look like something they normally have on them, like jewelry or even clothes. It's only when they run into the trigger person do they reveal themselves for what they are, and they secrete nasty, instant molecular glue that makes pulling them off without severely damaging the carrier a tricky thing indeed.
And the poor guy's got it on his balls.
What can I do? If I run, he's dead, and half the block is gone. If I rip it off he's probably dead or maimed, and I still can't get it away before half of another block is gone.
And if I disarm it we're all okay, but disarming these things are a real !@#$ bitch without some really expensive and big damn equipment. None of which I have on hand at the moment, or even in the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G., quite frankly.
So I grab the poor SOB and start running for the river. It's the only thing I can think to do. Jump in the river and try and drown the explosion. If I run like mad, jumping over every obstacle in my path, I might just make it.
Just.
!@#$ him and !@#$ me. It's us versus however many people live and work on my block, and that's a lot of people. So I run like mad, counting down in my head all the while, jumping over taxis, over traffic, into traffic, through gaggles of pedestrians...
And have I mentioned I haven't even had time to zip up, yet?
Finally, after far too long, I get to the river. The timer says I'm at 03, 02, 01. We jump the !@#$ in and I pray it's just enough time to get him deep enough to not hurt anyone else but us.
And then a really funny thing happens. The poor guy pees himself, and this somehow shorts out the blackbomb. That is not supposed to happen, but it does.
We stand by the edge of the river. He laughs, gagged. I laugh. No one else is, but !@#$ them.
And when I try to get the gag off his mouth so he can tell me how he came to be skydiving in the nude with a me-triggered bomb around his ladyboy parts, someone unceremoniously blows his head off with what had to have been a .50 caliber sniper rifle.
SPYGOD vision proves useless. I'm stuck babysitting a dead body with a bad-ass bomb wrapped around it until the Neo York PD can send over a bomb squad. And they take their sweet !@#$ time with that, let me tell you.
What the hell happened? Probably the clumsiest yet eerily almost-effective assassination attempt I've had pulled on me in a long time. It would have been airtight if the person who'd programmed the bomb hadn't forgotten to tell it to discard any secondary genetic material, so the poor Katooey's last fear pee wouldn't turn the whole show off.
But watching with a gun just to make sure dead men told no tales? Diabolical. They must have factored in the possibility that I would have done something entirely unexpected.
Needless to say, that put me completely off Thai. So I'm enjoying Indian, instead, and availing myself of some of these lovely Bollywood boys between courses. Metalmaid has been kind enough to fan us while we saunter about, which is kind of unnerving, but under the circumstances, not too unwelcome.
So there you have the secret to adventure. Wear something unpractical, go pee on official Neo York business, and look to the skies, son. Look to the skies.
(SPYGOD is listening to We Have Explosive (FSOL) and having a cold Kingfisher)
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