Note: Continuing on from the previous installment.
It's clear that, right around here, no one was sure about the tone of the piece, anymore. It jumps back and forth from actually factual information to snarky bull!@#$. This is what happens when you have four or five different writers working on one document, and one overworked editor more or less rubber-stamping the whole thing while getting blown by one of Dr. Yesterday's sex midgets.
We think.
K is for Korean War
Korea isn't just one of the few places you can get soda that tastes like bubble gum. It's also the place where the future of Strategic Talents in the Cold War world was written out. And, more importantly, it's where SPYGOD really became SPYGOD, instead of who he was before.
Long story short? The Commies were evil, and, once World War II was over, stopped being our friends (so we could help defend them from the Nazis) and wanted to take over the world. Part of taking over the world was taking complete control of the Korean Peninsula, which they'd gone half and half on when the Allies liberated it from the Japanese. So, in 1950, a fat, evil Commie named Kim Il Sung got permission from the Soviets, and aid from the Chinese, and his soldiers swooped into South Korea to "unify the Fatherland."
The United Nations, being a powerless fraud, could only condemn it and ask for its members to do something. Fortunately, America intervened, because President Truman was a smart man who knew what happened when tyranny went unchecked. We sent troops in to help the South Koreans stop the commies, and figured it would be over soon, as long as the Soviets and Chinese stayed out of it.
But there a BIG problem! After World War II, the United Nations included as part of its Charter that member states should not use Strategic Talents in war. The spineless wimps at the United Nations were afraid that a superhuman arms race would happen, with everyone trying to make strategic talents, the same way everyone was trying to make atomic bombs.
Since no superpowered people could fight each other, like they did during the last war, this war was going to take a long time to end. So President Truman secretly sent a few Strategic Talents in, hoping they would find out that the Commies were using Strategic Talents, so America could send Mr. USA and the Liberty Patrol in to fight them. After all, if they we Commies breaking the rules, so could America!
SPYGOD led the mission because he'd been doing secret work in the Soviet Union, and had a good idea how to keep things quiet. But a bad thing happened. The Strategic Talents were ambushed and captured, and sent to a prison camp.
The Commies put them in special chains so they couldn't break free, and hurt them to try to make them tell what their secret plans were. None of the brave American superheroes would tell them the truth, so the Commies hurt them and used them for fun.
Soon there was only one hero left, and that was SPYGOD. He broke free, burned down the camp, and got away, but by then the Commies were almost all the way down the peninsula. Even worse than that, the Chinese and Soviets had complained to the United Nations that America was using Strategic Talents against people who had none. Now the North Koreans would have to use superpowered soldiers to make it an even fight!
America knew that the North Koreans didn't have many superpowered soldiers, because Japan had killed a lot of them during World War II. This meant that they would have to get them from the Soviets and the Chinese. And once the Soviets and Chinese sent their Strategic Talents, ordinary forces wouldn't be too far behind.
President Truman knew this could lead to another World War. He had to stop this from happening. So he went to the United Nations and told them that the Commies were lying. He said that America had been using Strategic Talents in Korea, but that the Commies had done it first. He used information that SPYGOD had gathered while behind enemy lines to prove it.
But President Truman made the Commies an offer. He said that he would pull out all Strategic Talents, and not allow them to return, if the Commies would make the same promise. This would mean the Commies would have to admit they'd been lying, so they refused. So America sent in Mr. USA and the Liberty Patrol, and the Commies sent their superpowered soldiers in to fight them.
The war took another eight years to end. This is because neither side wanted to do as much damage as they could. They were afraid that if they fought too hard, and went too far, someone might use atomic weaponry. So a lot of Strategic Talents on both sides were killed or seriously wounded, and the fast, back and forth advances of the first years of the war turned into the same kind of trench warfare that happened in World War I.
An Armistice was signed in 1958. This meant that the war was still going on because neither side wanted to admit defeat, but that no one was going to fight it, anymore. After the signing, President Eisenhower promised the American people that America would never be the first to use superpowered people in a war, but that we would keep them "in reserve" just in case someone else did.
This is why the Liberty Patrol was disbanded. This is why we have The COMPANY. This is also why Vietnam took so long and was never won. Ask your parents about that.
(ED NOTE: Wow, way to sound jingoistic there, Bob. Could we make this a lot less history-channelish and a lot funnier? This page is in dire need of Operation Snark Bomb.)
!@#$ You, "ED" - Bob
(You're fired, Bob. - ED)
(SPYGOD is listening to Chalkhills and Children (XTC) and having some soju and cheju cider)
Showing posts with label commercialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commercialism. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
10/5/11 - More Crass Commercialism - SPYGOD's ABCs (pt 1)
Note: This was done as a mockup for a book project by The COMPANY's licensing and merchandising wing. It was going to be presented as a children's book for adults, much in the same vein as "Mommy! There are Liberals Under My Bed!"
Given the poor sales of such things, the project was quietly mooted. However, as the recent success of such works as "Go The !@#$ To Sleep," the copy's been moved back onto review pile.
Whether SPYGOD will approve is a matter of some conjecture. As of this writing, the licensing reps are drawing straws to see who has the pleasure of calling him up to get a preliminary approval.
No one wants to draw the short straw.
A is for !@#$hole
And boy, is SPYGOD ever a massive one, kids! He's been known to shoot people for moving too slow, too fast, and not at all! He blows up people's cars for getting in his way, steals their money, and spends it at the Gucci store! Even powerful people like Presidents and Superheroes are afraid of him, and what he might do, but it's all done in the defense of the U S of A, so it must be okay!
Put another way -- he's an !@#$hole, but he's our !@#$hole. For America.
But you still have to mind your parents, keep your hands to yourself, and watch your mouth. You'll understand when you're older!
B is for The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G.
Invented by the insane, fat, and disgusting Dr. Grosz in the late 1940's, The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. was a giant weapon disguised as a skyscraper. It was built in New York City over a period of four years, starting at the end of World War II. The porky mad doctor almost had the last laugh on America, but SPYGOD and The Liberty Patrol figured out what he was up to and stopped the weapon before the countdown started!
Exactly what the device was meant to do is still highly classified, and large parts of it have been sealed off and walled up forever to stop it from getting into the wrong hands. To safeguard it, The Liberty Patrol made it their headquarters, and after the Patrol was disbanded, during the Korean War, it was handed over to The COMPANY.
Now SPYGOD lives there, making sure its secrets stay secret! No one gets up there without his express invitation, kids, so don't even try to sneak in. (Unless you're over the age of 18 and have something he might want.)
C is for The COMPANY
The COMPANY (not to be mistaken with the Central Intelligence Agency, who are spineless wimps by comparison) is the best spy agency in the world! Anyone who says otherwise is an America-hating Communist, because SPYGOD says so!
The COMPANY deals with threats that are above the normal things that other spy agencies could ever handle, even on their best days. Every day they fight science terrorists, supervillains, and other countries' strategic talents! They stop invasions of all kinds, intervene in situations where superhuman threats are disrupting other nations' welfare and commerce, and put an end to the abuse of science!
The COMPANY has two headquarters. The Heptagon, in Washington D.C, is where they train Agents, park most of their amazing vehicles, and do the majority of their research. The Flier is their mobile base of operations, able to travel the world at lightning-fast speeds to fight any threat, anywhere!
(There's also rumored to be a secret, third base somewhere, but where it is and what it's named is completely unknown, even to most COMPANY Agents! How's that for top secret, kids?)
D is for Drunk
Yes, kids, SPYGOD is a drunk, a junkie, and several other things as well. He spends most of his day completely !@#$ up on alcohol, drugs, and strange, exotic substances that bring him up, drag him down, stop his heart, and turn his brains to jelly for a whole minute. In fact, some of the things he sticks into himself don't even exist in this reality!
They say that no less than Hunter S. Thompson once described him as "the single most !@#$ed up human being I have ever encountered, including my attorney," Timothy Leary told him to "lay off the stuff, man," and the Grateful Dead went off all substances after seeing him in action.
(Well, okay, they only gave it up for a week. But it was still a week without drugs. They took up Rolfing, instead. It did not help.)
The official reason for this magnificent self-abuse is that, because SPYGOD's senses are so hyper-attuned, he has to cripple his brain through this punishment, or else he would go incurably insane. And, since his immortal body can't be destroyed, it all works out in the end. However, people who knew him during World War II say that he was a massive drunk, even then, so this may be total bull!@#$.
Either way, kids, just remember that SPYGOD can take all the booze and drugs he wants, for America, but you still have to keep your noses clean. Again, you'll understand when you get older.
E is for Eyepatch
SPYGOD wears an eyepatch. It's big, it's black, and it's made out of special leather. The leather comes from an animal that's been extinct for millions of years, and it's the only thing that can really cover up the light from the Chandra Eye. If he didn't wear it, the stark horror and raw power of the Eye would make anyone who saw it go blind, mad, and incontinent in less than a second.
(Incontinent is a fancy way of saying you poop in your pants. No one likes that !@#$.)
Every so often SPYGOD lets someone catch a little peek of the Chandra Eye. He calls this SPYGOD VISION, and it does no one any good at all. He can even use SPYGOD VISION over the phone, or through a television. So it's a good idea not to be mean or rude to him, because he can make you !@#$ yourself from half the world away!
The Eye makes him immortal and all-seeing, but the human brain wasn't made to operate that way. This is why he's such a massive !@#$ drunk. It sounds like a lousy excuse, but maybe someday, when you're older, and the weight of a lifetime of bad decisions and dumb mistakes are staring you in the face, and you need to drink half your weight in Tequila Sunrises to begin to forget every !@#$ stupid thing you ever did, you'll begin to understand.
Until then, do everyone a favor and keep your !@#$ do-gooder bull!@#$ to yourself. No one needs to hear it, kid.
F is for The Flier
The Flier is The COMPANY's mobile headquarters. It's the size of three aircraft carriers put together, it goes around the world in twelve hours on a good day, carries enough aircraft to blow the !@#$ out of most small, unfriendly countries without them having to come back for rearming and refueling, and has enough weapons on board to blow up whatever the planes miss.
The Flier generally floats around Neo York City so it can pick SPYGOD up in the morning. Or it might be on patrol anywhere in the world. So all you kids out there reading this book in something other than American English be sure to tell your stupid, socialist leaders to play nice with America, or else you might be seeing it overhead real !@#$ soon.
G is for Guns
Guns? Oh yes. SPYGOD carries guns. He carries a lot of guns. Sometimes he carries twice his weight in guns, through means that no one really needs to understand but him.
And, given the effect the Chandra Eye has had on his private parts, he is a gun, technically. And he's almost always ready to go off, so don't make him angry, okay?
Okay.
H is for Hitler
Adolph Hitler was a really bad man who tried to take over the world, back in the early 20th century. If you have to have us explain why, or what he did, then your school obviously !@#$ sucks, and you should have your parents sue your teachers for malpractice. Seriously.
The important thing to know is that Hitler got all of Germany's superheroes and supervillains to join the Nazi party (if they wanted to live) and sent them off to fight other countries. The fighting was known as World War II, and, even though most Americans didn't want to get involved, smart people like President Roosevelt knew that it was only a matter of time before we would have no choice.
So they started recruiting American superheroes and supervillains to fight, and found ways to make ordinary people into superheroes. SPYGOD was one of the superheroes they made, and he fought in World War II, in Europe. And one day, after stalking him for weeks in the ruins of Germany, he killed Hitler with his bare hands!
It didn't end the war, of course, but it made it a lot harder for Germany to keep fighting when their beloved junkie !@#$ Fuhrer was dead. And this is why SPYGOD can do just about whatever the !@#$ he wants, kids. He killed Hitler. He !@#$ killed Hitler. Killed him D E A D.
There's a lesson here, somewhere. Maybe someday you'll learn what it is. Hopefully it won't be because you did it, yourself.
I is for Immortality
Immortality means you live forever. But nothing is supposed to live forever. All living things are supposed to get old, stop working, and die.
Your parents are going to get old and die. Your pets are going to get old and die, probably sooner than your parents do. And your grandparents are probably already old, so they're going to die pretty !@#$ soon, so make sure you're good when you're at their house or they might cut you out of the will.
You are also going to die, kids. You might not even get to be old, first. You might get a bad disease, get killed in an accident, or get shot at school. You might even get that nasty thing where you suddenly start aging really fast, shrivel up like a mummy, and croak of old age before you're fourteen. Life is !@#$ cruel that way.
But that's how life works. We're born, we live, we !@#$ things up, we die. Immortality means we !@#$ things up forever and ever, and never learn from those mistakes because there's no sense of impending doom or shortness of season to make us want to learn better, and stop being such a !@#$ dumb!@#$, and mend our ways.
Immortality means we are dumb!@#$% from now until the end of !@#$ time, itself. Which is why most gods are apparently major !@#$holes who don't learn a !@#$ thing.
Not mentioning any SPYGOD names, here. No sir. Just flip the page over and hopefully he won't have heard you reading this out loud.
(But if the phone rings in the next minute, don't answer it.)
J is for Japanazis
(ED. NOTE: Look, Florence. I know this is humor, and I know we can be kind of risque, here, but for !@#$ sake, this is the 21st century. I really don't think it's appropriate to refer to people who fought on the losing side of World War II in this way. You wouldn't use the N-word in context, would you? That's how this word rings, now. It brings up nasty memories of internment camps and anti-German sentiment, and we'd rather not offend in such a way as to get ethnic groups on our !@#$.
(Find something else for J, please. Maybe Jack Off? I know he can kill people with that weird, mutant penis of his...)
(SPYGOD is listening to King for a Day (XTC) and drinking the blood of an advertising executive)
Given the poor sales of such things, the project was quietly mooted. However, as the recent success of such works as "Go The !@#$ To Sleep," the copy's been moved back onto review pile.
Whether SPYGOD will approve is a matter of some conjecture. As of this writing, the licensing reps are drawing straws to see who has the pleasure of calling him up to get a preliminary approval.
No one wants to draw the short straw.
A is for !@#$hole
And boy, is SPYGOD ever a massive one, kids! He's been known to shoot people for moving too slow, too fast, and not at all! He blows up people's cars for getting in his way, steals their money, and spends it at the Gucci store! Even powerful people like Presidents and Superheroes are afraid of him, and what he might do, but it's all done in the defense of the U S of A, so it must be okay!
Put another way -- he's an !@#$hole, but he's our !@#$hole. For America.
But you still have to mind your parents, keep your hands to yourself, and watch your mouth. You'll understand when you're older!
B is for The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G.
Invented by the insane, fat, and disgusting Dr. Grosz in the late 1940's, The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. was a giant weapon disguised as a skyscraper. It was built in New York City over a period of four years, starting at the end of World War II. The porky mad doctor almost had the last laugh on America, but SPYGOD and The Liberty Patrol figured out what he was up to and stopped the weapon before the countdown started!
Exactly what the device was meant to do is still highly classified, and large parts of it have been sealed off and walled up forever to stop it from getting into the wrong hands. To safeguard it, The Liberty Patrol made it their headquarters, and after the Patrol was disbanded, during the Korean War, it was handed over to The COMPANY.
Now SPYGOD lives there, making sure its secrets stay secret! No one gets up there without his express invitation, kids, so don't even try to sneak in. (Unless you're over the age of 18 and have something he might want.)
C is for The COMPANY
The COMPANY (not to be mistaken with the Central Intelligence Agency, who are spineless wimps by comparison) is the best spy agency in the world! Anyone who says otherwise is an America-hating Communist, because SPYGOD says so!
The COMPANY deals with threats that are above the normal things that other spy agencies could ever handle, even on their best days. Every day they fight science terrorists, supervillains, and other countries' strategic talents! They stop invasions of all kinds, intervene in situations where superhuman threats are disrupting other nations' welfare and commerce, and put an end to the abuse of science!
The COMPANY has two headquarters. The Heptagon, in Washington D.C, is where they train Agents, park most of their amazing vehicles, and do the majority of their research. The Flier is their mobile base of operations, able to travel the world at lightning-fast speeds to fight any threat, anywhere!
(There's also rumored to be a secret, third base somewhere, but where it is and what it's named is completely unknown, even to most COMPANY Agents! How's that for top secret, kids?)
D is for Drunk
Yes, kids, SPYGOD is a drunk, a junkie, and several other things as well. He spends most of his day completely !@#$ up on alcohol, drugs, and strange, exotic substances that bring him up, drag him down, stop his heart, and turn his brains to jelly for a whole minute. In fact, some of the things he sticks into himself don't even exist in this reality!
They say that no less than Hunter S. Thompson once described him as "the single most !@#$ed up human being I have ever encountered, including my attorney," Timothy Leary told him to "lay off the stuff, man," and the Grateful Dead went off all substances after seeing him in action.
(Well, okay, they only gave it up for a week. But it was still a week without drugs. They took up Rolfing, instead. It did not help.)
The official reason for this magnificent self-abuse is that, because SPYGOD's senses are so hyper-attuned, he has to cripple his brain through this punishment, or else he would go incurably insane. And, since his immortal body can't be destroyed, it all works out in the end. However, people who knew him during World War II say that he was a massive drunk, even then, so this may be total bull!@#$.
Either way, kids, just remember that SPYGOD can take all the booze and drugs he wants, for America, but you still have to keep your noses clean. Again, you'll understand when you get older.
E is for Eyepatch
SPYGOD wears an eyepatch. It's big, it's black, and it's made out of special leather. The leather comes from an animal that's been extinct for millions of years, and it's the only thing that can really cover up the light from the Chandra Eye. If he didn't wear it, the stark horror and raw power of the Eye would make anyone who saw it go blind, mad, and incontinent in less than a second.
(Incontinent is a fancy way of saying you poop in your pants. No one likes that !@#$.)
Every so often SPYGOD lets someone catch a little peek of the Chandra Eye. He calls this SPYGOD VISION, and it does no one any good at all. He can even use SPYGOD VISION over the phone, or through a television. So it's a good idea not to be mean or rude to him, because he can make you !@#$ yourself from half the world away!
The Eye makes him immortal and all-seeing, but the human brain wasn't made to operate that way. This is why he's such a massive !@#$ drunk. It sounds like a lousy excuse, but maybe someday, when you're older, and the weight of a lifetime of bad decisions and dumb mistakes are staring you in the face, and you need to drink half your weight in Tequila Sunrises to begin to forget every !@#$ stupid thing you ever did, you'll begin to understand.
Until then, do everyone a favor and keep your !@#$ do-gooder bull!@#$ to yourself. No one needs to hear it, kid.
F is for The Flier
The Flier is The COMPANY's mobile headquarters. It's the size of three aircraft carriers put together, it goes around the world in twelve hours on a good day, carries enough aircraft to blow the !@#$ out of most small, unfriendly countries without them having to come back for rearming and refueling, and has enough weapons on board to blow up whatever the planes miss.
The Flier generally floats around Neo York City so it can pick SPYGOD up in the morning. Or it might be on patrol anywhere in the world. So all you kids out there reading this book in something other than American English be sure to tell your stupid, socialist leaders to play nice with America, or else you might be seeing it overhead real !@#$ soon.
G is for Guns
Guns? Oh yes. SPYGOD carries guns. He carries a lot of guns. Sometimes he carries twice his weight in guns, through means that no one really needs to understand but him.
And, given the effect the Chandra Eye has had on his private parts, he is a gun, technically. And he's almost always ready to go off, so don't make him angry, okay?
Okay.
H is for Hitler
Adolph Hitler was a really bad man who tried to take over the world, back in the early 20th century. If you have to have us explain why, or what he did, then your school obviously !@#$ sucks, and you should have your parents sue your teachers for malpractice. Seriously.
The important thing to know is that Hitler got all of Germany's superheroes and supervillains to join the Nazi party (if they wanted to live) and sent them off to fight other countries. The fighting was known as World War II, and, even though most Americans didn't want to get involved, smart people like President Roosevelt knew that it was only a matter of time before we would have no choice.
So they started recruiting American superheroes and supervillains to fight, and found ways to make ordinary people into superheroes. SPYGOD was one of the superheroes they made, and he fought in World War II, in Europe. And one day, after stalking him for weeks in the ruins of Germany, he killed Hitler with his bare hands!
It didn't end the war, of course, but it made it a lot harder for Germany to keep fighting when their beloved junkie !@#$ Fuhrer was dead. And this is why SPYGOD can do just about whatever the !@#$ he wants, kids. He killed Hitler. He !@#$ killed Hitler. Killed him D E A D.
There's a lesson here, somewhere. Maybe someday you'll learn what it is. Hopefully it won't be because you did it, yourself.
I is for Immortality
Immortality means you live forever. But nothing is supposed to live forever. All living things are supposed to get old, stop working, and die.
Your parents are going to get old and die. Your pets are going to get old and die, probably sooner than your parents do. And your grandparents are probably already old, so they're going to die pretty !@#$ soon, so make sure you're good when you're at their house or they might cut you out of the will.
You are also going to die, kids. You might not even get to be old, first. You might get a bad disease, get killed in an accident, or get shot at school. You might even get that nasty thing where you suddenly start aging really fast, shrivel up like a mummy, and croak of old age before you're fourteen. Life is !@#$ cruel that way.
But that's how life works. We're born, we live, we !@#$ things up, we die. Immortality means we !@#$ things up forever and ever, and never learn from those mistakes because there's no sense of impending doom or shortness of season to make us want to learn better, and stop being such a !@#$ dumb!@#$, and mend our ways.
Immortality means we are dumb!@#$% from now until the end of !@#$ time, itself. Which is why most gods are apparently major !@#$holes who don't learn a !@#$ thing.
Not mentioning any SPYGOD names, here. No sir. Just flip the page over and hopefully he won't have heard you reading this out loud.
(But if the phone rings in the next minute, don't answer it.)
J is for Japanazis
(ED. NOTE: Look, Florence. I know this is humor, and I know we can be kind of risque, here, but for !@#$ sake, this is the 21st century. I really don't think it's appropriate to refer to people who fought on the losing side of World War II in this way. You wouldn't use the N-word in context, would you? That's how this word rings, now. It brings up nasty memories of internment camps and anti-German sentiment, and we'd rather not offend in such a way as to get ethnic groups on our !@#$.
(Find something else for J, please. Maybe Jack Off? I know he can kill people with that weird, mutant penis of his...)
(SPYGOD is listening to King for a Day (XTC) and drinking the blood of an advertising executive)
Friday, July 29, 2011
7/28/11 Crass Commercialism Makes the World Go Round
Got yet another phone call from the merchandising people about that !@#$ 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)
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