12/18/12 - Some People Understand Their Dream

Got a call from the President of the United States, today, and that could have been a total !@#$ing disaster.

Why? Well, son, as you !@#$ing well know I'm under house arrest. And one of the conditions of my incarceration is that I'm not !@#$ing allowed to drink more than my weight in alcohol per day. Something about how it makes me make bad !@#$ing decisions, though that's total bull!@#$, as you well know.

(I'm also not allowed to have more than three !@#$ing guns at any given time, or engage in direct contact with any past or current members of the COMPANY. They even took away my !@#$ tjbang sticks, the !@#$ers.)

So I'm !@#$ing sober, at 9 in the !@#$ AM, and haven't even been able to get myself some of that nasty, black heroin I'm drinking to pretend I'm the sort of person who gets up that !@#$ early, and suddenly the !@#$ President is on the horn, asking for me.

(Oh, yeah, and I'm !@#$ing naked, though that's nothing he hasn't !@#$ing seen before.)

What does he want? The !@#$ing usual. He wants to know how I am, how things are, how I'm adjusting.

"Adjusting." !@#$ of a !@#$ing word for this kind of situation. I'm essentially going on trial for doing my !@#$ing job because a bunch of bean-counters and ant-!@#$ers don't agree with all the decisions I made.

(Not that I don't agree some mistakes happened along the way, of course. But Jesus !@#$ing Christ, let's keep things in perspective.)

So of course I have to !@#$ing push it. I ask him how he's !@#$ing "adjusting," since he kind of had the office !@#$ing shoved onto him after its previous owner vacated, a couple weeks ago, after some really bad !@#$ went down.

And he says "oh, that's not fair." And I say "well, that's life, and maybe you should have thought about that before you agreed to be his !@#$ing veep."

And Mr. USA sighs and says a bunch of !@#$ that I'm not really all that !@#$ing interested in, because it all comes back down to one thing. It's him waving and !@#$ing drowning because, for all his powers and experience, he has no !@#$ing idea how to handle a country that's in the kind of !@#$ing shape America's in right now.

We have nothing beyond the state level, right now, son. We have no!@#$ing federal infrastructure, anymore. No military, no disaster relief, no money.

No nothing.

Which would have been okay if we'd been able to keep the Imago's technology, and let the states get back on their feet using it. But it turns out when we pulled the !@#$ plug on it, the whole !@#$ thing fell down and did not get back up again.

(Plus, after their trial, which I was !@#$ proud to help with, whatever wasn't down on the ground got put away for perpetuity. So there goes that idea.)

So there's your big !@#$ irony for you, son. The federal government is finally small enough to drown in a !@#$ing bathtub, and all the people who wanted to do it are either dead, insane, or wishing it would come back to life and save their !@#$es.

And as for the Presidency? To mangle John Nance Garner, the position is now not worth a bucket of warm !@#$. Especially since the TU wants to "help" us with our Federal Problem by swooping in and doing it for us.

And, at this !@#$ moment, that's not my problem.

Of course, if the President of the United States of America wants to put a good word in for me with the President of the TU, I'd be happy to suit the !@#$ up and come back to work. But he can't do that, and I know he won't ask.

So he ends the call, somewhat red-faced, and goes back to trying to manage a herd of cats in the dark. And I go back to grousing and grumbling and wanting a real !@#$ing drink, and settling for brewing up some !@#$ing coffee and drinking it right out of the !@#$ pot.

Mr. USA. We were allies, then rivals, then enemies, then allies, and then friends again, after all the !@#$ we went through at the end, there. And now I'm feeling like busting out of here, going to the White House, and kicking his head through his !@#$hole until he gets his !@#$ testicles back.

Still, I can't totally blame him. He's as much a creature of duty as I am. It's just that he takes orders from people, and I take them from me. 

Which probably explains why I'm !@#$ing here, now, doesn't it?

...

Ah well, enough of that !@#$. My lovely man is up and moving, and there's a full day of !@#$ on television. And if I'm really !@#$ing nice, he might just make me some more of that wonderful baked french toast he made, yesterday.

(Lucky me, my man spent all his time on Deep-Ten wishing he could actually !@#$ing cook in a real kitchen, for people in his own pay grade, and saved up decades worth of recipes, techniques, and ideas. Now we get to do it for real, amongst other things...)

So there's that to look forward to, at least. And while it doesn't really help with the lack of booze, it's a start.

And I'm never going to turn down a good !@#$ start.

(SPYGOD is listening to Some People (Belouis Some) and having a !@#$ton of coffee)

5/12/11 - Why Heroes Never Cry

"Load up on guns and bring your friends / It's fun to lose and to pretend."

(Art by Dean Stahl)

"Do you want to be a superhero?" that's what the sign asked Rodney Carmichael, three years ago.  

Three years ago, Rodney was eighteen years old and had just barely squeaked out of High School. Healthy but too weak for the Army. Not too uneasy on the eyes but no super model either. Bright eyed but dumb as a post.

He could have gone into flipping burgers at his uncle's truck stop. He could have left town for the big city and flipped burgers there, too. But by God he wanted more.

And there was that sign at the bus stop, pointing right at him and offering the opportunity of a lifetime. The government was going to make Super Heroes, trying to recreate the procedure that created Mr. USA all those years ago. Who wanted to volunteer for testing?

It involved some risk, of course. No promises, no guarantees. Just a chance for the lucky few.

But Rodney Carmichael wanted out of the bad hand life had played him. So he signed up, got a bus ticket to Neo York City, and underwent weeks of physical and genetic testing at the hands of Dr. Yesterday and his creepy sex dwarfs to see if he was compatable.

And, for once in his life, the cards were good. Turns out he had good genes. Amazing, super-deluxe, one in a million perfect genes.

Who would have thought?

So sooner than you could say "lie down, sonny boy," they had him scrubbed and going in for crazy weird science surgery. Gene therapy. Electro chemical baths. Strange substances.

Alien technology no one !@#$ing understands but everyone uses anyway.

He lived through it, which was a miracle unto itself, given all that. And he not only lived, but prospered. He bench-pressed ten tons. Heard people talking a mile away. Flew to near orbit.

Understood complex mathematics for the first time in his life.

On graduation day he took a punch from Mr. USA, himself, and staggered away to laugh about it

And that's how Rodney became Rockethand. That's why there's Rockethand action figures, breakfast cereal, t-shirts, and a fan club.

That's why, whenever there's trouble in America, you can call up Rockethand and his friends, and they'll be there. Soon.

He smiles that blank and friendly smile from televisions everywhere. He rescues cats from trees and stops bank robberies. He leads parades and tells kids not to take illegal drugs.

He's perfect. Amazing. Super-deluxe.

One in a million

But all those eggheads that Yesterday had running his tryouts, running all those tests to see how much his body could take? They didn't pay as much attention to something a lot more important.

They didn't look at his mind.

They didn't ask around town and find out that Michael Carmichael had been beating Rodney black and blue since before the day he was born. The fact that his mother's stomach was in the way didn't deter him in this important chore.

They didn't ask about the bullying in school that comes with your father being the designated county drunk, wife abuser, bigamist, and occasional fire hydrant stealer. They didn't ask whether all that bullying and possible brain damage at home eventually created something even worse.

They didn't read his diaries. They didn't ask about the missing pets. They didn't interview the girls he knew in high school who were !@#$ing scared of him. !@#$ing scared of what he might do.

!@#$ing scared of what he already did do.

None of that mattered because his genes were picture perfect, one in a million, super-deluxe. So what if he stared too long at wrong things? So what if he laughed at the wrong moments?

So what if he acted like he had a noggin full of broken dishes, sometimes?

That's what they're still telling me, even now. Dr. Yesterday's apparently shouting it over the phone in my subordinates' ears while I'm cleaning up his damn mess. Amazing, super-deluxe, one in a million.

Can't we just talk him down...?

Dr. Yesterday's one of the smartest people on the planet, but he just doesn't understand certain common sense things. He can't get his head wrapped around the idea that, when someone's brain damaged, sociopathic, and not firing on all 52 cards, it is generally not a good idea to introduce crazy, weird science substances into their bodies and turn them on like a Chanukah bush.

No, not at all.

That's why there's a room full of screaming Rockethand Fan Club kids seven miles away, not knowing why their best friend, the greatest man they've ever known, is frothing at the mouth, screaming at invisible fathers, and threatening to kill them all.

That is why I'm hanging upside down out the Flier, holding a gun the size of an East German female swim team member, loaded with bullets as big around as my arm that cost about as much as the GNP of your average oil-rich despotic sheikhdom, waiting for a flock of birds two miles away to get out of my !@#$ing way so I can get a good bead on Rodney's left temple, five miles past that.

If I aim the shot just right, no one else in the room should be caught in the blast. If I time it right he'll hear the shot just as the bullet hits his brains.

If I do this right I'll have killed him before he knows he's as good as dead.

I tell people I haven't cried since Divine died. But looking at that screaming, angry, sad, and broken face I'm about to turn into a red mushroom cloud, I'm not sure the tears gumming up my sights are just the wind. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Smells like Teen Spirit (Tori Amos) and not drinking a !@#$ thing)