All These Super-Types

I wrote this in one day two weeks ago in an attempt to write a story in under 1,000 words. It came out to be a little more. I wrote down the idea a long time ago when I was thinking about what it means to be a hero, and what it means to be a supervillain. I was talking to a friend and he said how he wanted to write something about Steel (the black superman) and how even if he didn't have his suit on, he'd be able to save the day because thats what it means to be a hero. So I thought, what if somebody was thrown into the responsibility of being a superhero (like Shinji in Evangelion) but just didn't take it seriously.
-Teck


All These Super-Types
   All these super-types do is make a mess. Even the “good” ones.
   Garry knocks again on the door, this time with his police baton and more force.
   The bad ones cause a ruckus and the good ones cause millions of taxdollars to be spent on repairs after their “superfights.” Then there's the rich intellectuals who think it's fun to fly around in a spandex suit so they start making laser guns and pay the best lawyers in the city to pass new laws that let them change stop lights to-
   The door finally opens. The one who answers is a college dropout with bleached red hair who calls himself Disastro. Although he is not a supervillian, neither is he a law abiding citizen. He has committed a fat stack of felony charges which includes many accounts of theft, harassment, indecent exposure, vandalizing, and (as is the case tonight) disturbing the peace.
   Disastro burps and blows the smell of cheap beer and pizza into Gary's face.
   “What'll it be 'po? Beer 'r Vahdker?”
   Imagine a fratboy who can lift a sixteen wheeled truck with one hand: this is Disastro. Other than superstrength, Gary has heard rumors that when focusing, Disastro can hear thoughts.
   “You need to turn the music down.” Gary has had this futile conversation before but goes through the motions because it is what he is paid to do. “The neighbors are complaining.”
   “Fahk you, dood.” Disastro burps again and closes the door. He is too strong for any want-to-be superheroes to fight without getting bruised up themselves, too small for any newsworthy superheroes to deal with, and his crimes too docile for backup to be called.
   Gary knows this.
   He has been on the buttend of super disrespect for the entire year he has been on the force and this is the last time.
   Gary slams his body against the door, breaking it down. Inside, Disastro sits with four other neighborhood superrascals playing a drinking game. At the far end of the beercan littered room are more people. A few jump out of the windows and run (the normal humans).
   Gary is ready to unleash a furious speech about communal responsibility and goodwill. The adrenaline from breaking down the door has his heart pounding so hard his veins tingle. But before he starts Disastro laughs.
   “Aw nah. Ai gahtta get a new do-ah?”
   Gary snaps.
   He takes his baton in both hands and slams it into Disastro's head with his mouth open and words coming out: “YOU NEED TO TURN THE MUSIC DOWN!”
   The baton shatters on Disastro's head. The speakers go silent as the played song comes to an end. No one says anything.
   Disastro and the four superrascals crumble with laughter. The next song starts.
   This is the end of the line for you! Gary's thoughts rage in his head. I'm going to get Pandaman. Come back here. And take every one of you to jail!

2
   Garry knocks again on the door, this time with his police baton and more force.
   Pandaman opens the door slowly, wearing only boxers and an untied robe. His hair is a sleepy mess.
   “Pandaman! The city needs your help! Disastro must be stopped!”
   Pandaman yawns. “Screw you, man. Let me sleep.”
   “B-but you're a superhero!”
   “NO! You call me a hero. All I am is a guy who can float around, has a strong left hook, and happens to obey your laws. I've got a job interview tomorrow so get off my property and let me go to sleep!”
   Pandaman starts to shut the door but Gary stops it with his foot.
   “Disastro is your archnemesis! Don't you want a chance to beat him up?”
   “Look. Officer. I've hung up the cape. The school payed me to put on their mascot costume and do promotional gigs until I graduated. We were only rivals because he used his mind reading power to steal a paper idea I had and I got in trouble for plagiarizing. Plus getting hit in the head too many times is bad for the brain.”
   “I'll pay you.”
   Pandaman's eyes brighten with awakeness.
   “How much?”

3
   Gary speeds down the road with lights flashing and a surprising anticipation.
   They're gonna get it! He's focused on the fantasy of seeing Pandaman holding Disastro's bloodied, unconscious body fifty feet in the air. Pandaman, in the passenger seat, grips his seat belt tightly.
   They're gonna get pummeled and tossed around and dug into the ground. And when they wake up, they'll be behind bars and I'll get a promotion!
   “H-Hey! Officer!”
   Gary doesn't hear Pandaman. He doesn't even see the headlights of the car in front of them swiveling into their lane. Behind the wheel is the drunken Disastro who knew where Officer Gary was going, what he planned to do, and looked forward to having a rematch with his old nemesis. It just took him a while to find his keys.
   Pandaman's throat dries up as the headlights from Disastro's car fill his face in a cloud white.
   Just before the two cars collide in a tsunami of jagged metal, shattered glass, and the crashing wail of a dying siren Gary snaps out of his fantasy. Disastro, not wearing a seatbelt, crashes through his windshield and the police car's. Shards of glass cut his skin and a small piece pierces just under Gary's eye.
   The officer, just now realizing that his fantasy will not be fulfilled, and that Disastro's superbones will certainly crush his normal ones then be sawed to pieces by the metal of the cars, thinks in the split second of living he has left: All these super-types do is make a mess.

Lizard Man

It's been three weeks so here I am!
I've been working on a new layout format and this is a nice breaking point for it I think. I've also tracked down the old cohorts and some possible new ones. We're currently working on a new name (or maybe this one... or even an old one??) that will match our spunky 2nd decade style.
And since this is kinda a preview of what is to come, I'm gonna post a preview of what is to come.
Lately (I use the term lightly. Seriously, by 'lately' I mean like 5/6 months) I've been writing a lot. Here's a preview of a short story I'm working on currently titled Lizard Man on 8th and Robinson.
((Teck!))


((REMOVED. sorry! I wanna get it published, so go find the real thing! This was only the Intro anyway..))

Whoa! It's 2009!?

Holy snap!
I just realized I haven't made a post since August.
And it is now January. Which means... a bunch of months have passed... almost a half-year? Counting months confuses me. I'd much rather count Cheez-Its.

Anyways. The long gap hasn't been totally fruitless. First, I'd like to blame alcohol for the lateness. I think that this comic sums up what I do with my free time pretty well: Mr. Wiggles: God Prefers Atheists. And to NOT segue for a change, BnF's Yet-To-Be-Named 2009 Album has a song about being an Atheist during the most holy of Christian times in America: Xmas. As well as other songs along the lines of being an Optimistic Nihilist (which is pretty much Hedonist I guess), an ode to Rufio and call-to-arms for ninjas against pirates, an instrumental about a zombie apocalypse, a song about being an alcoholic pirate gorilla, and others.
So check that out. I'm gonna start posting some literature I've been writing and try to come up with some absolutely amazing world-domination scheme so that I don't have to find a job. I figure that since there's no super-heroes anymore, there's noone to stop me and my caniving (caniving? spell-check is absolutely useless), dastardly ways.

See ya in like 3 weeks.
-Teck

Messing With 15-Year Olds At The Warper Tour!!!

-I went to the Warped Tour for the first time since I was like 14 yesterday...
It was really weird how everyone was asking 'are you over 18' when I'm so used to people asking 'are you over 21'
-I brought fig newtons to eat because I haven't had them in a really really long time, but they made everyone throw out their food. Ultimately, they didn't check my whole bag so I could have put the food in a different pocket and saved it from getting thrown out but I don't know the future so... =[
-During 3OH!3's set, Sean Foreman said he liked my hat. Their set wasn't like an MSI one where they're constantly talking to the crowd so I was really surprised and everyone got COMPLETELY silent and looked straight at me... I kinda felt like a I was in the middle of a sarlacc pit and if I made the wrong response they'd all start stabbing me with their pincer-teeth and dissolve me with stomach acids.
-My girlfriend and I were resting before mc chris and we ended up loosing track of time so we only got to hear two songs. But after, my girlfriend asked him for a picture and he said he'd give us one at his merch tent if we led him there, and that he'd let us cut the line. We pointed towards where it was and he started going straight to it. We think he knew where it was the whole time.
-Right before his last song he said he doesn't really think he's cutout for Warped Tour. I see why he'd say that. Too much screamo and high-school pop going on at the same time as him. But somebody at Vans let him in so somebody thinks he's got the tongue to speak to these kids.
-You can really see how all the drama of touring is wearing him down. I guess 'older crowd' is more of am emo song than a birthday tune. When we were "leading" him back to his tent, he walked straight and didn't smile or talk or anything. His backpack looked heavy and his hat had salt stains from sweat. He would occasionally wave or say a quick "hi" to the other artist-types.
-I wanted to ask him if he was going to keep touring and if he was going to be on the East Coast at all. I wanted to ask him what kind of cartoons he's been working on. But I didn't ask any questions. I wanted to thank him for not giving up and continuing on the tour but I didn't say anything. I didn't tell him he's a huge influence and his going to Warped Tour really gives me hope that people aren't so afraid of being geeks. All I said was "thank you" after he signed my 'mc chris is dead' cd but he was already trying to get the next picture done. All business.
-Then I started thinking about how much it must suck to be famouse. You gotta deal with all these kids who say you're their hero, the reason they do what they do, the sun of their galaxy. All you wanna do is sign their stuff, get that picture with them taken, and go to sleep. But the lines are so long and every single person in the line wants to tell you something. Something you've probably heard before but they think is absolutely unique. Or they really want to make an impression and get remembered by you. Like, they want you to see that crazy hat they're wearing, mention it in your set, then remember it when they go to get their CD signed.
~.~ Teck

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

-After watching Starship Troopers at the early part of this summer, I realized that the film is not just a sci-fi, action blockbuster about future-soldiers kicking alien-bug ass (the first time I saw it I was like 12… gimme a break). Instead, I noticed that the film is blatantly a work of pacifist-propaganda.
-I was originally going to write something about that, but now that I’ve watched the most recent installment of the greatest film series ever (second only to the Predator series) I’ve decided to merge that idea into this.
-If you’re unfamiliar with Starship Troopers you… No. I’m not gonna do that this time. I know you know what Starship Troopers is, and I know you at least loved it for part of your life (and I know that when you played StarCraft you always did Terran VS Zerg to replay the movie, but the computer would make crazy units like Mutalisks and Ultralisks and Queens that aren’t in the movie and it pissed you off because all you had were marines because in Starship Troopers the only vehicles they use are dropships, but instead of spending the money on building a gas refinery you just built more marines and became grossly outnumbered and you stopped playing StarCraft).
-But even if you’ve read the original novel, you’re probably familiar with how bad of a wrap the first movie got (the second one was straight-to-TV. This one is straight-to-Internet). People slapped it with pro-fascist and pro-military reviews that really don’t make sense. The story is a simple tale of a gullible boy being corrupted by his dystopic society and eventually becomes a black-clothed, bloodthirsty killing machine. Kinda like Anakin Skywalker.
-If you need a little revamp of the plot it goes like this: Johnny Rico is a high school senior who definitely isn’t played by an 18 year-old who goes against his parents and enlists in the army like everybody else in his class to be “cool” but then the bugs blow up the city he’s from and a war officially starts and Johnny Rico’s all pissed because his parents are dead and he stops at nothing to kill all the bugs thus making him shine in the eyes of his commanding officer which eventually leads to him replacing his commanding officer and becoming just as much of a hardass until, like some messed-up butterfly, he emerges from his cocoon as a lean-cut, no smiles, army-man. It should also be noted that the reason the bugs attacked in the first place is because the humans were being bitches and colonizing their planets – which, unsurprisingly, the human characters ignore.
-So with all that in mind I’ve started to question why American culture right now doesn’t have a rebirth of Starship Trooper fever? What do DC and Marvel comic heroes have to offer us as an escape from the daily news of more soldiers dying in a war that’s lasted too long? Why are dangerous tomatoes making more headlines than trillions of dollars fueling a failed attempt to reap “justice”? Starship Troopers is an exact parallel of this war: The humans get into it through questionable means, which results in all aspects of life (even baby-making) going towards the war effort, and they aren’t even winning the war- instead, relying on ingenious propaganda campaigns like commercials, songs, and video games to maintain national morale.
-Could you find any work of campy action blockbuster that is more of a parallel to today’s society?
-However, the first Starship Troopers movie is just a dystopic future sci-fi flic, and it’s very easy to parallel USA of 2008 to a dystopic future sci-fi flic (you see the phones people have now? We’re totally in the future!). But now there are two more Starship Trooper movies, both of which were made after this war started. The second one was not a typical Starship Trooper thing, but much more of a suspense horror and was actually a really entertaining film so I’m not gonna talk about it anymore. But this third one, Marauder, starts off with the exact same feel as the first film, along with some horribly blatant political commentary.
-It opens with the whole TV-commercial-propaganda thingy that make Starship Troopers and Robocop hilarious. But this time, the thing’s humor is so intensely dark it becomes a black hole that pulls you right up to the computer screen and you’re instantly reminded of checking Google News and seeing headlines of “War in Iraq: Have Our Troops Had Enough?” “Who’s Winning This War?” “So-and-so Famous-Person Says This-And-That About Middle East.” “AFGHANASTAN IRAN GRA!!!”
-Next, the film quickly fills in background (as all good action movies do) showing the audience that speaking out against the war results in you getting hung, and that our main characters will be on a small military base on some backwater planet fighting to help out the farmers who live on the planet, but who hate the soldiers because they blame the war on them.
-Obviously, hanging: Saddam. Farmers: civilians: fed up with the war: typical American audience member.
-After some bug killing, characters begin to get diversified in a sky marshal who faints at the sight of a dead soldier, but has a hit song called, “It’s a Good Day To Die,” and a veteran who is now leading anti-war protests. Leading officers are constantly making hubris-filled calls that lead their underlings into ridiculous amounts of peril and as usual, war is displayed as painful and unfair. The aspect of extreme religious beliefs and if soldiers should follow their own god or their superiors is a running theme.
-So why was this movie released straight to the Internet? Are we, as a society, so fed up with the war and being sad about how bad life is that we’ll ignore something that could open our eyes to our society’s blatant hypocrisy? If the majority of US citizens are fed up with Iraq, why are we still fueling the civil war? Why are we still causing bad emotions in Iran and Afghanistan and Palestine and Korea and almost everywhere but Antarctica (oh wait- pollution. Nevermind).
-Out anti-war anger fizzled out a long time ago. There are no more ‘boo-hoo war is bad’ movies and the ‘up and down the street not across the sidewalk music’ is being replaced by snap rap, nerdcore, and hair metal. So is it just that people are so tired of war-related-things that we’re now content to ignore reality?
-Eh… Or it’s just a fast-paced action flic hoping to feed off American adrenaline and make a few bucks.

~Teck~

PS- one of the main character’s name is Dicks. Seriously.
PPS- Slamball’s coming back. Start’s airing in August.

Kobayashi! Ready for Retirement!?

~I think he is. He’s just wearing contacts.~


-Apparently, the great Japanese hot dog eater, Takeru Kobayashi, has come in second in Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest for a second year in a row!

-Now, if you don’t know who Takeru Kobayashi is, that’s totally okay. You either don’t watch MTV, don’t follow competitive eating, nor are you aware of US-Japanese popular culture. But that’s cool! I’ll fill in some of the information for you:

-After surfacing from the depths of some hidden, jungle-ninja-village in Hokkaido, Kobayashi dropped jaws with his double-stuff-eat-jutsu (no joke. He breaks the hotdogs in half and sticks both cylinders into his mouth at the same time), and “Kobayashi Shake” techniques (seriously, that’s what his move to actually get the hot dogs from his mouth to his stomach is called. In other words, he has a NAME for the action of swallowing).

-In his first US contest he dominated by eating 50 hotdogs in 12 minutes. The previous record was 25. From there, Kobayashi’s life turned into one not too unlike that of Ryu from the Street Fighter series. Great eaters from all over the world began traveling on the backs of bears (Russians), sharks (Atlanteans), and slave-children (Chinese) to compete in Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest and test their esophagus’, and gag reflexes against the Sausage Tsunami.

-Although Kobayashi was able to rely on his stomach-expansion-jutsu for the first few years, the onslaught of international eaters pushed the young vacuum cleaner to begin training. He started eating massively huge meals and weight training (think Goku’s style of training but without the energy blasts) to increase the amount of calories his body could take and make sure that his fat cells didn’t store it or something… I don’t really know biology. Anyways, his training worked and he dominated in a five-year reign from 2001 to 2006 as The World’s Strongest.

-But that all came to an end when milk-guzzler Joey Chestnut slammed down 66 hot dogs in 2007. Before the competition Kobayashi had been experiencing somewhat unexplained “jaw problems.” After loosing his first sausage swallowing competition since sausages were first created (yes, he was alive then), there were rumors of the Tsunami going into surgery.

-Luckily for Kobayashi’s face, no scalpels were inserted and the Kobs continued scarfing down massive amounts of whoknows what kinds of foods.

-And now he has lost again. The contest was brought down to 10 minutes, and it seems like they used a different kind of hotdog. He tied with milk-guzzler Chestnut at 59 sausages, but then lost in a 5 hot dog tiebreaker.

-Does this mean the dynasty of Kobayashi is over? I think so. It probably has something to do wit those strange “jaw problems” from 2007 but it’s looking like the World’s Strongest is simply past his prime.

~TECK~

PS- The only being in the universe that has been recorded to legitimately kick Kobayashi’s ass, however, is a 1,089 pound Kodiak bear, on the amazing show, “Man vs Beast”.