Teaser Time!

In true Jehilew fashion, I'm now starting my 5878747273249875th fic, while completely ignoring 5878747273249874 WIPs.

You love me.

Anyway, even if you don't, here you go!

(Trigger warning: there is mild suicide ideation mentioned. Read responsibly, folks.)

He’s restless.

Nothing new for him, he’s been restless his entire life. The streets of New Orleans had raised him, and raised him well, she’d taught him that restlessness kept people alive.

It’s just that it seems to be worse these days. He can’t sleep. He needs sleep, craves sleep, and he’s exhausted. He knows that if he could just keep his eyes closed, relax, and rest, he’ll pass out for the next twenty four hours.

Alas, sleep only flirts with him. Teases him. Sidles up close, makes him promises and drags at his eyelids. And then flitters off into nothing the moment his eyes shut and his brain starts hopscotching across the checkers of his past.

That’s really what keeps him up. He could sleep if it wasn’t for the haunts.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits for a moment. Rubs the heel of his hand into his eye, pushing out the grit and maybe trying to gouge out the memories.

PTSD is a bitch. If only there was a pill he could take to fix it, he’d swallow the whole fucking bottle in a go.

A dark thought skitters across his mind, the thought that maybe there isn’t a pill to cure PTSD, per se, but if he could get a handful of the right kind of pill, he could--

He snorts and shakes that thought away. Death hasn’t cooperated any better than sleep, anyway. He’s tried that route before, on more than one occasion. Only once with true intent, a few other times without intent, but full contentment with the high probability consequence.

He’s concluded that it’s merely a thought habit at this point. He’s been down that path, and it’d been terrible, and the aftermath had told him he didn’t want it.

That never stopped him from flirting with the idea, though.

That’s what’d brought him here, in upstate New York, in a mansion brimming with a bunch of goody-goody mutant kids, and few do-gooder mutant heroes. Ororo had begged him to come up. She hadn’t known how bad off he was, but she’d known he was this close to slipping through the cracks no one ever sees. He’d somewhat reluctantly dragged himself up north, certain as the sun sat in the west that her professor would turn him away, deeming him too blackened around the edges to mess with.

Too far gone.

The urge to squirm out of his skin burns deep to his bones, and he stands. He pulls on a black T-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts and leaves. He’s not sure what Charles Xavier had seen in him that was worth the effort, it sure as hell hadn’t been his mind, for part of his mutation is a natural scrambler. Xavier could break him, he knew that, but in doing so, he’d hurt him.

Possibly kill him. Wouldn’t that be a riot?

He moves quickly and quietly down the hallway and upstairs. The mansion is dark; most everyone is asleep at this time of night. He figures it’s around two in the morning. He keeps it moving fast and silent, having no desire to seek companionship; he knows where he’s going, there’s a sunroom tucked up in the top floor, next door to the attic. He knows it’s there, for Stormy’s quarters are part of the attic as well, though she’s on the other end of the building. He’d gone exploring after paying his due visit to delightful weather wielding mutant and discovered it. 

He holds no delusions that the lounge is hidden; he knows it’s not. It’s just that most people convene in convenient places with all the amenities, and there’s nothing terribly convenient about this spot’s location in the building.

He takes the stairs two at a time, and at the landing, he takes a turn, and then a long hallway to the door at the end. He lets himself in, fully expecting to be alone with a fantastic view of a New England misty fall.

He notices her right away, despite the room being dark but for the moonlight invading from the windows. He supposes someone without his weird-ass eyes might not see her, she’s stock still and silent, tucked back fully in darkness, perched in the window seat at the corner, one knee up to her chin, the other hanging from the windowsill.

He pretends he hadn’t seen her as he moves to the kitchenette, discreetly watching her all the while. She’s staring at him, still as a statue, and then she turns her head back toward the window.

She’d made coffee. A full pot, from the looks of it, and had clearly helped herself to a whipped cream topping as well, if the can left on the counter is any indication.

He could do with some coffee, he supposes. It’s not like he’s going to sleep anytime soon, anyway, might as well.

He pours a mug and moves to the other end of the windows running the long side of room. He’s completely aware of her, can feel the thick spike of fear rolling off of her, the way she sort of pulls into herself as they share the space. He glances her way out of curiosity, and she’s watching him, every line of body tense and wary.

He puts out his feelers as he continues noting her body language. She’s not scared of him; there’s no suspicion, no paranoia. It’s more severe discomfort related. Skittishness.

Not a people-person, then. That’s perfectly fine, because neither is he.

He picks the chair a little further away to sit in, and as expected, her composure visibly relaxes, that roiling spurt of fear he’d felt off of her simmering back down to a bit of nervousness. Her eyes are still sharp on him, though.

Pretty girl, he thinks dismissively, now that he’s close enough to make out more of her features in the shitty lighting. Soft mouth, big eyes, and bigger hair. In another set of circumstances, he’d flirt his ass off with her. 

He looks away, knowing he’s being rude. She’s rude right back, fully withdrawing back to the window, clearly picking up that he’s not going to fuck with her, and perfectly content to ignore him completely.

He mentally sighs in relief, lets go of some of the tension he always holds along his spine, and begins to slowly relax a bit over a sip of coffee.

Turns out, it’s not a bad cup of coffee. 

Turns out, she’s not bad not-company company, and she accompanies him, blessedly silent, until nearly five in the morning.

#298 Taking Over the World

Hello? Is this thing on? Ah, perfect. Hello world, it’s me, Smuggles, the fiendish criminal who orchestrated the end of the Age of Superheroes and ushered in the Age of Villains, or the Age of Smuggles, my compatriots and I are still workshopping the name. Anyway, now that things are well and truly finished for your pathetic heroes and those who would try to guide them through life, I thought I might take a moment to explain to you all how all of this came to be, so that you might truly comprehend the absoluteness of our control and the futility of trying to stop us. And yes, I’m sure I know what you’re thinking, thanks to the mind reading flakes that Professor Brain-Scrambler mixed into every box of the aggressively marketed Cereal Flakes: Everyone’s Favorite Cereal and Favorite Flake in the world. You’re all thinking: Ooh is he really going to monologue now? That’s so passé, how gauche. But I feel as though I deserve this. You might have trouble believing this but this is actually my very first supervillain monologue. I don’t often succeed at my villainous plots, and even when I do, a successful smuggling kind of means there won’t be an audience for whom I can monologue. So excuse me if I feel like gloating for a bit.

Before I get into things though, I think it would be quite remiss of me not to thank those who helped me get to where I am now, starting with the real MVPs, the How To Hero team. The How To Hero team? Aren’t they good guys? Aren’t they victims in all of this? How could they have helped you? All good questions, to be sure, but they are indeed responsible for my meteoric rise to power. Of course they didn’t know it at the time. You see, three years ago I was nothing more than a petty thief with a costume and a codename. Barely a supervillain as some have called me. It was rare that I even saw superheroes, let alone did battle with them. Until June 8, 2017, when a certain blog told every two-bit would-be cape-fetishishist that I would be a good villain to test their crime-fighting chops on. Suddenly, I was being accosted nightly by every man, woman, child and giant badger with a hero-complex. It was humiliating, it was painful, and I vowed that I would get revenge on anybody who contributed to my nightly beatings, so, every superhero ever and also How To hero. I decided to start with the blog, as that seemed easier, and also they were the only ones on my revenge list who hadn’t already decisively proven that they could beat me up. So I began reading their guide, know thine enemy and all, and in time I discovered that while they may not be much of a superhero guide, they were, unwittingly, laying out everything one might need to be the ultimate supervillain. I reached out to an old accomplice of mine Perry the Pirate, who helped me hack into How To Hero’s database so I could access notes and drafts that they had yet to publish so I could glean even more information and tips from them. Apparently another lawyer in his firm worked closely with the guide and had a backdoor into their system on his computer. I pored over the information I found, sifting through thousands of unbearable puns and jokes to get what I needed, and thus, a plan began to form.

Historically speaking, the main obstacle in any villains way to world domination is the large contingent of heroes who love freedom and peace and living in a non-dominated world. They’re always spouting on and on about rights and justice and love, I know, they’re exhausting. But people tend to like them, and people tend to be inspired by them. Which often means that when a supervillain manages to take out one hero, somebody else will very quickly take up their mantle and continue their fight for them. So it is not enough to just pick off heroes one by one. In order to truly get rid of them, they, all of them, would need to be taken off the board all at once. And such an event would need to occur when a villain, or a group of villains, is ready to step in a take control, so that they may do so swiftly as soon as the heroes fall. This part, I realized, was crucial, no time at all could pass between the fall of the heroes and the rise of the villains. Any sort of grace period would allow for the rise of new heroes, and we would be right back where we started. So even though How To Hero had foolishly provided me with a roadmap to taking out the world’s heroes, I needed to put some pieces into play first. I needed to garner the support of my fellow villains.

Not an easy feat for the preeminent starter-villain. 

Honestly, it wouldn’t be an easy feat for anyone, had it not, once again, been for How To Hero. You see, most villain team-ups fail eventually. The villains will always end up betraying each other or falling out over some petty reason like “who gets to control which coast” or “what are we going to name the henchmen”. The rate of decline goes up the more villains you add to your team. So if I was going to form a villainous alliance capable of taking out the heroes and taking over the world, I would need to find a way to overcome the virulent backstabbing and counter-plotting that often plagued supervillain team-ups. So imagine my delight, when How To Hero published a guide on fights between supervillains and how to resolve them. Armed with the tools I would need to diffuse any fights that might arise I approached Al “Da Boss” Marconi, a big time supervillain and crime boss.

A few things you need to know about Marconi, he is quick to anger and only speaks to people whom he respects. So my first attempts at meeting with him ended with me being hurled out of a fortieth story window. Thankfully, on the advice of How To Hero, I was wearing a parachute and ended up being just fine. I realized I would need to find a way to impress Marconi. If I could get him onboard, most of the villain community would be similarly swayed. So I set my eyes towards bigger fish... Oh, not Charlie, that was actually something else. You know what, I might as well talk about that now, while we’re on the subject.

If I was going to take out every hero in the world I would need engineer large-scale threat, but as I’ve said, I didn’t not have large-scale threat connections. In fact, after Perry the Pirate left the villain game to become a lawyer, my only supervillain contact was another low-level villain named Charlie the Fish Whisperer. He mind controls fish by whispering to them, that’s not exactly large-scale, world-threatening stuff. It is, what you could charitably define, as a lame superpower. But that’s ok, How To Hero has a guide to using lame superpowers to your advantage. It was all about perception. All I needed to do was make others perceive Charlie the Fish Whisperer as a world-ending threat. But how to do that? Charlie was only a semi-formidable threat in the water so what were we to do? Mount on attack on Atlantis? How To Hero told us we’d be fools to try. Besides, if we allowed the idea that Charlie was only threatening in the water to stick, he’d never rise to world-ending threat. I realized we would need to speak to a specialist. 

Our world has nearly ended so many times, that there are several former heralds of the apocalypse just hanging around without much to do. I set up a meeting with a fellow called The Dark Harbinger who used to do some freelance heralding for folks like Karalaxus and The Living Ingestor. He taught Charlie and I what these big threat guys are actually like, and How To Hero taught us everything we needed to know about putting on a facade to trick others. But being able to talk the talk wouldn’t be enough. We needed a big dramatic action that would cement the new Charlie the Whisperer in the minds of heroes. Thankfully, How To Hero clued us in to another specialist we could speak to. A man named Ivan Karolov, aka Mister Immortal. Karolov agreed to meet with us, who can say why, I honestly think he was just bored. He had somehow found himself as the prime minister of Finland and I think he was itching to fake his death again and move on. Karolov used his skills and experience at faking his own death to help us make it look like Charlie the Fish Whisperer had killed him with a goldfish he had smuggled into Kesäranta. Charlie rebranded as Chuck and the heroes of the world became convinced that he was truly dangerous and locked him away in an alternate dimension. Obviously that’s not how I saw things playing out, but no matter. I had a world-ending threat that I could use as needed.

Now, to switch gears, I must explain how I finally gained the respect of Al Marconi and the rest of the supervillain community. To put it briefly, I went to Hell. Now, now, don’t give me that look, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds. In fact, How To Hero made it easy. All I needed was some peanut butter, and get this, I already had some! Just lying around in my cupboard. All I needed to do was put some out in a pentagram to attract a demon and we were in business. I planned on recruiting some Underworld bigwig to my campaign. How could Marconi not respect me if I had the legions of Hell behind my cause. The rulers of Hell are actually easier to appeal to than mortal villains. All I would need to do is pledge my everlasting and eternal soul to whomever was sitting on the throne that day and I would be given an army of ghouls and undead spirits to command. What do I care about my soul? Whatever demon I dealt with would only get once I died, and How To Hero had very helpfully laid out exactly how I could achieve immortality. Luckily though, I didn’t even end up needing to pledge my soul, once again How To Hero came to my rescue. While reading one night I came across a shocking diatribe against a man named Greg Greginski. Greginski is a well known talk show host who frequently talks about superheroes and their ilk, and rarely in a positive light, which is why How To Hero takes issue with him. Greg Greginski is not well-liked in the superhero community, but those of us in the supervillain community are privy to the fact that Greg Greginski is not simply a television host. He’s so much more. He’s part-time ruler of Hell, Greg the Skeleton King, and after How To Hero’s disrespectful remarks towards him, he was willing to throw his weight behind my crusade against the blog, free of charge. 

Once I had Greg the Skeleton King on board, I went back to Marconi with an army of damned souls and he was very quick to endorse my movement as well, especially after being dangled out the window by a ghost who occasionally struggled to stay corporeal. Marconi agreed to spread the word amongst the rest of the villains and I moved on to the final phase of my plan. Taking out all the world’s superheroes in one fell swoop. As I alluded to at the beginning of my post, How To Hero handed me the perfect plan on a silver platter. All I needed to do was trigger a superhero/supervillain team-up. According to How To Hero, when a threat is large enough, superheroes will form temporary alliances with supervillains until the threat is dealt with. This makes sense, supervillains don’t want the world to be destroyed, who would they do crimes against if the world is gone. So heroes need no worry about supervillains pulling anything shady during such a team-up, unless of course, the villains knew that the threat was fake, and that there was no real risk to the world. Enter Chuck the Fish Whisperer, my very own personal world-ending threat. The only problem though, was that Chuck had already been defeated and locked away, earlier than I’d planned. Oh well, at least he was still alive, I just needed access to a interdimensional portal generator. How To Hero had already laid out to me how difficult it is to cross dimensions, the easiest way would be to use somebody else’s existing interdimensional portal generator. Luckily, I knew somebody who could help, Frederick Kaminsky aka Dr. Brainwave. 

Dr. Brainwave was perfect, he had already built a portal generator, and he lived in How To Hero headquarters. He could be my man on the inside. He could be my partner in all of this. Or, well, he could have been. If he hadn’t been a world-grade idiot. It seems that, in his work with How To Hero as their supervillain correspondent, Dr. Brainwave had actually grown to like the team behind the blog. He had begun to think of them as his friends. He wouldn’t allow me access to his machine he told me, but as a professional courtesy he wouldn’t tell anybody about my plan to free Chuck. I let him think that Chuck was the brains and that I was simply his henchman, his sidekick. Brainwave didn’t think I was a threat, and so he didn’t take any steps to report me to the authorities. This ended up being his undoing. If Dr. Brainwave wouldn’t help me, then I would need somebody else on the inside. Unsurprisingly, Brainwave’s beloved guide held the answers. Allow me to quote from the blog’s guide to joining a team that has not invited you to be apart of it: 

If you want to join one of these teams and there’s already somebody there with your powers you’re definitely going to have to sabotage them. We understand that sabotaging another hero to steal their spot on a superhero team isn’t a very superheroic thing to do but some things are just more important! [Don’t] Poison them! Depower them somehow (maybe with some type of ray and/or beam)! Humiliate them by beating them at Dance Dance Revolution at the next superhero dance festival and tractor rodeo which I’m nigh certain is a real thing.

If I wanted to join the How To Hero team, I would have to get rid of the person who already filled my niche. I wouldn’t do it with poison or Dance Dance Revolution though, I would do it with a bomb. A bomb that I had smuggled out of Brainwave’s own workshop when I had met with him. I mailed a bomb to How To Hero’s office. Best case I kill everybody in the building and then just waltz in and use Brainwave’s portal generator to unleash Chuck, trigger a superhero/supervillain team-up, and then have the villain betray the heroes once they’ve let their guard down. Worst case, I take out Brainwave and steal his job. I knew Brainwave always wore rocket boots, he was almost as much of an avid reader of this blog as I was, so I knew that if anybody was going to fly the bomb out of the office, it would have to be him. Afterwards it was just a matter of filling out an application and coasting on my reputation as a non-threat. Sure enough, those fools fell for it hook, line and, sinker. So here we are now, the superheroes are gone, and I and my allies rule the world. And it’s all thanks to this little blog. 

That’s all for now, stay tuned for my first slew of villainous decrees and demands soon. Welcome to the new world order.

Slept the whole day and woke up at dusk. I went down to the beach with Charlie and Max. All kinds of people were there, talking and partying and playing in the surf. I told Charlie I used him as an example for when it’s appropriate to show up to a Black space or event:

“I know Charlie well. I see or speak with him more days than not. If Charlie was having a party at his house, I’m reasonably confident that I could walk in without an invitation and be welcome. If Charlie was having a party at his uncle’s house, I would ask him before attending. If Charlie was attending his Uncle’s party, I would wait for an invitation.”

I don’t remember my advice for when I didn’t know anyone at the party.

The beach was at the bottom of an artificial cove, like a concrete amphitheater. From the top of the stairs I could see people packing up to escape the rising tide but the water still looked inviting. Jerah had been sunbathing nude earlier and was still naked when she approached me. She started to tell me some gossip about someone, but I cut her off. I wanted to swim before it got too late, I said. The sun had already set. I hung my jacket on a post and descended.

The last step of the amphitheater ended at the top of the beach. I took my shoes and socks off, stripped down to my underwear and left everything on the bottom tier of the wall. I made for the water, but didn’t go far because the tide was already brushing my feet as I took my first steps. I rushed headlong into a wave that lifted me high into the air and back up onto the wall. Surprised, I collected my stuff, now soaking wet, and made my way back up to the top of the hill.

There was a carnival ride that Carly and I both thought looked fun so we climbed aboard. It was one long arm, fifty feet or more, parallel to the diagonal of the wall. The arm was pinned in the middle to a mount that spun, with a smooth yellow bench at either end. The arm would spin and the force generated by the ride would keep the riders in place.

We didn’t realize until the ride was already moving that there was no bar, no safety restraints. I put my arm around the back of the chair, the only thing I could hold onto. My elbow was too far out, and it hit something as we flew by. We screamed and screamed.

The arm stopped after a few goes around. We thought someone had heard our cries and stopped it. We were dizzy and disoriented so we lingered. Too long—it started again.

This time, someone finally heard us screaming and came to our rescue. The motor stopped and the arm slowed. A woman with a flashlight, the one who hit the stop button, commanded a man who identified himself in a warm Indian accent as “a professor, here to help” to grab the back of the seat as it floated by. We were still screaming “stop the ride”.

Back on solid ground, the woman said something about steering clear of carnival rides. I tried to say I usually loved them, but could barely speak. It felt like my mouth was full of glue. The words “brain scrambler” drifted into my mind.

Karen Young | Military Communications and Electronics Museum

There are 6 pillars to keeping your brain healthy: an active social life, quality sleep, regular exercise, stress management, healthy diet and mental stimulation. Research has shown that mental stimulation helps reduce the risk of developing dementia.

Museums can help keep your brain mentally stimulated!

How do museums help keep your brain healthy?

Museums act as a giant memory box, allowing visitors to connect with objects they already know or introducing them to whole new areas to explore. When you learn something new it makes your brain work! The harder the topic the more mentally stimulation it provides.

But museums also provide additional benefit to brain health by combining mental, physical and social interaction all at the same time. You can’t visit a museum without meeting new people and interacting with exhibits as you walk through the galleries.

At the Military Communications and Electronics Museum we provide not only an opportunity to learn about Canada’s military history from prior to WWI, we also have a wonderful collection of science artifacts from the area of communications and electronics. From early telephones, radio, ciphers, voice scramblers and radar, communications has been at the forefront of technological change in the 130 years and the museum has many early examples of communication technology. By exploring history and science together that increases your mental stimulation!

So come keep your brain healthy and visit the Military Communications and Electronics Museum.

Military Communications and Electronics Museum Museum Hours: 11:00am – 5:00pm Monday to Friday, year round Open Weekends 11:00am – 5:00pm May- September Admission: By Donation 613-541-4675 www.c-and-e-museum.org 95 Craftsman Boulevard Kingston, ON K0H 2Y0

» COMING IN DECEMBER

The Enigma Story: Technology, Turing, Trondheim, Toronto Friday, 2 December 2016, at 7:00pm Doors open at 6:30pm

Seating is limited and only those who have pre-registered will be admitted. Admission is by donation.

Pre-register by contacting [email protected]

Discover the remarkable story of the Enigma machine, a device used by the German military during WWII to encrypt their military communications. In this presentation, you will learn about the machine’s inner workings, the code-breaking efforts of Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park, the role that Canadians and Ontario played, the ties to modern espionage and encryption technology, and what James Bond has to do with all of this. A highlight will be the display of a real Enigma machine.

Presented by: Dr. Peter Berg

Peter Berg holds an undergraduate degree in physics (University of Muenster, Germany) and a PhD in Mathematics (University of Bristol, UK). After academic appointments in Ontario and Trondheim, Norway, he moved to Camrose, Alberta, in 2015 to take up a position as professor of mathematics & physics and Chair of the Department of Science at the University of Alberta. Given his passion for public speaking, the Enigma machine is his favorite topic.

Donald Trump, Colin Kaepernick, And The Politics Of Football

Football Is Trumpball Lite Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

The Super Bowl is superfluous this year. Who needs a reality show about violence, domination, and sexism, not to mention brain damage, now that we have Trumpball, actual reality that not only authenticates football’s authoritarianism but transforms us from bystanders into victims? Before this game is over, the players may swarm the grandstands and beat the hell out of us.

Pro football actually helped prepare us for the new president’s upset victory by normalizing a basic tenet of jock culture: anyone not on the team is an enemy, the Other. And it’s open season on opponents, the fans of opponents, critics, and women (unless they’re cheerleaders or moms). Trash talking is the lingua franca of this Trumpian moment, bullying the default tactic.

Yet pro football has also provided us with the single most vivid image of current American resistance to racism. Last summer, before a pre-season game, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the playing of the national anthem as a symbol of his refusal “to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” As the season progressed, he started going down on his right knee when the anthem began, revealing that he was wearing black socks decorated with pigs in police hats.  These, he said, represented “rogue cops that are allowed to hold positions in police departments.” He would eventually stop wearing them, convinced that the socks were a tactical mistake.

Kaepernick’s non-violent gestures, done initially without fanfare, were the most powerful message from SportsWorld since that other hard year of despair and determination, 1968, when two American Olympic medalists, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their black-gloved fists in Mexico City.

Incredibly, Smith, Carlos, and Kaepernick were all tutored by the same man, sociologist Harry Edwards. In the 1960s, as a young San Jose State professor, Edwards created the Olympic Project for Human Rights as his protest against racism. Now a retired Berkeley professor, he has been a long-time adviser to the 49ers.

Forty-nine years ago, as symbols of the so-called Athletic Revolution -- an attempt to resist the tyrannical rule of coaches and administrators, particularly over African-American football players and college track-and-field competitors -- Smith and Carlos were marginalized. Instead athletic “activism” morphed into hustling for sneaker endorsements.  But this time, Edwards promises, will be different. “The evident trajectory of the Kaepernick ‘movement’ (and the growing support among athletes for its concerns),” he recently wrote, “means that there are going to be some turbulent times over the upcoming Trump era as the pressure on athletes to stand up and speak out escalates.”

You won’t be surprised to learn that Donald Trump immediately disparaged Kaepernick’s gesture, telling a Seattle radio station, "I think it’s a terrible thing, and you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him, let him try, it’s not gonna happen." He then moved on, as he tends to do -- perhaps because he was already bored or perhaps because it triggered a memory of his own disastrous pro football days.

Sports Owner Trump Destroyed His League

Donald Trump is an old story for me.  When I first began talking to him in the mid-1980s -- I was then a sports reporter for CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt -- he had just bought the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League (USFL), then in its second year of operation. The USFL played its games in the spring and summer to avoid direct competition with the National Football League for fans and TV access, but did manage to bid successfully against the established league for a number of star players, including Herschel Walker, Steve Young, and Doug Flutie.

In the course of our first long interview, Trump assured me that he was not a man consumed by his latest purchase. (“If the league isn’t successful, then, you know, it’s off to the next thing.”)  He did, however, boast -- he was already The Donald, of course -- that his involvement gave the USFL “a little bit more warlike posture toward the establishment,” and that the “magic” of Trump Tower would enhance the image of the league. He insisted that he didn’t much like attention himself, but felt obligated to do this interview because I represented “a great show.” Even then, he spoke in the adjectival style (Great! Sad!) now familiar to all Americans.  At the time, though I sensed that it was all mud, I was a journalist and at least it covered the ground.

When I asked him about reports that the USFL’s hidden agenda was to eventually merge with the successful National Football League or at least pressure it into admitting some of the upstart franchises, he responded genially, “I hadn’t thought of it to be perfectly honest,” adding, “I don’t think it’s in the cards for many years.”

Of course, Trump turned out to be the leader of a group of owners pushing the new league to shift its games to the fall, a direct challenge to the NFL. An anti-trust lawsuit against that league followed, ending in a Pyrrhic victory.  The USFL received a judgment of $3 and collapsed, having lost tens of millions of dollars in the process.

It was all so Trumpian, so much the shape of things to come. Maybe I didn’t take him seriously enough then because we both came from Queens, a scorned outer borough of New York City, or because he was already a well-known publicity hound and classic boldface tabloid name. But I did come away with two insights that helped me in later interviews with him (when the subject was real estate or politics): first, that he would always respond to a question, even a needling one, as long as he was its subject, and second, that he had a gift for what I came to think of as predatory empathy.  He was remarkably skilled at reading what his interviewer wanted to hear and then reshaping himself and his answer accordingly.

Once he read me as a liberal with a weakness for pop philosophy, he typically answered a question about the moral responsibilities of sports owners by offering this supposed credo: “I tend to think that you should be decent, you should be fair, you should be straight, and you should do the best you can. And beyond that, you can’t do very much really. So yeah, you do have a responsibility.” Then, as if adding a note in the margins of his own bland comment, he added, “I’m not sure to what extent that responsibility holds.”

Typically, he had swallowed his own tail and who knew what he meant, including him. Through the 1990s, as the host of a local PBS public affairs show and then back writing columns at the New York Times, I watched his mean-spirited pomposity swell as he filled airtime and notebooks. But what more could a journo ask?

Once, for reasons I can’t recall, I returned to that supposed sense of “responsibility” of his, asking him if he’d like to “run the country as you have run your organization.” 

“I would much prefer that somebody else do it. I just don’t know if the somebody else is there,” he replied, as if already imagining January 20, 2017. “This country,” he added ominously, “needs major surgery.”

“Are you the surgeon?”

“I think I’d do a fantastic job, but I really would prefer not doing it.”

I’ve thought about Donald Trump ever since -- he did have that effect on you -- and have come to realize that he’s an avatar of the worst aspects of jock culture. (He had, in fact, been a good high school athlete.) His kind of boastful, bullying, blowfish persona is tolerated in locker rooms (as in sales offices, barracks, trading floors, and legislatures) just as long as the big dog can deliver. Which he has done. It’s no surprise that his close pals and business associates in SportsWorld include two other notorious P.T. Barnums, boxing’s Don King and wrestling’s Vince McMahon (whose wife, Linda, is now Trump's pick to head the Small Business Administration).

Another typical jock culture trait is rolling over for the alpha(est) dog in your arena, be it the team leader, coach, owner, or even the president of Russia. One wonders, had Trump become a successful NFL owner, would he have wimped out as completely as New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft did when Russian President Vladimir Putin pocketed his Super Bowl ring in 2005 and walked out of their Moscow meeting room with it. It was never returned. Under pressure from the George W. Bush White House, according to Kraft, he claimed it was a gift, only to change his story years later. Kraft is a Democrat, while his coach, Bill Belichick, and his quarterback, Tom Brady, are friends of Trump. The Patriots, the best team of our era, will, of course, be playing the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl.

A Jock Spring?

Colin Kaepernick, alas, won’t be getting a Super Bowl ring, at least not this year. The 49ers, long a successful and lucrative franchise, ended up with a 2-14 record this season. The 29-year-old Kaepernick is a scrambler with a powerful arm.  Once an exciting prospect who led his team to the Super Bowl in 2013, only his second pro season and first as a starter, he seemed to have lost some of his mojo in recent years.

He’s still an interesting character, though: biracial, raised by white adoptive parents, smart, and curious. His torso and arms are tattooed with religious phrases, and he ostentatiously kisses the “To God the Glory” tat on his right biceps after any touchdown, which became known as “Kaepernicking.”

His emergence as a progressive hero, however, surprised even Harry Edwards. “Nobody saw [Muhammad] Ali coming, nobody saw Kaepernick coming,” Edwards told Elliott Almond of the San Jose Mercury News. “He was in the tradition of people who tend to open up new paths. Nobody saw Dr. [Martin Luther] King coming.”

Putting Kaepernick in such a league may be a tad premature, but he has stimulated what might be called a Jock Spring, and not just because he promised to distribute his first million dollars in salary this season to community charities. Women soccer stars, high school football players and their coaches, National Football League and Women’s National Basketball players all began going down on one knee as the national anthem struck up. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the gesture “dumb and disrespectful” before professing regret for her remark. Time put Kaepernick on its cover.  Trump blamed him, in part, for a decline in the NFL’s ratings.

The initial signs of a Jock Spring actually pre-date his protest. Last July, New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony posted on his Instagram page an old black-and-white photograph of a dozen young black athletes in suits and ties posed in protest at what was then a summit meeting of sports stars. The front row of that 1967 photo now seems like a sports Mt. Rushmore -- Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Muhammad Ali, whose heavyweight title had been stripped from him after he refused to be drafted into the military. 

Anthony’s message called on “all my fellow ATHLETES to step up and take charge. Go to your local officials, leaders, congressman, assemblymen/assemblywoman and demand change. There’s NO more sitting back and being afraid of tackling and addressing political issues anymore. Those days are long gone. We have to step up and take charge. We can’t worry about what endorsements we gonna lose or who is going to look at us crazy. I need your voices to be heard. We can demand change.”

It was a surprising statement from a player best known for not passing the ball enough.  A few days later, he joined fellow NBA stars Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, and LeBron James onstage at ESPN’s annual awards show, where LeBron declared: “It’s not about being a role model, it’s not about our responsibility to the tradition of activism. I know tonight we’re honoring Muhammad Ali, the GOAT [Greatest of All Time], but to do his legacy any justice, let’s use this moment as a call to action for all professional athletes to educate ourselves, explore these issues, speak up, use our influence, and renounce all violence.”

A month later, Kaepernick sat down.

“Athletes have the biggest megaphone in the country,” Edwards said to Almond in their Q-and-A. “Everybody identifies with the athletes. Kap has opened up a conversation about what is probably the most convoluted, the most difficult, and the longest-standing and intractable issue in terms of race relations in this country: This is why it was so important for Colin to take off the pig socks.

“I told him that we went through that in the 1960s and it was one of the biggest mistakes we ever made. Ultimately, we are going to have to sit down across the table with the police and hopefully come to some resolution with some of these life-and-death issues.”

As the season ended, Kaepernick’s teammates awarded him their Len Eshmont Award for “inspirational and courageous play,” making a mockery of reports in the media that he had been alienating the rest of the team. Edwards describes the media and the sports establishment as clueless when it comes to Kaepernick’s growing support among athletes -- a phenomenon that promises “some turbulent times over the upcoming Trump era.”

Kaepernick’s most transcendent transgression has been the way he punctured the comfort of football’s sweaty sanctuary, letting in both light and some hard truths -- including this reality: that objectified and extravagantly well-paid performers can still have real thoughts about the world outside the white lines, a world becoming more and more perilous for those who think Trumpball should not be the national pastime.

Trump has said he will not be attending the Super Bowl -- that might even be true -- but he will sit for the usual pre-game presidential interview, this year with Bill O’Reilly of Fox, which will broadcast on the holiest event of the sports calendar. Should you tune in? While we’re still a democracy, make your own decision. Do whatever you did for the Inauguration.

Robert Lipsyte is the jock culture correspondent for TomDispatch. He returns after having been on leave to explore the belly of the beast as Ombudsman for ESPN. His most recent book is his memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

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#248 Countdowns

00:19:59

Well, it finally happened, somebody is trying to kill us. I suppose it was only a matter of time really. After all, we teach superheroes how to be superheroes. You could probably trace every foiled evil plot and captured supervillain from the past two and half years back to us. In fact, I recommend you do that right away. Any time evil has been defeated and the world has been saved is on us. We just haven’t been able to say that because we didn’t want villains coming after us, but like we said, somebody is trying to kill us.  (If you are a crime-fighter and take offense at the notion that all of your successes should actually be laid at our feet, please, stuff it, we’re the ones who are about to be killed. The least you could do is let us have this.)

00:19:34

About 26 seconds ago, we received a bomb at our offices. Well, technically we don’t know when the bomb was sent here. We are not good about checking our mail. We’ve all got our excuses. Parenthesis Guy is not allowed within 300 feet of any mailman in our city. (I got turned into a dog once and I was pretty jazzed because finally I could express my utter ire and hatred for mailmen in a socially acceptable fashion. Unfortunately, my colleagues here managed to break the curse just as I was about to pounce on our mailman.) Curly adamantly believes that if the Devil ever comes to collect on the debt Curly owes him, that he will do it through the United States Postal Service. {And I’ve yet to be proven wrong!} Lawyer Guy is a very lazy, good for nothing freeloader who can’t be bothered to pick up a few envelopes off the floor. [I… I don’t work out of your office. Are you guys ok over there?] No, we’re less than 19 minutes away from dying. Dr. Brainwave hasn’t been allowed to touch the mail ever since he built that army of origami robots out of envelopes with our address on them. <Honestly, even I was surprised that no superheroes came to take me away from here after that one.> And me? Well, I refuse to open the mail because I have a crippling fear of inadvertently starting a countdown on an explosive device. Validation has never tasted so sweet. (You were the one who opened it!) It was just my birthday and I thought somebody had sent me a present! {That seems fair actually, it did “Happy Birthday” on the package.} (Ok, but the “birth” part had clearly been crossed out and the word “death” had clearly been written above it.) I thought It was a hilarious gag! But honestly, this is fine. We can make this work for us. Today, for what may very well be our final post, we’re going to talk about countdowns.

00:17:03

I’ve often seen people wonder why supervillains would even include countdowns on so many of their evil schemes. Wouldn’t it be better not to give the heroes a clear timeframe for when their evil plot will be perpetrated? Would it not be better to simply show up, blow something up without warning, and call it a very evil and very successful day? Well, yes and no. While blowing something up with no countdown might result in a very successful and agonizing explosion, it causes the villains to miss out on being able to inflict an additional level of psychological torture on their victims as well. Think about all of us here, huddled around this bomb, watching it countdown. Why, we’re going positively mad. (We’re using this time to talk about the relative value of countdown clocks instead of doing anything productive to actually stop it so, yeah, that’s pretty batty.) Exactly! The mindset of villains is that their victims will suffer from fear, anxiety and desperation as the clock ticks down, and then they’ll get blown up! <Plus, countdown clocks are not really as useful of an early warning system as you seem to think. Most of the time, the numbers displayed on them are inaccurate and the explosive will go off much sooner than you think it will.> (Wait what?) [Seriously, do you need me to call someone?] Maximum torture. Maximum evil. {It’s maximum evil that our office is about to be blown up and you still won’t let us go home early for the day.} You should’ve thought of that before you used up all of your vacation days back in May! {For the thousandth time. I was mugged and in a coma.}

00:15:19

Curly makes a valuable point though. Few things are worth your life, and if you can get out of where you are, you definitely should without wasting any time trying to diffuse the bomb in the time you have left. One of the fun things about having foreknowledge of an impending explosion is that your adrenaline is going to be pumping through the roof. This means that many of your pain receptors will be dampened and you can get away with doing things you would not normally be able to. So you can hurl yourself out a nearby window. Kick down a door. Punch a wall down! Shrink yourself down and flush yourself down the toilet! When there’s a ticking time-bomb in your midst, any way of getting out is going to be safer than sticking around. (It should be noted, dear reader, that ever since our Escapology post all of our doors now lock from the outside and we have to come up with increasingly absurd ways to escape our own offices every evening. So we’ve very much backed ourselves into a corner here.)

00:14:01

If you can’t leave the room you’re in, perhaps the bomb can. Bombs are often much smaller than humans. (Shrinkers notwithstanding. Honestly, if you have access to shrinking technology, you should probably shrink the bomb before you shrink yourself and flush yourself down the toilet.) If you’re able to move the bomb, and you’re fairly confident that nobody around you will be injured, try throwing it out the window, or chucking it down a trash chute, or flushing it down the toilet! <Fortunately, our office is nestled in between two preschools, so no matter which direction we throw the bomb, we win.> That is obviously incorrect and we’re not going to do that, but there isn’t a preschool floating above us. (Wow, good thing we moved last year.) So what we’re going to do now is just pick up the bomb and throw it as high as we can. Worse comes to worst we accidentally blow up a bird or something, but honestly, they’ve had it too good for too long anyway.

00:05:59

Well that was a terrible idea, we should not have touched the bomb and we certainly should not have thrown it through our skylight because it fell right back down and we are 6 minutes closer to death and destruction. <Again, it’s going to be less time than displayed actually.> [Why do you guys even have a skylight that opens?] (When we first started How To Hero, we operated out of a car that had a dope sunroof and we’ve been chasing that high ever since.) If throwing the bomb doesn’t work, or it causes the timer to speed up, you might want to look into alternative methods of stopping the bomb from going off. Thankfully, we live in a world of superheroes and a world of superheroes is a world of fantastical science! We could use a time-dilation bubble to slow down the timer forever! We could open up a portal to a dead universe and drop the bomb through it! We could send it back in time! We could send it forward in time and make it tomorrow’s problem! We could use a technology neutralizer to neutralize the technology in the bomb! We could call upon our bomb-diffusing robot, Todd! The possibilities are endless! Well, not for us. Unfortunately, we keep our time-dilator, portal generator, time machine, and technology neutralizer in an offsite storage unit that is at least an 8-minute walk away. (Plus we’ve locked ourselves in.) And unfortunately, Todd the bomb-disposal robot is a disco convention in Tallahassee (he is a robot of many interests!) and it will definitely take him more than 4 minutes and 33 seconds to get here (and he has definitely been screening our calls).

00:04:29

If you can’t get rid of the bomb using the power of science fiction, you might have better luck simply disconnecting the timer from the bomb. If the timer isn’t connected to the bomb the bomb won’t know what time to explode and it probably just won’t! Maybe! I don’t know, we’ve only got 4 minutes to save ourselves. (Readers are encouraged to start playing “4 Minutes” by Madonna……….. Now!) If the timer is attached to the bomb with screws unscrew them. If it’s scotch taped just cut through the tape. If it’s a series of different colored wires… ah, hm. Which wire are you supposed to cut? Does anybody know? (Blue.) {Green.} <Chartreuse.>  So, no. Guys, come on, you’re looking at the bomb, you know none of the wires are those colors. Ok so we can’t remove the timer, we can’t move the bomb, and we’re stuck in here. (And Todd the robot who diffuses bombs won’t answer our calls.) Right, and Todd the bomb-bot won’t pick up the phone.  (Can’t really blame him though. You know how much he loves disco. He probably didn’t even bring his phone.) He is a robot his phone is in his head. {So, where does that leave us?}

00:03:30

If you can’t remove yourself, the bomb, or the timer from the situation, another thing you can do is to contain the bomb, and thus, the ensuing explosion. Look around you, see if there is anything that you think is powerful enough to lessen the effects of the explosion. You’re going to want something durable, so no glass display cases or wooden music boxes.  (Wait a minute... Something durable... Like something that can contain, among other things, unholy sky liquids, eternally damned souls, and all powerful cosmic artifacts?) Oddly specific but I guess. (Does anybody have one of Jerry’s Homegrown Condiment Jars????) Are you kidding me! (Do you have a better idea?) Well I guess not! Does anybody have a Jerry Jarman jar? {I’m pretty sure he blacklisted me after I yelled at him.} <Personally, I believe he’s the one who sent us this bomb!> Ah gosh.

00:00:50

(You know what? It’s really weird that “4 Minutes” by Madonna is only 3 minutes and 10 seconds long. Now what are we supposed to do? Just sit in silence like a bunch of idiots?) {Maybe one of us can eat the bomb?} Nobody’s eating the bomb! That’s stup- Wait, Dr. Brainwave’s Greatest Shame! (What?) {What?} <NO!> What, this can work! <You dare invoke that name!> Look, we’ve got a giant monster in our backyard that I’m reliably informed will eat anything. In my experience if something will eat me there’s little it won’t eat. She’s 38 feet tall, and a mile wide and an adorable abomination of science who I’m pretty sure will be fine if she eats this bomb! (I don’t know...) What other choice do we have! {Did you forget about the fact that all of her internal organs are sentient beings and musical theater professionals? We can’t risk them getting hurt in the explosion!} Oh, you’re right. I did forget about that. <That’s all right, I’ve figure out what needs to be done.>

00:00:10

<By my estimate we’ve got about five seconds left before this thing explodes and takes all of us with it. I don’t know about the rest of you but I find that completely unacceptable.> Yeah, the rest of us aren’t exactly pleased Brainwave. Though, if I’m honest. If I’m going to get blown up, I couldn’t imagine a better group to spend my last few minutes with. (Awwwwwwww. You love us.) {I think I’m gonna cry.} <All of you idiots shut up now. Listen, none of you are going to die. None of you can be allowed to die. You were right, this guide has saved the world, seemingly by accident, more times than I can count. And I’m a doctor, I can count pretty high. If you die here today, if this guide dies today, well that very well could be it. So I can’t allow that to happen.> What are you doing Brainwave? (I cannot believe it hasn’t been five seconds yet.) <Well, I guess you can say I’m saving the world.> Hey! Put that bomb down, every time we touch it it speeds up! <Well, t-minus three seconds then.> What are those? Rocket boots? Have you been wearing rocket boots this whole time? <I read what you said about air superiority being crucial, and it’s a good thing I did!> {Wait, you actually read this guide?} Put that bomb down right now. <Of course I read the guide, do the rest of you not read it?> (Only the parts I’m in.) {That doesn’t even make sense, your parts are all commenting on the other parts!} Brainwave, I don’t know what you think you’re doing but if you’ve really read through the whole guide then you know how stupid I think heroic sacrifices are! <Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a hero then.> You are missing the point! <Thanks for letting me live in your basement. The mutant alligators will need to be fed. Tell DBGS that I love her, and tell Professor Brain-Scrambler that he’s a hack and that he can suck it.> Frederick wait! (Whelp there he goes. Right through the skylight. The skylight that we just said is retractable. He just went right on through it. Pretty baller actually.) How likely is it that this whole thing was just some big prank? {Pretty likely I’d say.}

00:00:08

00:00:07

00:00:06

KABOOM

[Guys? Guys what happened?] Oh god. He’s dead. [Who is? What’s going on?] Brainwave- Dr. Brainwave... He... He sacrificed himself for us. That idiot. (Oh god oh god there’s- There’s blood and glass everywhere.) (Who better to clean up all that blood and glass than Jer-) NOT NOW! [Is it true?] Yes. Dr. Brainwave is dead.

#249 The Death of Your Nemesis

(Note: This is Part Two of a three part story. Part One. Part Three.)

Uh. Ok, so your nemesis has died. The person you’ve gone head to head with for years and years. The enemy of yours who, without fail, always strives to make things as personal as possible, is gone... Good! You’ll be better off, and the world will be better off with them. You can finally dedicate your time to dealing with more systemic ills in your neighborhood. No longer will you have to alienate everyone you love because there’s always the slim chance that on any given day your nemesis could discover who you are and take vengeance on your friends and family. When your nemesis dies, that’s a reason to party. You’re free of them! Forever! Huzzah! You may not have been able to kill them due to some complicated moral code that only allows you to kill their henchmen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate their demise!

(Oooooook buddy, why don’t sit this one out. You’re going through a lot right now.)

I’m fine! Why shouldn’t I be fine! My nemesis, Dr. Brainwave, a convicted supervillain who was living, rent-free, in my basement, is dead. I’m free of him. I’m doing great!

(All right, totally. We can all see that you’re handling this with dignity and poise. Why don’t you let me deal with this one.)

Well I suppose I have been training you as my apprentice so that you could one day write blog posts on your own...

(Sure, that’s what our relationship is. So why don’t you go outside, take a breather, and let me handle today’s entry.

What the man says is true. Dr. Brainwave is dead and I guess, technically speaking, he was our nemesis. He’s threatened our lives more times than we count. {We are notoriously bad counters though.} He’s destroyed our home, our place of work, our garden filled with one-of-a-kind miracle veggies. {Immortality radishes, vampiric celery, tasty kale.} And yet, he’s always been there, and I think we kind of just assumed he always would be. You see, a nemesis is not just another supervillain that you’ve got to fight with alarming frequency. They’re a major part of your life. Oftentimes your nemesis will know you better than anybody else in your social circle. Sure, they only took the time to get to know you on this deep level so that they could inflict all manner of psychological torture upon you, but still, it’s kind of nice that they invested that time in you.

A superhero’s relationship with their nemesis is always going to be complicated. You’ll usually see them more than you see your family. You’ll see them at their highest {when they believe that they’ve killed you} and at their lowest {surprisingly enough, after they’ve succeeded in killing you and find their life to be devoid of all meaning and purpose} you’ll occasionally find yourself fighting alongside them and yeah, in some twisted way, you’re going to form a kind of meaningful relationship with them. So what are you even supposed to do when they’ve died? Granted, you’re not as fanatically dependent on them for your continued existence and purpose as they are on you. There will always be crimes to stop and evil to vanquish. But any superhero would be hard-pressed to deny that their lives would be a little bit emptier without their nemesis. Perhaps that’s the real reason why so few superheroes actually kill their nemeses.

If you feel like you need to mourn the passing of your nemesis, that’s ok. You should allow yourself to space to do that. Do something that they would’ve loved. Hold a {vacant} bridge hostage, kick a {robot, stuffed, already dead} puppy into the sun, burn yourself in effigy! If you’re worried about getting attacked by other supervillains if you attend a funeral or memorial service for your nemesis don’t worry! Supervillains usually are not friends with one another. That funeral is gonna be hella empty. You can go there with no problem. Besides, supervillain funerals have been poorly attended ever since Lady Richter used her “funeral” as an opportunity to drop many of her fellow supervillains into a bottomless chasm. Ever since then, supervillains have had a hard time believing that any of their colleagues are actually dead. If any other supervillains attend your nemesis’ funeral, they’ll be lugging around giant ladders in case a bottomless chasm opens up beneath them, and they will be too exhausted to fight you.

The whole How To Hero crew {me, Parentheses Guy, Zach, Lawyer Guy, Dr. Brainwave’s Greatest Shame, Diego A. Wayghosts, Todd The Bomb-Disposal Bot} attended Dr. Brainwave’s funeral and, lo and behold, the only other person in attendance was Dr. Brainwave’s other nemesis, Professor Brain-Scrambler. {There was also, of course, a large contingent of mutant alligators.} He actually spoke quiet beautifully about his mad scientist colleague, after which we pulled him over to the side and told him that he was a hack and that he could suck it, in line with Dr. Brainwave’s final wishes. All in all it was a very emotional 2 am-4 am. {Supervillain funerals almost exclusively take place during this time which is colloquially known as “the witching hour.”} The funeral home was a bit cold, and I would say it was definitely haunted, but overall, it was a pretty solid funeral I’d say. 

Once you’ve spent some mourning the loss of an important and ever-present figure in your life, there is some housekeeping that you need to do. Reach out to your nemesis’ loved ones and express your condolences. The last thing you want is for their loved ones to vow revenge on you and beginning the cycle anew. If you can, talk with their loved ones, estranged family members, sidekicks, or unholy creations and make them understand that you were not responsible for the death of their loved ones. The quicker you do this the better. Blaming a superhero for the death of a loved one is 17th most common supervillain origin story. {number 68 is having your coal company run out of business by windmill farms but number 33 will blow your mind.} In our case, we sat down with Dr. Brainwave’s legions of mutant alligators and several hours of teeth baring and jaw snapping, a fragile peace agreement was forged. {The alligators for their part, behaved remarkably well. Not a single bared tooth or snapped jaw among them!}

Once that is taken care of you must attend to the rest of your nemesis’ personal affects. Their goons will be directionless, and this is a great time to many of them off the board. Have your friends in law enforcement scoop them up before they can find employment under a different supervillain. Or, if you really wanna get wild, invent a new identity for yourself, pose as a new supervillain, take control of your nemesis’ cronies, and then have them perform tasks that seem like crimes, but actually good deeds. Stuff like, “this old woman is an ancient evil spirt, help her cross the street” or “this is my territory now, nobody else is allowed to commit a crime here. If you see another villain doing crimes here, stop them!” Arrange operations against your nemesis’ lairs and begin systemically dismantling their operation. Since they were your nemesis you have the unique advantage of knowing where they’re likely to have kept most of their really cool stuff. And remember, in the souvenir game, it is first come, first serve. So lead the operation against their main fortress or stronghold yourself and claim all of those spleen-discombobulators and parasite helmets for yourself! For us, that just meant going into our own basement and, honestly, reclaiming a lot of stuff we thought we’d lost! We also blew up all of Dr. Brainwave’s stuff, as per his last will and testament. [Hi, again, a hastily scrawled note scratched into a chalkboard that says “destroy all of my Earthly things in the same manner in which I died” is not a will.] Well, we did it! And it was awesome! We didn’t even need to buy any explosives, it’s astounding how much of his stuff was already made out of bombs! {You know what? It’s actually pretty alarming how many explosives there were just under our house this entire time.})

Wait, how many bombs were there?

(I thought I told you to take the day off because you were being weird!)

You’re being weird! How many bombs did you find in Dr. Brainwave’s room?

(I don’t know, probably around 660. What do you think Curly?)

{I’d say around 664, maybe 665.}

Oh you have got to be kidding me.

(See, you’re being weird again. Buhbye! Now, any real superhero can’t exactly be without a nemesis. People will start to talk. “Oh yeah, that guy? He’s not really very superheroic, he doesn’t even have one evil person whose sole purpose in life is to destroy them. Poor guy.” So you need to find a new nemesis! {We recommend reading our advice for finding your first nemesis.} Try calling up all of your old enemies and see if they’d be interested in engaging in an eternal struggle between good and evil with you. Or, just go through the supervillain phonebook and pick a name that kind of seems like an inverse of your own name. {Or, if it’s still too soon for you to even think about replacing your dear departed nemesis, just prank call about of villains until you’re all cheered up.} Without Dr. Brainwave gone, we’ve obviously needed to start looking for a new supervillain correspondent... and, well... I guess just take a look at some of the auditions we’ve received.

Al “Da Boss” Marconi: “Ayyyy, da best way to save da world is to stab a twerp right between the eyes and laugh as he bleeds out on the pavement!” {Factually incorrect.}

Dr. Python: “So this job comes with a free room right? My last roommate turned out to be Ultiman so obviously that wasn’t going to work out and I kind of very badly need a new place to live.” {Seems to believe that living with Ultiman is a bad idea because he is a superhero but living with us is fine. Which leads us to believe he either doesn’t really get who we are, or does not respect us.}

Giorgio the Evil Mime: “...” {This guy was Zach’s top choice, but he is clearly grieving and not in his right mind. He seems to have forgotten that our supervillain correspondent needs to be able to speak and make intrusive comments on our blog posts.}

As you can see, we have been having some trouble, but luckily we’ve got interviews with Jhonny McBarn-Burner, Mustard Man and the dreaded Karalaxus who is actually a very pleasant guy once you agree to give up your free will and join his horde of mindless zombies. So hopefully one of those guys pans out.)

Stop everything! We don’t need a new supervillain correspondent. (Dude, for real, you need to take a break. You’re going a bit cuckoo you know?) No, I’m serious, and your face is a bit cuckoo actually so how about you step the heck off.  (Rude.) We don’t need to replace Brainwave, because I don’t think he’s actually gone {What are you saying! Wait, did we actually all die in the explosion? Was he the only to survive? Is he mourning us? Which of us did he mourn the most? Me?} No, I believe that he’s dead. But I also believe that he died on purpose. (Well sure, we all saw him unrepentant supervillainously sacrifice himself so that we could live!) I don’t think he sacrificed himself at all actually. I think he planned on dying, and that he planned on benefitting from it in a way that none of us could have foreseen.  (Ok, you’re gonna have to walk us through that.) Ok, so remember when we went through Brainwave’s stuff, we found a grand total of 665 bombs right?  (I guess?) {We are notoriously bad at counting.} True, but I think we got it right this time. I think that there were only 665 explosive devices in Brainwave’s lair/our basement. [Only?] Yes only! What kind of fanatical supervillain builds so many explosives but stops before hitting 666! The devil’s number! I think he did have 666 bombs, until he mailed one to our office! (Wait, what? You think Brainwave sent us that bomb? That seems like a stretch.) Oh? Does it? The most evil person that we are acquainted with sent us a bomb? That seem awfully farfetched to you? (Well, when you put it like that...) And he was wearing rocket boots the whole time! We could’ve strapped the bomb to one of his rockets and launched it through the skylight without him having to carry it! {That reminds me, our landlord called and said that we definitely lost our security deposit because of that skylight.} (Ah DANG IT!!!!) I think that he waited until the timer was low to reveal that he was wearing rocket boots so he could make his sacrifice play. And hey, he knew that the time on the bomb was displaying the wrong time and yet he knew exactly when the bomb was actually going to go off. That isn’t suspicious to any of you??? (Look, if I made a big deal about everything I found suspicious our coworkers we’d never get anything done!) {Is this about my outstanding deal with the devil?} (No, actually.) And Parenthesis Guy, you even said that the funeral home seemed haunted during the funeral! What if that was Dr. Brainwave! What if he devised this whole scenario so he could die and become a ghost!  (Why would he do that? And doesn’t this all seem a little convoluted.) Yeah, dude, he’s a supervillain! Something the rest of you seemed to have lost sight of. Of course he would come up with an absurdly complicated plan to become a ghost. From a supervillain’s perspective, being a ghost would be way better than being a frail old human with the physique of a scientist.  (I don’t know man, I’m just not seeing it.) What! It makes total sense. He freaks us out with a bomb. Classic supervillain move. He puts us on an emotional rollercoaster by making us think he sacrificed himself to save us, causing us to question everything we thought we knew about the sort of person he was. All while shedding his physical form in order to commit crimes as a ghost. It’s a classic Brainwave move!  (I think maybe you should lie down buddy. You’re starting to go a bit crazy. And not in a fun way like the rest of us.) {Yeah when you make us look like the sane ones you’ve gotta throw in the towel man.} Yeah. Yeah ok, maybe you’re right. (Yeah, maybe we’re right. Let’s call it day, we’ve still gotta go feed the mutant alligators.) You guys go ahead I’ll catch up. {Ok, remember to put on your armor before you enter the alligator pen this time.} Yeah, yeah I’ll remember. All right Brainwave, the others are gone. I know you’re here.

<Uch fine. You got me.> You absolute bas- <Listen, you’re right. I’m every name you’re about to call me. But can we do this later? Right now, I need your help.>

How many times have you see this? You and your squad have gone storming fists first into a haunted castle or a rogue government laboratory. The place is big and most of the world’s heroest are off-world fighting *checks notes* three million jelly fish? Really? In space? So your team is small, so small that it will take you forever to find what you’re looking for and uch who has the time for that. So you split up. Your watches are synchronized, your communicators are charged, Mega Mouth, the loudest man to have ever lived, is there, if he calls out you can all converge. What’s the worst that can happen? The mission ends in success, you’ve recovered the nuclear flapjack or the souls of the seven warlocks of the east or you’ve brought down the criminal empire of The Mobster. In fact things went better than any of you could have ever expected. It almost seems like... No, it couldn’t be. Could it have been too easy? Have you perhaps misjudged what the bad guy’s ultimate goal here was? Are they actually closer than ever to achieving world domination? Yes, yes and maybe, depending on how competent they are. (A villain’s competence can generally be assessed by counting the number of underlings they’ve employed who are clearly waiting for a chance to stab them in the back. If the number is higher than zero they are incompetent.) You see you or one of your friends may very well have fallen victim to one of the oldest tricks in the supervillain playbook. Please join us as we embark on our 150th post where we will discuss:

Mind Control

“Mind control, because hiring willing employees is complicated!” “Mind control, because you shouldn’t have to tell them twice!” “Mind control, because free will is such an unpredictable thing!” “Mind control, because can we really trust people to have thoughts that we didn’t give them!” These are just a few of the many slogans that the mind control industry has used in an attempt to sell people on the idea of having thoughts sold to them. Supervillains have been using mind control ever since the first brains were invented, to get unwitting pawns to do their dirty work. There are many different forms mind control can take, let’s take a look at a few of them and how they’ve been used, and how we as a superhero community can fight back against them.

Brain Washing This is one of the oldest, and bluntest, forms of mind control. Brain washing is not when a brain is literally removed from a head and placed in a bathtub or dishwasher or something. Rather it refers to a metaphorical scrubbing, an erasure of everything that is contained within a brain, including memories, personalities and even emotions and feelings. The brainwashing process usually leaves a supervillain with a blank slate. The poor sap they’ve kidnapped can then be molded into whatever kind of person the villain needs them to be. A fighter, a chaufer, a professional heckler, whatever they need to fulfill their maniacal machinations. The reeducation process might include pro-crime propaganda (you know motivational posters that say things like “stabbing is cool” or “push your neighbor down a flight of stairs”) or specific anti-superhero lessons (things like “Did you know that Ultiman loves double-dipping?” or “Have you heard literally anything about Professor Paleontologist?”). In no time at all our brain-bathing baddies will have a brand new henchman all of their own. Supervillains sometimes make use of this method because- (hey, this is exactly why we hired a supervillain correspondent) We did not do that. (You’re telling me you can explain why a supervillain might brainwash somebody better than a supervillain who lives in our basement and is literally named Dr. Brainwave?) All right I see your point... <Excellent! I knew you’d come around. Ahem, brainwashed henchmen are far more reliable than those free-thinking goons we’ve discussed before. They follow orders to a tee. They have no regard for their own safety. They can’t be reasoned with or manipulated or bribed by those devious, super fools that are always trying to put a halt to your plans. But at the same time, brainwashing is only good if you have the means to build a person from the ground up. The victim will need to relearn everything. How to walk, how to talk, how to go to the bathroom on their own. They’ll be like an infant, smelly and useless. Sure, once a you’ve brainwashed a few pitiful maggots you can pretty much just have them teach and watch after each other but the first go around you’re going to have to spend a lot of time crafting the person you want. Which is why I almost never do it anymore. But you know who does? Which insignificant mad scientist wannabe is still utilizing these antiquated claptrap methods? That hack, Professor Brain-Scrambler. You’ve never met any man as pathetic as he. That absolute fo-> Yeah so that was a mistake. 

Brainwashing can also be very difficult to undo. Generally when a brain is wiped clean it’s wiped clean, that’s it. Occasionally, the bad guys who are preforming the procedure might keep the “data” they pull from the brain for safe keeping (usually in the form of a glowing sphere) in which case all you need to do is retrieve the personality sphere and reunite it with the body. Sometimes a supervillain won’t do as thorough of a job as they’d thought <ha, certainly sounds like that buffoon Brain-Scrambler to me> and the victim’s former personality and memories can resurface, usually when they’re exposed to objects or people from their past. Other times though, the most that you can do for these people is to just rescue them from the employ of the supervillains and return them to non-supervillain society. Other times a skilled enough psychic can restore a brainwashed victim’s personality with enough time. (talk about the fish!) NO! <Did you know he isn’t even a real professor? He’s been rejected from the Villain’s College 17 times! I should know, I penned the rejection letters myself after intercepting his applications and feeding them to my mutant alligators.>

Hypnosis Similar to brainwashing, hypnosis allows a villain to imprint something new onto a victim. While brainwashing is often permanent though, hypnotism is always temporary. Hypnosis is useful when a villain needs a quick, disposable henchperson or if they want to ruin somebody’s reputation or frame them for a crime, especially a superhero’s. Hypnotized people will often have no memory of their actions while they were under the spell of the hypnotist and thus a villain can cause a person a lot of grief by using this method. They can force a person to do something unsavory, wait for the hypnosis to fade, and then wait for them to realize, or be informed about, what they’ve done and watch them collapse as they’re forced to live with the guilt of what they did for the rest of their lives. 

Hypnotized people will often behave more like zombies than actual living people and so they are easy to spot and stop (and tops) before they get into any real trouble. Just make sure you don’t confuse them for an actual zombie and shoot them in the head or set them on fire or something. That would be bad. What this means though, is that breaking a hypnotist’s hold is about as easy as waking somebody up. Loud noises, vigorous shaking, true love’s kiss. Take your pick. (I recommend the vigorous shaking, especially if you’re using our new, state-of-the-art Unhypnotizeinator, which consists of what amounts to a tilt-a-whirl that we got for a steal after the amusement park it was in was shut down for having a “criminally unsafe” tilt-a-whirl.) Sometimes though, even after a hypnotized person is awakened from their trance they can lapse back into it if certain stimuli are in place. The most common one is falling into actual sleep. In cases like these the person who has been hypnotized will fall asleep, as people are wont to do, and then immediately wake up under the control of Pocket Watch or the Hypster or whomever. If someone you know has been hypnotized make sure that you always have loud music playing and just live out the rest of your days making sure that they never have a moment of sleep ever again. Or you can best the evil hypnotist in combat. That’ll usually break the spell. Either that or you’ll have to destroy the enchanted watch or pendulum that they’re using to hypnotize people.

Sleeper Agents Like hypnosis, sleeper agents can be switched back and forth between being fully-in-control and fully-under-control. But unlike sleeper agents, the victims won’t actually be asleep or in a sleep-like state. Even though the word “sleep” is right there in the name. What a broken language this is. Sleeper agents (sleepers agent?) can be activated through a series of codewords or images and once activated they become basically brainwashed victims. Except they come fully-loaded with all those nifty things humans can do. No matter potty-training dangerous assassins, these guys can go all on their own! Sleeper agents might have entire secret lives that even they themselves aren’t aware of. They could even have an entirely different skillset that is accessed only when they are activated by their handler. Right now you (yes you) could have the ability to breakdance or bake wonderful soufflés or shoot a moving target at 300 meters and you’d never know it! (Atlantis cable news rhubarb kerfuffle. Try now.) 

Sleeper agents are some of the most dangerous enemies a superhero could have. Anybody could be one. Your best friend, the guy who runs the best coffee cart in New York City, the librarian, any of them could be sleeper agents who just need to hear the right sequence of colors and Major League Baseball teams to try to rip your throat out. It is extremely difficult to remove a sleeper agent program from a person’s mind. The process requires what amounts to a lobotomy, carving away at the parts of the brain, or hopefully, the implants in the brain, that cause the neighborhood mailman to turn into a hyper-competent ninja. 

The Power of Suggestion This kind of mind control is usually superpower based. Instead of rewriting a person’s entire personality or taking control of them indefinitely, villains with this power will simply issue a command to some poor sap and use their powers to force them to carry it out. People who under this kind of mind control will usually be fully aware of what’s happening, but they are completely unable to stop it. Usually this type of control will fade either after a set amount of time or after the victim has carried out the command. 

Generally, the only way to prevent a victim of this kind of mind control from carrying out their dastardly directives is to physically prevent them from doing so until the time-limit has passed. This could mean you have to physically restrain the person or simply knock them unconscious. (By throwing a brick at their head.) Be careful though, usually villains with these powers will be crafty sons of mothers. They’ll often have a couple of people under their control at the same time. These people will sometimes be redundancies, meaning if you stop one of them there will be another to carry out the same task. Other times they’ll be used to appeal to your sense of preserving-innocent-livesism and the sly suggestive supervillain will have ordered them to cause themselves or others bodily harm should the one who you’re trying to stop be stopped. With villains like these you need to outsmart them, or somehow find a way of disabling their powers. Otherwise, every moment they can speak is a moment they can place another person under their control. Remember, their powers are speech related so if they can’t speak they can’t use them. Try taking them out for a raging night of karaoke and screaming at pigeons, their voice will definitely be gone by the next morning and you can lock them up in a power neutralizing cell or like a deserted island where they can’t speak to anybody.

Mind control is one of the most dangerous techniques supervillains use in their never ending quest to take over some body of land. Which makes sense, not only are they evil but they have a strong enough will to get out of bed every morning and clomp around town in a ridiculous psychedelic battle suit, they’re not going to be very interested in allowing other people to keep their substantially weaker wills are they? Fortunately mind control can be combatted, not only with all of the ways we just mentioned, but also with a regular old sheet of tinfoil. That’s right! None of these mind controlling methods can get through regular, off-the-shelf, aluminum foil. So unwrap that sandwich you’ve been saving and make yourself a gosh darn hat out of tinfoil. If you need help making said hat, Hatman actually runs hat-making seminars every Friday night. (So hey, I guess everybody’s free to do crime in Hatsburg on Friday nights.) <Good to know!> Wait, no!

Thanks to all of my fans and supporters (that’s you guys!) and death by a thousand bolts of lightning to all my enemies (that might be you guys too!) [Wait,what?] {Oh you still work here?} [Of course I still work here!] Here’s to another 150 posts, stay tuned for a master post and a few small announcements later today! 

Mission Briefings

Before a superhero launches into action, it is important for them to know what exactly they are going to be getting themselves into. Who are they fighting, why are they fighting them, what are the stakes involved. There are a lot of unknown variables and questions that a superhero is going to have, and the answer to all of them, is contained within the dreaded mission briefing. 

Mission briefings are the worst because the alarm’s already gone off, you know there’s evil to be fought, you’re all amped up and ready to go, and now you have to attend a meeting. Can you believe that? A meeting. Meetings are already the worst, especially since so many of them seem to be about your personal hygiene. Look, we get that you fight a lot of crimes and that you’re wearing like 300 pounds of ancient Greek armor but please, please you need to shower. It’s hurting everybody else’s productivity. Anyway, this meeting is especially heinous because it comes at the worst time but it’s actually super vital. You can’t even complain that it should’ve been an email. You can’t just ditch it and hope for the best. You’ve got to go so that you may learn how best to handle the threat you are being sent to handle. If you don’t go, lives can be lost and civilizations could quite literally crumble. (Look, if they hadn’t been shortsighted and built their entire civilization on top of a bunch of giant graham crackers the sentient Marshmallos of S’moria wouldn’t constantly be facing the threat of their civilization crumbling. What a bunch of s’morons.) 

So here’s how you can get away with not paying attention during these things. Listen, you’re a hero, you’ve faced thousands of threats before, and while we talk a lot about how supervillains are unpredictable and outlandish, the truth is there are only so many evil plots, plans, and schemes. (This reminds me of the time Joseph “Professor Brain Scrambler” Brainscrambler built a device that would eliminate anyone with the name “Joe” from existence so that he would finally know the joys of having a unique name but he set it wrong and it instead eradicated everyone with the name Jrf. Even he didn’t see that particular evil plot coming) You can probably jury-rig a functional plan to stop any crime just based on your previous experience. So while you do have to physically be in the room for the briefing, you don’t have to try to focus on statistics and minutiae when you’re so amped to fight some crime. 

So here’s how you get out of actually needing to be in the room during these things. There are probably a hundred different ways superheroes can pretend to be places they aren’t in this day and age. Clones, holograms, androids, shapeshifters-for hire, you get the gist. But none of these solutions is truly perfect. Clones have a nasty habit of going evil, and the last thing you want is an evil clone of yourself in a conference room with the rest of your team. Holograms don’t work if anybody touches you, and there tends to be a lot of hand-holding for support during these meetings, it seems like every other day someone’s nemesis or a villain that is responsible for a hero’s traumatic and tragic backstory resurfaces. An android might take this task so seriously that they go to the briefing, rapidly process all of the information they are being given, and then go out on their own and quickly and effectively stop the bad guys before you even get a chance to. That certainly seems like a waste doesn’t it! And of course, you can never trust a shape shifter, they might show up to this meeting disguised as you but with embarrassing acne. Or you with a stupid haircut. Their powers know no bounds. It’s simply too risky.

The best way to not have to sit in a stuffy conference room during a mission briefing is to move the briefing elsewhere. If the briefing takes place somewhere more exciting, you might actually be able to glean some useful information without letting your enthusiasm be stifled by the dreariness of an office conference room. The best way to do this, obviously, is to burn down the conference room... accidentally. Clumsily knock over the pier of the eternal soul-flame that someone left lying around. Accidentally startle Flaming Headed Guy, who is notorious for hiccuping flames when scared. Antagonize the dragon you keep in the stables and let it chase you to the conference room. Do whatever you need to do. If the conference room is reduced to ash, you certainly can’t have a meeting in it. With any luck the person giving the briefing will just opt to cut their losses and do the briefing en route to the crisis-zone to make up for lost time. Have you ever attended a mission briefing in a cargo jet hurtling towards a living volcano? That’s the kind of thing that really grabs your attention. Sure, the howling of the wind and the blood pumping in your ears might make it difficult to hear all of the important information being imparted on you, but you’ll certainly retain more than you would’ve if you’d been bored out of your mind in a stuffy conference room. 

Mission briefings are vital, but unfortunately, they’re also the most boring part of fighting crime. Sure you need to know all the salient details of who you’re fighting, why they need to be fought, and so on and so forth. But we mustn’t lose sight of the most important thing, keeping your energy up and the adrenaline pumping so you can actually fight the bad guys and do your job! So read through files and profiles while falling from a plane, learn about the mystical reality you’re journeying to while your mind is being torn apart and reassembled as your actually cross over, learn the anatomy of the monstrous abomination you need to fight while you’re holding their jaws apart from your head. In this biz, it’s never too late to learn the things you need to learn, as long as you do it in an exciting way!

We recently ran a survey where we polled various superheroes to discover what they thought the worst parts of their jobs were and proud to finally be able to share our findings with you! (We would’ve had them sooner but somebody decided to take a two week nap under a bridge in schenectady {for the hundredth time, I was mugged and unconscious! Thanks for looking for me by the way!} Thanks getting back here in a timely manner!):

2% of superheroes said that the worst part of their job was the giant gelatin monsters, because they get goop everywhere and everything sticky. 11% said prank calls to their superhero hotline. “Uh… hi, I’d like to report a crime? Yeah it’s… uh… what was it again? Oh yeah! Uh, I’d like to a report a crime and it’s your outfit hahaha get new clothes you trash bag!” 15% said it was the constant pain that they are in because they made a deal with the devil and their soul is constantly on fire but that it is a burden they gladly bear if it means that mankind can be safe for even just one more day. (Dramaaaaaatic.) 27.5% said it was having their memories or friends erased or altered due to time travel shenanigans. 54.5% said supervillains.

Unfortunately, all of those people were wrong and that was a waste of everybody’s time. {Are you kidding me? I spent two weeks in a coma for this!} The worst part of being a superhero is obviously…

#200 Supervillain Teams

{That’s basically what the majority of those people said!} No it’s different!

A single supervillain is plenty dangerous on their own (most of the time) they’re only limited by their own imaginations and their access to resources. (In today’s economy and privacy obsessed cultural climate, you actually need a lot of money to steal a lot of money. It’s kind of like how you need experience in your field before you can get a good job in your field.) So when a bunch of villains put their heads together and pool their cash. Hooboy. Then you’re in trouble. In most universes, the villain to hero ratio favors the villains. This is due to a number of factors. Most people are selfish and when given extraordinary abilities, they will choose to use to benefit themselves as the expense of others. Being a villain is honestly way more fun than being a superhero, especially if like you making your own hours and pontificating in front of large crowds. Also, most villains will kill heroes but most heroes won’t kill villains. So if all of your enemies team up, or if everybody’s enemies team up, you’re going to be in trouble.

Villains are a competitive and dramatic lot, so when a bunch of them sit down for a brainstorming sess, things are definitely going to get out of hand really fast. They’re all going to keep upping the evil ante, as I will now demonstrate for you.

(Scene 1 Act 1: Int. dungeon of some sort. There are skulls everywhere, there’s an actual demon chained to the wall, he’s very sassy and does not want to be there. In the center of the room there is a table, skull-shaped of course, There are several hooded and masked figures sitting at the table. The room smells of sweat and snake venom.)

Al “Da Boss” Marconi: I have called you all here today to finally put an end to those terrible, disgusting, super fools, that keep foiling our schemes.

Assorted villains: Huzzah!

Smuggles: I say we steal all of the dinosaur skeletons from the Museum of Natural History!

Tim the Fabulous Soul Muncher: Let’s replace them with live dinosaurs!

Professor Brain Scrambler: Let’s shoot the entire building with a de-evolution ray and turn everybody there into dinosaurs!!!!!!!!!!!!

The demon chained to the wall: Uh, that’s not how evolution works. Are you dumb? Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Just let us know if you are? You seem like a real moron to me. But what do I know, I’m just an immortal being who personally tortured some of history’s greatest minds.

(And then the demon chained to the wall was the first guinea pig for Professor Brain Scrambler’s de-evolution ray. End scene.)

And that’s just when I decided to end that conversation! Real supervillain meetings go on for way longer and you end up with a plot to turn the Earth into a giant dinosaur that can then be used to eat other planets. <Hey guys quick question and I swear it’s not a big deal. But why wasn’t I at that supervillain meeting. I mean I am the only supervillain you guys personally know. Like if I were writing about, I don’t know, a meeting of the scrawny blogger club, I would definitely put you guys in it. So what gives?> Not now Brainwave. <I mean if you needed a mad scientist, I’m a mad scientist. Did you know Professor Brain Scrambler isn’t even a real professor, he’s just wearing a real professor’s skin. Which I’m pretty sure doesn’t make you an accredited teacher but whatever. Like I said, it’s not really a big deal.>

Whenever you can you need to exercise your influence to try to prevent supervillains from teaming up in the first place. Whenever you’re fighting a villain, make sure not to mention anybody else that you’re fighting. Make them think they’re the only villain in your life. If they don’t know that other villains are out there, they can’t team up with them. Also, supervillains are very jealous and possessive. So if they hear you’re fighting somebody else on the side they’re going to get very upset and seek out the other villain and tell them that you’re a dirty two-timing superhero and then they’ll definitely team up to push your car into a river or something. I’d suggest keeping supervillains isolated from each other when they’re incarcerated as well. If you keep them with regular criminals, at worst they recruit a few new henchmen, but if you keep them locked up with other super villains you’re going to have a Legion of Really Really Mean People situation on your hands. However, this often is not feasible. There are only so many prisons out there that are equipped to hold superpowered criminals. But there are a few! More than one! Which gives us some room to play around here. You should try to work with other superheroes and these prison wardens to group villains together in the same prison that you think would never get along long enough to scheme together. For example, you could probably lock up Dr. Brainwave and Professor Brain Scrambler in the same jail without running into any issues. Because they hate each other. They hate each other so much. Also, police, superheroes, whomever, if you’re looking for wanted criminal Frederick Kaminsky aka Dr. Brainwave, he’s here. He’s in our basement and he won’t leave. I don’t know if that technically makes the rest of us hostages, I’m not like a lawyer [it doesn’t] but please come and pick him up. <Awww you mentioned me, that’s all I wanted. Thanks man!> Seriously, somebody come arrest him.

If you’ve colossally messed up and allowed a vast supervillain conspiracy team up to happen right under your noses then you need to get all hands on deck. Call every superhero you know. Even the the ones you hate. Even the ones who were dead last time you checked, they might be back now. Like I said, you’re already outnumbered so you need to call literally everybody you can think of here. Every noble-hearted magical creature and monster, every sympathetic quasi-deity, aliens that you’ve made alliances with over the years, heck even the members of that book club we had you join. Everybody needs to be on their A-game for this. If not, the villains could well succeed in wiping you all out and taking over the world. And we can’t give them that kind of satisfaction.

Once you’ve got your super army assembled, you need to begin a war on two fronts. Split your group into two teams. One team to actually go and fight the bad guys wherever they might crop up to perform evil deeds. It is unlikely that every villain is going to go everywhere at once, they’ll probably split up and pull off crazy evil schemes. So if you’re part of that team, be prepared for anything. I mean anything. 50-foot tall evil pants. (If your enemies are anything like mine, they have a wicked sense of humor. Trying getting the pants to tell a lie of some sort. I’m willing to bet that it’s rigged to burst into flames if it does. Nobody commits to a bit like a supervillain.) The ground turning into acid beneath your feet. (Pack a jetpack.) A dude with a blackhole in his chest. (Bring a really big cork). Anything.

The other group needs to start a whispering campaign to destabilize this villain alliance. Any team up between supervillains is relatively flimsy and a short term arrangement at best. As soon as the superheroes are all done away with, the villains are going to begin fighting amongst themselves for dominance. So if you can get that process started earlier, before all of the heroes are killed off or turned into monkey jesters, you could cause the alliance to collapse in on itself. You and your allies should start calling up your nemeses (don’t pretend you guys haven’t exchanged contact info at some point. I saw them at your last birthday party!) and ask them what the plan is long term. Ask them if they really want to share power with all these other villains, especially since they’re all highly likely to betray them. If you get enough villains antsy about the whole thing you can cause the entire thing to collapse and then you and your super friend can round up the injured and confused villains following the inevitable civil war.

Of course, not every supervillain team is the result of a large supervillain alliance. Some supervillains simply start out as a team, possibly because none of them on their own are really a threat. These villains have no independent resources to pool so even if they’ve got outlandish ideas, they’re pretty manageable. Here’s a list of a few other types of supervillain teams:

Gangs turned supervillains: These guys were a group of criminals before they got their powers. Unlike other villain teams, they don’t have their eyes set on world domination or the mass extinction of supervillains.

Mirror Universe Counterparts: These guys are just like your superhero team, but from another dimension and evil. To get an idea of what this might look like, take a magic marker to your team picture and draw goatees on everyone.

Cults: Cults are a lot like a regular supervillain organization. The leader is usually the only true supervillain, while the rest of the followers are just henchmen with creepy hoods.

Evil armies: As we’ve mentioned, some countries are unfortunately, led by supervillains. Meaning their armies are technically supervillain armies.

Villain families: This is just a regular family who bond by dropping spider-bombs into preschools or blowing up dams. It’s actually kind of sweet. You know what they say, a family who slays together, stays together.

Hopefully you now have everything you need to combat any supervillain teams that might rise up during your superhero career. Remember, supervillain teams need to be handled and dismantled as quickly as possible. So… heh… I guess don’t waste too much time reading this extra long post. Read this before the supervillains team up! Or have a speed reader read it and summarize! Any way good luck!

Previously On How To Hero

“(Our supervillain correspondent, Dr. Brainwave, told us he once electrified every surface in his lair in case a superhero came in so he could zap them. He had to putter around with a jetpack for weeks. Nobody ever showed up.) Wait our supervillain what? (Our supervillain correspondent, you know, he gives us the inside scoop on supervillains, and in return we let him live in our basement since his lair is one big bug-zapper.) What are you talking about? (Why did you think we had all those mutant alligators in the basement?) All those WHAT?“

“<Incoming Transmission: You’ll also need a portable torture chamber, a mutant alligator and a radiothermal antimatter replicator, in case you wish to harness the universe-threatening event and utilize it for your own nefarious purpose at a later date. End Transmission> What the heck was that? (That’s Dr. Brainwave, our supervillain correspondent remember?) He’s not allowed to write things here! I didn’t sign off on this! {Oh honey you stopped being in control of this thing a looooooong time ago}”

“Dr. Brainwave? Our supervillain correspondent who is illegally squatting in what used to be my bedroom and who, as I have noted time and time again, I don’t even like. Need I remind you that he once created a monster that ate me.”

“Brainwave, I don’t know what you think you’re doing but if you’ve really read through the whole guide then you know how stupid I think heroic sacrifices are! <Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a hero then.> You are missing the point! <Thanks for letting me live in your basement. The mutant alligators will need to be fed. Tell DBGS that I love her, and tell Professor Brain-Scrambler that he’s a hack and that he can suck it.> Frederick wait! (Whelp there he goes. Right through the skylight. The skylight that we just said is retractable. He just went right on through it. Pretty baller actually.)”

“I’m fine! Why shouldn’t I be fine! My nemesis, Dr. Brainwave, a convicted supervillain who was living, rent-free, in my basement, is dead. I’m free of him. I’m doing great!“

“It makes total sense. He freaks us out with a bomb. Classic supervillain move. He puts us on an emotional rollercoaster by making us think he sacrificed himself to save us, causing us to question everything we thought we knew about the sort of person he was. All while shedding his physical form in order to commit crimes as a ghost. It’s a classic Brainwave move!”

“<Uch fine. You got me.> You absolute bas- <Listen, you’re right. I’m every name you’re about to call me. But can we do this later? Right now, I need your help.>“

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion of the How To Hero event: The Death of Dr. Brainwave

Protecting Yourself From Psychics

The average person has at least four or eighty-three thoughts per day. Some of these thoughts are rather mundane: “what should I eat for lunch today?”, “what should I eat for lunch tomorrow?”, “how many ants would need to band together in order to lift me and should that number make me feel bad?” While others are vastly more important: “My pin is ****”, “I am secretly the superhero Captain Thunder”, “I hope nobody finds that embarrassing video of me drunkenly singing ‘Yo Ho A Pirate’s Life For Me’ whilst jabbing a plastic sword at a city bus.” You probably have a lot of important thoughts rattling around in your head. Thoughts other people might like to take a glance at. Well, unbeknownst to you there are dozens of people around you, listening to your thoughts, and judging you for them, on a day to day basis. So how do you protect yourself from that?

The easiest way to prevent someone from listening to or reading your thoughts is to never have any thoughts ever. Do everything solely on impulse. What are you having for lunch today? The first thing that comes to your mind at lunch time. Spaghetti! Pizza! A rock! Whatever the first thing you think of is what you’re eating. You can’t risk putting any more thought into it, if you do, a hostile psychic might know about it and poison your food. Any decision you ever need to make needs to be quick and at the last possible second to prevent your enemies from catching wind of it. Nobody should ever know what you’re doing before you do it. Not even yourself.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because you haven’t finished reading this blog post yet: “Zach didn’t you once mention a device that could prevent mind readers from reading minds? Why don’t I just get myself one of those bad boys?” Gosh you’re a real idiot aren’t you. If you had any brains at all you would know that the device you’re talking about came up in our post about animal sidekicks and those mind-reading-deflector helmets were for animals. Humans have more complex brains than animals. These things aren’t going to work for you. So how about you never throw my past writing in my face ever again. You don’t know anything. You utter dingus.

ANYHOO if you want to be able to think freely the best way to stop people from peering into your innermost thoughts is to wear metal on your head. That’s right, all you robots, mech pilots, and armored heroes are totally safe and you guys can skip this post! Mind control beams (or whatever?) can’t get through metal, everyone knows that. It’s like how I can’t get through the doors at La Mardi because they have a very strict “no Zach Schechters” policy because one Zach Schechter once went in there and set off a bunch of confetti poppers in the middle of the dance floor and ruined it for the other Zach Schechters. When you’ve encased your head in a metal block, psychics can’t get past the bouncer.

But, a metal cap isn’t for everyone. Some superheroes are allergic to metal. It might clash with the rest of your costume. It might be too heavy for your head. So let’s take a look at some other options.

Some superheroes have been known to be so careful about guarding their secrets from mind readers that they actually use hypnosis or other forms of brain washing to repress or lock away their secrets so that they can’t think about them even if they wanted to. Since most superheroes’ biggest secret is that they’re living a superpowered double life, this sometimes results in them developing a split personality. One of their identities is mild mannered Whomever Jones while their other identity is superhero Power Jones. Due the hypnosis, the two identities will be completely unaware of each other so it would be impossible for either of them to have their minds read and for their secret identity to be revealed. (Note: I only used Power Jones here as an example. The man has one million powers, I’m sure one of them is mind reading immunity.) This might seem a tad extreme but hey, if you keep repressing your memories and secrets and splitting off parts of your personality, eventually one of your multiple personalities will be the kind of guy who makes better decisions! So that’s something to look forward to.

Another method you can try is to, every so often, think “hey mind readers! I know you’re there. Get out!” This serves two purposes, for one, you’ll definitely freak out any mind readers who happen to be nearby, causing them to both fear and respect you and your mind reading detection prowess. And secondly, such a declaration actually makes it illegal for any mind reader to continue to read your mind. (I feel like it’s always illegal for people to read your mind.) Well your feelings are both wrong and invalid!

If you’re bi- or multilingual, try thinking in a language that you don’t think anyone else in the room understands. Or think in abstract thoughts that only somebody with your experiences and context would be able to decipher. Sometimes preventing someone from understanding what they’re reading is just as valuable as preventing someone from reading your mind 

You can also try thinking entirely in lies. If you think a bunch of fake secrets then any psychics or telepaths or Professor Brain-Scrambler <*cough* hack *cough*> will be acting on faulty information. You can even use this method to set up ambushes to take evil mind readers off the board. Simply think up a fake location for your hideout and then lie in wait with your squad for some evil mind reader’s evil henchmen to attack the place. You’ll be able to round up a bunch of evil mind readers this way, making your city a safer place to think freely. 

You can actually use your mind to fight off evil mind readers in a number of ways. Here are some aggressive tactics you can use when you think mind readers are milling about:

Think of the most annoying song you know. In no time at all the annoying jingle that’s stuck in your head, will be stuck in their head and they’ll think twice before probing your mind again.

Whenever you enter a room that you’re reasonably sure has mind readers in it think up some absolutely devastating insults about every single person in the room. With any luck your mind reader will be so devastated that they’ll run off crying before they can get any useful information out of you.

Conjure up some really gross images. They’ll be so caught off guard by the disturbing pictures you’re projecting with your mind that they’ll start gagging and you’ll be able to apprehend them quickly and put a metal hat on their head to prevent them from reading any more minds.

Hijack their signal and read their mind. This is a little tricky but a neural passageway goes both ways and if you’re a skilled enough active thinker you can identify the intrusion into your mind and ride it back into the mind reader’s brain and read their thoughts. With any luck they’ll feel so violated by the experience that they swear off reading minds forever and you’ll have saved the day just by being your nosy, intrusive self!

Nobody wants their mind read. Well except for people who sometimes have a hard time articulating their thoughts. They might like having someone who can read their mind and explain to others what they’re thinking. Mind control definitely has its time and place. I guess that’s why the Psychic Fish is (somehow) so popular. But if you don’t expect to have your mind read it can be an intensely uncomfortable experience. Your mind is your haven, you should feel safe thinking your weird thoughts and housing your secrets there. So get educated, and protect yourself against mind readers. 

Hey, I don’t know if you take asks but what would you say about the pros and cons of super senses

I do take asks! Asks are my favorite!

#085 Super Senses

As I’m sure you know (and if not here’s some kindergarten level education for free) most humans have five sense. Taste, sight, smell, touch, hearing (I feel like their should be a one syllable word for hearing, it really throws everything off.) There are various robots, aliens, mutants, fifth-dimensional imps, and fifth dimensional-alien-mutant-robotic imps that have a couple more senses like bar-code-scanning and humidity testing but for now lets just focus on the main five.

TasteFolks with super-taste can generally live pretty cushy lives. While they might not be able to make it as a superhero on super-taste alone they can make it as a super-restaurant critic. That’s a job where you get to eat at fancy restaurants for free and (as if that weren’t enough) you get paid to insult them. As a super-taster you will wield full and complete power over the restaurant industry in your area. You won’t even have to worry about competition from other critics. Your superhumanly enhanced food opinions will be taken way more seriously than anybody else’s. If you want nothing but pizza and donut fusion shops in your neighborhood you can make it so! However, super-taste is not without it’s drawbacks. You’ll experience every bad taste just as strongly as you’d experience any good taste and let me tell you, there’s a lot of gross stuff out there and some of it sometimes find its way into your mouth. That’s going to suck for a super-taster. Also, I’m pretty sure if a super-taster gets poisoned they get super-poisoned (whatever that means to you).

SightSuper-vision is a very handy power to use. You’ll never need to shell out loads of money for telescopes or microscopes or binoculars or reading glasses ever again! Impress all your optometrist-ocquaintances by always absolutely nailing the eye-chart examinations! Paint more vibrantly than ever before due to your enhanced ability to perceive color! Additionally people with super-sight can be a huge help in search and rescue operations and act as a sort of early-warning system in the event of an oncoming alien invasion or non-sentient-space-junk-such-as-meteors-and/or-asteroids invasion. The only problems that come with super-sight only arise if you’re not especially well-trained in using these abilities. When rookie-super-seers first get their powers they often have trouble controlling them and deciding when they need to telescope or microscope or otherwise enhance their vision leading to migraines, eye-strain and seeing things you never wanted to see and now can never unsee unless you hit up Professor Brain-Scrambler’s Memory Wiping Kiosk in the mall, but that guy is an accredited supervillain so I suggest not availing yourself of his services.

SmellA hero with enhanced olfactory systems or a “super-snooper” as it sometimes colloquially known, can be a huge asset in any crime-fighting team. They can act as a human bloodhound, sniffing out drugs, corpses, expired milk, anything. A hero with super-smell is the ultimate tracker and can even act as a taste-tester without the risk of death that that job usually entails. That’s right, we’re talking risk-free employment with kings that’s a pro if I ever heard one. Heroes with super-smell can sniff out poisons and gasses that are widely believed to be scentless. They can smell something and identify the object, food, or perfume’s component scents and even sometimes determine where each component originated from in the world. The major downside to super-smell is that it’s not really a power you can turn on and off at will. Just like tastes, there are a lot of terrible smells in the world, especially when you’re knee-deep in the dirty, crime-ridden world of being a superhero. Plus you’re going to be uncomfortably aware of every time somebody near you farts. 

TouchPeople with super-touch can usually determine what an object is made out of just by touching it. This is certainly a cool party trick but it doesn’t have a lot of uses in the superheroic world. It definitely has some uses, but like, if you’re going to be a full-time superhero and that’s your entire shtick, you’re going to spend a lot of the time being bored or sitting in your team’s base. It might be better to just market yourself as some sort of super-touch consultant for when the more “super strength and laser-eyed” heroes need to figure out what some bomb or abomination of science or sandwich is made out of. Or you can start some sort of live-therapy talkshow called “Super-Touching” and help people get to the heart of their emotional issues. Your powers won’t grant you a deeper insight into these kinds of things, but they will give you a great name for your show. The major downside to this power is that you’re going to feel everything a lot. Your nerves will be hyper-stimulated and hyper-sensitive. You’ll probably need to invest in silk everything, clothing, sheets, toilet paper. Everything else might feel like sandpaper. 

HearingGosh it’s like BiteLock from Droidsaurs (a super cool team of crime-fighting robotic dinosaurs that are constantly showing up at super-battles and making Professor Paleontologist look like a fool). All of them have monosyllabic names and then this guy shows up with a polysyllabic name. Like slow your roll dude. You don’t need that many syllables. Anyway, super-hearing is really the cream of the crop here, so I guess maybe that’s why it gets that extra syllable (seeing, tasting, touching, and smelling are all words). With super-hearing (and super-training) you’ll always know what’s going on around you. You’ll be able to pick up on every movement, every word, even every breath in a considerably large radius, which, as with the other super-senses, can be very overwhelming without proper training and practice on filtering. Once you’ve got that noise mastered though, you’ll be unstoppable. You can be a ninja, a rodeo clown, a bat, the possibilities are endless. Plus you’ll always know when someone is talking smack about you. This way you can go and fight them. And you’ll always know when someone is saying nice things about you. Except you’ll never know if they’re only saying nice things about because they know you can hear them or if they actually think highly about you. I guess that, in essence, is the true downside to super-hearing. Never knowing if people are being real with you. 

Any and all of these powers can be highly useful to a superhero as long as you’re willing to put the work in to master them. Sensory-overload can be debilitating the untrained super-sensor so it’s best to find someone who is more experienced than you at dealing with these things to help guide you through this process. Until you can do that I recommend finding one thing in your immediate vicinity to focus on. Use that object or person or place as an anchor of sorts before you start using your powers. This way if things get overwhelming, and they very quickly can, you can refocus yourself on your anchor and begin to shut everything else out. 

I hope this was as helpful for you as it was for me and as always everybody should feel free to ask me questions on superheroing (it was helpful for me because now I can save the post I had written up for tomorrow for Thursday, and the post I had written for Thursday can get bumped to next week and boom suddenly I’m ahead of schedule). 

#086 Underwater Adventures

Some members of the para-community subscribe to the “darling it’s better down where it’s wetter” lifestyle. To them the ocean is simply where it’s at. They just love all that water. And for some of them it makes sense. The mermaids, and water nymphs, and sentient killer whales who can’t go on land without taking strenuous countermeasures like magic wheelchairs or fish-bowl helmets will obviously prefer to be where they can breathe and move about freely. But some landlubbers also prefer to hang out under the sea. The heroes who can talk to fish or who were turned into sentient whirlpools by alien science. The villains who wanna hang a leviathan head on their walls or steal and sell valuable magical decision-making conches. All of this just means that if you’re going to be a superhero, you’re going to go on a lot of underwater adventures.

The setting for many a superheroic underwater adventure is the so-called “Lost City” of Atlantis. Most universes have some sort of version of Atlantis.  Sometimes it’s an ancient city that sunk to the bottom of the ocean because somebody somewhere accidentally pulled up the stopper. Sometimes it’s an alien spacecraft that crash landed because some moron spilled orange soda all over the controls. Sometimes it’s inhabited by mer-people of all shapes, sizes and colors. Sometimes it’s just got normal-legged dudes with gills and speedos. One thing that always rings true for Atlanteans though, is that they don’t much care for surface-folk. Something about polluting all the water and eating their fishy friends. For millennia it wasn’t even a problem. Humans couldn’t get deep enough into the ocean to ever even stumble upon the golden spires and multi-story statues to underwater powerhouses such as Poseidon, Neptune (the planet), and the big ol’ fish that ate Jonah, that decorate the city. The world of the land and the world of ocean floor remained separate with the surface-dwellers none the wiser. But then, the superheroes showed up and, due to the rules of the weird factor that we’ve discussed, stumbled upon Atlantis, tridents, domes, sea-shell underwear and all. Once first-contact is made with Atlantis it is best to be civil and diplomatic. You don’t want a war on your hands. Mankind would almost certainly lose it. Some Atlanteans can control water. Do you want to fight a tsunami? Good luck punching that or shooting it with a tank. 

Some Atlanteans will inevitably be inspired by the superheroes they meet and take up a life of superheroics as well (or they will do it because they desire peace and justice and it has nothing to do with the land heroes at all). And you’d do well to get one of those guys on your team. Now I know what you’re thinking, “haw haw, why would we ever need one of these guys on our team? All they can do is communicate and control all underwater life and also swim really well!” And to that I respond “You just answered your own question!” Do you know how much crime goes on in the ocean! It’s just a giant pool of crime that dominates two-thirds of the world. And also talking to fish is a rad power. Have you see underwater, there are some crazy scary animals down there, it’s better to have them on your side.

Underwater missions are a great time to let some of the guys on your team who don’t often get to participate in stuff stretch their legs and literally get their feet wet. The Atlanteans that we mentioned, the super-swimmers, the guy with the power to hold his breath for a really long time, the guy who can only shapeshift into aquatic creatures, King Water Breather the king who can breathe water, the giant robot who turns into an aquatic hovercraft and whose voice sounds like he’s always blowing bubbles in his milk or something. These are the guys who are often overlooked when it comes time for the guys in charge to send superheroes out into battle. But when Professor Brain Scrambler gets a hold of a brain-scrambled leviathan or if heaven-forbid Chuck the Fish Whisperer ever gets out of that prison pocket dimension you’re going to need them and then you’ll see! Then you’ll all see! (You may remember Chuck the Fish Whisperer from our post on Starter-Villains where he was called Charlie the Fish Whisperer and considered to be a very low-level threat. Well since then he’s become way more hardcore, he once used a gold fish to murder the prime minister of Finland. He’s incredibly dangerous and he even changed his name from Charlie to Chuck to reflect this new change in his life. He’s so dangerous that when he was defeated it was unanimously voted by everyone in the entire world to seal him away in a pocket dimension where he couldn’t get near a fish or a prime minister ever again. So I guess, in the world of villainy, he’s doing rather well for himself.)

The world’s oceans are home to many dangerous sea creatures that would most accurately be called monsters. Leviathans, water dragons, sea serpents, krakens, scyllas and charybdises, vampire manatees, etc. Most of them are not inherently malignant (there’s that one giant jellyfish who sometimes sneaks up on boats and pantses sailors but it’s really more of a prankster than an outright evil villain) and are more than content to live their lives in peace. Unfortunately, supervillains are a thing. And they are not content with just allowing these creatures to live their lives in peace. They’ll often try to capture them, control them somehow and then unleash them on the public. Then you’ll have to fight them. Lame. When you have to fight an angry sea creature you should try to remember that it is not evil and should not be treated as such. Fight it enough to either distract it or non-lethally incapacitate it so you can stop the true villain from pulling off their evil schemes. If possible these sea monsters should be monitored either by Atlanteans or Surface-World marine biologists so these evil schemes can be nipped in the bud before they ever really get off (or onto) the ground. 

(We’ve been talking a lot about water here so I feel like this is the right place to asks this question: Is water wet? Or does it just make things wet? Like if I were describing the ocean could I call it wet? Like it can’t exist in a dry state really right? So can it really be wet then? Just something I think about from time to time. It’s no big deal. I definitely didn’t write this entire post just to pose this question to you all. Anyway, ciao.)