Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Friday, November 22, 2013

Heavily Customized, this Open Letter could be very suitable for many purposes!

Dear public SERVANT:

That's right. You serve ME. GET IT? You were { ELECTED / APPOINTED } to serve me, to represent my interest and that of my fellow { DISTRICT / GROUP / WHATEVER }! There may not always be agreement as to what that best interest is, but your sworn duty is to do your best to see it, to serve it and to uphold it!

So I'd love for you to tell me just where you get off with this { LATEST OUTRAGE SPECIFIED }. Are you or are you not aware that government's ONLY just authority derives from the consent of the governed? Did you never know that in a free society - in a society where LIBERTY is - libery demands that government can make no act of prohibition, confiscation or compulsion except where government can show compelling cause for the necessity of that act? And what about the necessity of your act? What cause can you show? What is your justification for this { LATEST OUTRAGE SPECIFIED }? YEAHHH! BULL STUFF! You have none! You're just { lining your pockets / kow-towing to pet causes & special interests / "showing your ass" / other }! Or if not, then what's your explanation? YEAAHHH SURE. Bull stuff.

You make me { SICK / disappointed }.

I long for the days when a public servant could stand up proud to do their due diligence dutifully and fulfill their charge to the best of their ability on behalf of those in whose name they have been entrusted with authority. When humility and excellence were the bywords of government. Those days NEVER EXISTED. But someday maybe they could exist. I have hope for that.

You shit all over my hope, { sir / ma'am / recipient's first name / OTHER (such as PAL or BUD) }

Respectfully,

Friday, November 01, 2013

Character Sketch: THE GREEN SPOOK (a Fiction Friday Exclusive!)

Background: long sales meeting. I drew a picture of this bad-ass HERO. As will be obvious to anyone who is a fan of old pulps, golden-age movie serials and-or radio suspensers, he's very loosely based on deceased film critic Gene Siskel.

Catchphrase: "NOBODY knows what I'VE been up to! AH HAHAHHAHAHAHA hahahaah HAHAH heh heh, eh...!!!"

Description: "The culprit was last seen fading around the corner wearing..."

HEY! Wait! Maybe his name should be the GREEN CULPRIT. Hm.

Or maybe the Green Culprit could be his spunky, sarcastic teenage girl sidekick. Don't worry, she's probably "of age." Who knows with this guy? He's one of those mysterious anti-hero types, always in trouble with the law!

Um. Back to Description.

Outfit:

- Deep green slouch hat & trenchcoat / pinstripe suit (charcoal green) / midnight green gloves

- Red kerchief, completely obscuring lower half of face.

- Does not seem to be a robot or space alien

- Appears to be a human being

- Sepulchral white face (makeup? Skin condition?), badly pock-marked a la Bryan Adams but otherwise unremarkable

- Odd eye-obscuring black...makeup? mask? goggles? All 3?

Sometimes it is all 3.

Skills:

- language skills. Has demonstrated comprehension of many, many languages (at least in written form, warning signs, directions, instructions on facility walls etc.) plus comprehension of multiple spoken languages. Only ever heard to speak English (no accent) and Japanese (detectable french accent, but this is suspected to be a deliberate subterfuge!)

- stealth. It would be hard to argue with this one. The only place anybody ever seems to catch this guy is on film, or in an eyewitness account of somebody laid up in the hospital with pretty ugly-looking injuries.

- hand-to-hand combat. Would be an understatement. This dude has displayed a fluid mastery of more martial arts than you can shake a stick at! Definitely does employ recognized styles, forms and techniques - he's not freestyling; he really seems to enjoy execution with perfect form in a known mode. Yet unless you knew what you were looking for, he does it with such ease of transition that he could easily be assessed as having "no style." To trained eyes, though, he's been seen to fight multiple combatants in protracted battles using a different, recognizable martial art technique with each of limbs - at the same time - sometimes keeping each style limb-consistent, seemingly for his own edification and amusement when it doesn't particularly aid him, other times when hard-pressed, he's been seen switching freely between a panoply of techniques, tumbling through all of his limbs in rapid succession, and with every appearance of having been tailored to the opponent! That's fucking nuts, people. However, despite this seemingly indefensible level of crossdisciplinary mastery, he has on occasion (okay, on one occasion) been shown up on a bad day as detectably less competent than the single best practitioner of one specific martial art, at that martial art. This was the only instance anyone has ever borne witness of the Green Spook "fighting dirty," and in fairness, the sole eyewitness also got both eyes blacked, a couple rib-punctured lungs and a nasty scaphoid fracture for her trouble. Testimony indicates "you should see the other guy" and "I would have won on points" - name withheld, no need to embarrass anybody.

Known Equipment:

- triple-action triple-mag submachine gun (full auto and semiauto settings): tracer-action paintball (glowing green, possible tracking or other further chemical-based subaction), hot lead (possible further subaction AKA armor-piercing or hollowpoint) and blanks (possible subaction ?? - SUPERLOUD blanks; airballs {fire loud and far but burst with only tiny paintball-esque impact, deploying variety of smoke/gas}). He has ungodly facility with this sidearm, not only in terms of marksmanship (naked eye or aided by the gun's built-in laser sight or it's a slide-in optical/nightvision-capable scope) but also with switching settings on the fly. He has been witnessed switching between types and varieties of ammo round as many as fifteen times during a single, continuous burst of automatic fire - and with every appearance of matching round to bulls-eyed target to desired effect against that target. That's crazy.

- HUGE GREEN cape - deploys in mysterious fashion from either beneath or as a separating top-layer of the trenchcoat. It IS NOT itself, the trenchcoat - the trenchcoat remains visibly in place when cape is deployed. Cape can be used a number of ways - to parachute, or MAYBE as a glider of the parasail-variety (does not function as rigid or semirigid wings). Also detachable as a trap device or net (corners have novel fastners on them to fix in place on available surfaces), or whatever other creative way you might use a really huge bulletproof tear-resistant cloth. NOTE: it is unclear whether there is more than one cape. His cape has at times demonstrated water and air permeability, but at times it has been shown air-permeable only, at times liquid-only, and at times seemingly nigh-impermeable.

- high-tensile long-range tractorgun (can be clipped to bodyharness, or deployed with optional backfiring anchorcables, at need)

- smaller, shorter-range (approx 300 meters with accuracy) high-tensile wire. Deploys detachably from necktie rigged into body harness. For longer range shots, he has been seen to use a tube-like necktie accessory of not-entirely-clear design.

- twin high-impact, rigid-yet-semiductile-under-certain-kinds-of-stress riot batons. Bright green with a thumb-trigger on the sidehandle-projection to alter to midnight green, incandescent green or seizure-strobe green. He straps these (handle downward) on quick-release thigh holsters.

- usual array of hand- and leg-binders, the obligatory retractable/extensible lassorope/bullwhip, smoke bombs (varying effects, including all the same ones as the submachine gun "airball" rounds, plus a dense and amazingly copious BRINDING BRIGHT GLOWING GREEN FOG bomb!), ninjarangs that flash a weird green hypnotic/seizure strobe light as they fly - somewhat arresting effect! Known to freeze reflexes of the intended (and usually actual) recipient. Et cetera.

- No flying armorsuit though. At least, none that has been presented tactically.

- katana and wakazashi (both back-scabbard mounted - through slots in the trench, the handles can pop or retract as called for)

Superpowers:

~ skin impervious to all piercing attacks, body highly-resistant to all impact regardless of velocity or magnitude, body completely indifferent to any frequency, amplitude, voltage etc. of electromagnetic force or radiation, as well as to all burns whether chemical, heat, or cold.

~ has functioned for improbable times underwater and in hard vaccuum, though whether this is a superpower or some kind of air supply is not known

~ has demonstrably behaved as if he is a huge fan of Air Supply, which could in theory be used as a distraction attack. This perhaps should come under "weaknesses," but as it's the only known one and a little on the shaky side, it didn't seem worth the separate section.

~ strength on a level of ten-maximum fury Hulks (I refer to the trademarked Marvel Comics character The Hulk purely for the sake of a well-known fictional comparison. No infringement intended, Marvel! -- but guys? You know what though? Your green dude's a pussy compared to my green dude. And my guy's as calm and cool as his own reflection in a lake, while he does it).

~ two hundred times faster than the fastest Super-Saiyan possible within or beyond the laws of physics known or unknown

- just kidding. He has no superpowers. That you know of.

Drawing:

Like I said, I got one, but I need to scan it in. I spent too long typing this out! Fuck.

Later on I'll do it.