Yearly Archives: 2010

Blogging, Amazon, what I'm working on, and why apartments suck.

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Just so you guys know, most writers check their Amazon rankings daily. We’re kind of weird like that. It is a kind of strange competitive trait.  Really, since Amazon updates by the hour on some strange, unknowable formula, it really doesn’t mean much, but being in the good number range is always nice for our egos.   Amazon is only one outlet, but it is a really big outlet. Plus it is the only place where author’s with self-esteem issues can be updated hourly.

MHI has hung in there really well for almost a year now.  I figure out of the 4 million books on Amazon, if you’re hanging out in the top 1,000 you’re kicking serious booty.  The highest I ever got was into the 500 range back at the release, which considering that includes non-fiction, politics, news, childrens books, Kindle, etc. I’ll take it with a smile.  Since then I’ve tapered off, (since ya’ll already bought it) and MHI will normally be hanging out in the 20,000-30,000 range, which is still good out of millions. That means it is still selling. (B&N is still restocking it too, which is even more awesome).

I have noticed a trend though. Whenever I do something on my blog that gets a slew of links and hits, I get an Amazon spike. This week I had two big ones, Tom Stranger and the punching of Ms. Magazine in the face.  Links went out, I made new folks laugh, (and was honorarily adopted into the Robert Downey Jr. Screaming FanGirl club! “Ms. Magazine made fun of Robert? KILL THEM ALL!”  Thank you, Julie, for the intro. )  and yesterday MHI is back up in the 5,000 range, #50 in Horror. (being in the top 100 of a genre is always sweet).  And even better, Monster Hunter Vendetta, which isn’t even released for a few more months has been right there with it too. (though Amazon hasn’t stuck it into genres yet).  This morning both are sitting around 10,000, which is pretty darn good. I do believe MHV is going to do well.

As a writer, if you want to be a success, it takes more than writing a really good book. There are lots of people who are far better writers than I am who fade into obscurity. I’ve always been told that one of the keys is building up a loyal fanbase who trust and like you enough to buy anything you put out.  For any of you who are aspiring writers, I’d recommend blogging.  It introduces your work, it lets your fans get to know you, it helps you network and make friends, and every now and then you can use it to crush your enemies and grind them to dust.

Originally I had some other writers warn me not get too political on the blog, since that ran the risk of offending potential readers. (I’ve noticed that advice is often only applied to those of us on the right)  But I’ve never been very good at that whole middle-ground thing. Nobody has ever accused me of being “moderate”.  I figure, why be mushy? Let people know how you really feel.  Unless you are a writer and a lunatic, because then you might want to keep anything that will hurt your sales out of the public eye.  So you may want to keep your conspiracy theory about the Reptoids from the Hollow Earth to yourself.  Unless there is a big potential fanbase in that community, because if it sells another 10,000 books, then I’m all about the fact that Rahm Emmanuel is actually a Reptoid in diguise.  

On the fiction front, Mike and I have been working hard on splicing together the two halves of Dead Six. Last Saturday consisted of the two of reading the book out loud and tweaking things as we went. (his iguana, Winston, was there as well. Winston, however, failed to provide any useful input into the editing process). My goal is to have the draft out the door and into the discerning hands of Reader Force Alpha by Monday morning.  For anybody who thinks that co-authoring a book would somehow be easier because you’re only doing half the work, you are so very wrong.  Co-writing is actually a whole lot harder. Sure, you can come out with a superior product because two brains are better than one, but you’ve also got to figure out how to mesh two brains together into a coherant mass, and you’ve got a lot more continuity issues and editing work. 

Once D6 is out the door, then I’ll jump back on Monster Hunter Alpha. The actual word count on Alpha is only 75K so far, so about half way through, but the first part is always the hardest, and then it goes faster and faster as I go.  I’ll have Alpha done and out to Toni this summer. 

Meanwhile, the Correias are still living in a crappy little apartment while our new house is being built.  It kind of sucks. I bought our first house seven years ago. It was great. In fact, it was so great that I forgot how much apartments suck. Then we sold our nice house in town in order to build a magnificent house in the mountains.  The only downside was this required living in an apartment. No problem. How hard could that be? We lived in an apartment before… Oh… but we’d forgotten. The years of bliss had faded our memory of being renters.  We’d forgotten that no matter how nice your apartment complex is, some of your neighbors will be crack whores and imbeciles. I don’t care if you pay five grand a month in rent, if you’re renting, one of your neighbors will be a hooker (or might as well be) and somebody else will leave cigarette butts all over your doorway.    

For example, yesterday. My apartment (which by apartment standards, is perfectly nice and sound) has a pool and a hot tub. Mrs. Correia suggested we go let the kids swim and we could sit in the hot tub. They seem to have a pretty good resistence to diseases that begin in the word “Crypto”. Okay. Great idea.  Until we got there, and there were literally 400 children stuck into a 6×10 tub.  Even if it hadn’t been filled with stinky, screaming kid flesh, I’m sure most of the water had been replaced by urine at that point, so Mrs. Correia and I sat on deck chairs while the kids swam in the pool. (98% urine free!)  There was another guy sitting there by us. 

So after twenty minutes, this lady shows up,  goes to the guy in the chair, and I kid you not, says; “I’m back. Thanks for watching my kids. What was your name again?”  She then gathered up approximately 11 of the 400 children from the kid-tub (creating space that was surely immediately filled with pee) and left.  Huh? What kind of person leaves their kids at the pool (and they were young too) with a dude who’s name you don’t even know?  “Excuse me, you don’t look too much like a serial killer. Would you watch my kids? I’ve got to go perform unmentionable acts in the parking lot in exchange for crack money”

The basement is done. The wood has been delivered. There is a porta-potty.  FRAME! FRAME! FRAME! Come on, baby, Correia wants to live in a house again!

Ms. Magazine vs. Iron Man 2

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I haven’t Fisked anything in a bit, so I’m feeling Fisky, and I discover this bit of awful today posted on the Dixonverse.  (fun board, run by comic book writer Chuck Dixon and his fans) It is from Ms. Magazine, and it is a piercing piece of journalism that dares to expose the horrible misogyny and racism of IRON MAN 2.  As a Wise Latino, who is always understanding of everyone’s feelings and since I also just watched Iron Man 2 this weekend, I feel uniquely qualified to explore this profound issue.  As usual, original article is in italics, my comments are in bold.

Gender 101 from Iron Man 2

By Natalie Wilson

And for the record, I didn’t know Ms. Magazine still existed. I thought that it had been put out to Shrill Harpy pasture back in the ‘80s. 

It’s right there in the title: Iron MAN, not meaning “human” but male.  Indeed, though I for one am hoping for an Iron Maiden movie starring Olivia Munn!  As I sat watching the movie with my 13-year-old son (and cringing at the overt sexualization of females), I cringed when I found out this lady had a kid.  Poor, poor child. I realized that Iron Man 2 is about the glory of males, the fact they are indeed “iron” and that, with their strength and ingenuity, the world will be saved. Hey, if magic unicorns wanted to step up and save the world, I’d be all in favor of taking the rest of the day off.

A number of other significant gender lessons are imparted in the film.

First, on men and masculinity:

1. Men don’t cry, they scream, as Ivan (played by Mickey Rourke) does when his dad dies.  Not only am I a wise Latino, I am also a writer. Trust me lady, nobody wants a weepy pansy villain. Plus, Ivan was a RUSSIAN.  Badass Russians only have three emotions: Revenge, depression, and vodka.

2. Men like power tools, technology, welding and weapons. Talking, not so much. Duh.  Ironically, my wife also prefers tools, tech, and weapons.  Which is one reason I love her so much.  And men do talk. We talk a lot. Just not about the stupid crap that people like you enjoy. Go watch Sex in the City 2 for that boring ass shit. Iron Man 2 was too talky. Hell, there were only two action sequences in the whole damn movie.

3. Men are big wheels and lone gunmen. Not all of them, just the ones interesting enough to make movies about. They may say, “It’s not all about me,” as Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) does at the beginning of the film, but, really, it is. Lady, he’s Tony Friggin’ Stark. If you don’t get that, I don’t think anyone can help you. 

4. Men need to leave a legacy and build a better future. The best way to do this is via weapons, wealth and womanizing  I don’t know about the womanizing, but an America without weapons and wealth would be speaking German right about now. (well, actually we’d still be a British colony) Weapons and Wealth (or guns, germs, and steel if you prefer) are what put us on top.

5. Men’s hatred of women is cute and humorous–or as one blogger puts it, “Tony Stark’s privileged sexist playboy antics are hilarious,” teaching viewers that “Men’s sexism is funny and endearing, as is their greed.” Yes. Tony is a great character, played wonderfully by Robert Downey Jr.  Tony is a playboy. That’s the character. When you find yourself easily offended by the personal habits of someone who doesn’t actually exist, you may want to reexamine your life.

6. Men are fabulous at business–so fabulous that they can successfully privatize world peace. Well, how’s that whole UN thing working out for you?

7. Real men (aka Tony Stark) think the “liberal agenda” is boring. AMEN!!  I cheered at that line. It is absurdly boring. It consists primarily of guilt, angst, and crying, and it only makes sense if you’ve been brained really hard in the skull with a brick.

8. Men will always need to be in the theatre of war. As such, they might as well turn their bodies into weapons. So that explains all those push-ups… Well, I suppose that we could just try to ‘love’ our enemies into not murdering us.

9. In fact, the male body is a weapon. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically.  Disagree. The MIND is a weapon. Everything else is just a tool.  Man is iron. Or, as Andrew O’Hehir’s naming of the Iron Man suit as “impenetrable iron-dong costume” Yes, because dongs are humanoid, red and gold, and can shoot laser beams.  in his Salon review Because hell, when I think of profound thought, I think of Salon.  suggests, the iron suit allows for the fulfillment of the male body not only as weapon but as walking erection–hard and ready all the time.  WARNING:  If massive walking laser erection that can fly and shoot missiles lasts for more than four hours, seek medical attention.

Wait a second though… wasn’t the single most effective combatant in the whole movie a woman?  More on that in a bit.

Secondly, on females and femininity (these lessons are longer, you see, because females need a lot of teaching): 

1. Women are for dancing, either around poles or on stage as props. Wherever they are dancing, they should be scantily clad. Yes, because movies featuring fat, ugly dancers really kill at the box office. And pole dancing while wearing a burkha is not only difficult, but unsafe. Note to cameraman: Shoot women dancers from behind so as to get maximum amount of booty shots, as in the opening scene of Iron Man 2 where our gaze is directed to numerous bent-over butts in red spandex hot pants. As O’Herir points out in his Salon review, there is “no irony” in these “loving, loop-the-loop tracking shots of these dancin’ hoochie-mamas with their spray-bronzed legs and perfect Spandex asses.” Wait… was he saying that was a negative? Screw you, Salon!  Rather it is, as this blogger aptly names it, “a vomit-inducingly sexist scene involving various swooping close-ups of womens’ body parts as they gyrate.” Yes, because attractive women dancing as a backdrop for selling a product would never occur in real life! How dare Iron Man 2 be set in a world we recognize!

2. Women are objects. When Tony is shown his new car, he makes a joke about the woman standing next to the vehicle: “Does she come with the car?” And what part of that would be out of character for the, you know, the character?  In other words, women, like cars, should be sleek, good looking, fast and expendable. Lady… Are you insane? That’s an Audi R8.  There is nothing EXPENDABLE about it!   It is not your Prius.  Tony assesses new female character Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) using the same parameters: Her intelligence, multi-lingual skills and martial arts training don’t seem to matter; he uses Google to find her old modeling pictures. I thought that part was pretty realistic, since if you use Google to look up anything, you are going to get boobies.  Go ahead and try it as an experiment.  I’ll wait for you…

See? Boobies. I told you so. Don’t blame Tony Stark for the fact the internet is mostly porn.

As Froley of ReelThinker notes, she is put “in her underwear just for the hell of it” and her character is no more than a “near-cameo.” Near-cameo is Salon speak for person with the longest action sequence.  This incites Froley to assume that director “Jon Favreau must be some kind of chauvinist dog, because he takes every opportunity to objectify women.” Well, have you seen Swingers? Man, that one is a classic.

But hold on a second. ScarJo (look how trendy I am!) plays Black Widow, a sexy super spy the defected from the USSR with super kung-fu moxy.  Once again, since we’re talking about fictional characters (since we’re watching Iron Man, and not some Sundance Festival piece of crap that no one outside of Manhattan will ever watch) and the Starkmeister is a known womanizer, then if would make perfect sense for Black Widow to have those photos on the internet, because the character would use that to her advantage against the other character.  Though I’m doubting very much that Ms. Magazine or Salon will be able to make that logical leap. (see brick to skull thing above)

3. Women need to have good make-up know-how. Both Stark’s assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Natalie are not only beautifully made-up themselves, but also have the skills to mask Tony’s various bumps and bruises with foundation. Yes. Because ugly people go far… How many female CEOs wear Birkenstocks and don’t shave their armpits either?

This skill, along with their ability to take precarious, mincing steps on incredibly high heels, frames femininity as a performance that benefits males. High heels are tools of Male Oppression! BURN THEM!

4. Women’s most important asset is their bodies. Even when they are in full-on battle mode, they should remain hyper-vigilant about their bodily display. They don’t get to wear “iron man” suits, but really tight body suits. What fun would it be if their boobs and butts were hidden under metal? Actually, check Google. I’m pretty sure somebody is into that too.

Wait. Tony Stark should have been played by somebody ugly. Last I heard, women like Robert Downy Jr. Obviously this movie was just pandering to women!  (there, see how stupid that sounds, Salon? Yeah, **** you too).

5. Women are petty and jealous. Make fun of their jealousy by telling them “green doesn’t look good on you,” as Tony says to Pepper when his ogling of Natalie is obviously bothering her. Hey, lady. Have you ever actually talked to women about other women? Women are MEAN to each other in ways that men can’t even comprehend.  

You may say that this is just a stereotype… Sure. Did you go to high school? Girls are brutal to each other, and practice psychic warfare designed to ruin other girl’s self esteem. Or is that somehow men’s fault too?

6. The female body is weak. Pepper, after being saved by Tony near the end of Iron Man 2, says “I quit…My body can’t take this stress.” After two hours of watching Tony’s body take bullets, bombs, electric shocks and poisoning, we hear that poor Pepper can’t take the stress–of being a CEO for a week. That’s because he’s Tony Friggin’ Stark, and because it is a movie. In real life most humans are turned to jelly after fifteen seconds of the flailing about that passes for fighting. That would be BORING. So we watch characters that can kick ass. 

(ironically, despite Ms. Magazine’s astute observations, misogynistic director Jon Favreau gets beat up badly while womyn ScarJo kicks booty.  Apparently the folks from Salon had gotten up for popcorn at that point)

7. Women are very forgiving. Ignore her, lie to her, bring her the one food she is allergic to as a gift and make it known that you are a lifelong womanizer: Character… The word zips right over their head. None of that will matter as long as you kiss her at the right moment. Or, as Kyle Smith gleefully notes, “The Gwyneth Paltrow character is comfortable with being Tony Stark’s assistant instead of judo-chopping and blasting away at bad guys herself, in the somewhat silly manner of virtually every female lead in action movies these days.” Yep. So now if a woman does what the male lead does, then it is “silly”.  Make up your freaking minds!

Yes, it’s soooo silly when we act as if females want to be part of the action! As one blogger put it, “If I were Gwyneth Paltrow and I just played the role of a stiletto-heel-wearing submissive secretary cleaning up after some rich white chauvinist asshole, I’d send back my Oscar.” You would send back your Oscar, assuming you could get one, which you can’t, because you’re a no talent hack who writes for Salon. Meanwhile, the lovely and talented Gwyneth Paltrow is laughing at you, while she sits on a giant pile of money.

Finally, the film provides lessons in racism and homophobia:

1. Tony Stark explains his desire to no longer making weapons with, “I saw Americans killed by my own weapons in Afghanistan! I can’t put it better than this blogger: “Do I even need to mention how stupid and racist it is to say that he was OK with his weapons being used to kill all those other non-Americans?”  Huh? Uh… who are we currently fighting? Should Iron Man have been like that one Tom Clancy adaptation where the Jihadists suddenly turned into white supremacists?  In this same vein, as noted in my earlier post, various Others are framed as “evil terrorists,” namely Middle Easterners and North Koreans. Yes. It is absurd to think that Iran or North Korea would ever be a threat! (meanwhile, on Earth, they’re skipping the robot suits and building nukes)

2. Black actors are exchangeable. Swap Don Cheadle (Iron Man 2) for Terrence Howard (Iron Man 1). No one will notice. My goodness, you are stupid. No really, I mean you are really really dim-witted.  Terrance Howard was replaced because he wanted too much MONEY. Not only was it noticed, there was a hat tip to the geeks in Don Cheadle’s first scene where he said “I’m here, deal with it.” Indeed, deal with it, bitch.

p.s. Don Cheadle is a better actor. Deal with that, all you player haters.

p.p.s. Nick Fury was played by a black man. Nick Fury was originally white.  You don’t hear me screaming reverse racism. (okay, yes, geeks, I know. Ultimates… let’s not get too geeky)

3. Organizations which discriminate against homosexuals deserve huge donations. In the sequel, Tony donates a modern art collection, which Pepper has collected over 10 years, to the Boy Scouts of America. Okay, you want to pick a fight with the BSA. Kiss my ass and die. No seriously. Kiss it good. Then die. Go to hell, and die, on fire. A lot.  Oh, it’s not enough to cry about Iron Man picking on you, but you mess with the scouts, you’re lower than whale crap. They’ve done a thousand times more good than your pathetic, self-righteous, proud-to-be-a-victim, naive, liberal bullshit has ever even dreamed of accomplishing. You despise them because they have the audacity to stand up for what they believe in, instead of bending over to your agenda. And you people just hate that.

Bonus note: The sexist message of the Iron Man films spills off the screen and into our fast-food culture, with Burger King offering “four lifestyle accessories for girls and four action-packed toys for boys.” Girls, get busy accessorizing! Boys, take action! News flash lady. Boys and girls like different toys. I’ve got boys and girls. My girls know how to defend themselves, and they can shoot. I’ve raised them to be very intelligent, self sufficient, and proud, but guess what? They liked to play with different toys. I feel sorry for your thirteen year old. When the other little boys were shooting each other with Nerf cannons, did he enjoy that My Little Pony you made him play with?

And not only do you hate the Boy Scouts, you hate the King? Bet you’re one of those people who thinks food should be regulated too…  Well guess what, lady. The Burger King will not be trifled with. He is terrifying. He is a force of nature. Do not piss off the King.

The King is watching you…

For this feminist, one thing’s certain: I won’t be stepping out in my non-high heels in order to see the sure-to-follow Iron Man 3.

Nope. Next is Thor, (a Viking! Boo! They’re insensitive! What with all the raping.) then Captain America (who, if the adaptation is faithful at all, should make your little head explode), then Avengers, then Iron Man 3. Me, and my Viking War Children will be at all of them, opening night.

This article was just an example of why the “feminist” movement died a pathetic death as a shell of its once important self.  True feminists are women are proud of who they are, and who take responsibility for themselves.  My wife is an example of a woman who truly takes no crap. However, since she’s a conservative, she is evil incarnate to the imbeciles at Ms Magazine. The feminist movement as it stands today is just another democrat shill organization that exists primarily to whine, feel picked on, and look for excuses to cry racism.  These are the people who hate Sarah Palin, but didn’t say a word about Bill Clinton’s misogyny. Apparently my Rule #1 of racism also applies to sexism.

Hey, Ms. Magazine, Iron Man go you down? Put on your big girl panties and deal with life.  That’s what Tony Stark would do.  

The Adventures of TOM STRANGER: Interdimensional Insurance Agent

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Washington D.C.

Earth #345-B-98081

October 5th, 2012

President Baldwin surveyed the Whitehouse underground war bunker.  The greatest minds in the country were gathered here, appropriate for their greatest time of crisis.  It had only been two days since a hole had been torn between worlds, but already all of Europe and half of Asia had been conquered and consumed by the slimy purple bastards.

The Secretary of Defense stood at the front of the room, giving the most important PowerPoint presentation in human history.  SecDef had even worn his nicest eye patch.  It was the black one with the embroidered USMC bulldog on it.  The fate of all mankind rested on the decisions that would be made in this room in the next few minutes. So of course, Powerpoint wasn’t working.  They’d wasted ten minutes trying to get it running.

“Piece of ****! ****-knuckle **** pot!” the SecDef shouted as he kicked the projector. “What’s the deal, Ed?”

“It says it suffered a fatal error,” the Secretary of Education said as he poked ineffectually at the keys.

“Fatal error?” SecDef drew his .45.  SecEd was smart enough to get the hell out of the way. “I’ll show you a fatal error!” POTUS covered his ears just in time as the computer exploded in a very satisfactory manner. The Secret Service detail was used to these kinds of outbursts, and barely raised their collective eyebrows.

Tom Stranger had a seat just behind POTUS.  He leaned forward to whisper, “It doesn’t really matter which dimension you’re in, Windows still does that.  There’s even one Earth where Bill Gate’s cyborg head is god-emperor, and they’re still forced to use Vista.”

POTUS shuddered at the thought.

“**** squat **** son of a ****monkey!” SecDef grumbled.  “I’ll do this the old fashioned way!” He snapped his fingers and two generals and an admiral brought in a dry-erase board.  “Dismissed **** stains!” SecDef bellowed as he drew a dry-erase marker from his dry-erase marker holster. He popped the cap and started drawing stick figure versions of the alien invaders.

“They call themselves the Horde of Righteous Purification, but they don’t talk much, because they’re usually too busy eating babies!” SecDef deftly drew a frowny face on one of the blobs.  Then he thought better of it and drew a bunch of sharp teeth as well.  “They travel from planet to planet. They face-**** the ever livin’ **** outta that planet, eat everything, steal all the resources, and then stick a black hole in the core before they leave, just to be dicks about it!”

“Have we tried negotiating with them?” the Secretary of Health and Human Services asked.

POTUS groaned. He didn’t really know what Health and Human Services did.  “Duh. You think I’m stupid, Tina? Of course we did. But they ate the ambassador. And then they ate the Secretary of State. Then they ate his dog. We even tried playing the keyboard, like in that one movie with the mash potato mountain, but they ate John Tesh too. John Tesh and his keyboard! I’ve depopulated half the state department. It was like an all-you-can-eat bureaucrat buffet,” POTUS sighed.

“But what if we were nice to the—“

SecDef hurled his dry-erase marker at the SecHeHum. “Shut your pie hole, hippie!” Sadly, because he only had one eye, he lacked depth perception and struck the Press Secretary in the nose. But SecHeHum hid under the table just in case. Victorious, SecDef drew another marker from his holster, purple this time, and continued his briefing.  “The Horde lives for war. They’ve been biologically augmented for the last million years to be perfect killing machines. They don’t have tanks. They are tanks!” He colored the many tentacles and murder sparklers and eye ball cannons purple.  “Their air power is made up of giant purple pterodactyls, with scramjets for buttholes. They fart themselves to mach 4 and sexually assault F-22s!”  He switched to red to draw flames as little stick figure human soldiers were crushed mercilessly beneath the tentacles. “Their vats grow a fully combat effective Death-Mauler in ten minutes!” SecDef made explodey noises as he drew.

POTUS spoke up. “And you don’t even want to know about their Harvesters!”

“What do they Harvest?” the Secretary of Agriculture asked suspiciously. He knew a thing or two about harvesting.

“SCROTUMS!” SecDef shouted.

Every man in the room cringed and crossed their legs protectively. “Nuke ‘em!” screamed SecEd as he pounded the conference table. “Nuke the **** out of them!”

The room began to chant “NUKE! NUKE! NUKE!”

“That’s the spirit!” SecDef answered. “Too bad we’ve been nuking them left and right since breakfast. France is now a glass parking lot with permanent nuclear winter so the Horde went ice skating on it!  They are immune to radiation, bullets, electricity, disease, lava, and personal insults. We’ve tried everything. They sweat nitro and sneeze acid, and when they’re not killing, they’re practicing killing, or sharpening things so they can do some stab-killing! They exist only to blow **** up…” he trailed off, a single tear forming in his good eye. “My God, they’re beautiful.”

The greatest minds available began to panic. Which was understandable, since half the world’s population had died in the last twenty-four hours, but it was an election year,  POTUS knew he needed to get this situation under control, right the hell now, so he stood and flung his chair across the room. He went through a lot of chairs that way, but it got the point across. He’d risen to fame and popularity by playing a decisive man of action during the five seasons of the #1 most successful Libertarian Space Cowboy show to ever air on TV, so everyone knew not to screw with him. The room grew quiet. “Ahem… That’ll be all R. Lee.”

SecDef didn’t hear. He was drawing a bunch of little stick figure army men and saying “No. Not my scrotum!” in a very high pitched voice. Sadly, the purple blob thing got them. “AAHHHHH! NOOOO!”  Deep voice; “This will look good on my trophy necklace.” Then more exploding noises.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” POTUS spoke calmly. “This situation is under control. All is not lost. Allow me to introduce Tom Stranger.”

“Your reality took out a policy with my company back when John Wayne was president,” Tom walked to the front of the room, passing out business cards the entire way.

TOM STRANGER

INTERDIMENSIONAL INSURANCE AGENT

“Interdimensional insurance?” the Treasury Secretary asked. “What’s that”

“It’s just like home owners insurance, but for events relating to rifts between realities,” Tom answered.

“Are you the guys with the cute little gecko?” SecHeHum squeaked from beneath the table.

“No,” Tom said.  “That’s Geico.”

“What about the duck?” a Secret Service Agent asked.

“No. That would be AFLAC.”

“What about that weirdly attractive red headed woman with all the makeup who lives in that somehow Orwellian white room?”  the other Secret Service Agent asked.

“Flo?” POTUS asked. “Damn, yeah, she is hot.”

“No,” Tom answered as he adjusted his bowtie.

SecDef looked up from his dry-erase massacre. “Cartoon secret agent chick that fights robots?”

Tom shook his head sadly. “ I’m afraid my firm does not have any sort of attractive, ironic, or humorous mascots. What we do, however, offer is a full line of interdimensional insurance services. Since this Horde incident originated on Earth #789-Alpha-12567, they fall under your extended Space Marauder Protection. We’ll just need to fill out some paperwork, and by paperwork, I mean blowing up a bunch of aliens, but we’ll get this all wrapped up in no time.” The room breathed a collective sigh of relief. Tom had been voted number one in customer service for three years running.

“So there are other Earths?” SecAg asked.

“Every time a Planck event warps the geodeosynergy matrix, a Thorne Conundrum will cause an alteration in Hawking space,” Tom said happily. When SecAg looked at him blankly, Tom realized he needed to tone it down for this universe’s Cow Lord. “Yes, a whole bunch of Earths. A different one for every decision ever made.”

POTUS whistled. That was a lot of Earths. There was an Earth where he’d had oatmeal for breakfast, and he didn’t even like oatmeal. “So what happened to 789 whatever?”

“Sadly, that version of America hadn’t kept current on their policy and they were harvested. It was a strange planet. You see, they spent all their budget on odd things, like tarps, or buying perfectly good cars so they could destroy them so they could buy new cars, or acorns, or Canadian style healthcare.”

“What’s a Canadian?” Secret Service Agent #1 whispered to #2. #2 shrugged. Whatever it was, it sounded silly.

“I wonder how they could possibly have gotten in such bad shape?” POTUS asked. “We were doing awesome until that whole invasion thing.”

“In that horrible reality, Firefly was cancelled after just one season your Excellency,” Tom Stranger explained.   Everyone present recoiled in horror.  Tom was used to the shocking variations between alternative worlds, but because of his extensive travels, he was extremely knowledgeable. “There was never a Libertarian Space Cowboy revolution. You were never elected. Instead the Republicans ran a senile version of Colonel Tigh and the Democrats won, with, what I believe was Steve Urkel.”

“Impossible!” SecDef shouted. “Lies!”

“You have a show on their History Channel where you shoot watermelons with machineguns. Only you didn’t have the eye patch.”

SecDef put on his war face. “OooRah! ****in’-A. Now that would be sweet!”

Tom Stranger nodded. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Thank you for picking Tom Stranger for all your interdimensional insurance needs.” He clapped his hands twice and his giant robot battle suit crashed through the bunker wall. The twenty-foot tall velociraptor-shaped monstrosity of plasma weapons and bio-armor had a single bumper sticker between its death ray and the napalm sprayer. It read; You’re in Strange Hands with Tom Stranger.

“Thank you, Tom Stranger!” POTUS shouted, climbing on the conference table and lifting one fist heroically into the air. “America! **** yeah! Coming again to save the mother-****ing day, yeah!” he quoted from the National Anthem.

Tom leapt into the cockpit of his battle suit just as his cybernetic implants kicked in. “It’s time to kick some ass and adjust some claims.”

TO BE CONTINUED…  EDIT – Here in fact:  A message from Stranger & Stranger http://MonsterHunterNation.com/2010/05/24/a-message-from-stranger-stranger/