Superpowers

The Spiderman, Batman, and other superhero documentaries have gone a long way towards fostering understanding between humans and meta-humans, but we are still worlds apart. “Can I gain superpowers during sexual intercourse?” is still a question I get asked all the time at meta human education seminars (See Figure 1: How Are People Gaining Their Supernatural Powers?). Superpowers are, for better or worse, part of our world now, and it's best that you familiarize yourself with these “gods that walk among us,” and their accompanying powers.

Perhaps you or someone you love are struggling with strange powers you don't want to talk to your doctor or spiritual advisor about, for fear of being sent to a superhuman government detainment facility? The Superpowers chart can help you identify your power and move on from there (See Figure 2: What Should You do After Identifying Your Powers?). Superheroes hate to be “defined” by their superpower. “Oh, just because my power is superspeed, you think I have commitment issues?” Or, “Just because I'm physically invulnerable, you think I don't have feelings?” I can't tell you how many times I've heard these complaints from superpeople I know.

Should you become a hero or a villain? Both have their advantages: superheroes win more often (See Figure 3: How Often do Heroes and Villains Win Their Battles?), but super-villains have more fun. You hardly ever hear super heroes laugh maniacally after a victory, but villains can do so for hours, their manic laughter bouncing off the walls of their underground lairs. Although powers themselves are neither good or bad, there are certain superhuman abilities that seem to lead to villainy, or are difficult to use in a positive manner: Mind control (possession), darkness control, poison generation, necromancy, self-detonation, disease bestowal. Superhuman intelligence especially seems to lead people down the “mad scientist route.” But whichever side of the law you choose to align yourself on, you’ll find the same career perks: flexible hours, excitement, and travel (See Figure 4: Where do Superhumans Fight Their Battles?).

Once you figure out what your particular power is, you’ll need to identify your weakness. Don’t worry, it will be something very rare! Perhaps a relic from your home world, a rare isotope, or the love of a pure woman. (Unless you’re a member of the Green Lantern Corps., in which case your weakness will be something incredibly common and inane.) If you’re unable to discover your weakness on your own, don’t worry, eventually your nemesis will figure it out. No matter what your weakness is, you will probably also be susceptible to magic, the annoying wildcard of the superpowers world. Many superheroes who are supposed to be invulnerable are still susceptible to the effects of magic. Super strength, mental powers, power negation, illusions—a magical being could have any and all of these powers. The chief drawbacks of magic are its unreliability, high prep time, and general cornyness. 

Young meta humans often argue about what power is “the best.” Super strength and invulnerability are top contenders, as is mind control and super intelligence. But even if your super power is something more humble (See Figure 5: Lamest Super Powers) just remember, it’s not the size of your power that matters, but how you use it. 

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FIGURE 2: WHAT SHOULD YOU DO AFTER IDENTIFYING 

YOUR POWERS?

1. Name yourself

2. Sew a costume

3. Fight crime/commit crime

4. Battle nemesis

5. Repeat

FIGURE 5: lamest super powers

1. Super boring

2. The ability to see 3 seconds into the past

3. Animal communication: worms only

4. Impenetrable dinner conversation

5. The strength of a dog

6. Invisibility to the opposite sex

7. Ennui

8. Heightened paranoia

9. Omnilinguism

10. Je ne sais quoi

Top Five Alien Pornos

1. ALIEN: A crew of spacemen get face-raped and impregnated by an alien whose head is shaped like a giant phallus, and whose blood is made of acidic sperm.

2. EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY: Aliens cross the galaxy to have sex with Geena Davis. The amorous invaders discover that Earth girls are indeed easy, assuming you look like Jeff Goldblum.

3. SPECIES: An alien succubus who conveniently looks like a underwear model has sex with a bunch of men before killing them. It won an Oscar for Most Thinly-Veiled Pretext for Sex and Violence. 

4. COMMUNION: Christopher Walken is given rufies by aliens and then probed in a lewd and invasive manner. There are also some great dance scenes.

5. MEN IN BLACK: Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones star in this sizzling summer blockbuster about secret agents who police alien activity on earth. If you want to see some real sizzling, check out the director’s cut, which has a scene where Jones has to suck the venom out of a poisonous alien bite on Smith’s tongue.

Doomsday Scenarios

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the world is going to end—maybe today or maybe a million years from now, but its destruction is inevitable. The end may come without warning; everything you know, including your cat, could be obliterated at any moment. “Oh no,” you think, “armageddon won’t happen to me.” You know who else thought that? (See Figure 1: This Guy).

That’s the bad news, and I realize it’s depressing. However, remember, I have good news as well: the good news is that, odds are, the end of the world is going to be awesome. Like a gut-shot gunslinger in an old western, the human race will fling itself over the balcony railing, screaming melodramatically as it falls.

For instance, theoretically, there are one-dimensional cracks in the fabric of space called cosmic string. Although only a proton thin, they run the length of the universe and have incredible density. We’re not sure whether or not they exist, but they might, and if they do, and if one were to touch the earth, the earth would be torn apart in a matter of seconds. The whole earth, reduced to cosmic rubble by invisible space string. How cool is that? (Cooler than nuclear winter, which is another completely plausible doomsday scenario.)

Or, there’s a chance that, if a large enough meteor hits the earth (it’s happened before) it could trigger simultaneous underwater volcanic eruptions that would make the oceans boil, spawning giant hurricanes that merge and form a hypercane, a giant storm the size of North America. Not to mention the volcanic ash and dust that would blot out the sun. Whoah.

Tidal waves, biblical plagues, alien invasion, hell reaching its maximum capacity and forcing the dead to rise from their graves, they’re all exciting possible doomsday scenarios. There are, however, a few boring doomsday scenarios: dwindling natural resources, a global pandemic, pollution, and global warming are all steady, gradual problems that could ultimately destroy the human race, hopefully before they bore us to death. Nobody wants to spend their afterlife telling other spirits “How did I die? Well, the earth’s temperature climbed half a degree every year for twenty years, which doesn’t seem like much, but that increase significantly increased the amount of algea in the oceans, which upset the foodchain and blabbity-blab blab boring scientific stuff.” The biggest reason to fight globabl warming is so we can obliterate ourselves in a flashier way, like by creating a miniature black hole or zombie plague. 

This brings up a frequently asked question: are humans stupid enough to end the world? This is a facetious question, because causing doomsday is anything but easy. Look at dodo birds—the dummies—they came nowhere near obliterating themselves. Rats, pigs—and yes, humans—had to do it for them. In a way, completely destroying our race or planet would be an impressive accomplishment, the crowning cap stone to our pyramid of self-destructive behavior. 

“Doomsday” in the sense I’m charting doesn’t require global demolition, merely the extinction of the human species (or permanent enslavement by another race, such as the Alien Zoo or Planet of the Apes scenario). The earth is a 4.5 billion year old ball of rock that is much harder to destroy than the human race, and the majority of doomsday scenarios would leave the earth intact enough to support other life forms (See Figure 3: Who Will Inherit the Earth?). 

Even if we avoid the many natural or unnatural catastrophes that could end the world, in a billion years our sun’s steady increase in brightness will evaporate all the oceans, which means there will be no place to vacation and the Earth will consequently be unlivable. Ultimately the universe will either continue expanding and tear itself apart at the seams, or reverse course and contract, ending in a cataclysmic reversal of the big bang.  

And while it would suck to be in the middle of one of those apocalyptic situations, you have to admit that the end of the world is far more exciting than anything else you’ve ever done, including that time you made out with the high school chemistry student teacher and then smoked grass in the back of his van.