Between work and school and trying to keep on top of SecGov Robots and the next year’s batch of Phone Guyses, I’ve had little time for ordinary posts on the site lately. Well, for one of my classes I had to produce a few “found poems” so I might as well throw them up on here, right? The correct answer is “right”.
Friendspeak (a found poem made from lines of texts between Marq and me)
I have a new phone.
It is one of those technology phones.
Consarnit.
I will still get the message in a robotic voice.
I am in Dartmouth.
Sports Entertainment.
Where will Kip be at?
Plenty of time, I suppose.
Yeppp.
I just now got your song picture.
Huggable angel statues.
A Larry David-looking guy’s car broke down in the rotary.
Traffic is nuts. I will be late.
Trust Us, We Are Human (a found poem made from Spam comments on This Very Website)
Oakland survived a shaky night.
We fix it.
Hardly is it possible to imagine that more such good exists.
I believe it’s just the way you search
within the mirror, not the amount.
What they did to him was senseless.
So do not be much too difficult on your self.
Do whatever you can
plus the relaxation will get the job done alone out.
Precognitive Robot (a found poem made from Kip’s text prediction application, which attempts to determine what you are trying to type before you finish.)
Dissidents,
Fairfax Hoffman’s
beforehand optioned.
Friday.
Sainsbury heights.
Yuri unstated,
Shenzhen good-looking.
Fifth liftoff urged Uhura
watch outright hunch.
Diuretic Puget
degree Nikkei.
proprio pointed
fight.
We got some Little Choy:
The victim of Choy’s vicious barbs this week is Dr. Blade, who was the villain in the Justice-Man comic I made in my distant youth. He’s getting old now, but he is still tinkering with his machines. I can also point out that this isn’t the first time that Choy has shown up in that neck of the woods.
Also, we have some Phone Guys:
Helm
As he hit puberty, Craig began to suffer headaches. He heard voices and had trouble focusing his vision. He was lucky in that his parents were medical scientists who were able to discover the cause: Craig was developing some kind of superhuman mental powers. His headaches were caused by the fact that he could hear the thoughts of others. His loss of vision was because his vision was capable of detecting thought currents in the air. He was being overwhelmed by his new mental senses and it was killing him and that, in turn, began to cause him to emit powerful bursts of telekinetic energy. The invention of the Helm saved him. Built to block the information that reached Craig’s brain. He was alone with his thoughts again.
In the years since, Craig has tinkered with his Helm and improved. He can open apertures that allow mental impulses to filter in, and with practice he has learned the “language” of these impulses, so he can now essentially read minds. The telekinetic bursts that he can emit are also highly focused now, a useful weapon. All this made Craig a popular consultant for law enforcement agencies, who will often call on Helm to help solve fantastic cases.
Helm is the organizer of a loose-knit collection of mentally powered characters (I’ve mentioned them before). He’s somewhat inspired by Cyclops of the X-Men, though I am confident that many other examples could be found of characters who are trapped in something to contain their powers.
The Scarlet Cannon
Siobhan Reilly has a giant cannon in place of her right arm. It can be used to shoot things. It wasn’t always that way. In fact, she once had a right arm, but one day woke up with a cannon. That’s not a particularly normal situation, and perhaps is less than ideal, but Siobhan had decided to accept her lot in life. She has a giant cannon in place of her right arm. And so, she dresses in a red outfit and fights crime.
I admit, I had no particular idea where I was going with this one (and it shows). I decided I wanted to do another superhero with a color in their name and this is what happened. Such arbitrary methods can create unforeseen greatness, but not always. Still, if someone has to be a D-list superhero, the Scarlet Cannon is perfectly happy to do it.
N-Tangle
Clarissa Jurgens has created an experimental suit that connects her nervous system to a collection of billions of strong, prehensile nanofibres. Clarissa can control these as if they were a part of her own body, winding them together to create thick cords or using them individually to perform delicate tasks on a minor scale. Using this suit to become the superhero N-Tangle (the N can stand for Nano- or Neuro- or anything else needed, Clarissa insists), Clarissa is living out her childhood dreams of fighting crime, though she soon finds that it is a lot more serious and a lot less fun than she expected. She struggles to stick with it, if only because she doesn’t know what else she wants in life.
Ridiculous hair. Just ridiculous. I don’t even know what is going on there. And also, if I had named the character before doing the sketch, I probably would have tried to work an N onto the outfit. I picture her being able to swing though the city like Spider-Man, using her to brace herself.
Skullserpent
Misti Drake has divided her mind. While she is still in complete control of her body, she simultaneously is within the Skullserpent, a floating snake-like entity with a human skull for a face. Most people don’t have that. Misti uses her mystical second self in a quest to locate and destroy a society of magical criminals called the Night Fellows. This evil order, intent on world domination in the name of their dread leader Karaksus the Uncontrollable.
Skullserpent’s design looks so much like a villain that I considered saving it until I got to the villain creation portion of my Super Sundays. To me, she looks exactly like someone who would be on a group of villains created in the 80s to fight some team of superheroes or another. But I decided not to go that way. The fact that she doesn’t look like a hero is one of the reasons that she should be a hero, I think. I mean, sure, I already did that with Queen Deathknell, but why not do it again?
