Reasonable Superheroes

Huge Penis No Personality Man

Summoned into existence by the collective will of men with average sized penises and above average insecurity, Huge Penis No Personality Man is a tool with a purpose. Just as parents have allowed the proliferation of Santa Claus in order to control their children's behavior, Huge Penis No Personality Man is created to control their fragile egos. His goal is to keep the men who created him comfortable with their girlfriends and spouses, even though they had one or several or more than several flings with men based on the unlikely size of their genitalia, which they sheepishly admitted when they assumed that their boyfriends or spouses were emotionally mature and able to handle such a revelation. How does Huge Penis No Personality Man accomplish this difficult task? By roaming the earth giving as many girls as possible the most disappointing night of their lives, despite his impressive package. He seduces them with his "man of few words" charm that belies the fact that nothing is really going on in his head at all, then once in the bedroom, after requiring 45 minutes to become officially inflated, he performs for exactly 1 and a half thrusts, then makes a great big and complicated mess, pelts her with a box of tissues and falls asleep. Then he wakes up and talks about the weather all morning, oblivious to all of the hints to leave her apartment. She then passes him off to all of her friends to see if they have better luck... after which they decide that all men with party favors for a dick are simply not worth it. They then finalize and perpetuate this belief by discussing the subject in a cold, sarcastically scholarly and judgmental "Sex and the City" format, which is what these men assume all women must do. That is where these men imagine their partners deviating from sitcom franchise dialog and each take turns mentioning their current partner favorably with very little segue but somehow it is not at all awkward. The imaginations of these men need many, many superheroes.



Captain Call-Out

Meet Brent. If Brent could describe himself in two words, they would be "No excuses", but you should know this because it is on his Facebook, which he updates hourly to remind you to stop wasting your time on Facebook. When Brent takes to the streets, he changes his name to Captain Call-out, fighter of crime so heinous, most of us are perpetrators of it and we don't. Even. Know. Captain Call-out is here to let us know. He is the new definition of selfless... he is the pale shadowy figure who actually confronts you on barely perceptible faux pas and negligibly minor wrong-doings, often with a preachy and distinctly liberal agenda.

After putting in a 13 hour day, you are about to hop on the subway and you lean against a building to have one last cigarette before going underground. "Excuse me, m'am, what do you think you are doing there with that cigarette? That building you are leaning on is a restaurant. A FAMILY restaurant. There are children in there." Children said in that tone of course warrants the attention of those passing by. It's the "CHUH" sound that pierces through the white noise. You try to defend yourself with logic, but he only says, "Yes, I see there is great distance between yourself and the door but I don't trust that those windows right over your head are airtight. I know it may not be too big a deal to you but, well, I guess I'm just not as jaded to the human condition as you are." BOOM! That just happened. And you have nothing to say in response other than that you legally have the right to smoke at that distance from the entrance. Only after he walks away in disgust do you realize how much like a soulless minion of the tobacco companies you just sounded. You spend the rest of the day feeling annoyed, and then mad at yourself for even being annoyed at something so stupid... or did he have a point? You wish you could have thought of a comeback. Captain Call-out knows when you've had a long day and you aren't in the frame of mind to deal with that you may call "trivial bullshit". Well TOO BAD because The Captain is ALWAYS ready to call you out.

You go to a new restaurant by yourself for dinner. You feel a little bit self-conscious being the only person there alone, and the hostess is seating you by the window in the middle of all the couples... the type of couples with aggressive boyfriends who insist on sitting by the window because it shows that they are in control or something... after spending a minute twitching and adjusting in your seat, you stutter as you tell the waitress you'd like to move, BUT THEN! Captain Call-out interrupts his own date to single you out. "Oh don't worry, we're not judging you. There are plenty of perfectly acceptable reasons to be out on your own tonight. More importantly though, why would you think we are judging you, unless you are prone to passing the same judgment on everyone else. And by the way, way to make the waitress push through the tables to bring your water and menu before you get the guts to decide to awkwardly push back through, just so you can quell your insecurity." Just as you push out a self-deprecating laugh to mitigate the awkwardness, he says, "And trying to use laughter to mitigate the awkwardness is both pretentious and predictable. And try not to stare at all the same girls you checked out on the way in, you're so obvious it's pathetic." Not knowing what else to do, everybody applauds his rant. Rather than find a new restaurant, you sit down and order your food mostly out of stubbornness and you don't want to seem like you're once again second-guessing yourself, though you're no longer hungry. You just sit there staring as your food gets that translucent gloss as it cools, wondering if he had a point.

You're at a party passing a joint around and it's down to the charred lip-searing end. You decide that it's kicked but just as you put it out in the ashtray, Captain Call-out breaks from his conversation about awesome local bands that you ought to know about to ask "Hey, what do you think you're doing, man? You think that was done? There are people who would give anything to smoke what you just carelessly discarded. Anything, that is, except money, because they don't have any. I noticed earlier you said you only work part time, I guess your parents are paying for college? It just pisses me off when spoiled kids make decisions for everyone else but consider only themselves. You wouldn't last ten minutes on the street, dude." Without thinking you try to salvage the situation by saying your parents aren't paying your tuition and that are on academic scholarship, but that backfires, he easily spins that to make you look spoiled AND arrogant. Caught with all this off guard, all you can say is "What's your deal, man? Chill out!", so now you look spoiled, arrogant, and inarticulate. Since nobody wants to talk to you and you're too high to drive home, you have plenty of time to sit and wonder if he has a point.

He's read every book and seen every documentary... and if he hasn't seen it, it's because he knows that it was biased because it was funded by big corporations under a different name. Everybody asks themselves "is he a good guy or is he a bad guy, is he a good guy or a bad guy"... which is good that people ask themselves that because if they asked out loud he would accuse you of trying to assign him a label, which he wouldn't take kindly to. You ask yourself how he came to be in the first place, well you know there is no need to ask, because there is a little bit of Captain Call-out in all of us.


Part II

He has an on-and-off romantic entanglement with evil super-villain Debbie Downer, ruiner of all good vibes, doubter of all good-intentioned but maybe a bit unlikely initiatives, the nurturer of ambivalence towards ambitions... Debbie likes him because it would piss off her parents if they didn't commit suicide after she told them what she wished for on her 16th birthday. He is turned on by her contrarian positions, as well as her unique availability to him. Ruining all other relationships with her Scepter of Skepticism, The Captain remains undeterred, writing really lousy indie music about her that he mercifully only plays for her. She is exhilarated in her campaign to sabotage a strangely healthy relationship with someone who actually likes her for who she is. No man has ever been able to maintain an erection in her presence. No man, that is, except for Captain Call-out. In fact, the more she doubts and talks about how it is such a bad idea for them to be fucking, the more embarrassingly soon he turns into Captain Pull-out. Determined to satisfy her, he convinces her with his usual guilt process that so turns her on to try instead taunting him with that which neither of them can stand: empty upbeat mainstream culture. So she prints out the Yahoo News homepage off his Mac Book. The more she rambles about "Dancing With the Stars", real estate market optimism in annoyingly remote towns, the last few Meryl Streep movies, The Green Movement, the harder he has to thrust to continue. She had her first 46 orgasms that night, and the streak would continue for weeks... but deep down inside, Captain Call-out suspected that he hadn't changed her. This and much more was confirmed one day when he showed up at her place and found Huge Dick No Personality Man curled up in a ball naked and gently sobbing in the corner. "You tried having sex with him, didn't you." She didn't even look up when she shrugged out, "I was curious." Wistfully, Captain inquires, "But what about us?" Then she looked right at him, with a single arch of her black hair reaching angstfully over her right eye, "I didn't think anything was going on, I mean in the grand scheme of things." He now knew that it was doomed, that she was too jaded and that he grew to despise jadedness. It became his weakness... a bias. It was only a matter of time before someone triggered this and set him off.

It's a windy day and you are finished with your banana. You walk well out of your way and you drop it into a bin, but a gust of wind takes it off course and it lands in a nearby pile of sludge. You pretend not to notice as you walk away. You think "Whatever, it's biodegradable. Maybe the garbage man will pick it up. I did more than most people would to properly dispose of this banana." But that is not what Capt. Callout thinks. According to the police report, which was gathered from eyewitness testimony, Capt. Callout said: "What were you just going to leave that there? Huh? What were you thinking, Jeeves? 'Oh, it's just one banana peel, it's not a big deal'. And that's just one crushed soda can, and that's just one newspaper, and that's just one one fast food bag, and that all adds up to a collage of your decadent jaded philosophy." You try to reply that you're really not that jaded, but the Captain has already made up his mind. He continues, "You're probably so jaded you don't think this is happening right now. You're so jaded I could just start fucking you in the ass and if I asked you tomorrow you would deny that it happened. You're gonna pick it up! I BET YOU PISS IN THE OCEAN, TOO." Then he forced the man who littered to bend over the man and sodomized him while screaming pick it up! Pick it up! Until police arrived on the scene.


Once captured and locked up in the mental ward, his health quickly deteriorated until one day they went to feed him and all that was left was peat and moss. Some say it was because of his vegan diet, but most say it was because his spirit left his body, because they swear they saw him calling someone out on the street. But nobody admits to an encounter... with Captain Call-out.