From: Jeremy_Reimer@mindlink.bc.ca (Jeremy Reimer)
Subject: N-Man # 8 - Gee, that didn't take long did it?
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 10:46:20 GMT

Actually longer than you think.  My posting schedules are very irregular and
N-Man #8 was the most delayed ever.  But since I also had delayed posting #7
to r.h....

Well, anyway, enjoy the episode.

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                            DISMOUNT! PICTURES
                  (a division of Discourse International)


                               Presents...


              The Adventures of:
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|     \/     |  ##    ####       ##    ##    ##   ##    ##   ##    ####
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|   / N  \   |##      ##       ##            ## ##      ## ##      ##
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  - "Yellow!"             The World's Greatest Super-Hero (tm)

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Copyright(C) 1992 By Jeremy Reimer, and the Infinite Number of Monkeys Group

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                                EPISODE VIII

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                |    N  -  M  A  N  '  S    S  O  N  G     |
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      "Dial 1-900-NMAN today, only $9 for the first minute, $2 each
                           additional minute"

It had been One Of Those Days.

First, N-Man had been unceremoniously thrown out of Sock World for no other
reason than the episode was nearing a close.  To make matters worse, a yellow
octopus whose only function in life seemed to be contradicting people had
been thrown through the DIMensional gate with him.  And if that wasn't
enough, a recent poll had come out showing that more people had contributed
to "Kascade Challenge II" than had sent away for their free gift (Send only
$20 to the N-Man Fan Club, c/o Jeremy Reimer, #204 3611 West 16th Avenue,
Vancouver, BC, CANADA, V6R 3C3)  It was enough to make our stalwart
super-hero throw his massive hands up in despair.

"Well, Blue, does life just suck or what?" he asked rhetorically.

"No, it doesn't," came the expected reply.  For once N-Man wasn't sorry that
the pet shop had been all out of octopus food.

"Ah, what do you know anyway," N-Man snapped back, uncharacteristically, as
he flipped on the TV.

Surprising that Bruce Springsteen could have been so accurate for once.  The
only thing on seemed to be Cher doing a one-hour infomercial for diet tips
from a fat woman.  Or was it clothing tips from a fat woman?  The fat woman
was involved somehow, and she wasn't singing, so N-Man blew up the TV in
disgust with his patented N-Man(tm) Anti-Television Grenade Launcher(R), the
perfect Christmas gift! "I've been wanting to do that for a long time," he
sighed.

"No you haven't!  You live for that TV!  Star Trek: The Wrong Generation is
on next, anyway!  What did you go and do that for?"  The eight-tentacled
beast was curiously distraught.

"It's all right, we can watch TV in another room.  I mean, I designed this
lair, you know.  Over three hundred rooms, and each one has a TV in it.  The
N-Mobile itself has at least three installed.  Even the bathrooms have them.
Come on, I may be short, unattractive and overly talented, but I'm not
_stupid_.

The octopus wasn't sure how to respond to that.  Immodesty and
self-deprication in the same sentence?  Or was it just a typo?

"Slack," N-Man announced suddenly.  "I need at least one paragraph of pure,
unadulterated slack."

"No, you don't," Blue replied forcefully, and covered his ears.

"Snuggles," N-Man began, "Connie fritzed through the blazing fields of
burning slack, pursued by the Anti-Bob blasting his thousand points of light
through the gelded 'frop gnashers of Dread Xistian as they destroyed,
annihilated and turned pink all that they saw."

The octopus was silent.

"Well?" N-Man queried.

"All I can say," Blue replied truthfully, "was that it really, REALLY blew.
Exactly what did you think you were doing?  Pandering to a target audience of
misfits and losers?"

"Blue," N-Man said solemnly, "I am a misfit and a loser myself.  I should try
to fit in at least."

"Nonsense," came the reply, "who was it who defeated the evil Count Karl Von
Klaussenberg?  Who was it who dealt a swift diplomatic blow to the evil Sock
World Leader?  Who was it who finally invented a VCR tracking control that
actually IMPROVED the picture instead of just distorting it more?"

"Yes," N-Man admitted, "that last one was particularly brilliant.  A large
chunk of my personal fortune came out of selling that technology to a
stereotypical Japanese businessman.  But Blue, it's more than that."  He
sighed and slumped down on a nearby couch.  "It's this super-hero thing.  I
just don't think I'm cut out for it, frankly.  I've run out of even remotely
interesting villains to defeat, to start with, and if you add on top of that
the collapse of my movie deal the whole picture begins to reek.  I'd say it
makes me want to toss my cookies, but it's worse than that.  I'd like to toss
the entire Oreo(tm) factory."

"No, you wouldn't," the tentacled, yellow aquatic beast replied, but it was
to no avail.

"I'm taking an extended leave of absence, Blue, I don't know when I shall
return.  Make it known to anyone who will listen that you won't have N-Man to
kick around any more.  I am officially retiring from the super-hero business
as of right now.  Oh, and Blue?"

"Yes?" the octopus replied softly, almost in tears.

"Could you tape Star Trek: The Wrong Generation for me?  And cut out the
commercials.  Thanks."  With that he left, rather undramatically.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

It's Baby Oh No!

(singing)

Oh, oh, Baby Oh No!
She's so real she seems alive!
Oh, oh, Baby Oh No!
She spits, and screams, and wets, and bleeds, and dies!

(Voiceover)
Haven't you always wanted to perpetuate gendered division of labour to the
next generation?  Give your daughter new Baby Oh No, the doll so real that if
she doesn't take care of it right, it will die!  Start that loving guilty
feeling at a young age with Baby Oh No!  From Menttel(R)!  Batteries and
psychiatric care not included.

AND NOW BACK TO N-MAN!

Meanwhile, at a top-secret laboratory perpetually surrounded by violent
thunderstorms, Dr. Meencraser was beginning the final stage of his diabolical
experiment designed to bring the world to an end.

That was the sort of thing diabolical scientists usually did, you understand.
That or try to take over the world.  Not too many of them were interested in
developing a cure for cancer, inventing self-cleaning underwear or releasing
a version of Wolfenstein-3D that didn't induce vomiting.  No, they had to be
boring and destroy the world.

"Quick! Increase the bandwidth! I'm losing the connection!" he yelled at his
unfortunate yet unionized assistant Bleck.  The small, hunch-backed man
complied by twiddling a ridiculous-sized knob.  The reason why these sorts of
knobs are always so big is so that the viewing audience can clearly see what
the knob actually does, even if it is something as technically implausible as
"Bandwidth Increaser Knob", or seeing 40-column text and weird flashing
graphics every time someone types "DELETE" on their PC.

Meencraser was, evidently, trying to destroy the world through the Internet.
He had a multi-pronged attack which included a dastardly program of his
called the Cascade Worm, which would fill every newsgroup with randomly
generated cascades (indistinguishable from the real thing) until people
actually exploded from reading the things all day when they should really
have been doing work. Handling a) the physical Earth itself, the ground,
buildings, American military bases, flowers, etc. and b) The remaining 99.9%
of the population who WEREN'T reading news would be taken care of by the
Kumquats, small, yellow-greenish fruits that...

"Wait a minute!" yelled Meencraser at the camera.  "A Kumquat isn't a fruit,
it's a Middle-Eastern country!"

Sorry.  The remaining 99.9% of the population would be taken care of the
Kuwaitis, small, yellow-greenish fruits that...

"No!" screamed the deranged scientist.

My mistake.  The remaining blah blah blah would be taken care of by the
Mangoes, small, yellow, Baltic nationals with bad dress sense who tended to
jump up and down going "whee! whee! whee!" whilst eating their molten cherry
fondues made from East Indian rugby shorts and...

"All right, that's it," Meencraser shouted, stamping his feet, "I'm taking
over.  You've completely lost control of the narration."  He cleared his
throat.  "What I am trying to do here, is to use the Internet as a stepping
stone to the rest of the world.  Kind of like the author of this stupid
series..."

Ahem.

"Anyway, the thing is, the Cascade worm will effectively bring the whole of
the Internet under my control.  Those few readers who _don't_ explode from
reading the things will become my own personal mind slaves, bent on
conquering the world in the name of Meencraser!!!"

Oh, highly original.

"Who asked you, anyway?"

---

Meanwhile, N-Man was sitting on a remote mountaintop retreat in Tibet, his
legs crossed, levitating three feet in the thin air with the assistance of
the N-Man Nearly-Invisible Movie Wires(tm) that were attached rather
painfully to his shoulders.  He had just finished a rather long conversation
with one of the monks who, he had claimed, was capable of simulating the
effects of ten hits of LSD by mere mental concentration.  The monk, whose
name was Om-Ah-Uh, claimed that the money saved from this technique alone had
been enough for him to buy out the entire monastery and turn it into a
lucrative tourist attraction. N-Man had grown tired of the conversation and
had attempted to turn it towards a more general discussion of life's great
struggle, but the monk would have none of it.  At that point the N-ster
decided that perhaps the way of the monk was not for him after all, even if
they could hallucinate by sheer willpower. It was then that a man who looked
exactly like the guy who always cries out for Superman appeared on the barren
ledge where N-Man was sitting.  He cried out.

"N-Man!  The world needs your help!"

"Go away," N-Man said.

"The authorities are helpless!  You must help!"  The man was beginning to
sweat, even in the cold thin air.

"Who writes your lines, anyway?  You want help, go get Superman.  I'm busy."

The man paused for breath.  "Two problems, N-Man!" he gasped.  "One:
Superman's dead.  They killed him off.  Two:  He was a fictional character!"

N-Man paused for a moment, still suspended in mid-air.  Nobody had ever
called him by his super-hero name before.  Could it be possible?  Could
someone actually NEED him?

"Please, you've got to stop Dr. Meencraser!  Thousands of Usenet readers are
roaming the streets, hypnotized by his Cascade Worm!  Entire cities are in
chaos!  You're the only one that can save the world!"

N-Man thought about this for a minute, and smiled wrily.

"Yes," he said, "I am."
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    STAY TUNED FOR N-MAN # 9, THE MOST EXCITING EPISODE OF N-MAN EVER!
          COMING SOON TO EITHER ALT.SLACK OR REC.HUMOR NEAR YOU!

                    THIS FILM HAS NOT YET BEEN RATED
     POSSIBLY BECAUSE NO-ONE THINKS IT WORTH THEIR WHILE TO RATE IT


Here are some exciting scenes from the next episode of N-Man(tm)!

"Don't you give ME any Captain Highliner, buddy!"

"The horror!  The horror!  Oh, sorry, wrong script."

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" (sound effect)


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--
Jeremy_Reimer@ |"It turned out, as N-Man discovered later, that the black
mindlink.bc.ca | boat hadn't been after him at all.  It was full of riotous,
---------------| unemployed former James Bond villains enraged at the fall
aka THE JAGUAR!| of Communism in the Soviet Union."
---------------|
Stealth Sig#69 |  --From "N-Man #3: N-Man on Holiday"