“Even the Lone Ranger had his white horse and Tonto. You can’t do everything yourself.”
Those were the words which stared back at me from my horoscope for today. Epic and meaningful words, fraught with, um, important stuff as everything fell into place in a horrible, wonderful way. It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty busy these past few weeks, and then right out of the blue, here’s a personal message just for me and every other person on the planet who happens to be a Scorpio, hot off the presses of Astaroth the Horoscope Demon. I can run from reality no longer, because it already tied my shoelaces together while I was eating breakfast and administered unto myself a truly fiendish noogie until I submitted and said my name was Gitchy Goomastink (reality, it seems, has a completely retarded sense of humor about such things). So here I am, and I need a sidekick. Not just any old sidekick though, because there are so many places to go wrong with this choice that it’s not even funny, except of course for the fact that it’s actually extremely funny, or at least it will be if I can possibly frame it in suitably ridiculous terms.
First, it’s generally a bad idea to get a sidekick who happens to be of the same gender as you yourself happen to be. If he’s close to your age, he’ll always be bitin’ your style; if he’s way younger people are going to think you’ve got a little Batman-Robin action going on on the side, which you can’t really blame them for, because why else would anyone choose to be followed around by another man who dressed exactly like them only with more rainbows and a nickname like, “Boy Wonder”? Also, just going to opposite route and choosing a girl for your sidekick doesn’t really work out either, unless she’s your orphaned niece and you’re teaching her to fight crime that she might one day replace you. Otherwise, it’s just a bad idea, because she’ll either fall in love with you and not let you mack on all the various and sundry supervillianesses and police comissioner’s daughters, or she’ll always be bringing boys home to your fortress of doom and totally messing with your vibe of mysteriousity. And no ethnic stereotypes. Ever. It’s okay if you want an Indian for a sidekick, but don’t ask him to wear a loincloth around and talk in broken English about sky spirits and earth mothers; this is the 21st century, and we’re all a little too liberated for that nowadays. Finally, no space aliens. I mean, if you just happen to hang out with a lot of space aliens and one of them is qualified, then hey, go for it; but don’t go and hire on a Venusian just to score diversity points and impress the ladies. Also, space orphans are almost invariably retarded. Seriously, there’s a reason their home planet of Zoopdar tossed them off to Earth, and it’s usually got a lot to do with them being clinically annoying. Which is to say, in brief, that if you hired on a blue Neptunian kid who wore an exact replica of your own costume but with more pastels and a turban who only spoke in clicking sounds and girlish giggles, you would have committed the ultimate in sidekick faux pass?
Where does this leave us then? With two main choices, animals and robots. And not just any animal or robot will do here (Remember back when Bill Clinton tried to replace Al Gore with that Furby? Not a pretty sight.) Nope, any animals used have to be large enough to roll over a
As far as robots are concerned, the most important thing is that they have at least one arm that turns into a machine gun, rocket launcher, or T-shirt cannon. Also, none of that cute beeping business that so many robots are into these days, a proper robot has a funky faceplate thing where his mouth would be that kind of moves when he talks. And if you’re doing this properly, then he needs to be either an escaped military prototype, a mercenary from space who mysteriously crashed on Earth, or a lifeless metallic shell from which the immortal soul of your best friend/mentor helps you to battle the forces of evil. Built-in universal remote is a plus; integrated whininess circuits are not.
Which means, all in all, that all I have to do now is find a giant cyborg robo-puma who sounds like Louis Armstrong, eats metal, can fly, was built by the ancients of your tribe, knows how to fix a starship, can set stuff on fire ten different ways from afar, and who can help you pick up girls in a bar. So, if anyone out there either is, or merely personally knows, such a beast, go ahead and give them my email address so I cans tart auditions as soon as possible.
