If you’re like most people, you probably want to get ahead in this old world of ours. Maybe you’re already in school, or thinking about taking some night classes at Ye Olde Communitie Colledge, perhaps you’re still calling for that free information Sally Struthers spoke about, or maybe you’re just playing the Armageddon Lottery, where after the coming nuclear apocalypse you hope to be the last survivor of mankind and to rule the blasted sphere of Earth with an iron hand. Whichever route you may happen to be planning on, I can safely say without fear of contradiction that you probably ought to consider another line of career self-improvementizing, getting yourself some super powers and being professionally awesome with them. Maybe you can use them for the good of the human race, or more likely, use them to get all sorts of beverage and sneaker endorsements. Perhaps you can became a pro-wrestler or a black ops government interdimensional ninja assassin. Or maybe you can just be super angsty and live in a flophouse, like Spiderman. Whatever you decide to do with your awesome powers, it’s all just so much frying up of nachos in the empty metaphorical microwave of your soul until you actually get some super powers. Contrary to what you may have been told by your guidance counselor, the school nurse, and Bill Cosby, super powers aren’t all that difficult to come by (they just say that they are because they’re sooo much fun they want to keep them all for themselves), and it just so happens to be the case that through my many aeons of studying the ways of all which is totally freakin’ sweet, I happen to know of most of them. So put on your learnin’ cape, kids, and find a big Technicolor letter that you can iron on to your pajamas, because you’re about to get a crash course in super power acquisition!
First, the easiest way of all is to have just been born on another planet. All you have to do is go find a copy of your birth certificate. If it says something like, “Zornar VII” then you’re in luck and you can probably start flying around and saving people immediately. If on the other hand, it says something like, “
Getting bitten by something radioactive is always a good standby, though in this post-Cold War era in which we live, getting bitten by something genetically engineered is fast gaining popularity amongst the younger generation. The key thing here is to remember that mere radioactivity isn’t enough; the animal/crustacean/kitchen appliance in question has to be something that you’d want to gain the salient features and abilities of. So for instance, getting bitten by a ninja, or a dinosaur, or maybe Dick Cheney, would probably result in you getting powers that could be described as super by even the most jaded observer of such things, while getting bitten by a radioactive blue-butted baboon, or a genetically engineered Richard Simmons could have only the most dire of consequences.
Power rings, of course, are always a good way to go, but before just picking up and putting on any old power ring that you get out of a gumball machine or from a little blue alien. Instead, you ought to follow the stoplight rule when it comes to such things. Green, for instance, means go ahead. You’ll most likely receive the power to make any big green thing your little superhero heart desires, not to mention getting the power to fly, wear tights, and generally rule. Yellow or gold means slow down, because even though the ring in question will likely give you awesome power and near immortality, it will also slowly but surely corrupt your very soul and turn you into a gibbering guy in a loincloth. Red means stop and run away, because what you probably have there is the Heart ring from that Mayan kid who ran around with Captain Planet. All it let’s you do is be more understanding and namby pamby. Don’t be fooled by the notion that it will let you control monkeys either; because they’ll all be nancy boy enviromonkeys, who will turn on you’re the moment you try to get them to rob a liquor store for you!
Of course, you could always just build a time machine and go back to a more primitive period in human history where your awesome high-tech weaponry and funky dance moves will wow all the cavepersons there. Like you could go back to the time of King Arthur with a flamethrower, or teach fear to the denizens of Victorian England with your lightning gun, or maybe you could just go back to the 80s, drive a Prius, and wow everyone there with your self-adjusting Nikes.
And last but not least, you could always just build a robot or a power suit or something. You see, while it might seem that the knowledge required to build a truly top drawer suit of power armor might be beyond the reach of most people, if there’s one thing that comic books have taught me it is that really all it takes is a highly motivated person with access to a hardware store. So as long as say, your brash young superhero niece is off flying around fighting evil, you can magically find it within yourself to build a power suit capable of defeating an entire army just so that you can go out and protect her, despite the fact that you work at a record store and can’t even program your VCR (remember VCRs? Back when I was but a lad, in the Cretaceous Epoch, they were all the rage; but then so were Communism and slap bracelets).
So now that you know how easy it is, all you need to do is start hanging out at a poorly secured toxic waste refinery/genetics lab/Incan temple/Radio Shack and before you know it, you’ll be earning your seven Porsches by wrestling monster trucks and eating lava on the Tonight Show. And if you should happen to go with that “Back to the 80s” route, try and bring me back a copy of Tron on Beta; I sold mine for some magic beans.
