The Incredible League Of Incredibly Practical Superheroes

            I went to see the Avengers, even though I’ve never been all that enthusiastic about superheroes.  I mean, unless you happen to be in New York City when an evil demi-God from another realm decides to launch a total annihilation campaign against humanity, they’re not really that useful.  And that almost never happens.           

In theory superheroes could be pretty helpful in preventing disasters, but I think they should try to address more practical problems.  So here are a few spandex wielding protagonists that I wouldn’t mind intervening in my life on occasion.

Captain Patience

            In the bleak apocalyptic social landscape of unreciprocated facebook messages, Captain Patience stays strong and never panics.  Even in the 25^th hour when she knows they’re online because they just commented on someone else’s status 14 seconds ago and therefore the only possible conclusion for their unresponsiveness is that they’re fucking with her and have some sinister investment in her misery, she just stays calm and does not crack. 

            It is no great mystery that waiting SUCKS.  It sends you into a downward spiral of insanity that convinces you that the only cure for waiting is to do something mind-numbingly stupid, the consequences of which make you realize that there are many many things way worse than waiting.  So on that darkest day where the evil insecurity demon tries to invoke his wrath, Captain Patience swoops down just in time to fight him off before the dark lord forces you to hit ‘send’ on the passionately worded follow up message that goes something along the lines of “wow, your level of idiocy is unfathomable I’m amazed you’re even able to dress yourself”.  Another crisis that could have been averted with the help of Captain Patience.

             

Willimina Power 

            Willimina Power is resistant to every strain of cupcake, and serves as the first and only line of defense against the horrible Retail Therapy Goblin.  In the morning she always chooses the treadmill over the snooze button, and after cooking her own nutritious dinner instead of just microwaving a box of food-flavoured preservatives, she washes the dishes instead of selling her soul to the dish gnomes to bail her out again.  Everybody knows dish gnomes are a bunch of lazy slackers and if you wait for them to do anything your cookware will breed its own ecosystem in the sink.  Of course some of us learn that the hard way.

The Incredible Emotional Stability Hulk 

            The Incredible Emotional Stability Hulk has never once cried because she ran out of parmesan cheese, and when she learns that the boy she likes doesn’t share her views on refugee policy it doesn’t even phase her.  She doesn’t refer to minor inconveniences as “a total disaster”, and instead of flying off the handle when missing an episode of Glee she simply contemplates that great ancient proverb ‘She who knows Rachel’s response to Finn’s proposal is no more wise than she who does not’.  Then she morphs into something like a Buddhist monk and meditates to the height of enlightenment and floats away. 

            She still cries at the end of that Futurama episode with the dog, but that’s only because you have to be born without a soul to make it through that episode without feeling like your still beating heart has just been torn out of your chest cavity and thrown into a vat of acid.  Same applies to Dancer In the Dark starring Bjork.  Otherwise she responds to all of life’s obstacles with her famous catch phrase “No worries, that’s cool!”           

Reality Chick

            Unlike many superheroes, Reality Chick doesn’t live in some far off galaxy or top secret lair.  She walks among normal people and is totally grounded in the real world.  She gets that imaginations can be useful, but you can’t actually live in them because the atmospheric temperature of LaLa Land is not suitable for permanent human habitation.  She vacations there from time to time, but her earthly responsibilities remain her top priority when the real world needs her.  She still dreams when there’s time though.

Moral of the story: Superheroes shouldn’t leave their environment in worse disrepair than Team America.  Problems can be solved without destroying any UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and I mean that both literally and metaphorically.  (Think about that for a second.)  Minor catastrophes can breed bigger catastrophes which can be easily prevented by not acting like a dumbass every single time something pisses you off.  When faced with the need to relax and refrain from eating the entire cheesecake it’s easy to turn into Jared Leto’s mother in Requiem For A Dream, complete with Cha-Cha dancing refrigerators, speed addictions, and frantic appeals to the media to let her have her 15 minutes.  (Seriously, WHY COULDN’T THEY JUST TELL HER WHEN SHE’S GOING TO BE ON THE FUCKING TELEVISION???!!!)  It is these moments of weakness when we make disasters happen, but the Incredible League of Incredibly Practical Superheroes is just the team to keep people out of trouble and out of electro-shock therapy.  And by ‘people’ I mostly mean me.

*Note: I kept all the superheroes well stacked as is the convention. Sorry I can't draw and I'm even worse at drawing with MS Paint. I made someone verify that at least one of them kind of looked more or less like a superhero though.