Mysterious Heroes

Sorry I’ve been gone for a little while. I’m hoping to get on a more regular writing schedule, but life gets in the way sometimes. Don’t worry (I know you weren’t), this is still a priority for me, despite the following joke.

Note: Song 15 of my 322-part series. We lost a song from my iPod in the transition to a new computer, which increases my odds of finishing the entire series by .000016 percent.

Song: Mysterious Ways

Artist: U2

The Lord, Bono and Ninjas work in mysterious ways. Well, Bono not so much. He writes songs, people, like me, like them and buy them. He and the rest of U2 go on tour, people like me buy tickets and t-shirts and then they repeat the process every few years. Not exactly rocket science.  It’s barely above the ‘recognize the pattern’ problems in my two-year old’s books. And since I can’t figure out a way to write about God working in mysterious ways that’s both humorous and not sacrilegious (at best) or blasphemous (at worst), I’m stuck writing about ninjas.

Unfortunately, most of what I know about ninjas I learned at an early age. And by early age, I mean ten or eleven. And by ninjas, I mean ninja turtles of the teenaged mutant kind. I assume those four ninjas are a representative sample of all ninjas everywhere. Granted, the other ninjas lack the same marketing prowess of the turtle ninjas, but if there’s one thing kids love, it’s comedic violence inflicted by animals that are typically slow-moving unless they’ve been touched by some sort of primordial ooze and trained by a sewer rat who played in that same ooze but is, for some reason, much older and wiser. And how is it they learned English? I assume turtles don’t speak in English and there was never any mention of the ooze having special language powers.

I also find it interesting that all ninjas are named after renaissance artists. I don’t know if it’s like some sort of Papal naming thing where there’s a Leonardo II and so forth. Being that I’m not a ninja (shocking, right?), I guess I’m not privy to that kind of information.

All ninjas are like this, right?

What I do know is that ninjas are on the leading edge of “cool” language. If an accountant tried to make the word “cowabunga” fashionable, it would likely not have caught on. Then again, they did make the word “derivatives” popular, so maybe they have more juice in pop culture then I realized. While I’m not hip enough to bring it back, I do hope word’s like "bummer," "dude," "bogus," "radical," "far-out," "tubuloso," "bodacious," make a comeback outside of the surfing community. Ninja community, I’m looking at you. Well, not really since you lurk in the shadows, but I’m looking your direction to make that happen. And while you’re at it, can you make “factually correct” popular, or at least accepted enough that I don’t get strange looks when I use it.

But most of all, I learned that ninjas have only one archenemy and their only mission in life is to defeat that enemy at all costs. Even if those costs are three live-action movies, television shows, appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show and countless lunchboxes, action figures and even stuffed animals. Having those things will ensure that, if nothing else, your archenemy will never truly die because there’s always money to be made in a sequel, no matter how unnecessary that sequel is. It’s even better if you can work in some product placement with the national pizza chain of your choice. (And does the delivery of pizza in any way hinder your objective of staying hidden in the shadows? Or is this a Home Alone situation where you put the money out the door and then play Angels with Dirty Souls to convince the delivery boy there’s, a human inside?

Unfortunately, all these questions will remain a closely guarded secret of the ninjas. And because I am not a turtle and don’t have radioactive ooze just lying around the house, I guess I’ll never know. However, any of my readers who have special ooze and are turtles who want to become teenage mutant ninja turtles and relay to me the secrets, I promise not to publish them on a widely read blog, just this one.

Next Song: Goodbye

Artist: Hootie and the Blowfish