Mission Eight: Being the Product

John Sununu, the Republican from New Hamphire, or so I thought. I had my GOP Membership card ready. It would have earned me some mega-brownie points.


Turns out this J’onn Sinew Nu character is just some overweight alien. Luckily, like Republicans, money was his only concern.

"I'm the perfect gladiator," I began my presentation. "Notice how my nickname, HRG stands for Horn-Rimmed Glasses, the glasses, of course, being my signature trademark."


I clicked to the next slide.


"By simply replacing the word glasses with gladiator, I become the Horn-Rimmed Gladiator. It's perfect, and has rather satanic connotations, a must for capturing that elusive caveman demographic."

I continued on with my presentation...

"With the signature glasses comes the possibility for endless merchandising. Everything not yet wearing horn-rimmed glasses can be produced by us with the vision-augmenting, and stylish, spectacles, then sold with an enormously high markup to the general masses."

"How high of a markup?" the VP asked.

"Umm...upwards of seventeen hundred percent," I answered quickly doing no math in my head.

J'onn seemed impressed. I continued on to the next slide.


"Horn-rim your little gladiator."


"Horn-Rimmed Gelatin."

"Yes, yes. That is a good plan. But I feel we need some more products. Man cannot live by bread alone, ya know. Say...could we put some of those glasses on bread?"

I clicked on to the next slide.


J'onn giggled gleefully. As he calmed down he said, "Go on."

"Well, I understand your concerns about the limitations of glasses. Eye wear can only do so much. That's why my special talent involves....."


"Paper! It's everywhere. I even suspect that many computers have paper inside them where they write down information for retrieval later. Yes, paper is the new frontier in this digital age. And it's relatively cheap! One sheet of paper only costs the expenses associated with the growing and logging of two hundred trees!"

"But how do we make something like paper into a product?" J'onn asked.

"We make IGE brand paper. Then give away free IGE pens to everyone attending a gladiator match. But the IGE pens will only write on IGE paper! So they'll have to go out and buy our paper, lest their free pens be useless!"

I had him just where I wanted him. Time for the big surprise.


"Did I mention I died once? That's right! I died, and came back to life. If there's anything forty-seven years of being a caveman has taught me, it's that people love a good demigod. Put me in the ring and you'll have God on your side. Just think of how many seats a church fills week after week."



"Hmm...so far, so good," Sinew Nu said. "But what about your fighting style? I hear one gladiator is exploding heads with telekinesis. Another is running people over with his wheelchair. What have you got?"

I thought about shooting him, to make my point. But that would have most likely lost me this challenge. So, instead, I shot the monkeyboy assistant.


"He'll probably be okay. If my monkey anatomy is correct, then I believe I just shot him in the head."

"Hmm...well, I'll need to buy, I mean, hire, another monkeyboy, but other than that I like what you have to offer. I'll let my accounts play with the numbers and get back to you."

I shook Sinew Nu's hand and left, feeling like I made the sale.