Greetings, dear friend. I hope this finds you well in your homeland, and doesn’t disturb your slumber.
As you know, it’s been on my heart and mind for a while to continue on with my pseudo-superhero short story collection, following “The Worrying Wonder (Woman),” and write an Inspector Gadget spin-off spoof short story of your life, so I’ve been excited to finally start the process. What follows is a general summary of the piece. (*Please don’t take any offense, as it’s just a humorous, hyperbolous extension of our absurdist shitshow movement of ridiculousness, and is obviously written with much love, as I wouldn’t be devoting so much time and effort if it wasn’t.)
If there was ever a superhero character that was analogous to your life, it is of course Inspector Gadget: brilliant but oblivious. Inspired by Get Smart and Pink Panther, your character will wear neon (like you like to in real life), specifically a pink New Balance exercise suit (similar to our faux father’s). Needless to say, he loves gadgets, and is a cyborg (this will come to be a big part of the story, as you will see further down). He is powerful and loyal to his career, and is basically a workaholic. This is evidenced by the go-to formula of their episodes: when Chief Quimby (David) calls Gadget for a mission, Gadget always responds with, “Don’t worry, Chief, I’m always on duty!” I will of course go into your background of endless house-managing hours, and your evolution from there. He drives a minivan (your druggie buggy of choice), and is very caring and protective (for God’s sake, there are women and children here!) of his family, especially his niece, Penny (Marissa—working title—“Intake Inspector Director/Marissa Mechanism”).
Behind every great man is a woman, and she’s it. Marissa is really the one who saves the day in every episode, and that will be reflected in part by how you did your time in the trenches, and now wish to hide behind a laptop filled with graphs and spreadsheets and such, away from the reprobates, so Marissa is usually the one who physically chases the culprits through Dunkin’ Donuts parking lots and such. Marissa also has to hide her crime-solving gadgets from Gadget, to keep him oblivious to her being the one who actually does the life-changing work, like her use of a laptop disguised as a “Big Book” to fool, fit in with, and impress you, her non-technological gadget of choice to save lives.
That brings me to another trait—Gadget obviously doesn’t believe in the supernatural, so your past history of science, reason, technology, etc., will of course be gone into, but also your evolution out of stubborn east coast asshole clichés via your openness to Eastern philosophy and other such practices, along with your ongoing spiritual evolution in general.
One of his most famous catchphrases is, “Wowsers!,” which will of course be your, “Shitshow!”
As for the “Go-Go, Gadget” phrase, yours will be “Travel-Travel, Utensil” (see below), due to your globetrotting, and will ultimately further your worldly missions with exotic gadgets to keep compliance and thwart shitshows. “Go-Go, Google” will obviously have to appear too, and may be featured in the last line or so of the story.
I of course went through many possible name/title combinations for you, and ultimately landed on “Scrutineer Utensil,” and/or “Safety Scrutineer/Care Compliance Utensil,” but many other possible combinations will make appearances throughout the story, as you will see.
An input I will want from you is if you think your actual denomination should be in the various names. For example, your critics in the story might call you a “Monitor Mara Tool,” but you are really just a “Widget William Watchdog”—man and K-9’s best friend.
Speaking of pooches, the Inspector Gadget character Brain (Sow) is Penny & Gadget’s dog, and works with them to complete missions and such, but after years of helping Gadget, he gets phobic and disillusioned with him, gadgets in general, and the world itself, and goes into relative isolation, so I think Sow will just briefly appear (as is of course commonplace in my creative universe) and do what she usually does—chill in the breezeway, and occasionally try to bite Marissa and others.
Much like the Bat-Signal, your visage will be a spork—an “AMFABL Utensil.” The “Put down the spoon and pick up the fork” intravenous-drug-user-in-recovery saying will have significance for you because you put down the benzo-addled, couch-locked ice cream scooper, and instead picked up a proverbial fork—something more lean and assertive, stabbing at your goals and consuming them with ease. It is also a hybrid of sorts, which will factor into the story later on. It represents the bridging of who you used to be, who you’ve become, and how you “don’t regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it,” but instead use it to your advantage, as you continue to go on to transcend past, present, and future endeavors. It’s just a symbol, though, as you typically just use your hands to snack, which will factor into the falling action. It also goes along with your relative self-proclaimed but also factual uniqueness and charisma, and can represent your bipolar, symbolizing you being able to fight various crimes across the spectrum.
Speaking of food, your character will also take on a Santa Claus–type persona, as you’ll be a “nocturnal scrutineer,” a typical nighttime vigilante, going to rehabs and such around the world and hacking into their systems at night to help them reach 100% compliance, all-the-while snacking and leaving crumbs (like Santa’s cookies) for the staff to find in the morning. There begins to be talk of a secret, possibly imaginary scrutineer who helps achieve Joint Commission goals, but they just as easily dismiss it as Joint Commission consultants who stay late and leave messes.
Also along the Santa lines, “Ombudsman Billy Instrument” will get mass amounts of emails (lists) from people with complaints of naughty non-compliant and such people, which will be like another Bat-Signal, and allow you to accurately scrutinize the necessary entities.
Chief Quincy (“Device David/Program Director Inspector” or something similar) always gives Gadget a piece of paper with the mission outline on it and tells Gadget to take it in as it will self-destruct, but Gadget in oblivious fashion always gives it back to the Chief, and it literally blows up in his face. The Chief always loses his temper with Gadget, and asks himself why he puts up with him, but nevertheless, ultimately shows his appreciation. This will obviously be David initially asking me about hiring you, which gave him pause, and your ongoing tensions, especially with money and such, but will also highlight your symbiotic, similar nature, and his knowing what great accomplishments you’ve made for his company.
Dr. Claw (“Medication Appendage Distributor” [Dr. Granese—“G”—if names are to be left out]), which literally translates to Docteur Gang in French, leads the criminal syndicate M.A.D., and Granese obviously heads a business devoted to madness, so it works out. He is of course your evil nemesis. I will respectfully request that you please give me G’s vehicle, residence, and pet info, if applicable and possible, so he can have a cat, live in an old country club castle, and drive a black & red Maserati, along with “Pussy (Cat)”, his presumably plastic Orange County wife. Dr. Claw’s phrase is, “I’ll get you next time, Gadget!,” so G’s will be, “I’ll get you next time, Utensil!”
Now for the plot outline: I’ll of course go into a brief timeline, starting in Boston and going into the events that led to ABL and your surgery and current situation and such, and it’s there that the rising action and first conflict-of-sorts happens. Your Mexican surgeon will call you (as he knows the operation was a success, and that you in turn have become successful), and will describe a situation that he could really use your help with. Much like one alcoholic being the only one that can truly help another, the surgeon has a patient he thinks you might be able to help. (*This is where it gets ridiculous, but it’s God’s will.)
He has a morbidly obese man on an examination table who has been so non-compliant with his diet that his anus is impacted and obstructed by a solid shitshow, and the good doctor knows that you have a knack with gadgets, so he requests you come with your prober apparatus, shitshow analyzer gizmo, to assist in a proctoscopy. You successfully remedy the situation and pass the gas and bowel obstruction with the help of your adjunct gas-pass apparatus, and have an endoscopic epiphany that you can help “get through” to such shitshow people on a grander scale, and expand your endoscopic scope into the belly of the beast-of-burden world.
So you become a compliance consultant on multiple levels for multiple entities: rehabs, obese intellectuals, etc., but it’s not until your epiphany leads you to really reduce gas emissions by collaborating with Tesla on creating a hybrid car that runs on water vapor and vape juice (as a type of aromatherapy instead of exhaust smell) that you really start to make change on a global scale. You realize that God has a sense of humor, as due to your east coast conservativeness, you’ve never really cared about the environment, but now you’re a conservationist, and the Director Inspector of Environmental Care. This all goes well for a time, and you think your faith in technology will be your saving grace, that you will be the one to bring about technological utopia and change the common belief that a cyborg-type of existence will result in dystopia, but it indeed “backfires” on you, and the vape juice emissions start to burn a hole in the ozone.
The climax, in general, will be that you vow to give up technology entirely, getting back to a more humanistic nature, and go on to destroy the part of yourself that you’ve held on to for so long. The falling action sees you struggling to cope with your “normi,” non-technological existence, with Marissa by your side every step of the way, but you ultimately find strength in that you’ve successfully destroyed a part of yourself before, during the surgery, and successfully went without things that you believed enriched your life while on your diet, so you begin to embellish more of a troglodyte existence, while remembering that you primarily and successfully snack with your hands without utensils, like a caveman. You start to really appreciate the simple things in life, and your new life in general, and you, Marissa, and Sow, essentially go on to live a happy, quiet, serene, non-manic life.
Marissa Mechanism realizes that the efficacy of the psych meds’ mechanism of action you guys are/have been on and utilize in the industry are futile and even destructive, so you go off of them, and it solves all your problems—and ultimately takes power from and defeats Dr. G, his Madness Operation, and overall mind-control quest to defeat you.
One of the last conflicts will be that your “stinkin’ thinkin’” comes back, and you consider relapsing on pills, so without even thinking of the consequences, you robotically say, “Hey, Google, go-go get me some gabapentin”—and only a deafening silence is heard, while you gently and silently nod to yourself and poignantly smirk and snigger while realizing that you can finally surrender, “drop the rock,” and put down the spork.
Much more will of course be revealed and expounded upon, but I think you get the gist. Hopefully you can appreciate the concept. Please let me know what you think.
Thanks
This pseudo-superhero origin story conceptualization letter was sent a couple of years ago to my friend, ex-roommate/coworker, etc., Billy (who has been referred to as the Elon Musk of mental health), per the funny epiphany I had regarding his life being analogous to Inspector Gadget in myriad ways. I’ve yet to write the actual story outlined here, but the thought occurred to me that this behind-the-scenes, quasi-craft essay correspondence of sorts has just as much if not more merit than what the actual parody might turn out to be.