If I had a superpower, what would it be?

Let's face it: the world needs heroes.

And if it wants a good-looking hero, it should choose me.

But before I volunteer, I need to know: what do we want our heroes to save today?  And what courageous acts and supernatural powers are people going to expect from me?

I made some calls to take a survey:

Hollywood wants me to save a dark gritty world so that directors have somewhere good to shoot movies. They will require me to sacrifice all my meaningful personal relationships to do so--either by emotional withdrawal or violent death. And they want me to have Super-Angst as my power, unless I'm Robert Downey Junior, in which case they'll settle for Super-Ego (not to be confused with super-ego) instead.

The government wants me to save the economy. And they want me to do it by patriotically shopping until I collapse into a consumer coma. My superpower will be Confidence and my super equipment will be a combination of tax rebates, credit cards, and disguised Monopoly money. If I can just amp up all my desires and fulfill them with statistically recorded financial transactions, our future will be saved.

And my kids want me to save them from bedtime. My daughter is hoping that I have the power of Super-B.S. to keep one more story coming out of my mouth for ten to twelve hours, when she'll have to go back to school. My son is hoping I have Super-Lungs to sing verses of "Old McDonald" on demand until his vocabulary gets big enough to stave off sleep forever.

I told Hollywood I'm sorry, but loneliness makes me more pathetic than brooding. I told the government that driving through Vegas brings out my inner communist, and they decided to leave the hard work of saving America to someone else.

It's just as well, though. I'm kinda busy figuring out where to put the polar bear and mongoose who recently moved onto Old McDonald's farm.

And on that farm, he had a leopard seal. E-i-e-i-o.