Five Conceptual Abilities that Are Almost Superpowers

1. Knowing the right wine at the right time
If you understand the difficult pairings of wine and food you understand basically everything about human nature, physics and the astral plane. Should you be able to boldly and correctly combine a wine with fiery Indian food (hint: not Cabernet Sauvignon), a victual most often combined with lager, you may be eligible for some sort of Nobel Prize in gastronomy. Your friends will respect you, your enemies will fear you and your meals will always be delicious. How might you fight evil with it? The sharpened edges of a broken bottle of ‘59 Claret.

2. Ability to wear hats
Back in the day men wore hats. There weren’t just the ubiquitous baseball caps that I see when I’m attempting to dine at some lovely restaurant and I have to do everything in my power not to remove the offending local sports team booster by throwing him out the window.

I’ve been meditating. It helps. Men used to wear all types of hats: bowlers, top hats, fedoras, cowboy hats. Most men lack the self confidence to pull off a straw boater. If you can wear a hat you obviously have the poise to singlehandedly save the world, especially if the rim of your hat is razor sharp and you can use it like a Ninja throwing star. It also allows you to hide the lack of combover skills.

3. Pulling off a good combover
The best thing about a combover is that it can hide your evil genius, since studies have shown that most people associate evil genius with baldness. Had Richard Nixon not been able to hide his male-pattern baldness, he might not have gotten as far as he did. Ike Eisenhower, who was bald as a Moon Pie, was probably a closet evil genius but too busy being wholesome and saving the world from fascism to ever get his evil on.

4. Inventing An Invisibility Clock (as shown in photo above)
This will never be as useful as an invisibility cloak, but an invisibility clock has its benefits, notably making the area of the body where the clock is kept completely invisible. If the clock were large enough it could block out the entire head region, though there is the distinct problem that the wearer will no longer be able to see without peeking around the clock and exposing the eyes. Perhaps the best application of the invisibility clock is to wear it on a chain at chest level, freaking out your enemies because you appear to have a giant hole in your body.

5. Owning a power ring
Green Lantern’s power ring is often confused with an actual super power, but what it is is a lovely fashion accessory that allows GL to levitate cars and fly in space without ship or oxygen. It’s incredibly handy, small and compact but cannot be considered a superpower – perhaps the correct description here is “ability to put on a power ring,” which is something shared by all of us with fingers. A slightly larger skill is the talent to find a power ring, which are often located at the better hardware stores (hidden between power drills and power washers) and jewelry consignment shoppes. Visit Cold Spring New York to find one. The Home Depot will let you rent a power ring but they’re almost never at full capacity, and are scuffed up and will invariably clash with your uniform.