flarn flarn filth

Hello, and welcome to the television soundstage cleverly designed to look like my living room. I know you’re all anxious to get back to Channel 11′s Million Dollar Matinee presentation of Benji the Hunted, so I’ll keep this paid commercial announcement brief. Look, gang, these are complicated times we’re living in, am I right? You’re unsure of whether you should take your kids to the new Smurfs movie and risk exposing them to the sexist message that while boys can aspire to any of a diverse array of characteristics, the only valid role for females is that of boner material. You no longer have a voice in Washington because all your elected representatives are in the pocket of the powerful cat food lobby, which has spent the last decade engineering an escalating series of financial crises in order to get more people to eat their product, which admittedly, is delicious. And if all that weren’t enough, you’ve begun to suspect you aren’t getting the compensation your plasma should command on the open market. And that, friends, is where I come in.

I’m Osiris Niedenfuer, from the law offices of Niedenfuer, Sukarnoputri & Associates, here to represent you in negotiations once the time inevitably comes to supplement your income by selling your blood. For evidence that I was born to practice law, please direct your attention to this gavel-shaped birthmark on my back, which when viewed from another angle could also look like a hand extending a middle finger to those heartless plasma brokers that want to pay less than every dollar you have coming for your hard-earned plasma. Ever since our nation’s ruling class of wealthy elites developed the technology to fully unlock the potential of human plasma as a youth serum that keeps their old, white skin glowing and looking taut as they absorb the vitality of the unwashed masses by literally drinking their living essence, the plasma market has become a competitive, sophisticated set of traps and snares designed to get the most plasma out of you for the least amount of money- don’t be caught trying to navigate it without a qualified attorney to help you obtain top dollar for that sweet liquid gold running through your veins. I spent six years at Julliard perfecting the homespun accent and folksy mannerisms that had sympathetic juries eating out of the palm of my hand during my halcyon days as a high-powered trial attorney, when I was winning big cash settlements on behalf of the cat food industry. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the southern gentleman with the bolo tie on your side of the negotiating table this time?

I’m so confident in my abilities that should I fail to get you the highest selling price for your nutrient-rich plasma (pending a preliminary battery of tests to make sure your plasma is of sufficient quality), our well-trained staff of crime scene specialists will, at no extra charge, help make sure your death looks like an accident, thereby securing the full benefit from your life insurance policy and making access to potable water for your children more than just a dream. So pick up the phone and make that call, before you spend another long winter warming yourself with the scant radiant heat given off by the electrical transmission lines at your municipality’s now-privately owned utility substation.

As I sit alone at my desk here in my reinforced bunker, it seems appropriate that it has been cleared of all but a few items: the paper on which I am penning this letter, a glass of water accompanied by a single cyanide tablet, and a sense of destiny that it would be difficult to overstate the impermeability of. Indeed, everything extraneous has been removed as I have uncluttered the space around me to symbolize my newly regained clarity of vision, which I had gradually lost in the decade since founding this cult (this should shed light on the origins of the ping pong table, Galaga/Ms Pac Man machine, and mini-fridge stocked with fun size Mr. Goodbars which mysteriously appeared in the east tabernacle last week; I would have explained earlier if I had known it was going to raise so many questions. Again, I’m sincerely sorry for any misunderstanding).

Friends, the final chapter of our Family’s story is being written, and it is with some sadness that I watch the tale unfolding on the monitors fed by our many security cameras. After a lengthy standoff, law enforcement agents in helmets and body armor have breached the west walls and will soon be swarming the compound while barking terrifying orders through a megaphone, but I feel eerily calm knowing that it will all soon be over. It is only now, unadorned at last by the tunic made of scratchy iridescent fabric that I have worn every day since walking in these doors, that I see the only option is to sacrifice myself so that you all may go free. Lest you feel abandoned by my having led you to this place, promising enlightenment and redemption, only to leave you at the moment it all fell apart, I want you all to know that our time here has not been for naught. Consider the third chair violin in a symphony orchestra. Is it disappointing that the culmination of a lifetime of dedication is to toil anonymously, to blend seamlessly into a larger body in service to the vision of another? Or is the discipline required to learn their craft its own noble and fulfilling form of self-expression? I say with certainty that each and every one of you has performed a vital function in what we built here, every bit as essential as the executives at Goldman Sachs, who covertly funded our compound as long as we kept drawing media and law enforcement attention away from their own criminal activities. Years from now, when it all seems pointless, think of the gratitude currently being expressed in the afterlife by all your dead ancestors and pets we posthumously converted to the true faith.

As you re-adjust to life in the outside world, I ask you to remember a few things that will aid in your transition. Prepare yourselves for a media feeding frenzy, as America gets an erection harder than galvanized steel when presented with the opportunity to express righteous indignation. Be careful in what you reveal to outsiders, for just as what happened here cannot possibly be understood from the outside, neither can it be explained from the inside. I guess what I’m trying to say is that no matter how clearly you explain that adhering to a rotating schedule of sexual assignations (posted every third thursday in the compound’s dining area) allowed all the believers to share all components of their being, the piece on Dateline is still probably gonna be edited in a way that makes you look like a weirdo. Well, I think that’s everything. No need to remind the last person to leave to make sure the lights are off, since that should take care of itself once the exercise bikes in our electricity generation room are unmanned.

Being one of only two or three varsity athletes in my high school’s freshman class failed to deliver the social standing or respect from my peers that I had hoped for, but such is the case for a 103-pound wrestler, especially a wrestler that only ascended to that position due to a freak injury to the senior incumbent (of equally meager social regard). As such, I elicited an array of responses from the girls of my peer group ranging from outright hostility and disgust, to consideration as a potential candidate for the similarly sexually frustrating, benign, let’s-not-ruin-our-friendship variety of friendship. My knowledge of Heather Jurenberg was characterized by the former.

Heather was, while not popular for any discernible reason like cheerleading or student senate, usually in close proximity to popular people and known to attend the popular parties I had heard about. And she wasn’t the prettiest girl in school, but she was probably in the 80th percentile. In 5th period art class, students sat two to a table, and for some reason she and I were assigned to the same table, where she called me pizza face and told me she’d better not ever catch me looking at her chest or she’d tell the whole school. One day in class, however, the teacher brought out the slide projector for a lesson on cubism, then turned off the lights on the classroom.

At this, I felt a rubbing on my shin that I was horrified to discover was  from the foot of Heather, who had moved her chair to view the slide presentation and was now sitting perpendicular to me instead of at the other end of the table. I moved my leg away suddenly, silently terrified at the prospect of Heather loudly asking why I was touching her leg, just to embarrass me. Strangely, though, the rubbing resumed a few seconds later, and when I looked at Heather, I knew it was intentional. She had taken off her shoe and in her sock foot was tracing every part of both my legs. The secrecy of it all served to build a sort of conspiratorial intimacy between us that I hoped could last at least until the next big party, and I took the fact that she kept getting more daring as a sign that that intimacy was growing stronger. By the time our teacher joked about “the only nude you’ll ever see in this class” before showing a slide of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, Heather had extended her foot’s exploration well into my swimsuit area, as if to make sure her exercise was having the desired effect. It was, and after 40 minutes it was getting a little uncomfortable down there, unaccustomed as I was to a sexual encounter taking more than three minutes, or occurring with a second person in the room. Then our teacher turned the lights back on, and as soon as she did, Heather stood up to move back to her seat, then stared down icily at me and said in a stern voice only I could hear, “If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll tell the whole school you’re a fucking liar.”

In the intervening years hence, I’ve tried to look her up on Facebook, Myspace, classmates.com, Friendster and LinkedIn, if for no other reason than to get a quote for this story, but I can’t seem to find her, so I can’t update you on how her life has gone since then. Probably pretty awesome, though. As for me, I grew up to have no super weird feelings about girls at all.

At first I didn’t see the point of establishing my own religion. I mean, sure, there were tax incentives, but how was I gonna find disciples willing to follow a doctrine I was making up in real time? I was a couple years out of school and having a hard time settling on a career path, though, so I quit my job at Catfish King and went for it. And despite my earlier misgivings, my new religion got off to an exciting start.

My first objective was to attract an affluent flock, which I accomplished by advertising in the local polo club newsletter. I then locked in my new adherents with flashy sermons asking them why, if they wouldn’t put shitty 87-octane gasoline into their luxury sedans, would they settle for putting lesser religions into their souls? (in truth, very few of my metaphors made any sense beyond telling the gathered faithful how great my new religion was, in as unspecific terms as possible.) Once confident in their loyalty, I began subtly undermining their collective self-worth in order to increase their reliance on me. It didn’t take much, just a few sly jabs like screaming at them through a megaphone that they all smelled like a gross blanket from the garage that a raccoon had just given birth on.

It felt oddly liberating to disconnnect from any grounding in reality, as I made an escalating series of promises that pledged an increasingly outlandish picture of the afterlife. Any guilt I may have felt by making these false claims was offset by the realization that my followers truly enjoyed the organizational simplicity of being able to divide the next world into two categories: devotees would be treated to a millenia-long Pink Floyd concert replete with an image of  Jesus shooting a spectacular laser light show from his stigmata, while heretics would be condemned to an eternity of Supertramp rock blocks, to be interrupted by periodic breaks to shit pure blood for 40 days.

For the first time, I had a community that accepted me and loved me. But more than anything, I wanted power. Not just so I could bend people to my will and shape the world to my liking, but also so that my Hoverboard would work on water, and I panicked once I felt my influence over my parish beginning to wane. Under mounting pressure to produce a nonexistent holy text I had been telling the Family about for months, I staged a combined diversionary tactic and morale-boosting exercise, gathering all the congregants together one night to teepee our cross-town rivals in Falun Gong. Then, ecstatic with righteous fury, we egged the B’nai B’rith and ding-dong-dashed the First United Methodist Church. It was a glorious night, but one that ultimately proved quite costly as we made some formidable enemies. Within days, an unflattering piece on 20/20 brought a lot of undesired attention from several law enforcement agencies.

Predictably, it all went downhill fast. One by one, my wives left me as my economic prospects dimmed after the investigations. I couldn’t hold down a job because no matter how far back in the kitchen they’d put me, it was just a matter of time before someone recognized me while taking out the garbage, and then I’d be run out of town. But in losing everything, I have been freed from desire and given a fresh start. I’m excited to be living off my wits again, and enjoying the fruits of my cunning. In fact, I notice you’ve been eyeing this delicious morsel I’m eating, friend. No, it’s not one of those gross-out novelty gummi rats on a stick from the makers of mini-jawbreakers made to look like eyeballs. This is the real thing, baby. I got traps all over the city, enough to keep me fed for as long as I want. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I had acheived success at something like this in a past life.

Hi, I’m LaBarbara Van Derven-Watanabe, and you may remember me as the 2023 Academy Award winner for Best Jugs in a Dramatic Role. Although my image is currently represented in your domicile as a flickering blue hologram with a badly askew aspect ratio, I can assure you that I’m just as beautiful as you remember me. I’m here to talk to you about something very important: our national security and your role therein.

As has been widely reported, the roving band of robotic wolves that have been terrorizing the west coast remains at large. No one knows who built them or why, but a national sundown curfew shall remain in effect until they are captured or destroyed. These metallic hellhounds have remorselessly killed three people over the last nine years, so it is critical to everyone’s safety that we achieve full participation in the newly established security guidelines without complaint, as we are closer than ever to eradicating the robotic wolf menace from civilization for good. While it may be true that our continued reliance on deregulated household cleaning solvents alone has caused approximately 60,000 more deaths than robotic wolves over the same time span, and that the killings perpetrated by these ruthless murderers all occurred within a two-mile radius, and that it has never been conclusively determined that robotic wolves are even to blame for these deaths as opposed to being a thing the overworked local authorities just made up to explain away some unsolved unfortunate incidents, these ferocious beasts represent an existential threat to society.

Our experts who are paid good money to sit in think tanks and imagine worst-case scenarios theorize that by now the wolves’ creator(s?) may well have mastered the technology to construct humanoid robots with the ability to infiltrate our nation’s most cherished institutions and take them down from the inside. While this is merely speculation, until these rumors are thoroughly debunked we have no choice but to treat them as indisputable fact. So exercise extreme caution in dealing with your friends, family, and neighbors, as any of them could be insidiously gathering information on you for the coming attack. Remember to monitor and report any suspicious behavior, such as verbal criticism of the new security measures to be unveiled next week.

We will do everything possible to uphold our oath to keep the public safe until the people responsible for these crimes are brought to justice. This includes enlisting the services of college alumni associations to track down all persons of interest, no matter how frequently they may change their addresses. In the meantime, we advice you not to trust the biased media for information on further developments in this story. Instead, get your facts straight from the source: approved daily reports from the newly formed Security Commission. It is vital that we begin building our security infrastructure for next year, when we will mobilize to liberate Canada and her vast reserves of fresh potable water from their tyrannical overlords, who have been blocking our access to the vital North Pole trade route that was opened up by the melting ice caps.

We must be forever vigilant to protect our precious freedom to speak, assemble, and worship as we please while inside the resonance imagers that can detect abnormal amounts of electrical impulse activity in the parts of the brain that regulate dissent from sociological norms. Remember, these are complex and challenging times, and the best way to simplify them is to follow our instructions to the letter.