Return to Zender (Week 281)

Apologies for the sudden end to last week’s column, communistas. The sheer epic scope of the commune’s tale got the better of me and I had to take three Excedrin Migraine and spend a few hours feeding the ducks behind the Shanesly Arby’s.

When I left you last, the Crochet! staffers had just packed up and left town like those front-running little bear assholes in The Lorax. I have to tell you, commune readers, this was a personal low point in the life of Emil Zender. However, that didn’t last long as the very next week there was the lawsuit, which made Crochet! jumping ship seem like a trip to Six Flags.

It turns out that all these years there was a website called The Onion that people tell me is quite popular. And apparently various individuals with law degrees felt that the commune’s brand of insouciant truth-telling was a bit too close to The Onion’s jam for comfort. I don’t see it personally, but that may be due in part to our lack of a working internet connection. For all I know they may have a Homer Brinks working there who tortures their downstairs neighbors at Sew What? magazine, that really would be weird and possibly actionable. But either way, there was a lawsuit, and it turned out that our "friends" at Hipsoda.com were just archiving our site for use as evidence in the trial, just like they had repeatedly told us they were doing. It even turned out they weren’t being sarcastic! Note to the world: We really need to develop a sarcasm font, pronto.

Before you get too excited however, the lawsuit turned out to be about 97% sizzle and only 3% steak-like polyurethane. It turns out they’d spent years carefully amassing evidence against the commune without bothering to check in on our assets, which turned out to total -$47.39. Yes, Kinkos, I got your collections call. After realizing that even recouping their legal expenses was an absurd pipe dream, the lawyers attempted to have our site shut down so as to cease and desist damaging The Onion’s reputation. However it was quickly uncovered that for most of the commune’s existence, due to various technical fuckups the site had only been accessible through off-brand love tester machines in various Southern California Pioneer Chicken locations, and had never actually been posted on the wider internet until Hipsoda.com started collecting evidence for the lawsuit. So by a strange twist of fate The Onion had damaged its own reputation, spreading the commune’s unique brand of verve to seven new fans in the intervening years.

This seemed to embarrass everyone into just dropping the whole thing, well that and the fact that Boris Utzov got confused and went home with The Onion’s lawyers at the end of our last meeting with them, and the last I heard they’ve been unable to get him to leave.

But sadly, the commune’s triumph was short-lived. Without their shared hatred of Crochet! or the law to rally around, the commune staffers soon began to splinter. Some followed Omar when he left to start a cult in Gambia. Some -shudder- got jobs at the Shanesly Department of Public Works. Some are employed at the local strip club, Twerks because they typed in "Works" wrong on the nav. Some, I am certain, were eaten by the Gnarlap living in the crawl space under the basement, after it ran out of regretted mail-order brides and Pomeranians to eat.

Raoul Dunkin left to start a new political news site, TwinkInc.com, a hopefully more palatably-named successor to his deeply mourned spankrag.com. Red Bagel did stop by briefly, dressed as Colonel Sanders and insisting that everyone refer to him as such for tax purposes, but he quickly lost interest and left to work on his "Donald Trump" character.

My most loyal boarder was of course Ivan Nacutchacokov, who stayed the longest due to his fierce love for the commune and deep fear of his ex-wife, in uncertain proportions. But even his ticket was punched one night a few months back when the NSA came for him, apparently after finally getting around to reading some long-forgotten commune article that laid their nefarious plans bare for all to see. I would suggest they were tapping our phones or internet, but we had neither, and I’m not sure they’ve learned how to intercept bulk Valpak coupon mailers marked RETURN TO SENDER, which had been our main means of economical correspondence.

After Ivan was dragged screaming out my front door, then calmed way down and went along happily after discovering it was the NSA and not goons hired by Ivana, I must admit I fell into a bit of a funk, commune readers. Was this all my grand plans had come to? A brief smattering of articles over the years, countless unexplainable holes in my walls, some kind of insatiable beast living under my basement and an attic that smells like a sanitarium for dogs? Sometimes I question if it was all worth it.

And then I remember that all those dolls in the attic still have little walkie talkies in them. And man if my mom’s boyfriend Doug isn’t afraid of those dolls.

The spirit of the commune lives on!

Zincerely,
Emil Zender

Return to Zender (Week 280)
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Return to Zender (Week 50)
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Return to Zender (Week 24)
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Return to Zender (Week 8)
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Return to Zender (Week 2)
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