t's been a good year to be NetFlix. The online DVD-renting and video-streaming service has continually posted increases in profits each previous fiscal quarter, sometimes gains as much as 88%. Despite claims that increasing postage prices and the difficulty of obtaining streaming content may hinder future profit reporting, NetFlix continues to make big money while offering less to subscribers than in previous plans. The announcement of higher-priced plans, the separation of DVD rental/streaming packages, and setting limitations on streaming devices have all been designed to offset any future losses and increase profits, but today NetFlix CEO Reed Hastings announced it wasn't enough, and has made a bold proposal to raise subscription prices on people who use neither service.

"NetFlix is facing a struggle in the future, to continue to bring high-quality entertainment to our loyal subscribers, those who rent traditional formats by mail or watch via our state-of-the-art streaming service, we need to increase our income," Hastings announced from his undisclosed location in the NetFlix bunker in California. "I see no reason to further burden our faithful customers with the costs. Which is why I am enacting a daring new plan to increase subscription costs to those who do not subscribe to us."

Under the new NetFlix plan, subscribers to the DVD-rental service will pay $7.99 for 1 DVD at a time and $11.99 for 2, while the unlimited streaming-only plan stands at $7.99, and those who choose not to watch movies in either format from NetFlix only pay $2.99.

"At long last, starting in November, NetFlix is bringing the thrilling experience of a recurring NetFlix charge that our subscribers have long enjoyed to all those who have not yet become NetFlix customers," said Hastings.

Response has been mixed from non-customers and consumer watchdogs alike. Nell Farthingford, a spokesperson for the consumer advocacy group Wait/What, said of the new NetFlix price increases, "Wait? What?"

Farthingford clarified why consumer advocates like her are concerned about the new plan.

"I'm not math expert, but it does sound a lot like people who don't receive any service from the company are being forced to pay them for nothing." Farthingford did concede, "However, if I'm already paying them $2.99, it's only another five dollars to get unlimited streaming content on my PS3, X-Box, Wii, iPhone, iPad, or NetFlix-ready device. That's not a bad deal."

Outrage swelled around the internet on message boards, where outrage is born and nurtured, with some people complaining that the media company is exploiting those who do not patronize them to increase their already-large profits. Following price increases in November 2010 and June 2010 on people who actually watched movies, tempers run high for those who are unhappy with NetFlix. As always, though, a few responders could see the business sense of the deal.

"It's only a three dollar increase from what you were paying before," said MovieLuv.net forum user rhAsTings. "Quit your cryin. If you don't like it, you don't have to not use it. Just subscribe today."

Stockholders have already exhibited excitement of over the potential gain of $2,574,000,000 in the third quarter, and insiders at NetFlix are reportedly shitting themselves wet at the prospect of increasing their presence overseas, raising their number of non-subscribers to an estimated 6 billion by the end of next year.

Hastings said, "I see no reason a simple hut-dweller in Botswana should not be afforded the same luxury that a meager trailer-dweller without internet will soon enjoy—the joy of becoming a NetFlix bill-payer. Today we have the United States… tomorrow, we take the world!"

Upon receiving news of the NetFlix proposed price plan, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos dramatically smashed a china cup against his Kindle and bellowed, "You will bow down before me, Reed! You… and your heirs!"

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You may be asking yourself what do I mean by my slightly smug title? Am I mocking the tragically short and tortured life of a little girl killed in a massive campaign of genocide? No. I embrace Anne Frank's courageous spirit and indomitable will more than ever, now that I have had to spend secretive nights with my own "family" here at the commune, hiding out from imaginary government ninjas, fabricated Al Qaeda terrorists, and any number of made-up enemies that forced us to take to the road in recent weeks.

As a fresh reminder (let's pretend we're on the second part of a two-part sitcom, and you need filling in), the commune staff, sans Ritalin poster child Omar Bricks, fled their home offices weeks ago under the presumed threat of international terrorists trying to kill us. Why? Who knows. Perhaps in Red Bagel's belabored mind, he pictured some insidious plot to turn the commune offices into a potent missile to strike at government and financial targets. But we overran our attackers, whom I personally witnessed were carrying weapons that looked remarkably like toys, including a lime-green Super Soaker, and took to the road.

This is a natural reaction to a possible terrorist attack, of course: Load all your staff and whatever equipment you can carry into a Partridge family-style bus and drive west as if you're following the Grateful Dead. Reporting the incident to the police, federal agents, or the Department of Homeland Security would only tip your hand that you're important enough to be a terrorist target. And I'm sure a nasty new piece of paper is added to your FBI file, so it's best to avoid contacting the authorities at all costs. This is the rationalization of Red Bagel's mind, of course, and it's precisely why I've been writing angry letters to doctors to have the man committed for years now.

Not that being on the run from international assassins with the commune staff was all bad. Some of it was very bad. Some of it was agonizingly bad. So I might draw a pie chart, if that were my forte, and split it roughly into equal parts about 33% bad, 33% very bad, and %34 agonizingly bad. With a potential margin of error that it might be 99% agonizingly bad. You try sharing the same bathroom that Stigmata Spent and Ramon Nootles are using. One day of that and you'll be ready to walk in downtown Falluja with a sign reading "Islam blows!"

It was every bit as bad as I say. Boris Utzov doesn't speak a lick of decipherable English, of course, but it's impossible to understand him anyway since the man is always eating. I now know why all his columns are stained with ketchup, mustard, and French fry grease. But at least his broken English is a lot cleaner than anything coming out of Ivana Folger-Balzac's mouth; the woman could have made Sam Kinison blush. I've never heard such abundant use of the F-word just to ask a hitchhiker for directions.

All his money and Bagel wouldn't even spring for a hotel room. Well, he did get a hotel room, but he wouldn't let any of us stay in it since he was using it for the "commune dummies" he built out of old mannequins. "Just a trap to catch the bad guys," Bagel told us, rubbing his hands together in his usual scheme-talking manner. So basically we all end up sleeping on the bus seats, some of us two to a seat. I'm not sure which was more disturbing, Shabozz Wertham's audible racist sleep-mumbling or Boner Cunningham's somnambulist groping. What am I saying? Of course Boner was the worst. Without a doubt.

I'm just not cut out for this group. Believe me, if I was employable elsewhere, I would leave them all behind. When the most intellectual conversation you can get is with an 8-year-old mail clerk, you know you're in the wrong place. Come to think of it, why did I even follow them? It's not like anyone put a gun to my head. Well, not a real gun.

º Last Column: Highway to Hell
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I would like to take this opportunity to express to the world my view about Yuppies. I hate them. Bottom line. Thanks for listening.

Yuppies would be our idea of cool if we lived in a world Bill Gates had farted out of his ass. That's what he dreams about at night, a bizarre-o world where he has a chance with chicks, and the hideous byproducts of his eugenics experiments roam through mini-malls across the land. Holy shit, it happened already? Wake me up when the screaming gets too loud for you.

No real human being actually thinks they're being hip when dressed like one of these faggoty, middle-aged losers. You know what I'm talking about. All those forty-ish, peppered gray, khaki wearing, polo shirted, overweight, laptop carrying, SUV driving, laugh out loud at jokes they read in Dilbert wussy bitches! These are the kind of people who thanked their lucky fuckin' stars when computers were invented, because if it weren't for computers, natural selection would have had its way with these gimps like a 350 pound inmate named "Tiny."

Yuppies make my scrotum shrivel up like a raisin in the microwave. Just the sight of one is enough to send me into an incoherent, Yuppie-beating rage, as the security guys at CompUSA can attest.

I had the acute displeasure of sitting next to one of these zombie clones on a three-hour flight last week, after a long night of tweaking. Thank God I had stashed Nevil in my carry-on baggage, giving me the option of releasing him on that fucking swine at a moment's notice. Damned if they aren't a lot of maintenance, but owning a midget can be the difference between mirth and madness when the chips are down. They should put that on an inspirational calendar somewhere.

As soon as that Yuppie sat down next to me I could feel the bile in the back of my throat start to bubble. Watching him squeeze his fat ass into that narrow coach seat, as the perspiration built up inside his precious little round glasses and he started to sweat through his Banana Republic Yuppie fatigues, I could feel my hands twitching at the drawstring of my midget satchel, ready to unleash this poor fucker's tiny, apeshit doom.

Since I already knew you can't throw a fire extinguisher on a plane without hitting a Yuppie, I made sure Nevil was prepared for the flight through a strict regiment of starvation and randomly lighting my lighter underneath him to fuel his fire. If you're going to go to the trouble and social embarrassment of flinging a midget onto a grown man in public, you have to at least make sure that midget's in a particularly foul mood, so you get your money's worth.

But just when I was about to open the bag and take cover behind the Chinese woman sitting to my left, something infinitely more entertaining than siccing a starved and half-crazed midget on this unsuspecting fucker suddenly dawned on me. Holy shit, this Yuppie was scared of flying! I had no choice but to use this to my advantage.

While we were sitting on the runway, I took the liberty of calling the flight attendant over several times to point out the window and ask if they were completely sure that cardboard patch on the wing was really going to hold after takeoff. Then when the time for takeoff finally came, I unbuckled my seatbelt and screamed at the top of my lungs that I was feeling a breeze coming from the emergency exit door. Have you ever seen a man reflexively suck sweat back into his pores? Awesome. Then to polish the poor bastard off, periodically throughout the rest of the flight I would open my window blind just enough to look outside, then start crying. When he tried to sneak a peek I would slam it shut and moan in a trembling voice "Just ignore it! Maybe it will be OK if we pretend we don't know anything!"

By the time we landed, tons of fun had worked himself into a big puddle of sweaty hysterics. And when the flight attendants brought out the restraints to cart his ass off the plane and into that rubber van, nobody acted more surprised than me. Did you see how that guy started freaking out when we landed? Jesus. He thought my stewardess-call button was an emergency ignition switch for the plane's engines! Crazy, crazy shit.

"That's what you get, you fucking clone," I thought to myself.

No question that piece of work blew a microchip or two, either during the flight or while the orderlies were beating him silly with rubber bitch-sticks on the way to the booby barn. And I got his laptop, which makes for a bitchin' dartboard. These are the small, quiet victories I ponder in spare moments, when reminiscing about my war with the Yuppies.

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