ride-to-be and self-kidnapping victim/perpetrator Jennifer Wilbanks
copped to several charges on Saturday, including illegal self-confinement
and terroristic threatening to your own persons. The missing Georgia
"runaway bride," as some less respectful newspapers have dubbed Wilbanks,
disappeared and reported herself kidnapped on the day of her wedding,
only to turn up later when she managed to escape from herself and phoned
her lucky husband-to-be, whose name we withheld out of respect to the
poor bastard.

Police found and arrested the abductor, Wilbanks herself, and held her in
custody as they built a case. Rather than face herself in court during a
lengthy trial, Wilbanks confessed to all the crimes she was accused of,
in hopes of getting the whole thing sorted out before her big wedding.
But Wilbanks didn't forgive herself so easily for her downfall.

"I also want to let myself know that I won't forget what I've done to
myself anytime soon," warned Wilbanks, in a statement released by her
lawyer, who may be Wilbanks herself in yet another impressive role. "Do
I hear that? I won't be getting away from me so easily. I'll let
me forget about me for a while, but one day, when I least expect it,
I'll turn around, and I'll be there. And I won't be happy."

Wilbanks refused to answer questions as to whether she was threatening
herself with bodily harm, and other reporters just laughed when this
correspondent tried to get them to back up his questioning.

With the abductee/abductor refusing to answer questions, the commune
sought out an expert on self-abduction, Audrey Seiler, a Wisconsin
college student who tried to kidnap herself in April of last year.
Seiler disappeared from her off-campus apartment March 27, 2004, and
was found four days later, telling police she was abducted by a man
with a knife. Seiler confessed to kidnapping herself only when police
discovered a videotape of the young woman buying a knife, duct tape,
rope, and cold medicine all in one purchase, though this reporter can't
picture a weekend coming and going without buying all of those items.

"I know in my case, it just came out of nowhere," said Seiler. "You're
walking along, you think everything's fine and dandy, then—bam!
You jump out of nowhere, put a hand over your mouth, and force yourself
into an alley. I had my car with me, which was lucky, so I forced myself
into the trunk, then had to get out and actually drive myself to the
hideout. But I kept a knife on myself, so I wouldn't try anything funny.
It's really scary. I've known myself for a long time, but I've never seen
myself like that before."

Seiler also admits she wasn't sure what made her kidnap herself; at first
she thought it was just a sorority prank or something, but then recalled
she hadn't pledged any sorority at all. At that point, she began to doubt
her mental stability.

"The police never understand," said Seiler. "They always think you can
wait for a moment when your back is turned and escape. But you're
paralyzed with fear, afraid of what you'll do to yourself. That's why I
didn't want to tell the police who had really done it."

As for the case of Wilbanks herself, the most recent victim/perpetrator
of self-kidnapping, Seiler had some thoughts on what might motivate her
to such a twisted crime.

"I really, really liked that Runaway Bride movie. She probably
did, too. She probably thought she'd kidnap herself, hoping a cool
Richard Gere-type, only not so gay, would come to her rescue. It never
works out, trust me. I was inspired by the movie Excess Baggage,
but it's never as fun as it looks. Spend a few days out in the woods by
yourself and it takes all the charm out of being held at knifepoint."

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You ever had this "cereal"? I hope so, because I for one hate to suffer alone. I'm serious, what ever happened to Rice Krispies or Fruit Loops? Now those were some cereals. None of this roadside gravel bullshit. It doesn't even talk when you eat it. Even my ex-wife did that. And fun fruit flavors? Don't let the "Grape" part fool you; the only fruit this crap tastes like is Heath Ledger. Boring.

Life is like a bowl of Grape Nuts, and by that I mean it sucks. Sure, it comes in a lot of flashy packaging, and there's a wombat on the box, but inside it's just a bag of dirt from Nevada. Kids? Had 'em. Jobs? Did 'em. Movies? Slept through 'em. Transexual adventures? Saw a 20/20 on 'em once. Didn't seem all that appealing.

You know that song, "Shock the Monkey"? I tried that once. Went down to the zoo in 1985 and told one of the apes there'd be Republicans in the White House for the whole of his natural life. He threw a rubber T-bone steak squeeze toy at me. I still don't know what that song was about.

When I was a young man I wanted to be a lumberjack. Can't remember why, must've been all those "Don't Be a Fag, Cut Down a Tree!" ads that were on the radio at the time. Anyway, I thought that might just be a good life. Spending all your time out of doors, getting nature back for every time it had rained at an inconvenient time during your life. But there was one thing I hadn't counted on: cutting down trees is a goddamned lot of work. I'm serious, it's not like in the cartoons or those lumberjack video games, where you swing the axe with one hand and the tree goes down like a huge stick of warm butter or a horny teenager at Crystal Lake. Those goddamned trees have their mind made up about standing, and it takes some serious convincing to get them to see things your way. It's a battle of wills and the chances are good you'll decork your spine before the tree even starts to lean.

That's when I got the idea to cut the whole process short and cut to the chase with a couple sticks of dynamite. Now that's speaking a language trees can understand. When you say jump, they do, and cartwheel end over end for good measure. But as you might imagine, there was some serious resistance to my startling new innovation in the world of lumberjacking, as there always is when a brash newcomer struts in and turns things on their ass. And you know those big Brawny paper towel meatheads didn't want some skinny mug with a dynamite connection horning in on their racket. That, and there were some problems with not being able to find the tree after the dynamite went off, since depending on the prevailing winds it could end up a half-mile in any direction, and they always seem to build elementary schools at the most inopportune locations. And there was some jabber about 90% of the usable wood being destroyed in the explosion, as if their meathead-and-axe system worked flawlessly right out of the gate.

I wasn't a lumberjack for long. Didn't exactly shock your monkey with that one, did I? Yeah, the lumberjacking industry and I decided to go in different directions. I learned the lesson that there are some dreams too beautiful for this world to handle, and they learned… come to think of it I don't think those meatheads learned a damned thing. Nuts. I hate coming out on the wrong end of a learning experience. But like I said, life's a bitch and all she's serving for breakfast is Grape Nuts. Would it kill life to make French toast? I doubt it. But that's life for you.

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Dear commune:

Maybe you can settle a bet for my buddy Steve and me. Say two guys are shocking each other in the nutsack with a cattle prod, with the agreement that whoever passes out first loses the bet and has to buy the other guy some chili fries, right? Okay, now if you shock Steve in the nuts and he screams like a girl so loud that you pass out from surprise, do you still lose the bet even though you never got your nuts shocked? Steve thinks you do, but I think he’s full of shit and has been sitting on a bag of ice too long. Is the commune a bunch of lesbo-bangers from the Steve camp or do you see my point?

Sincerely,
Artie Duchamp
Flatskull, NJ



Dear Artie:

Cattle prods? What are you guys, a couple of seven-year-old girls in floral-patterned dresses at a tea party? You sure you guys aren’t pulling our legs? Because we doubt you really have the nuts to shock, nice try ladies. Any two guys who were really serious about a snack-bar wager like that would take turns stuffing their nuts into a power outlet, and the first one who’s blown out the window loses. "Passing out" is pussyese for feinting, as any southern debutante knows. Quit wasting the commune’s time and write us back when you have some local press clippings to enter as evidence.

the commune

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Editor’s Note: the commune is not responsible for any property or nutsack damage caused by the commune’s own brand of dubious advice. By reading this website you have agreed to the legal release that is encoded, Beautiful Mind-style, randomly throughout the site’s text and images. And just try to disprove that, brainiac.

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