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OH MY GOD SNOW

The good news here in the commune offices is my court case has resulted in a nice out-of-court settlement. The bad news is… well, I'll get to the bad news in due course.

Frequent readers of my column, or actually anyone who read the last one, will remember that I was taking legal action against the author of the play based on my life, without my authorization, Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale A Lot of Money. My lawsuit was on the fasttrack toward a big fat payoff for the commune, and me in particular, when we found out the author of the play was none other than black sheep of the commune family Raoul Dunkin. Now, insiders and outsiders with insider contacts know that Raoul Dunkin was the first reporter hired when the commune made the jump from publishing on the back of pre-published pamphlets to the internet, where the overhead was considerably lower and the journalistic standards likewise lower. Which made it all the harder when he and his money-hungry blade backstabbed me and his brethren by running off to become a hot-to-trot M-TV veejay.

Apparently, M-TV and Dunkin were a poor match from the get-go and even the coveted 3-5 a.m. timeslot couldn't make him a star. He pink-slipped that job and ended up writing plays off-off-Broadway, specifically the Vlanch Community Theater in Vlanch, Pennsylvania. Which is where I saw the Fred Scarsdale bit. Cut to September of 2002, and a very pissed-off Red Bagel demanding compensation. Now we're talking settlement.

Dunkin always was bad at numbers. Would you believe over 30 people saw his play and he still ended up deep in debt? If over 30 people ever read an edition of the commune, I, Red Bagel, would be rolling in money like a pig in shit. Instead of rolling in shit like a pig in shit. Dunkin's big mistake, as far as I can tell, was paying all collaborators involved in real money instead of skeeball tickets and coupons. He also doesn't seem to have heard of government loans and frivolous lawsuits.

Needless to say, Dunkin could not pay the compensation I demanded, and in fact ran up even more bills thanks to hiring that pricey Bar association-approved "lawyer". Way to go, A-hole. All that money flushed down the drain and you still settled the case with yours truly, the lawyerless commune's fearless editor-in-chief.

All that said and done, as part of the settlement Dunkin is coming back to work for the commune for a while. You tell me who the real loser is! Bludney Plud? I suppose we can all agree on that.

So welcome, dear reader, to a bold new era for the commune. Well, not really. Welcome to an era that reeks of a bold old era. Dunkin is back with his passable news coverage, and yet I'm not firing Ramon Nootles, his replacement I took on staff when the extra coupons I saved allowed me to expand the workforce. At least not yet—he's the kind of reporter who seems to benefit from a healthy fear of the guillotine.

Nobody could be happier about Dunkin's return to the staff, at least I've decreed that nobody can be happier. Dunkin, to his credit, is putting up the appearance that he's not totally miserable, and that's appreciated.

By the way, we have no plans of removing the "Let's Promote Raoul Dunkin!" game as of yet. Let's just see where this is going for a while. The numbnuts does have a history of abandonment, and we may forgive, but we never forget.

º Last Column: I Want Compensation for the Play Based on My Life
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Whenever visitors come to the commune offices, and one day I'm optimistic there will be visitors who are not merely there to take the furniture away, I smile brightly and yell out, "Welcome to the monkey house!"

Many think it is a colorful, humorous thing to say. It is, in fact, a warning. An attempt to keep visitors away. To save them from the horrors inside, even if they are here to repossess our materials. For the commune has become a house of horrors in recent weeks, and I owe it all to monkeys.

Yes, some well-intentioned individual, let's just say for example it's me though I'm not actually stating I did do it. But this person, this Red Bagel, supposed he could save a lot of money on cleaning people and certain money-grubbing reporters by bringing in monkeys who work for peanuts (or actually bananas, the elephants were the ones who wanted expensive peanuts) and slowly replace the entire staff in the hopes eventually the entire staff would be made up of banana-earning monkeys. Sometimes in the six-bunch range, but most in the one-bunch and under category.

Continuing with our hypothesis, let's suppose that monkeys, while the smartest of all earth-walking non-dolphin mammals, still require a great deal of training, even more so than money-grubbing reporters and foreign cleaning people. Let's say such a fact escaped our hypothetical Red Bagel person who, in perfectly innocent intentions, released wild, untrained monkeys into the commune offices assuming they would imitate the behavior of columnists, reporters, and cleaning people. While instead they have been content to scream loudly, jump on unrepossessed property until it smashes, climb walls, and hurl their eliminations at every non-monkey personnel on staff.

Now let's suppose, for the sake of this discussion, that all of this is exactly what happened and this is where we're at.

I have gotten to the end of my rope, loyal readers, and I've found a monkey swinging on it. I suggest monkeys are not smart, lovable, cute or cuddly, but in fact are wild animals with minor humanlike behaviors, but any of that humanlike behavior is usually hidden under the hideous crap-throwing creature behavior they have more fun exhibiting. We have been lied to by countless Clint Eastwood movies and Saturday morning live-action television series.

Needless to say, the commune is not functioning as it normally should this week. Most columnists and reporters are operating outside the office, from their homes or covering their stories in the field and submitting them to the printers outside. While I am trapped in my office, afraid to step outside where I'll be pounded by less-than-attractive monkeys. It could be worse, I could be like Ramrod Hurley, whom they have dressed as one of their own and are apparently performing some kind of mating ritual with.

This should be taken care of within a short amount of time. I've hired some friends of mine, call them "cleaners," and they'll be taking care of these monkeys soon enough, no questions asked. I will be alright, assuming I can keep my office barricaded and avoid the mating ritual.

Until then, I hope you can continue to enjoy the commune as monkey-free as you can. Do not visit the offices, if I need remind you, and please excuse any feces on or in this column.

º Last Column: Puppets Are Hollywood's Best-Kept Secret
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