She stood in my office, panting, all legs and neck and muzzle. She was a great dame, alright.
I’d been snoozing in my basket, not a care in the world, dreaming about squirrels. Why was it always squirrels? Those slippery bastards always seemed to get away. But then there she was, standing there in front of me, and my dreams took on a different tone.
“Are you Woofus?”
“I am,” I replied, as nonchalant as I could manage. “Private Investigator for hire and part-time puddle drinker. What can I do for you?”
She wagged. Just a little, but enough so that I could see what she was thinking. “I need your help.”
My ears pricked. A fine piece of tail and a job? The day was looking up.
Turned out that someone had been taking her food. Just a little each night, but enough that she noticed it was gone. Exactly the kind of kibble that makes me mad. That bowl was all she had in the world, and someone takes it right out from under her. What a world.
I took the job. Whether I’d let her pay, I wasn’t quite sure yet. First I needed to talk to the right people.
Owie Howie was the neighborhood hedgehog. A real spiky fella, from the wrong side of the fence. Slept all day, roamed the area at night. You had to be sharp to see him, but whenever there was trouble, he’d be there. Luckily, I knew that he’d always talk eventually. A single saucer of milk was all he needed.
Sure enough, he was snoozing under a hedgerow when I found him. I slid the milk towards him with one paw. Wordlessly.
He looked up at me, startled. “Talk,” I said.
“I haven’t done nothin’,” Howie said.
“I’d bet a boneful of kibble that you have,” I said. “But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about. I’m here about a dame.”
“I’m not here about Lena Dachshund,” I barked. “But you keep your spiky paws to yourself. I’m talking about a real tall dame. Came to me this morning. Said her food was missing. Just a little bit. Sounds like the work of a professional thief, if you ask me.”
Howie looked up at me. There was fear in his eyes, clear as day, even through his milky haze. “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
I put one paw down on the saucer of milk so hard that it flipped right out onto the lawn. “Talk, damnit. I ain’t gonna ask you again.”
“This is deep,” Howie said. “Too deep even for you, Woofus. Turn away. Turn away now while you still have the chance.”
“I ain’t never turned away from a dame,” I growled, my voice real low. “And I ain’t doing it now. Enjoy your milk, Howie.” I left him, desperately licking milk from blades of grass, out there in the open. Guys like Howie were shameless. I wasn’t about to take advice from him, particularly not now he had told me everything I needed to know.
That looks of fear could only mean one thing around here. There was only one hound sick enough to produce that kind of reaction from a guy like Howie. And I was going to schnuffle him out.
Greetings, loyal citizen! It’s the motion picture industry here. We’ve noticed you’re buying less DVDs than you used to. This is terrible news. Why might this nineteen-year-old technology be in decline in the age of on-demand video, ubiquitous Internet access and high definition mobile devices? Your turgid pirate faces have the answer written all over them.
Here are ten things we’re doing in 2012 to force you to buy DVDs. DVDs! O, glorious DVDs. So digitally versatile are you. DVDs DVDs DVDs DVDs.
We’re including two hundred and eighty seven unskippable copyright notices before each movie. We know that you may be unfamiliar with the law. That’s why you keep copying our precious intellectual property. So, in order to educate you into paying $14.98 for a legitimate DVD copy of Shallow Hal, we’re incorporating two hundred and eighty seven slightly different copyright notices. That’s almost 48 minutes of copyrights! Consider yourself educated – over and over again.
Introducing DVD dongles. In order to play specially protected dongle DVDs, you need to don a dongle™ on the back of your DVD player. Please note that don a dongle™ is a registered trademark, and that donnable DVD dongles may only be produced under a regional license representing no less than 3% of the retail price of your illegal pirate whore machines (TVs, laptop computers and DVD players).
Pixel protection. One of the leading causes of DVD piracy is the transmission of contiguous, related image components as part of a self-contained frame. Our innovative solution is pixel-only DVD sets. 345,600 miniature television sets (0.004″x0.015″) are placed in a rectangular array, and connected to tiny DVD players. Each one contains a cropped version of the movie exactly one pixel by one pixel wide. Simply hit play on each of the 345,600 DVD players simultaneously, and enjoy your movie. Bittorrent that, assholes.
We will fling poo at you. Our monkeys are primed, and at your windows right now. They’re watching you. Do not violate our intellectual property rights.
Pre-emptive piracy. In order to prevent the public from copying our content and uploading it to illegal file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay and Demonoid, we will do these things before they have the chance. As we have the full licenses to the content and are in possession of applicable contracts, this will not be breaking any laws. This way, our entertainment products will legitimately continue to reach audiences, retain marketing buzz and royalties from the on-demand, rental, television and air travel markets, without interference from you pirating scumbags.
Spoken word beat poetry album (untitled) Funding goal: $149,000. Time taken: 4 days.
An ingenious commentary on modern-day culture and the new aesthetic, Spoken word beat poetry album (untitled) eschews the poetic form by taking pages from public domain works and performing them in an authentic beat poet style. Tracks include Treasure Island (page 47) and The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria. Can be played on an iPhone.
A lovely cake Funding goal: $20. Time taken: 30 seconds.
Reward for backing this project: a photo of the cake.
Night star Funding goal: $12,100,000. Time taken: 7 hours.
Ambitious project to establish a satellite of the earth with a quarter of its diameter. Will have dry seas, craters, and plenty of dust. The idea is that it will reflect the sun at night time, when sunlight is traditionally unavailable: an ingenious solution to an age-old problem. Fully compatible with iPhone use.
Gamey gamey game game game Funding goal: $1,000,000. Time taken: 1 day, 3 hours.
Gain a new insight into the world around you by playing Gamey gamey game game game, an indie product that takes game dynamics and applies them to the real world in a visceral way. String yourself out on bourbon and take to the streets, whispering obscenities to pets, while evading capture for as long as you can. Take beautiful tilt-shift photos of bewildered dogs and share them on your iPhone.
German Funding goal: $450,000. Time taken: 3 days, 2 minutes.
For too long, Germany has been without a language of its own. This unique social project aims to establish a form of communication for Europe’s highest exporting nation, including a full grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation instructions. Reward for backing this project: contribute your own compound noun. German will be usable on the iPhone.
Badgeclout: the gamified reputation system that’s pay to play. To assign whuffie to a person, you have to buy it, in the form of virtual gifts like Rolodexes and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. These gifts can then be traded or assigned like currency. Obviously, the whole thing sits on top of Twitter.
Frolickinbrine: “curse” your Facebook friends. If they’re cursed, an increasing number of sorry events befall their profile, until seven days later it meets its doom. They can escape their fate by performing tasks, like “liking” a brand or cursing their friends.
Idcheckintothat: “check in” to your partners. Leave tips and ratings. Get recommendations.
Badgermatic: iPhone app that automatically inserts a badger into the background of any picture you take. $1.99. Further woodland creatures – and, inexplicably, a squid – are available via in-app purchase.
Teadar: location-aware mobile app for ex-pat Brits in America. Tired of having tea alone? Finds other British people in need of tea in the neighborhood, finds a place that doesn’t serve it in horribly-diluted form in a giant paper cup, and then negotiates biscuits for you all.
Urban Harmony: a mobile app that listens for those people who play music on their phone speakers at the backs of buses and trains, and then harmonizes with them, Barbershop-style.
At Rum & Monkey, we love our audience. You’ve been here with us since the beginning; on January 30, 2002, when we pulled the giant “on” switch and the city lights all flickered out – we like to think with joy – you were ready and waiting for the products of our fecund finger-tappings.
The Internet, however, has moved on. It used to be enough to tack up a page and leave it sitting there, winningly smelling up its corner of the web while people stopped by to copy embed codes into their MovableType weblogs. These days, you’ve got to throw up – literally throw up, projectile-style – brand pages on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, RedTube and Grindr, and ideally track the hell out of your visitors and sell inferred knowledge about the HIV status of their children to the dazed, pockmarked remnants of the KGB, operating (as everyone knows they are) from a warehouse loft in Sunnyvale.
With this in mind, some time ago, we added a Facebook “like” button to all of our pages. Most people don’t know this, but in exchange for doing so, Facebook provides detailed demographic information to site owners, using the profile details of people who didn’t log out of their site and happen to stop by our site. (Seems legit to us.) Our visits and pageviews are pretty awesome, but we’ve been stabbing in the dark – now, for the first time ever, we could analyze the demographics of our site and better serve you, the user.
This is absolutely true: the key demographic for Rum & Monkey is 14-year-old Indonesian teenage girls.
“No way,” we said.
As it turned out: way.
Shit.
We’ve been running this site for nine years, people. We’ve run articles about Sarah Palin, Robert Mugabe and George W Bush. We’ve called Ariel Sharon an evil criminal, we’ve discussed the finer points of New Labour politics in Britain, we’ve made web toys about the looting in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina (all in the best possible taste, of course). Our hope – nay, our plan – was to attract a disaffected audience with the same disjointed sense of humor.
Now, it could be that Indonesian teenage girls have a particularly adept understanding of global sociopolitical current events, and have been attracted by our intelligent but irreverent coverage of same. More likely, though, they don’t give a shit, and have been skipping right past all that stuff to the Name Generator Generator, rendering our tears, sweat and that time we locked a team-member in his room for three days entirely pointless.
Which is not to undervalue Indonesian teenage girls. I’m sure you’re all great, and you’re in an up-and-coming part of the world that’s rising beyond its troubled past and is sure to blossom in your lifetime. That’s awesome. We just don’t know how the shit to write for you.
So, girls, answer us this: what can we do better? How? Why?
Everyone else out there who’s tried to run a website: how do we pivot from this?
And finally, to the three people who have actually been reading for the LolPalins and the Señor Peegs and all the rest of it: thanks. It means a lot.
Hi, America! Al Qaeda here. We’d like to thank you for changing your way of life in response to our activities over the last ten years. It’s fun to visit an airport or public place and see that familiar Al Qaeda stamp! Thanks to our friends at the TSA for making this possible.
We’d like to let you know about some other things we’ve been doing:
We’ve poisoned the french fries. Every french fry you buy in the continental United States is infected with terrorism. The same goes for fried dough, fried butter, and anything from Jack in the Box.
We’ve been broadcasting subliminal messages on the Fox News Channel. It’s basically our channel now. Every time you watch Fox News, you’re inundated with terrorist messages and become a sleeper Al Qaeda operative yourself. We also broadcast hypnotic messages in music played from cellphone speakers on public transport.
American cheese is un-American. ‘Nuff said, we think.
It’s pretty obvious that you should be avoiding Two and a Half Men. But did you know that Al Qaeda is responsible for the programming of America’s Next Top Model? You will smize in hell!
We have sent a large contingent of terrorist operatives who will bicycle on the wrong side of public roads, and on the sidewalks. Further terrorist contingents cram too many people into the segments in revolving doors and randomly come to a stop in crowded pedestrian areas.
The giant TVs at all Costco entrances are set to explode randomly.
Chihuahua dogs, when combined with handbags, will form a complete dirty bomb.
The cast of Jersey Shore join together like Voltron to create one big mega-terrorist.
We certainly don’t think that you should alter your lives in response to this new information.
Editor’s note: Rum and Monkey has existed as a website since January 31, 2002, well before many of its visitors had mastered the art of fully autonomous toilet control. However, it is not yet the Internet giant it deserves to be. These are the notes from a recent meeting where plans to rectify this by utilizing a win-win, zero-game, synergistic managed innovation strategy were touch-base synchroblurted molepoo dancer blah blah blah.
1. Pay Per Click advertising. We advertise bullshit relevant products and services and negotiate a fee every time an identity slave a user clicks through.
2. Eyeball-based advertising. We laser etch advertisements for relevant products and services on the eyeballs of punters. This gives us an advantage over our competitors Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto holds them back from doing the cool stuff. Luckily, our “be aggressively weird” motto is more permissive.
3. Bikini car wash! We wash bikinis with cars, in a crafty twist on the old classic. For crafty backwards money.
4. Build an iPhone app that convinces iPhone users that they must gently sing to their glassy-faced call-droppers daily or they will shrivel and die. Sell it for $1.99.
5. Organize a webinar. Charge people a fee in exchange for ceasing to use the word webinar. Move the event to Twitter, coin the term twonference, and profit handsomely.
6. Orchestrate a gargantuan reverse 419 scam and buy Nigeria.
7. Redevelop the site into one that has both purpose and definition, in a way that focuses on a specific audience and creates high quality, intelligent content on a highly regular basis. Attract valuable sponsors and sell branded products and services that are attractive to said audience. Probably drop that one article illustrated by a photo of Robert Mugabe.
8. Three words: virtual poo slinging.
9. Enrage the Tea Party by using logical reasoning, measured debate and intelligent political discourse based on a common respect across partisan lines. Also, call Glenn Beck a clownish buffoon whose carefully administered disinformation is viscerally evil. Include a new cartoon character, the ObamaCare Bear, who shoots rainbows powered by socialized medicine and a universal right to healthcare. Charge them to reply. Double if they want to reference Ayn Rand.
10. Become a social meme marketing agency. Describe ourselves as “gurus”. Provide face-to-face seminars, webinars, twonferences and fucktoblasts about how to create social widgets that the unwashed masses will paste upside their sites and spread virally across the twogosphere like some kind of pan-digital syphilis. Get government funding for the fucktoblasts.
11. Bring back Owen. What the hell happened to Owen? Is he still looking at those goddamn clouds?
12. Get as many Twitter followers as possible.
13. The world has a population of over 6 billion, with a total wealth of over $100 trillion. Create a website for everybody. If we can capture just 1% of the market, we’ll be fabulously profitable.
15. Actually begin selling rum and monkeys. Licensing for both may be an issue, so perhaps begin by selling just monkeys. But get them drunk first. If necessary, reassure them with a monkey lullaby, or rouse them into rum-sodden joyfulness with a sea shanty.
16. Two words: Internet mugging. Like GroupOn with knives.
Poor blog, I still love you, you neglected piece of crap.
Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, released his album Culdesac today. You can download it for free! Have some summer fun with Donald Glover and his indie-rap stylings. He produced it himself so you know it’s good and he’s got the mad cred.
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