Join the new world

Please enjoy this week's musical introduction. It foreshadows scintillating themes soon to be revealed in today's startling Cinderella-meets-Daedulus story of a rags to riches rise for a forlorn sapling who'd been left to clean up potato peelings dropped by impudent and underpaid sous-chefs, but grew to become a mighty, mighty tree-trunk, only to be dashed to the forest floor, chopped down by his own hubris.

As you've probably guessed from that awesome lead-in, our musical guest is the immortal Beale Street gospel-blues master Bobby Blue Bland, Memphis' timeless teller of tales of betrayal, love and resignation who, unfortunately and somewhat mysteriously, never wrote any articles at all for eRepublik.

At least we have his songs, which are not half bad...


Ain't Nothing You Can Do



So hey! Exciting News!! This week, we're assembling a team of long-dead writers to tell an important story...

Before introducing them, tho', kids, listen up. Let's pull up around the campfire. Warm yourselves on the smoldering embers of eRepublik. Let's get serious for just a sec'. Here's a shocking fact we want to share with you about eRepublik in The Old Days (TM).



Not only did there used to be a "Fight" button you had to press like twenty-zillion times a day, but players used to log into eRepublik just to read the press!?!?!


Yes, I know! Incredibly strange, right? I know, I know. Shocking. ALMOST unbelievable. But it's true! Those ancient and decrepit boomers way back in the 2010's used to actually READ the WORDS too!! LOL! They so dumm. Stoopid boomers.





Yeah, so here's a little doo-wah-diddy concerning those rapscallion "writers" of Days Gone By...

Aeriadne was a player who -- not all that long ago -- was dis-respected and bullied mercilessly until she and several other long-time veterans quit the game in disgust over outrageously ungentlemanly behavior, particularly on the part of a certain arboreal-boiman who is the subject of today's scientific investigation. (We shall refer to the subject, for the sake of privacy and decorum, as "Poot"). She once asked the community to help assemble a list of the best USAnian writers of all time. An outstanding writer herself, she started out by mentioning that Phoenix Quinn, fondly known to legions of fans as PQ, had been described by world-famous curmudgeon and swank-tin-hat-wearer-about-town, Franklin Stone, as "the greatest writer of all time". And so she asked the community to add to the list headed up by PQ.

A lengthy collection of stellar scribblers was quickly compiled. A few of them still lurk and larp around these e-parts. Here is the All-Star List...

Phoenix Quinn, Custer, Glorious Failure (aka Necrosis), Emerick, Chutley, Melissa Rose, Gnilraps, Paul Proteus, Aramec/Athanaric, HobbiTon, Bucephalus92, HeapSeppo, desertfalcon, SamWystan, Gates Schellinger, ArcNox, Nicholas Ryan, Candor, Dumb Emma, Kyle321n, Jon Malcom, NeilP99, Claire Littelton, Chisholm, Astra KatG, the legendary Jewitt, RexObject, Zheng He, Jack Flufferton, Mr Hyphenated, Gulden Draak, St Krems, CRoy, Joe DaSmoe, Alexander_Auctoritas, Jovan Tekelija, WookyJack, Jude Connors, Max Mcfarland 2, Civil Anarchy, Sleeve, PigInZen, Dogpyle, Bia Zadora.

Certainly, there've been many other extraordinary, salutary and revolutionary writers too, both in the eUSA and elsewhere. Including ones who were not prolific or well-known, just awesome. For example, thanks to our extensive (and thankless, I might add, think you very much) academic research poring through volume after tedious volume of the Prison Notebooks of Phoenix Quinn, we now know that one of PQ's personal favorites was Genghis Hank, who only ever wrote 10 articles.




Oh ye darting swarms of ephemeral cibàyìbàyì! Remember, remember as you flutter through the fading light of this New World on your fragile e-wings, that the stars shining over your social e-history at night sparkle so scintallatingly because of the wit, grit, nitpicking and spirited bullshit of those legions of sick scribblers!




Ahem. (Choking back a small sob of nostalgia). Yes. Right. Anyway. As we were saying, advanced technology produced by the SFP's Radical Labs has produced a way -- for a limited time only, and at a special low, low prices if you act now -- to resurrect four of eMurika's legendary deep t'inkers!




One might ask oneself... Why have we taken this radical step?

Well dammit, Janet, here's why...




To tell the tale of this week's super-hot topic requires a super-hot team! Boys, girls, fellas, gals, and gender neutral friends and comrades of all ages, buckle up your e-seatbelts!!! This is the one the edition of RFD tearing up that embarassing problem everyone's been whispering about, the one that is like two annoying marbles rattling around in the cavernous ashtray of an old monster-sized Chevy LTD bouncing down some pot-holed old lumber road in northern Maine but the whole time you're mistakenly thinking maybe the transmission is about to go or the muffler's going to fall off, yes, this is the juicy gossip important question that's been troubling e-souls in both "the Meta" (whatever that is) and "the Game" (such as it is) for weeks now, yes, that one, as you may have already guessed, but if not we'll tell you now, 'cause inquiring minds, etc. etc.... yes, and again, yes, oh yes, the hard-hitting topic that our hard-boiled, hard-as-nails, totally-hard-hot-science-based team will reveal today is...






To dig into the roots of this story, and to bring to it the level of scientific rigor mortis it deserves, we've resurrected a stellar, if somewhat morose, crew of investigative journalists of e-Yore, each with a remarkable pedigree in e-philosophy, e-psychiatry, e-politics, and other great e-stuff!



First up, Chutley!

A loveably infamous caveman whose charticles on primitive thinking took the game to ever new hilarious lows, Chutley once notably -- and, yes, this is entirely relevant to our topic -- ended an interview with Pizza the Hut, who took it as a serious question, by asking, "Do you smell that?".



And the ineffable Jack Flufferton.

Flufferton always told the truth, even when it hurt to look at it. Or at him. Oh gosh, don't we all remember his subtly complex if somewhat dubiously sexist argument for why Colombia should've been "spanked"? Yeah. Yeah? Amirite? And isn't that the kind of eyes-wide-open examination of the full body of evidence that we so sorely need to hit on today?



Next, you'd better sit yo' smarmy asses down you zoomie smarty-pantses, lest you fall over from laughter, 'cause it's none other than possibly America's greatest-ever Box-o-CrackerJacks journalist, the short- but well-lived ... SamWystan!

Man oh man, Sam suffered seriously and not in the least silently for telling the truth. And for telling lots and lots of lies too. All of which was wickedly funny. He understood what "left libertarian" really meant and he fully embraced the term, living the life of a rebel who sought to lift up the community. Unlike some of those pretenders these days who use "libertarian" as a figleaf for "hopelessly clueless and greedy anti-social shmuck who thinks the whole town should just be turned over to wild bears because fReeeEdUmM". Elders amongst us no doubt recall the immortal words that SamWystan left behind in his beautiful and only-partly-plagiarized epic parting swan song, "America is Dying and Only YOU Can Save It". Yeah, we're remembering the part that goes...

'I'll be all around in the night. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so young players can run, I'll be there. Wherever there's a Player Wig beatin' up on a guy for being new or not doing things the "right way", I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way newbs smile when they've won and they try and change things, and when the people are playing the game, and tearing down the old systems, I'll be there, too.'


Gosh. Hold on a sec. (Sniffle.) Jeez, I miss the old press.



And. Of course. As you might have expected. And if you didn't expect it then WTAFBBQ?!?! We've also conjured up a vist from none other than the wonderfully weird Phoenix Quinn!

Yes, the ol' cosmic cowboy-ostrich him(?)self, who -- some people say -- still cruises various murky back alleyways of the SFP Forum and may yet one day return to the New World bathed in glory, or at least dressed up like one of the Flying Burrito Brothers, or maybe Orville Peck, with a batallion of buff gay communist space rangers at his side, ready to smash the shackles of the illusory Real and thus reveal, by triggering a great and therapeutically-beneficial social uprising-event, all of the underlying e-neurotic obsessions that arise when we suppress the jouissance of our genuine desires for les petit objets à, a lack that keeps us doing the wigs' bidding for them like good little consumer-slaves, and yes, yes, yes, my turtle-folk, he'll do so while raging and ranting and reciting poetry and jumping and chanting and laughing and dancing and being full of that sound and fury, signifying... well, I dunno... ummm.... something really, really great!!! Yeah. Yee-ha!! Or maybe not. Who knows?





















And now... without any further a-doo-doo, to our tale!
Which, in case you've forgotten already, is...



For week after funky week, a number of strong foul-smelling odors (or as they say in Canadian, "odours") have been detected emanating from the Presidential Chicken Coop. Above and beyond the usual expected stench of alt-right memery and incel sweat.

Previous logical and precise investigations have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the strong smell emanating from the first suspected originator of said stench (who in order to protect his privacy shall be referred to herein as "Stinkbombinar"), is not, as reported in some sensationalist yellow-journalist rags (see, for example, issues 30 through 40 of Radio Free Dixie), a natural Rygellian bodily effluent. Indeed, it's now been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals (which we can't find right now at this very moment, but trust us it's true!!), that the first subject is not, as often claimed by Himself and others, a star-born Prince of the Chicken Realm at all, but simply an ugly rat-eating frog-like creature who smells like a nasty swamp on a hot summer day.

"What's that smell?", you asked? Easy. It's just "Stinkbombinar" in his natural habitat, covered in muck and slime, croaking away while he munches on rodents. Need proof? Here's a not-at-all-photoshopped photo of the first subject, caught, as they say in Synechdoche, in flagrante delicto, munching away on a swamp rat...




Of more interest to the scientific community is the source of the cloyingly sickening smell that has been detected to follow the second subject (anonymysed as "Poot") around like a cloud of those black flies that torture you during a humid mid-Summer hike up the mountains of New Hampshire when you rather foolishly packed only spam-and-mustard sandwiches and pickles for a snack. The virtues of this effluvium have variously been conveyed as "the bark of an old tree, rotting inside from mildew", "dead rat", "cheap poutine that has been left out in the sun too long", and "desperate virgin boi hysteria".

Upon scientific review, it's been demonstrated that these purely anecdotal claims do not pass muster. (LOL, was gonna say "pass mustard-gas", hehehehe!, OMG, I'm laughing so hard right now).


Ahem.


Hence the need to empanel, as noted above, a scientifically-objective investigative squad of the illustrious formerly-dead, who were instructed to follow strict protocols.





The Protocols

The methods used in this study come straight from the Radical Labs Handbook on Interrogating Smelly Phenomena, originally published in Scotland on 25 January, 1759 and carefully preserved ever since. It is the ancient and accepted authority on the great work of detecting the bogging humming of glaikit numpties, ye dafty tadgers. And if ye dunnae believe it, then yer bums oot the windae.

The procedure is quite simple really. The subject under investigation is invited to attend a secret proletarian tribunal where he or she or they are granted the opportunity to explain their malodor to the satsifaction of the panel of the Peoples' Questioners. It is made entirely clear to the subject, via a small sign posted on the wall of the interrogation room in various languages and dialects, that those who confess the source of their stink will be dealt with mercifully. While those who refuse to admit that they "dealt it" (as they say in the vernacular in parts of Ohio, Indiana and lower Wisconsin) are warned that the peoples' punishments for malfeasance and foul play may be quite harsh.

Unfortunately, neither the first subject nor the second subject agreed to face the music like a man. Their response to our eldritch warrants was to run around like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming like little girls. Here is an artist's depiction of that crazy scene. Oy!




Yeah. Jeepers! Since the source of the first subject's smell had already been established by the authorities, he was permitted to roam about the swamp freely. For now. The second subject was soon apprehended by the Peoples' Inglorious Bolshies, a shadowy Antifa outfit that occasionally hires itself out for jobs like this in exchange for rare recordings of Delta Blues artist Son House's signature slide-guitar masterpiece "Death Letter Blues".

The following is a transcript of the scientific interrogration of the "Poot"-y phenomena. It is our sincere hope that by publishing this material, others will be able to avoid the "Stench of Poot", as Flufferton has dubbed it.





The Transcript




Chutley - Subject Number Two, please state your real fake name for the record.

Poot - (Redacted, but sounds like "Poot")

Chutley - Oh reeeealy!?!?! You sure it's not (dramatic pause...) Samuel Brouillette!!!??? (dramatic music!)




(There is a general hub-bub in the secret tribual room. SamWystan is heard to gasp and mutter J’ai le feu au cul under his breath.)





PQ (to Poot) - Admit it! Admit it! J'accuse!! You were notorious not only for posting the same long, boring article full of mis-spellings and run-on-sentences over and over again in multiple countries, but you also used bold text for the entire article!! Admit it!! Hang him!! Hang him!!!

Jack Flufferton (admonishes PQ in a quiet aside, then) - We are not here to criticize "Poot"'s terrible writing skills and crappy scrivenery unless they are germane to his general smelliness. Also, we did away with capital punishment back at the start of V2. So we are (giggles) permitted (giggles) to admonish the perpetrator only in lower case.

SamWystan - LOL! I see what you did there, Flufferton. Now that was a stupid joke!

Jack Flufferton (to SamWystan) - Oh stuff it Wystan. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Chutley - Gentlemen! Please! Let's return to the matter at hand.




(There is a general round of tut-tutting, tch-tching and a little bit of bitch-slapping.)






Chutley -- Citizen "Poot", on Day 1749, after you'd moved to the USA from your original home in e-Haiti, in an article with a horribly mangled headline... (At this point, PQ is heard to exclaim, "The horror! The horror!") ...you called Comrade-President Civil Anarchy, whom you first disrespectfully referred to as "our supreme master", a "traitor" and then you called for his "punishment". It turned out that you had no idea what you were talking about, had failed to understand military orders, and yet you posted this ridiculously incendiary article anyway, attacking the leaders of your newly-adopted country for no reason. People say that that was your first "big stink" in America. How do you explain this?

Poot - He was a goddamn commie!! Commie! Commie! Commie! A dirty stinking commie!

SamWystan - Civil Anarchy? The guy with a hammer-and-sickle on his avatar? A commie? How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion? Hey, while you're at it, you dumb-cluck, can you also tell us please, what is the color is the sky on a clear Summer day?

Poot - Wut?

SamWystan (to Chutley) - Just as we suspected! Let the record show that the subject lacks the ability to detect irony. This could be quite serious.






Chutley - OK. Moving along. After failing to post anything at all for about 2,000 days, your next major "stink" in the media arrived on day 4165, when out the blue you accused "EZ Company" of being, and I quote, an "ENEMY OF THE USA".

PQ (interrupting) - Again with the all caps too!! J'accuse!! This fellow has the literary know-how of a jackanapes. He is an infernal rascal, I tell you, an enfant terrible, nothing but a plouc full of the basest of rural idiocies, lacking both charm and savoir faire. (to Poot) Tête de noeud! You will be banished back to e-Haiti for this stink alone!

Jack Flufferton - PQ, please. Speak-a da English, if you don't mind?

Poot - I am not from Haiti! Why do you all keep saying that?



(General laughter.)





SamWystan (to Poot) - It is a well-known fact that you immigrated to the e-USA from e-Haiti. Why do you bother to deny it?

Poot - It's a lie! I am from Québec!

PQ (jumping up and down) - Nonsense! If he was from Kebeck, he'd either be organizing cross-border black-market tabac sales, or demanding the independence of his sadly oppressed nation from the perfidious imperialist occupation of the Albionese, or sitting in a café discussing experimental post-neo-noir films while sipping espresso, smoking cigarettes and enjoying a delicious maple pastry from Le Croquembouche on rue St-Joseph. Clearly he is doing none of those things! Imposter!!

Poot (pointing at PQ) - Who the hell is this creature anyway? He looks like a giant bird.

PQ (to Poot) - Mwen se pi move kochma ou, ou ti chen malad!

Poot - Oh fout.

PQ - Ah-ha!! There, you see?! He understood. Li pale kreyòl!!

SamWystan (to PQ) - Good job, big bird. (to Poot) We will mark this lying about your nationality as another "stink" against you. You are obviously Haitian. Stop trying to hide it!





Chutley - Getting back to the main point, you cannot deny that you denounced America's most beloved militia as "enemies" and "cowards". We have the proof. The question we want to understand is, why would you make such a stink? And before you evade that question, let me also note that, in response to grilling from TheNorm responding to your absurd accusations, you wrote that " Gnilraps.. he is the only respectable player in that mu".

PQ - Ah-ha!! And may I draw the court's attention to the fact that there, right there, he used lower case when capitalized acronyms would've been correct? (PQ stares at the subject with fire in his eyes.)



(Jack Flufferton sighs with exasperation and gives PQ a look.)





Chutley - And then a few days later, again in the public press, you wrote "idgaf really", apparently in an allusion to some stink you'd caused on some forum somewhere. Care to elaborate?

Poot - I don't recall. I was probably drunk.

Chutley - Hmmm. OK. Then in your announcement of a bid for CP, you stated that " I'll try to keep the game fun for our people because its the only reason to keep playing this shit game.. Fun, community and friendship amoung the players."

Jack Flufferton - Clearly, given your penchant for attacking anybody and everybody, that was lie. Let's mark that down as another big ol' stinker, 'kay?

Chutley - Sure, but let me build up to the really exciting bit first, chum. OK?

Jack Flufferton - OK.

Chutley - OK. Once you were elected on a platform of "clean air", you formed a cabinet that included two SFPers and a Fed. One of those SFPers you later falsely accused of "leaking" information from something called "Private Congress". In fact, along with Subject #1, you have practically made a career of bad-mouthing the Socialists and the Federalists. And you have stood by silently while that stinkl-a-roo froggy-creature has launched ridiculous attack after attack on your "friend", Gnilraps. Why the changes of heart, "Poot"? And before you provide an evasive non-answer to that question, let me also point out that the country was in fact completely wiped out during your term. Since then you have taken every opportunity to gaslight people and say that the invasion happened under Tyler Bubblar's first term, but we were already down to a couple of states by that time. There is no doubt that the wipe happened on your watch. To cover this up, you've claimed that the invasion was part of your grand plan to join Asteria to begin with. (Standing up and glaring with somehat intense, yet kind, angry-caveman eyes, with just a bit of sorrow expressed as well in the crinkles of his crows' feet.) Really dude, why should anyone ever believe anything you say?






(There is a general commotion in the secret tribunal room at this point. Evidently, Jack Flufferton had dropped his spam-on-rye sandwich, which was quickly gobbled up by Phoenix Quinn who'd shouted "Five second rule!" before scarfing it up. This rambunctiousness had caused SamWystan to spill his coffee on Chutley, who, being a caveman at heart, had promptly responded by poking Sam in the eye in retaliation, leading to a whole "Three Stooges" thing. A break was called and everyone ordered some snacks. Flufferton asked for some of those maple pastries that PQ'd been talking about, while the others made do with a sampling of macarons flown in from Ladurée in Paris.)





Artist's fanciful rendering of the investigators' reactions when the Subject was led into the examination room.






(Flufferton burps, rather loudly.)

SamWystan (to Flufferton) - You're an animal.

Jack Flufferton (to Wystan) - I expected this, it is exactly the kind of narrow minded philistine lack of understanding I expect from an uninspired piece of trash like you. Sitting on your detestable pimple ridden buttocks, not caring about anything for the artist that struggles. You shit, you complain with hypocrism like a flatterer though you enjoy coloured TV and golf clubs made by Tony Jacklin and the secret sign of your hand from being a mason. You would reject me from your club, won’t you? You bastard. Back at you, because even if you begged on bended knees I won’t join your Freemason’s society.

Chutley - Gentlemen! Please! Decorum! (to the Subject) Now let's move on to the most serious evidence. Not only did you insist on mis-gendering Aeriadne after she'd asked you to cut it out, you also launched an astoundingly mysogynistic attack against Rainy Sunday regarding her ownership of a Discord server. Along with driving two of America's most-loved players away, you ignited a firestorm of criticism for which you never apologized and which drove even more long-term players to quit the game. In terms of stinkiness, that was undoubtedy your biggest pile of poo. How do you explain such bad behavior, especially given your previous statments about "community and friendship amoung the players"?

Poot - (There followed a long string of expletives and homophobic comments unsuitable for publication in a family-friendly journal.)

SamWystan - Ahem. If it please the scientific court, I would like to present some photographic evidence at this time which may help to shed some light on this development.


(After a great deal of futzing around, something called a "slide projector" is brought into the room. Sam clicks through the following pictures.)







SamWystan - Here is a photo of the subject...




SamWystan - I would like to draw the panel's attention to this area. I know it is a bit hard to see...




SamWystan - And here is a close-up of what, in the common, if somewhat vulgar, language used in places where such things are openly discussed, like, say, in New Orleans and Los Angeles, I believe this tiny twig-like appendage is referred to as "wood", if I'm not mistaken.




SamWystan - Now, as the sage members of this assemblage all know, it's not the size of the ... ummmm.... "member".... that matters, but what you do with it that counts, along with other... errr... things.



(PQ is heard to be laughing derisively at this point.)



SamWystan - Phoenix, please. This is not funny. Let's not make this moment any harder than it already is.

Jack Flufferton - Oh wait! I need to disable my pop-up blocker for this.

Chutley - Sam. What is your teeny-tiny point?

SamWystan - Oh. No point really. Just trying to make it clear that the subject, who tries so often to be such a huge prick, is actually just a tiny...

Chutly - OK. Thank you Sam. I think we've heard enough. Let's move on. Do we have any more evidence to consider? If not, who would like to wrap it up?






PQ - The subject has gone out his way to promote radical right-wing Groyper nonsense in eRepublik. He's echoed real life Trumpist slogans in-game and even used pictures of the Orange Dumpster Fire himself to promote his "cause", with the clear aim of sowing division and racial hatred and attacking the foundation of e-democracy. He's promoted fascist notions in various comments, regularly posts asinine responses to perfectly legit articles, and continues to engage in every type of juvenile homophobic, misogynistic, and racist humbuggery. I expect he's probably going to be arrested any day now by RL Canadian authorities, one for being an illegal immigrant from Haiti, and two for probably being a member of the "Proud Boys" group, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the Canuckster goverment and whose members are among the 185 traitors who've already been charged with felonies in the United States for attacking the US Congress building on January 6th. I expect his recent attempt to change his name to "500 Euros" and sell his account, for which he received a 3-day suspension for violating the TOS, was done in order to raise money so he can flee back to his home island. He is a pathological liar. He obviously bought the account he uses now and he belongs to team that makes copious use of multies to evade the normal democratic processes in-game, all while accusing others of doing what they are doing, in imitation of their real life "hero". Given the evidence I think we can conclude, gentle-ghosts, that there is no single cause of his stench. It is simply the cumulative effect of years of douchebaggery. May Harambe have mercy on his soul.





(At this point, the machine which brought our panel back to life ran out of steam, leaving the subject all alone, pondering whether any of what had just happened was real. Or just a game.)


(As the four panelists began to fade out, dissipating back into the mists of time, one last comment was recorded...)





Chutley - Did you smell that?