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In memoriam: The Dandy Goat

February 1, 2017

RIP The Dandy GoatThe world of free online content is mourning the loss of a rising star. The Dandy Goat, which has published more than 800 articles since its launch in June of 2013 and was praised by readers as “lol” and “lmao,” has died following the institutionalization of its founder and publisher, Franklin J. Dubbles.

Richard Omega, the Dandy Goat’s chief writer, graphic designer, editor, social media coordinator and in-house legal counsel, says that in the absence of Dubbles, the closure was inevitable.

“Franklin was the heart, soul and gallbladder of the Dandy Goat,” Omega said. “Without him, we’re nothing but a snail without the mushy parts inside, just a shell. Or is it the other way around? Maybe he was the pretty shell and we’re the mushy parts.”

“Either way, we couldn’t go on without him,” he added.

Dubbles was known for his impeccable dress, unflinching certainty of his own moral and social standing, and a preternatural ability to talk at great lengths without actually saying anything. He launched the Dandy Goat more than three years ago as a vehicle to “push society forward on the right path towards real progress, if that makes any sense, which I suppose it doesn’t, but it sounds nice,” as he once said.

Those who knew Dubbles well say that he was obsessed with the idea that history could be nearly divided into two sides, the wrong side and the right side, and that he believed we had only a few more steps to go and we’d be located on the right side, forever.

“Franklin was convinced that everything would be so nice and sweet-smelling there on the right side of history,” Omega said.

Franklin J. Dubbles
Dandy Goat founder and publisher Franklin J. Dubbles, in better days.

Psychologists say that when in November a brash and wrong-thinking New York property developer was elected as U.S. president, Dubbles was struck by a bout of acute moral indignation from which even his firm sense of superiority could not protect him. He fell into a deep melancholy, barely able to make it to appointments with his stylist —or to brunches with likeminded friends.

And whereas he was once a luminary on social media, Dubbles found that he could he could no longer post rambling, self-righteous rants on Facebook, let alone tweet — as he was so fond of doing — in favor of trending hashtags created by activists.

“His tragic flaw was that he really had faith in the inherent goodness of people, of their willingness to follow him and other cultured intellectual fashionistas into tomorrow,” Omega said. “Sadly, this only set him up for catastrophic disappointment.”

A week after Election Day, Dubbles was sent to a private psychiatric hospital in upstate New York where he is expected to live out the rest of his days watching old episodes of Jon Stewert-era “The Daily Show,” taking fabulous selfies and posting them to an anonymous Instagram account, and writing a memoir about life among savages.

Richard Omega
Richard Omega, whose minor roles included chief content fabricator and graphic designer.

“Franklin was always so passionate about his own ideas, even if they struck others as vapid, but he still wasn’t afraid to voice them, and that’s what counts,” said dentistry model Iris Pearl, who dated Dubbles in the spring of 2012. “He’d happily take to the streets to march in favor of polyamorous interspecies relationships, or go on Twitter to call for a boycott of the Smurfs for promoting an unrealistic body image, if he sensed it was the next big thing.”

Ichabod F.N. Herstal
Ichabod F.N. Herstal, who still weeps to this day when he remembers his time writing for “The Goat”

In addition to Dubbles’ tireless work as the Dandy Goat’s publisher and Omega’s humble offerings as chief content provider, several contributing writers did help to give the publication its reputation as one that would essentially publish anything. Not least among these writers is Ichabod F.N. Herstal, who over the last few years wrote nearly 60 articles for the Dandy Goat. I.M. Salmon, a relative newcomer, saw 11 of his articles digitally printed in the distinguished pages of the website.

Omega says that if Dubbles were able to speak today, he’d probably offer a tearful thank you to the devoted readers of the Dandy Goat and urge them to never give up the fight against — whatever is currently out of fashion.

“And then he would go back to grooming his eyebrows, something which he truly enjoyed,” Omega said.

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Former ‘Occupy’ leader reluctantly accepts job as bank teller

October 28, 2016

Former ‘Occupy’ leader reluctantly accepts job as bank tellerROCHESTER, N.Y. — A former Occupy Wall Street leader who has spent the last five years trying to dismantle capitalism by subverting its exploitative wage system has reluctantly accepted a job as a teller for Bank of America.

Marco Saleh, 27, was one of the original instigators of the 2011 Occupy movement in Manhattan’s financial district. After getting evicted from Zuccotti Park along with hundreds of others, for several months he travelled around the country, exchanging handmade hemp bracelets and necklaces for food and lodging. For the next several years, he steadfastly refused to be a willing participant in an exploitative economy of any sort, preferring instead to live in his parents’ garage, continuing the struggle for revolution by posting all-caps messages in news article comments sections.

However, after getting kicked off his parents’ insurance plan last month due to age restrictions and deciding that he wanted to buy a new MacBook, he was persuaded by his stepmother Margot to apply for the teller position, which she had heard about from her best friend, Debbie, who holds a checking account with the local Bank of America branch.

“I went in for an interview with the local capitalist overlord, Mr. Drake, who ended up being pretty nice, considering his role in the enslavement of the 99 percent,” Saleh said. “He agreed to hire me, but made me promise not to liberate my coworkers during business hours.”

Saleh says that among his other duties, he will greet customers, cash checks, process deposits and withdrawals, and accept loan payments. Additionally, he will be tasked with encouraging customers to sign up for a credit card.

“If I get 500 customers to sign up for a Mastercard, I win a pocket watch,” he said. “I’m going to have it engraved with the slogan ‘The Revolution May Take Longer.’”

Saleh says he is quite pleased with the terms of his employment, which include three weeks of paid vacation, a health insurance plan, and contributions toward a retirement fund. Still, he is vowing to stay with Bank of America only until he saves enough to purchase 50 acres of land in the Yukon or the global economy collapses — whichever happens first. 

“Also, the revolution needs to be funded, and what better way than by siphoning off the one-percenters’ money, one bi-monthly paycheck of $1215 at a time,” he said.

Price of ‘thoughts and prayers’ nosedives to all-time low

June 14, 2016

 

Price of ‘thoughts and prayers’ drops to all-time lowIn the wake of yet another highly publicized tragedy, the U.S. sympathy market has been flooded with condolences, both genuine and counterfeit, causing the price of thoughts and prayers to plummet to an all-time low.

Walt Wisher, chief economist at the Dubbles Institute for Social Economics, says that a solid one-minute prayer is now worth one-tenth of its 2006 value, and that the value of thoughts has fallen so sharply that they are now virtually worthless.

“This tragedy-induced drop is just part of an unprecedented 10-year inflationary period to which there’s no end in sight,” Wisher said. “While prayers still hold some value, especially in rural areas, thoughts are worth almost nothing.”

Wisher says that in some major cities, you can find traders offering a whole barrel of thoughts for nothing more than a single kind regard.

“They’re even shipping U.S. thoughts by the ton to Venezuela, where farmers are using them as manure,” he said.

Until recently, the value of thoughts and prayers had remained stable, with prices only slumping during national tragedies, such as when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded in 1986 and in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks.

Nowadays, however, with smartphones and social media so ubiquitous, Americans are devoting many hours every day to consuming news about tragic events — while simultaneously sending hundreds of thoughts and prayers.

“Before Twitter and Facebook, people generally held on to their thoughts and prayers, and would only use them in extreme circumstances, such as when friends and relatives were directly affected by misfortune or violence,” Wisher said. “Even when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, most Americans sent either a few heartfelt thoughts or a prayer, but not both, and certainly not in the sheer volume that we’re seeing today.”

“My own sister is known to send thoughts when her Facebook friends post complaints about bad traffic, and one time she offered a prayer for a neighbor whose son failed his driving license exam.”

The value of thoughts and prayers is so low, according to experts, that funeral mourners are said to be pooling them to give them actual meaning. Also, in some online communities, the phrase “sending my thoughts and prayers” has become shorthand for “I don’t care, so go screw yourself.”

Top business school tells all: how we produce the best psychopathic predators

June 6, 2016

 

Top business school tells all: how we produce the best psychopathic predatorsThe University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School is offering a new course this fall: BUS 415: Concealing Your Psychopathic Identity: The Secret to Becoming a Master of the Universe by Adopting the Persona of an Empathic Individual. Intrigued by the title, I arranged an interview with Dr. Howard Roark, Dean of the Wharton School, and Prof. Maxine Moregreen, who is teaching the new course. What follows are the verbatim notes from our conversation.

Roark: This course title refers to the high percentage of our students who are clinical psychopaths. And I say that with a mixture of awe, envy and immense pride. Wharton’s MBA psychos eat the lunch of Stanford and Harvard B-School students.

Me: You’re not saying that Wharton is populating the world of high finance with serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or, god forbid, people in the mold of Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs,” are you? 

Roark: (chuckling) No, no, nothing like that. Some 3-4 percent of the U.S. population can be classified as psychopaths, individuals totally incapable of feeling empathy or remorse and lacking any social conscience. These psychopaths in suits are found at the highest levels of government, business and the military. One of every ten people on Wall Street is probably a psychopath. Heck, I might be one but you’d never know it. (Roark displays an enigmatic grin.)

Me: So this is your ideal applicant pool?

Roark: Yes. We want these exceptional outliers to apply for admission to Wharton. We then try to weed out any psycho wannabes who show signs of “Empathic Distress Disorder” (EDD), or even a scintilla of genuine concern for others. We show the applicants graphic images of the loaded hold of a slave ship, pictures of torture victims at Abu Ghraib, and photos of a dead baby washed ashore from a sunken refugee boat. Any sign of empathic engagement results in immediate rejection.

Me: Professor Moregreen, tell us how your new course bears on this?

Moregreen: Sure. I try to provide students with a public face that conveys empathy. Psychopaths are almost always mistaken for normal people but we’re all about removing any risk of discovery.

Me: How do you do that?

Moregreen: The best way to manipulate consumer behavior is to leverage the message, “We really care. We want to walk a mile in your shoes.” If customers believe your brand truly cares about them, they’re likely to adopt brand loyalty, and even become brand evangelists.

In my class I invite professional stage actors to portray optimized empathetic behavior. Another day, we watch the classic 1956 zombie film “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” to gain appreciation for the challenges facing “pod persons” as they try to avoid detection by normal people. Not to drop names, but former President Bill Clinton skyped with us, demonstrating the facial expressions, voice inflection and hand gestures behind “I feel your pain.” He’s a master.

Me: Your attention to detail is impressive.

Moregreen: I offer practical tips to convey undetectable “faux” empathy to obtain the inside information for establishing trust. These include: showing curiosity about their lives, asking questions about hobbies, learning the names of spouses and children, and using a mirror to practice that all-important warm smile. Depending upon the situation, a hug and even a few tears can close the deal. We caution our students not to engage in the latter behavior without sufficient practice to pull it off. It must come across as spontaneous.

Finally, passing the course requires performing a flawless impersonation of an empathetic person. This is done before a focus group of marketing and advertising executives, and, believe me, they can detect a phony from a mile away.

Me: This has been totally enlightening. Do either of you have a last takeaway for our readers?

Roark: For spring term, Professor Moregreen is offering an exciting new course, MGMT 711: Social Impact Investing: How to Do (Very) Well by Pretending to Do Good. It’s already oversubscribed!

Revealed: Big Pharma’s big plan to cash in on Zika

April 11, 2016

 

Revealed: Big Pharma’s big plan to cash in on Zika Note: The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus an international public health emergency and some four million people may be infected this year. Zika may cause brain damage and unusually small heads in newborns — a condition called microcephaly. Women who become infected while pregnant are at especially high risk.

Uppyurs Pharmaceuticals, the drug manufacturing behemoth, is frantically attempting to vanquish rivals Novartis, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and others by producing a Zika vaccine. A copy of the minutes from a recent Uppyurs executive board meeting was surreptitiously obtained by the author.

According to the minutes, “If everything breaks right, we will have a Zika vaccine on the market by mid- 2018 and we anticipate revenues in the range of $7.5 billion. Proceeding with this is a no-brainer.”

The document also reveals that $78 for a single Zika inoculation will price the vaccine out of reach for all but the wealthy in the world’s 35 poorest countries.

“One of our serious challenges is to neutralize a guilt-ridden American public’s demand to make the vaccine more accessible or even — God help us — free to poor people,” said CEO Darren Slickerton. He added:

  • Because Americans are almost pathologically compassionate, we’ve been working on an empathy-inhibitor medication under the brand name ClearSoul. We can report that ClearSoul has been clinically tested on Uppyurs’s upper-level management and has proven 100 percent effective. ClearSoul promises to be the most lucrative product in Uppyurs’s history if not the history of the world. We saw a need and filled it. ClearSoul will be timed for market release just as Zika is declared a pandemic.
  • Massive lobbying of Senate Foreign Relations Committee members so any government attempting to develop an inexpensive, generic version of the vaccine will be immediately accused of aiding and abetting global terrorism and be targeted in U.S. drone attacks. We anticipate this will be an easy sell to the media and the public.
  • As a distraction and to lighten the mood, we’ll prepare a series of small-headed baby jokes such as, “Why will Brazil’s soccer teams fail to make the World Cup after 2028? They’ll be unable to head the ball.”
  • Friendly media sources have agreed to “tell Uppyurs’s story,” an inspiring narrative we’ve ghostwritten and which recommends that a Nobel Prize for Selfless Giving be created and bestowed upon Uppyurs Pharmaceuticals. As a PR move, we’ll donate the Nobel Prize cash award of $1.5 million to the “Tiny Hoodies for Zika Victims” campaign and emblazon them with the Red, White and Blue Uppyurs logo.
  • Candidly acknowledging the fact that immunizations in underdeveloped countries now cost nearly 70 times as much as they did in 2001, but that’s only because of supply and demand. Not enough poor people have died off but that should change soon.
  • When questioned about lowering costs for the Zika vaccine, our standard mantra is that we need to pay huge legal fees for patenting the manufacturing process, and who could deny the fairness of $25 million dollar bonuses for each member of our board of directors?
  • Regrettably, governments of these desperately poor countries can only afford one vaccination program, including but not limited to Zika, whooping cough, TB, cholera, Ebola, Nipah virus, malaria, hepatitis B and D, HIV/AIDS and dengue fever. Given the immense profit margins for us, we’ve already bribed most public health ministers to choose Zika. The others will be banished from office by inventive, high-profile sex and corruption scandals.
  • Our invariable response to all criticism will be: failing to maximize shareholder profits would be an egregious violation of our God-given, fiduciary trust. Anything less would be both un-American and socialist.
  • Finally, we’re working on an exciting new marketing slogan, tentatively titled: “Uppyurs: Making the World Healthier for Those of Us Who Really Matter.”

“This meeting is adjourned and as always, God Bless America and God Bless Uppyurs.”

 

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