Success!

For the impatient we will summarize this post in one line: We have "The Item" and it is more horrible than we could have imagined!

Those of you who have more than a few seconds to spend contemplating the implications of this statement will likely find the remainder of this post quite interesting. We are very pleased to have finally recovered "The Item" as it was the culmination of many months' work, and it is a terrible blow to the Parent Corporation. We have our experts authenticating our findings now, and, assuming they are authenticated, our find also rewrites the modern history of the brad and Jacob Gehris!

It all went down over Thanksgiving weekend (which, incidentally, is why there weren't any posts on Thursday or Friday) in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Penny Law's tip told us about the secret cache left by the famous Mr. Carruthers. It took us the better part of the weekend to locate the cache, but once we found it it took mere minutes to locate the item. It would have taken mere seconds to take the item into custody if we all hadn't been so shocked by the evil that is "The Item". After some open-mouthed gaping we finally did take the item into our possession and it is currently in a secure location being studied by a panel of trusted experts. We can't share much about "The Item" here and now, but once our experts authenticate it we will share the implications of our discovery with you. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with our apparent coup in obtaining the mysterious object before the Parent Corporation, and we look forward to letting you know more about it in the days to come!

"The Item"

We would like to thank Penny Law of New Haven, Connecticut, for contacting her local GPD office after our post about Justin Carruthers. Apparently our narrative caused her to recall something her late grandmother used to talk about, and so she began to search through the papers and things she inherited from her, and found some very informative documents. It seems that her grandmother had once been involved with Mr. Carruthers, and that she had learned a great deal about this item. We have Penny in protective custody and are grateful for her willingness to endanger herself for the common good. We hope to be able to release her soon, especially since her information has brought us very close to obtaining the mysterious item. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not amazed with the dedication or our supporters!

Generosity

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not generous, but we would like to take a moment to caution our supporters not to be too generous. If by generous we mean offering what we have to the less fortunate, by too generous we mean offering what others have to the less fortunate. While it is rather tempting, it generally gets you into more trouble than it is worth.

A new disease

Many of you have noticed that people around the world seem to be blaming others for their mistakes more often now than they used to. We have long suspected that this "blaming others" is actually a contagious disease, and we are glad that this study confirms this view. Unfortunately we were unable to negotiate a deal to allow you to view the full text of the paper free of charge and we apologize for this inconvenience. Just remember that at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not willing to take responsibility for our own failings!

A possibility?

We have been fairly certain that the motives of the dismemberment of Jacob Gehris were primarily based on hiding what Mr. Gehris was working on and in discouraging people from following in his footsteps, but an anonymous tip (of admittedly dubious sincerity) has us researching whether they were trying to amass his body parts for some sort of twisted museum exhibit, like they did to Galileo. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of this explanation, but as it is now all over the blogosphere we wanted you to know that we are, in fact, investigating it.

Please don't panic!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to a better society, but the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch does not make things easy. While we have been busily reconstructing the world economy to suit us (and you, of course) better the UBHP has been systematically reducing Eggo waffle inventories to the point that there will be a shortage next year. We would like you all to know that there is no need to panic as the GPD we have significant stores of Eggo waffles in undisclosed locations. If you are affected by the waffle shortage, please contact your local GPD office and fill out form EG-9123H: Request for Eggo Waffles. Again, there is no need to panic as you will be able to get enough waffles!

Another step closer to Science Fiction

We'd like to take a moment to say how glad that our friends at Simon Fraser University in Canada have managed yet another step towards making Star Trek-style phasers a reality! At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thrilled with progress!

WTFTFF 2009!

As many of you know we have been invited to participate in the World Technology Foundation's (WTF) annual conference on whether or not the time has come for mankind to technology altogether and return to his pre-industrial existence. Most of you also know that this is the first time we have been invited to give the keynote address. We beat out a number of Nobel Peace Prize winners and other experts in the field, which goes to show that our global efforts are gaining momentum. Soon we will be the only organization anyone thinks of inviting to their conferences, and then we will have accomplished our initial goal of world domination! After that, of course, we'll focus on improving the lives of our citizens everywhere, so it's a situation in which everybody wins!

The conference itself is aptly titled "Technology: Friend or Foe?" (TFF) and is clearly the only place for cutting-edge research on the effects of technology and new tools to study these effects. After all, it was in WTFTFF 2007 where Dr. Tyler Parsons speculated that Twitter would grow incredibly fast, despite its being next to useless. We regret to inform you that the organizers asked us not to quote from our keynote here, but we did want to let you know that we will be talking about the problems created by text-messaging. If you would like to attend, contact your local GPD office for details.

Justin Carruthers

Most of our readers will no doubt remember learning about John Henry, the man who beat a steam-powered drill but in doing so died of exhaustion. Unfortunately, efforts to identify the John Henry and the tunnel have been less than successful, as there are several locations that claim to be the site of the race and there were a number of people who went by the name of John Henry employed by the railroad at the time. Unsurprisingly, the details of the race, assuming it actually did occur, are even harder to pin down. It is for this reason that John Henry has become less and less of an individual with the passage of time, but has instead grown to be more of an embodiment of an idea: man fighting against the machine.

Fewer of our readers will be familiar with the story of Justin Carruthers, the notorious corporate spy who "robbed from the rich to feed the poor." He was said to have infiltrated no fewer than 18 corporations and funneled their intellectual property to the citizens of the towns where the corporations were based. His most famous exploit involved stealing the original formula for Coca Cola, forcing them to change it. We know that this change has been otherwise explained as "removing cocaine" but the legend says that the reason it was changed is that Mr. Carruthers stole (and destroyed) the original formula. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not skeptical of such grandiose claims, but, for reasons that will become clear as you continue to read, we are beginning to think that the legends of Mr. Carruthers may have some truth to them. We have tried to investigate all 18 claims, and have found that, as in the case of John Henry, we may never know for sure what actually happened.

In the past several months we have reported a great deal on the saga of the dismembered body of Jacob Gehris, but through it all one question has plagued us: Why, if the Company was indeed responsible for this heinous (and very odd) disposal of Mr. Gehris, did the Company have next to no information about the events in its files? Our team of experts has explored a number of theories, ranging from a desire of "self-purification" in the ranks of the Company to a catastrophic event that destroyed important information. One of the explanations we initially considered unlikely was that Mr. Carruthers has successfully infiltrated the Company a few years later and that he made off with the detailed documents. We considered it unlikely, that is, until one of our document experts (who had retired several years ago and will remain nameless so that he or she won't be harassed by people seeking to interview him or her) was paying us a visit. He or she saw the documents discovered at the construction site. The conversation went something like this:

Expert: "I haven't seen that handwriting for a number of years."

Tim: "Really? I thought you had been studying some of Mr. Gehris's journals as recently as last week?"

Expert: "No, not Mr. Gehris's handwriting, that handwriting there [the expert signals the corner of the page]. I would stake my reputation on that belonging to the famous and elusive Mr. Carruthers"

This expert had dedicated his or her life to proving or disproving the claims made about Mr. Carruthers, and after a thorough review it was found that all of the documents recovered had traces of this same handwriting. We also called in two more experts in the Carruthers incidents, both of which concurred with our retired expert.

It took us longer than we had hoped to piece together the coded message, but we finally did decipher it. It led us to another site, where a treasure trove of Company documents had been stashed. At the top of the stash we found a document written by Mr. Carruthers that explains the mystery far more satisfactorily than any other documents in our possession. The gist of it is that Mr. Carruthers had become an officer of the Company (under an assumed name, of course) in April of 1874, and that he collected information of value to the Company. When he learned the details of the sad tale of Jacob Gehris he decided to give the stash to Mr. Gehris. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Gehris misinterpreted his attempts to contact him as attempts to kill him, and in a desperate attempt to keep his family safe swallowed "the item," which caused his death. The Company, desperate to have "the item" cut Mr. Gehris open and then finished by burying parts of his body with parts of the plans for Aunt Gertrude in the places where we only recently found them. (Incidentally, these documents confirm our suspicions that the Company was threatened by "Aunt Gertrude" and didn't want it coming to light before they had time to twist it to their own purposes or otherwise render it ineffective). "The item" was subsequently stolen by Mr. Carruthers and placed in a secure location. We have not yet recovered "the item," but we believe that it was "Edgar's" goal when he attempted to infiltrate our organization earlier this year.

The rest of the story, although not explicitly spelled out in these documents, is fairly obvious. Mr. Carruthers, in a typically anti-intellectual-property fashion, destroyed hundreds of documents of value in the Company's files, hid a number of documents in the stash we found, and delivered the rest to the people. He was, by then, no longer able to maintain his assumed identity and had to quit the Company and move on to his next exploit. Although popular lore about Mr. Carruthers does not include an exploit against the Company, there are some obscure references in some of the older tellings of the story that seem to refer to these incidents. The Company, of course, purged their files of references to Mr. Carruthers and his assumed name, which is why they seem to have very little information about these incidents.

With a bit of luck we should be able to get our hands on "the item" very soon!

Distortion

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not reticent at the thought of complaining about the mainstream media, but there are occasions in which we must do it anyway. Take, for instance, the case of Dustin Reader, who carved a "B" into his hair, apparently in support of the Cincinnati Bengals. The media has tried to cast this story as a "young person versus the intolerant establishment," but they have left out a number of interesting facts. If you were to ask yourself, for instance, whether the "B" has other meanings you might be surprised at the other ideas this seemingly-innocent hairdo might represent. It is quite possible, for instance, that he is simultaneously declaring his support for Button holes, Barbecues, or even Brads. If your were to take this inquiry one step further, you might ask yourself whether the barber had ulterior motives as well. The media didn't investigate whether he has any suspicious ties to the now-defunct Company or any other secretive societies, and they didn't address the allegation that he has been selling hole punches on the side. We know that most of our supporters are vigilant enough that they wouldn't be taken in by such clear distortion of the facts of the case, but we fear for society in general, which is why we feel we must lodge a formal complaint against this irresponsibility.

Choosing appropriate role models

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned for our collective future, which, incidentally, is why we chose the phrase "The New Future" to grace our official logo, but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is our concern that young people seem to be using lower and lower standards when choosing role models. We have had a task force quantifying the decline in role model standards for several months now, and they tell us they are getting much closer to the answer*.

What we fear most is that unsavory characters such as Requleme Abanto, a brad eater, will become role models for the new generation. According to our simulations this won't occur for another 32 years, 7 days and about 11 hours, but that model assumes that our models of current and future Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch activity are accurate, and those models are very much dependent on our climate models.

In addition to helping the next generation choose appropriate role models, we, the supporters of the People's GNU Dictatorship are constrained to try to limit the unholy influences of such people as Requelme Abanto. He was, as was mentioned above, treated in surgery to remove a pound and a half of nails, and several full packages of brads from his stomach, and yet he does not understand the danger he is in. He even laughed about the prospect of being a sideshow nail-and-brad-swallower for his friends. Like he said to a reporter, "I swallowed 17 nails in February and didn't die." If all we aspire to is not to die, then I truly fear for the future.

At this time, we, the Board of Dictators, are calling on all of you to:

1. Pick better role models for yourselves.
2. Encourage young people you meet to choose better role models.

We would like to make it clear that while we appreciate the adoration, not all of your role models have to be members of the Board of Dictators or super-secret operatives employed by the aforementioned Board. There are at least a half-dozen other people worthy of your adoration. Okay, I can't think of six right now, but I'm sure there are at least five.

*Specifically they told us that their work so far has arrived at 42.44482, plus or minus 2. In January the best answer they were able to give was 37.1123 plus or minus 14. We hope that by the end of the year they will have a number which is accurate to plus or minus 0.001, but we'll settle for plus or minus 0.1. After all, while the exact number is needed for our simulations of the future, we have run simulations with the current figure (42.44482) and the limits of our margin of error (40.44482 and 44.44482) and it takes 10 years into the future before the simulations differ by more than the initial difference in the inputs.

An apology (Warning: may contain vegetables)

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not accommodating, which is why we take complaints very seriously. It has recently come to our attention that there are a number of our supporters who, like Vickie Larrieux, cannot bear the sight of vegetables. The term often used to describe such an irrational fear is "lachanophobia." We would like to apologize to any whose feelings were hurt by our failure to take into account the lachanophobic community among our supporters.

At the same time, however, the GNU Public Dictatorship stands for equality, and so we cannot and will not leave our vegetable friends hanging, so to speak. We have consulted with the Global Lachanophobia Awareness Detail (GLAD) and have determined that any future posts that refer to vegetables (including this one) will include a notice in the subject that will state that fact unambiguously. Labels such as these have been used successfully in the food industry and have made the experience of the food-allergic customer much better.

If there are any other groups of people out there that we may have offended, we invite you to make your voices known so that we can accommodate you as well!

It's just sad

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not socially conscious, which is why we find it sad that certain people don't think that all living things, animal and vegetable (and undead), deserve protection. Take this case, for example, when firefighters busied themselves with rescuing a pet duck rather than lifting weights or running laps. We wonder how much better these other activities would have been for the average taxpayer.

It's too bad they got caught

It seems that inmates at a jail in Indiana have been using a design flaw to visit with each other when the guards weren't looking. We just think it's too bad somebody got caught and ruined the fun for the rest of them. Oh, and although the article mentions "screws" we have it on good authority that the faulty fasteners are actually brads.

Finally!

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are pleased to announce that Cha Sa-soon has, on her 950th attempt, finally succeeded in passing the written test for her driver's license! We have been following her story for several years now, and to see her finally accomplish the first step of her goal is very encouraging. We had received many requests to aid her, but our strict policy of non-interference in driving tests has prevented us from doing anything. We hope she can pass the practical test soon so that she can finally sell her vegetables from a vehicle with an engine!

More details

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not informative, which is why we have been working longer-than-usual hours trying to piece together the plans that were buried with Jacob Gehris's dismembered body parts. We have at this point successfully located all of his body parts along with the plans from all but the hand. We believe those plans are in the hands of the Parent Corporation, and we believe that they may include plans for a clapper-like device. We still cannot reveal everything in the documents buried with Mr. Gehris, but we would like to give you the information we can provide.

We know that he called his greatest invention "Aunt Gertrude." After spending many hours with our intelligence experts we believe that revealing what we know about "Aunt Gertrude" will not put our operatives in danger and will not empower the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch. From the plans we have, we know that "Aunt Gertrude" was a rudimentary burglar alarm. It used mechanical means to turn on the gas to a lamp and strike a match. The lamp would light, illuminating the room it was in and alerting the occupants of the room that the signal had been received. The trigger mechanism is not depicted on the plans which we have in our possession. While we cannot be completely sure, we believe that the trigger mechanism was the clapper-like device that "Edgar" left on our computer system. According to the notes on the plans we have, the device was to serve as a burglar alarm. You might wonder why anyone would build a burglar alarm that would only trigger if the burglar clapped his hands twice in close succession, but we understand that agents of the Company at the time often used claps in close succession as a signal to other operatives of their presence. Thus, Mr. Gehris had designed in "Aunt Gertrude" a way to know whether the Company was in his home. The documents we do have suggest that he was killed to prevent this invention from becoming available to the general public, and that the plans for it were separated. It appears that the Company hoped to leverage Jacob's tool against him, but never got the chance.

We are very pleased to have discovered this wonderful tool for counter-intelligence, even if it is rather arcane by now. There is, of course, more to the documents than the plans to the clapper-alarm, but we haven't finished our deliberations on whether to make this information public just yet.

An effective use of emergency services?

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to making the world a safer place, which is why we applaud Ms. Strey's decision to turn herself in for drunk driving. Normally we would suggest that someone in her situation simply not start driving drunk. Perhaps she could have called a cab, or waited until she was sober. We figure that when she decided to drive home she must not have realized how drunk she was and that while she was driving it finally occurred to her. We're just glad that she chose to stop being a danger to others before something happened.

A new threat?

We're not sure yet, but it looks like someone may have fed this moth after after midnight. If any of you see similar creatures terrorizing your town, please alert your local GPD office. It might be nothing more than a freak moth, but vigilance never hurt anyone.

Good news

A new report out today shows that brad sales have declined again this quarter, making it 13 years since brad sales worldwide have grown. Incidentally, the GNU Public Dictatorship has been operating for approximately 13 years. We are quite pleased with the results, but we recognize that there is still a long way to go in the War on Brads.