Estranged, Out-of-Favor Web Poet Threatens Victims with Bricks, Bad Verse
Provo, Utah (SatireWire.com) – e.e. commerce, the famed Poet Laureate of the Internet whose rousing verse once spoke of an online utopia that would destroy brick-and-mortar business, has apparently given up the fight and embarked on a five-state spree of revenge against offline retailers, assaulting his victims with symbolism-heavy bricks and seriously bitter poetry.
 |
Police say commerce should be considered armed and extremely disillusioned.
Eyewitnesses say commerce, who penned such now ridiculed poems as eToys is a STRONGBUY, mort d’bricks, and i e therefore i am, is not working alone, but is the leader of a five-person gang of former dot-commers that calls itself the Unclickables. Since Friday, the suspects have committed at least 14 robberies stretching from California to Colorado, each time using a brick as its calling card.
“I was taking a smoke break outside the store, and suddenly this car pulls up and this guy jumps out screaming, ‘You want bricks-n-mortar? Here’s your goddamn bricks-n-mortar!'” recalled Sandra Danherd, a cashier at a Provo Wal-Mart. “Then he threw a brick through the window.”
The bricks always come wrapped in a poem infused with commerce’s hallmark scatological syntax, although, as the Provo brick proved, his unabashed Web evangelism has given way to morbid acerbity.
| Just who is e.e. commerce? |
“on waxen wax-ed wings i rose took
flight adflight into the kozmo.com; I thought-this is
forever; this is. petopia! –
etoys i-had;etown i-owned. ichoose! icast! i.i.i-
melt! like icarus. like e-carus
my marchFIRSTfalls. and
pets.dot.com; like faultfilled breasts.
of-silicon has leaked; and
stained my floor”
While commerce’s accomplices have yet to be positively identified, police say evidence leads them to believe they escaped from DotCamp Alpha, a Silicon Valley refugee camp housing thousands of laid off Internet workers. “We’re pretty sure these Unclickables are early dot-commers because when they go in, they never take the money, even if a clerk volunteers to empty the cash register,” said Utah State Police captain Curtis Blevins. “Instead, they say, ‘It’s not about money. It’s about building the brand.'”
Police have warned employees of any business that failed to be killed off by the Internet to be on the lookout for commerce, who should not be difficult to spot.
 |
“For one thing, there’s the brick, but he also shouts ‘Do what I say and nobody gets disintermediated!'” said California State Police Sgt. Danielle Jenkins. “That’s not your average bricks-n-mortar felon there.”
And to erase any doubts, there is the poetry, which the Unclickables force victims to read aloud. “That’s really the worst part,” said Cliff Schumaker, assistant manager of a Toys R Us in Las Vegas, where commerce struck Monday. “We’ve had robberies before. We’ve even had employees assaulted before. But we’ve never had anyone make us read:
‘playful and happy likepuppies were we. like
puppies were we atplay in e
. e-commerce and they? theyvestors investors
they hugged us
likechildren;
they loved us
likechildren
but oh but oh;oh now they kick us
likechildren
kickkick KICK us; in our puppygroins
it swells.'”
With commerce and the Unclickables still on the lam, law enforcement officials have been sharply criticized for failing to make an arrest. Police and FBI agents, however, insist commerce is no ordinary criminal, but is “moving at Internet speed.” Eyewitnesses, however, say he is actually moving in a 1972 El Camino.
FBI agents, meanwhile, have fanned out across the West and so far gathered more than 3,000 pages of evidence, essential documents that FBI Director Louis Freeh promised would be securely placed in boxes and promptly misplaced.
Copyright © 2001-2009, SatireWire.
