Category: LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Secret Millionaires Club🌭

Post author By Merritt K
Post date 01/08/2025
3 Comments on Learning Day: Secret Millionaires Club🌭

Look: I hate to get political on this, the comedy website where I write about dick fights, but one of my core beliefs is that the existence of billionaires is proof of our failure as a society. A billion dollars is a staggering, unthinkable amount of money to be owned by a single person. In 2025 I imagine that you can have a million dollars and still understand human life reasonably well. A hundred million and reality becomes Grand Theft Auto Online. At a billion dollars, you are effectively a different species.

But, of course, some billionaires feel a pang of social conscience, a sensation comparable to what you or I might experience when considering the plight of cows and pigs under industrialized farming. Some of these enlightened billionaires spend money on researching disease. Some of them start pretend charities. And some of them make cartoons to teach kids about the world. That’s right — this week we’re finally talking about George Soros’s Totally Tubular Paid Protestors.

I jest, of course. A simple jape. Those are still free, after all. We’re actually covering Secret Millionaires Club, a semi-educational kids’ television program about managing money produced by Berkshire Hathaway and starring four students who look like glossy, if occasionally melting, corporate-grown clones of The Weekenders for the early 2010s.

Our crew comprises Radley, the tech genius; Lisa, who dreams of leadership; Elena, the upbeat optimist; and Jones, the reckless cool guy. They are led by an elderly advisor who teaches them the traditions of his culture: investor Warren Buffett himself. Together, they do battle with the Foot Clan of financial illiteracy. I guess in this analogy, Krang is the SEC?

Maybe it’s just that thinking about the Ninja Turtles has put me in a positive mood, or maybe it’s that I’ve listened to it a dozen times at this point, but I have to say the theme song for this thing kind of goes. Take it to the bank, boys, this one’s a certified Buffett banger.

The first episode functions as an origin story. Our core foursome sits through a Warren Buffett talk at their school, then discusses how excited they are for their upcoming class trip to New York. Immediately after, however, the principal informs them that the trip has been canceled due to budget cuts. The public sector has failed, as it always will. Only private enterprise can save the day.

Our heroes devise one get-rich-quick scheme after another to fund their school themselves — a skateboard washing business, selling popsicles, marketing an advanced autonomous robot one of them made in his spare time… these all fail. In desperation, they seek out Warren Buffett, who advises them to try something different.

They combine their powers like they’re summoning Captain Planet — only, you know, the opposite of that — and create a successful juice business that leverages all of their unique abilities. The trip to New York is back on, and Warren sets the kids up to meet Jay-Z while they’re in town, effortlessly slicing the Gordian knot of “would you rather have $10,000 or a 10-minute meeting with Jay-Z.” The answer is both, because you’re friends with Warren Fucking Buffett.

It’s the sort of story that gets passed around as an example of grit and entrepreneurial spirit but which in fact speaks to the utter disregard with which American political power treats our country’s youth. It is a story that would not exist in a just world. Then again, a just world would not allow a man like Warren Buffett to exist, either.

Speaking of things that should not be, I watched Secret Millionaires Club on YouTube, but it originally aired on The Hub. The channel began life in the mid ’90s as Discovery Kids, broadcasting science and nature-themed shows back before Discovery pivoted to bridezillas and ghost detectives. In 2010, it was rebranded as The Hub with the involvement of Hasbro, who paid $300 million for joint ownership of the channel. And that’s how we got a whole new generation of 22-minute cartoon advertisements for Hasbro toys, including Transformers, Littlest Pet Shop, and, yes, My Little Pony. This is where Friendship is Magic and, subsequently, bronies originated from. The Hub is, indirectly, why The Jar exists. If you don’t understand that reference, just move on with your life. Don’t look it up. You’re looking it up, aren’t you?

Secret Millionaires Club, then, was a kind of penance. Savvy actors do one for the studio and one for themselves. Hasbro did three for themselves and one for the kids. For Warren Buffett? For the money. But the show at least ostensibly teaches its viewers something. Let’s try and discern what exactly its lessons are.

1. Cut Corners, Because Nobody Will Notice (Except Some Asshole a Decade Later)

Nobody except me has ever watched Secret Millionaires Club this closely. My obsession with noticing errors like this, in which some overworked Korean animator left the storyboarding in on the principal in the show’s very first episode, is why I will never join the ranks of the rich. I could be speculating on real estate right now, or doing whatever people did with GameStop a few years ago.

You think Warren Buffett got to be a billionaire by giving a shit whether his cartoons were finished or not? No, he did it by some kind of financial trickery that I don’t fully understand and don’t care to research. He definitely didn’t do it by making sure the characters’ eyes were properly aligned.

2. Filesharing is the Great Moral Issue of Our Day

Diversification is important to any portfolio. Two amongst the number of the Secret Millionaires have formed a band, just in case being mentored to financial success by Warren Buffett doesn’t work out. Their bandmates are British teens. The sentient robot to which one of them casually gave the gift of life is not in the band. They’re emphatic about this.

Nick Cannon shows up and takes the kids to London because Warren Buffett knows him, I guess?

Something I learned about Warren Buffett in writing this article is that he’s one of these rich guys who’s worried about population growth. Nick Cannon is, at least in his personal life, famously the opposite of that. But wealth has a way of smoothing over what might otherwise be passionate philosophical differences. Anyway, this was 2013. Nick was only a sixth of the way to his current total at that point. He flies the kids to London to meet their bandmates. What’s great about this is how normal everyone’s faces are.

There’s a catch, though: their other bandmate wants to quit because her parents’ record shop isn’t doing so well. The kids don’t know what to make of this until they become the beneficiaries of yet more nepotism when Nick Cannon posts on Nick Cannon’s Blog about their single.

Suddenly, they’re stars, being chased around the streets of London by their adoring fans. But their newfound fame does not bring commensurate fortune — their fans have been illegally downloading their music. “Check the London webisphere to see how much music is being pirated,” a character written and voiced by human beings in the year 2013 says.

The thrill of creation and the privilege of connecting with human beings through art is immediately forgotten. Childhood is at an end. All that matters to the Secret Millionaires Club now is that those bastards who call themselves fans stole from them.

It’s a neat trick here, having the band become famous without a publisher and thus sidestepping the whole issue of executives being the primary beneficiary of traditional record sales. Hopefully the kids at home just follow along as the Secret Millionaires club turns to the camera and says “we need to dump all our pirated music! It’s so not right if we don’t pay!”

But what is the band to do? They can’t play gigs in bars because they’re under 18. “The answer is right under our under 18 noses,” one of them declares, in a sentence that makes me uncomfortable for both stylistic and other reasons.

They turn the struggling music store into a venue for kids. And Warren Buffet invites a very special guest.

The literal fucking Queen of England. As far as I can tell, they weren’t friends in reality — searching “Warren Buffett queen” suggests “warren buffett dairy queen order.”

3. Shaq is Six Robots Tall

In episode five, “Elena’s Shaqtastic Adventure,” the Secret Millionaires Club meets Shaquille O’Neal. There’s no pretext for this — he’s just friends with Warren Buffett and drops by their billionaire Batcave to say hi. I guess the normal Batcave is also a billionaire Batcave?

Radley, the team nerd, has created an advanced AI whose only purpose is defining financial terms and which spits out some of Shaq’s vital statistics. Think D’Nerd from Bots Master, only trapped on a teen’s iPad… for now.

Later, Shaq teaches Elena a lesson about the fragility of the human athlete’s body and encourages her to go to summer school instead of basketball camp. But the show’s got more to say about robots.

4. The Machines Will Inevitably Betray Us

Eleven episodes into Secret Millionaires Club, the writers became bored with the premise of a group of normal teens solving money-themed problems in the real world. Warren Buffett seemed to lose interest, too, because around this point he stopped voicing himself and was replaced by a couple of different actors.

I get it: you finally get in a writer’s room and it’s for a billionaire’s preachy vanity project. You try to have some fun with it. You’re green and want to make your mark. Maybe you get a little silly and pitch “three episode time travel arc to Arthurian England with Warren Buffett.” And hey, the team goes for it.

Only, hold on, that’s not how it went at all. The mid-series jaunt to Camelot, in which Warren Buffett casually accepts the existence of time travel and wizards with the world-weary attitude of a man who could run a thousand games of to-the-death human chess without meaningfully affecting his net worth was written by industry veteran Mark Zaslove. He worked on a host of ’80s and ’90s shows like Ducktales, GoBots, and… holy shit, this can’t be right — co-created Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad? Just when I thought I was out of the ’90s bullshit, they pull me back in.

Anyway, after saving King Arthur’s kingdom through fiscal responsibility, the team goes on a series of slightly more down-to-earth adventures. That is, until episode twenty three, “Far Out Future,” in which a girl from the 25th century seeks the assistance of the Secret Millionaires Club. She’s in a pickle because she borrowed a ton of money to invent her working time machine, but now she can’t pay it back.

Worse, the loan officer who made the deal with her appears to be Steven Seagal.

Only… this is the 25th century, so that must mean…

Yes, it’s that old chestnut. A sentient robot in a world where machines are second-class citizens disguises itself as a human to get a job at a bank and offers a predatory loan to a teenage genius so that she can create a time machine. When she is then inevitably unable to pay the loan back, the robot then repossesses the time machine, travels to the past, invests in Apple and Facebook, returns to the future, and uses its control of the economy to enslave humanity.

What we’re dealing with is Terminator if Skynet was Bernie Madoff. Warren Buffett is aghast at the idea — not the notion of messing with the linear flow of time or the prospect of robots overthrowing mankind, though. No, what ticks him off is that the robots are circumventing the best way to make money: saving a little at a time.

I know that this show is for kids, but come on. Kids aren’t stupid. They know Warren Buffett didn’t get rich by putting five dollars in his savings account every month. The show even has the audacity to have the teens save the day with compound interest — the account they started back in their time is worth a fortune now and they use it to pay back what their future friend owes.

Except, what about the bank closing the account when nobody’s touched it in centuries? What about the bank going under? What about inflation, which today already outpaces interest in consumer savings accounts? God help you, you haven’t considered inflation, you fools!

5. Bigfoot is Real

And his portfolio? It’s spectacular.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Gareth Powell, who had no idea about The Jar till he looked it up just now. Our bad.

Tags cartoons, Free, here's lookin at you, Merritt K, Shaqonomics 101, tv

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Baby Got Book (OFFICIAL) 🌭

Post author By Michael Swaim
Post date 01/01/2025
2 Comments on Learning Day: Baby Got Book (OFFICIAL) 🌭

As we trundle toward the end of another year, it’s more important than ever to convince your kids that an elderly flying man has broken into your home. But just as important, we also pause to recognize the REASON for the season – selling products. And, to a lesser extent, ruminating over the year’s bitter disappointments. There’s also a C-plot (sometimes called a “runner”) about Jesus in there.

Okay, that was a lot, so to recap:

Lie to your children. You must make them believe your lies.
This year I released a comic book, a fantasy/sci-fi novel, and a rap album. I think they are all worth your time or I wouldn’t have linked to them just now.
Sales of each have been bitterly disappointing, but I don’t care because they were fun to make! There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

When Swaim told us he wanted to promote his new rap album, we asked him to revisit the worst rap video ever created: Baby Got Book. We did this because we thought it would be interesting to have a talented performer who puts effort into his art litigate this cursed artifact with the eyes of an expert, and not because we’re jealous of Swaim’s multi-faceted portfolio and secretly hate him. It is not that second thing.

According to his website, Dan Smith is a “whiteboyDJ, Pastor, Rapper, Speaker, and All-Around Fungi.” Does it help to know he sometimes likes to spell it “Dan 5mith?” No, that makes it worse? Oh okay. In case you still need more identifying information, please note that Dan’s speaking has been heard at several events throughout the United States.

That should tip most of you off, but for the real dummies here’s the dead giveaway:

“Ohhhhhh, that Dan Smith!” Yeah dingus, welcome to the party. We’re talking Dan 4king 5mith, star of viral Xtian rap video “BABY GOT BOOK.” “B.G.B.” is the perennially cool way to honor the teachings of Christ at Christmastime, which you can tell because I spelled “Christian” with an ‘X.’ So break out your black nail polish and Not Of This World tech deck and do some sweet flick-flips as we revisit a classic yuletide banger!

By the way, if you finish this column and want to hear the full song in all His Glory (Hallowed Be His Beats), please make sure you’re watching the (OFFICIAL) version. It’s very important to both Dan and the Christ Child that no one rips off this unlicensed parody of one of the most famous songs of all time. If you did your own rap about, say, liking big socks? Dan’ll see you in court, asshole, and I’ll be the guy waiting outside with a tire iron and pantyhose over my head praise Jesus.

The video naturally kicks off with a riff on the iconic monologue that opens Mix-a-Lot’s original, but only three words into the proceedings we run into trouble. See, the usual way Becky’s friend tells Becky to look at the big-butted girl over there immediately includes the act of taking God’s name in vain…as in “Oh my God Becky, look at her butt.” Couldn’t you just feel the evil inherent in reading that sentence? For Dan’s purposes (not wanting to burn in Hellfire for eternity after he dies), this will not do.

Thus, our Hip Hop odyssey commences with the words “Oh my goodness,” dripping with judgment and said by a chinless woman to her Black friend who stopped by on a break between photoshoots for college admissions pamphlets. She accuses another woman of looking like “one of those preacher’s girlfriends,” who they “only talk to because she looks like Mother Teresa.” Here is a picture of the woman and a picture of Mother Teresa, but I’m not going to tell you which is which.

“It’s just so huge, it’s gross,” continues the lady I have dubbed Caitlin for obvious reasons. It turns out they’re marveling at the other girl’s big fat Bible and hate her for it, even though they are here in the same church as her and both holding Bibles. Hey, nothing says “Christianity” like finding another tiny degree of difference to gatekeep each other over!

What follows is an epic ode to big Bibles, girthy gospels, strapping scriptures, and some psalms that’ll take your head clean off if you’re not careful. It’s time for whiteboyDJ Dan 5mith…to do his thang.

It turns out Dan’s specific thang is lying sexily in a pile of Bibles like Lester Burnham contemplating statutory rape at his daughter’s basketball game.

Alternately, my man also spits rhymes from the safety of some huddled bookshelves, presumably also stacked with Bibles.

In case you’re wondering about that golden turd hanging off his neck, it’s supposed to be the letters “KJV” for “King James Version.” If you’re wondering why a rapper rapping about how he only likes big Bibles has so far surrounded himself solely with Bibles of reasonable dimension – hey, get fucked. Stuff this Bible down your soul; hope you choke on it.

Damn that’s a sizable Bibable! I bet four to six Sunday School kids had a really shitty afternoon assembling that sucker. If they were smart they Trojan Horsed it, and when Dan falls asleep they will emerge and butcher him for his crimes. Chief among those has to be this shot of Dan’s Mom (or should I say “m0m?”) licking her lips for Jesus and moaning “Me so holy!” into the lens.

In Hollywood, this is sometimes called “spiking camera” or “nightmare fuel.” I know it’s his real Mom, too, because the next line in the video is “Ooh Mama mia, you say you want koinonia?” This can be recognized by those in the know as an Italian way of saying “Ooh, my Mom,” followed by a string of nonsense no one has ever uttered anywhere ever. Go ahead, say “I want koinonia” aloud. Congratulations, you are the first person in history to say that.

I’m not going to publish the Baby’s Got Book (OFFICIAL) lyrics here in full, for I fear the wrath of both God and frivolous litigators. But suffice to say the guy likes big Bibles and doesn’t like small Bibles, and this is something about which he is incapable of lying. It’s Sesamean in its childlike simplicity, like Elmo misunderstanding the difference between small and far away. Frankly, there are moments in here we could use a little more of both.

At one point, Dan raps “I can’t understand how it is that some weenie / wants the Bible on CD!!” Since a digitized Bible is orders of magnitude larger than a physical one in terms of data storage capacity, we are left to assume that Dan doesn’t care what’s IN his ideal Bible or how many words or ideas it contains, just that it is literally, physically large. After all, his favorite Bible is a big wooden crate with not a single Jesus-word anywhere on or in it.

No one will ever convince me that this isn’t a screencap from an I Think You Should Leave sketch, and I’m the guy who embedded it in the article. Sam Richardson is just out of frame to the right, please don’t test me on this.

Smith is also very proud of the fact that there are a LOT of books in the Bible, like individually. After consulting with a handy chart and calculator, he concludes that there are sixty-six books of the Bible, a total with which “Stephen King’s resume just can’t compare.” And technically that’s true, since we’re just talking largeness and King has released sixty-five books, not sixty-six.

That is close though! I guess now it all comes down to who produces future books at a faster rate. King does write a lot, but the Bible is overdue for some sequels. Dan continues to dunk on lesser literature, sneering self-righteously as he tosses the works of Clancy and Grisham aside.

And, of course, because this was never about the teachings of Jesus but rather about grappling with simple size differences, he also angrily hurls a small Bible into the gutter.

Like, if you chanced by on the day this pastor was filming his Christian parody rap, you’d see him dashing a Bible to the ground in front of some beaver graffiti. You’d be all “that’s the word of God, you jerk!” and he’d be all “I know, I’m pro-Bible shitnuts!” and you’d have to drill down and get into a whole thing about it. Realizing this, one might again argue that whiteboyDJ D4n 5m1th is in essence struggling to wrap the mind of a child around the contentious and nuanced theological and ontological issues inherent to liturgical translation. A-men! Double up: A! Men!!

This is all to say, at some point in the video Dan’s rapper character takes a hard turn into Gump Forest, crashing the short bus and starting to act all (that word we don’t say anymore but used to in the early 2000’s and lately assholes seem to be trying to normalize it again on social media – you know the one, the Black Eyed Peas changed their song title and that marked the official switchover? That one. Look, I’ll just say it: dunderpate). The sudden shift pushes the featured actress into a caretaker role, instead of a sexpot one. She teaches Dan scripture from a picture-book, then claps condescendingly when he is able to apply a felt wise man with success.

At the exact same time, the video also includes shots that make it clear these two people eventually started getting flirty at Bible study…

… then got engaged at a subsequent, outdoor Bible study.

Wow lady, talk about some weird power dynamics in a relationship! This illiterate man-child just mastered felt, and you’re already locking that dick down? You two would be the most disturbing fictional couple I’ve ever encountered if I hadn’t already referenced Forrest Gump in this article. Of course, the unspoken reality here is that Dan himself starred, wrote, and directed the video, so ultimately the true power is his. Knowing that, what can we learn about what the Big Book-lovin’ man looks for in a wife? Our only major clue is the line “Baby got it goin’ on / like the wife in Proverbs thirty-one!”

For the uninitiated, Proverbs thirty-one describes an ideal wife, and most Christians encounter it as a cute sign like this one, usually wedged between an “Eat, Pray, Wine” and an “It’s Wine-O’Clock Somewhere!” These signs invariably paraphrase the original text the same way a school of piranhas paraphrases a cow carcass. It’s the equivalent of a pocket Bible that just reads “In the beginning…God…Noah…smite…Isaiah begat Mahershalalhashbaz…Jesus of Nazareth…third day…forgiven.”

Here’s all of Proverbs thirty-one, with a quick synopsis at the bottom if you’re in a hurry.

TL;DR – “Don’t get drunk around bitches. A slave you get to have sex with is cool though, if you can swing it. Fear helps.” – King Lemuel, crediting the hideous thought to his Mom to avoid having to own it himself.

But Dan 5mith and the future Mrs. 5mith aren’t hearin’ the haters, and that’s okay. Even if their coupling is sinful, they were Hellbound regardless, so why not go crazy with it? You see, Dan is left-handed, hence the very elegant custom ring he wears that says “5OUTHPAW.”

Left-handedness, of course, is still considered a sin by most leading Bible scholars and makes Dan’s redemption impossible. He will burn forever in Hell, which frees him to marry whoever he damn well pleases. All that matters to Dan is that they pack a big book and have a high tolerance for whiteboyDJ, a substance now considered toxic by the government and recently linked with a spate of birth defects in Appalachia.

That’s how you call him, incidentally, in case you want to call him. You actually only have to dial “READ – SAL,” but when he answers he asks what you dialed and if you admit you only dialed “READ – SAL” he gets very butthurt about it. He’s also not fond of you bringing up the time he tried to intimidate some Black kids and got rolled like a fucking chump.

These things naturally sting Dan’s pride, because Dan doesn’t consider himself just a parody or novelty rapper. He takes his work seriously. Although Baby Got Book (OFFICIAL) is what made him famous, don’t sleep on Haunted House or Dawg Pound. Both are terrible, and in a way that cannot be dismissed as unserious. Better yet, check out some of Dan’s deep cuts like “Lots of Caucasians” off of the album “The Caucasian Invasion” featuring his rap collective “The Patriarchs.”

FUCK.

I forget though…is Dan Smith actually white? Can we get official confirmation on that?

Check. Great, yeah, no, go back to parody. Parody is where you belong, sir.

Perfect, buddy! This is right at your level, I love it. You can’t tell, but I’m smiling and clapping condescendingly at you.

Right, of course! Why wouldn’t you parody a parody? That’s how you get the funniest stuff.

Okay, sarcasm over. What a fucking loser. Sorry, I can’t even keep the facade going now…four remixes? That well is dry man, move on. This shit is honestly pathetic to the point that I have to end the column now – that’s how much moist ick I’m sitting in.

Unrelatedly, if you liked this piece please find me over at CRACKED! I’m back working there again, making the same kinds of videos I did fifteen years ago and reviving all the old series you onced loved me for! So please do that! PLEASE. This is a call to action asking you to please do that. I will make more After Hours I will I swear. I’ll figure it out just please don’t forget about me for even a second or I start to disap

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neil Schafer, who prefers a woman less Proverbs 31:25 and more Ezekiel 23:20

Tags bible, christian rap, christian rap (KJV REMIX), Free, Michael Swaim

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: A Brief History of Todd Time

Post author By Michael Swaim
Post date 12/04/2024
1 Comment on Learning Day: A Brief History of Todd Time

Tags collapsing waveforms, history, Michael Swaim, stacking tags, todd time

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Ellerslie🌭

When a date’s going too well, I throw on the Ludys.

Nothing gets Saturday night soft and dry faster. What purity rock lacks in craft or feeling, it makes up for in bitterness. The disses to modernity need work, but the self-owns are peerless.

See? Dick game’s only weak when you use it. Why not keep the secret? No one knows you rhyme this and Jesus until you sell it.

Meet Eric and Leslie, God’s goalies for your genitals. They took “Every Sperm is Sacred” at face value and stretched it into infinite books. With ideal timing: in the gospel cycle between repression and smiling, the Ludys kicked off a dry spell. It’s hard to appreciate today, during a push to outbreed the future. But purity put the Ludys on the map.

They began and peaked with When God Writes Your Love Story. The man-meets-child classic brought fresh voices to stale ideas, reaching more people than you’d like. They’ve rewritten it eight times, embracing one hit’s wonder. But the Ludyverse goes beyond that. Sort of.

Correcting the Bible with one partner gets old. The Ludys explore purity outside their primary relationship, making their financial bond stronger. If you need advice on real manhood or their first book in Arial, Eric has you covered. If you need help whipping yourself or tips on whipping yourself, Leslie’s your hero. A range of enemies, minions, and no editors shape their solo album period.

Leaving one mystery.

I’m competitive and I love projection, so I wonder: who does God love more? Which Ludy spreads the least helpful parts of His word most effectively? I’ve praised Leslie as a “literate mammal” in the past, but Eric has zeal. Blind arrogance goes far against a rival sorry for breathing. Leslie thinks whoredom begins at conception, which might be enough for Eric to steal this.

Who’s the Alpha Ludy? Let’s find out.

Eric believes a man leads or isn’t, so he goes first. After a few rewrites of When God Writes Your Love Story, he outgrew hellbound publishers. He sold a 39-page ebook called Are These Really My Pants for human money, directly to fans. While worthless to the average anyone, that’s a clown miracle. I’m in.

Interesting subtitle. Going in, it helps to know a little about Ellerslie. Fact one: lens flare.

Fact two: It’s not a scam or cult. There’s a whole book explaining that, so don’t say it.

See, if you’ve fucked, the Ludys still love you. But less. So much less than the lonely. You can redeem yourself at another church, but go ahead and burn your tickets to Ellerslie, their training camp for advanced virgins.

Anyone can skip parties or boycott Star Wars. Ellerslie discipleship crafts elite masturbators. Here’s a student testimonial:

Hold on, that sounds repressed.

Shit, that sounds backed up too. The “drill Jesus instead of each other” thing needs context. Try this on:

Bam! Normal. Would a cult cure anxiety? Or even claim to? Hush, you know what I meant. Look past the hivemind text and horny subtext and see the Lord at work. Ellerslie’s a free shield for your purity.

A spiritually free shield for your physical purity. Your wallet’s spread eagle like prom night. This is a financial blowbang. My checking account got crabs from the webpage. Jesus loves the poor, and Megachurch workshops take the rest.

“Sweet, a cult,” an elite strawman might say. “We haven’t done one of those since Chick-Fil-A.” Stop. That attitude alienates the one key voter: St. Peter. Eric unpacks Ellerslie’s non-cult status in Are These Really My Pants, flash-kicking the ball into his team’s net. In soccer, this is known as a “fuckup.”

Not too hard. The metaphor’s at Eric’s reading level. He’s happy to have a label that, if you squint during a sunstorm, looks like Christ’s. And chuckling, non-furiously. No critic, hilarious or otherwise, could make Eric mad. Or stretch one metaphor for half a John Galt.

I’d take sketchy, unnamed credit, but Are These Really My Pants limped out in 2015. I was ignoring lectures and primaries. Eric’s loudest critics were other pastors with cheaper camps. Are These Really My Pants is a Christian diss response, and even more passive-aggressive than that implies.

If I were pro-life, I’d reconsider that pun. It’s not even a pun anymore. It’s a mutant, clinging to life, and must return to the cycle.

Flipping insults has a long history, unless Nas is an imperial wizard. Spinning “cult leader” is a challenge. Not impossible—robber barons like the odd wink-nudge—but this reads like a tantrum. If you’re unfamiliar with holy passive-aggression, Eric’s one rumor away from kicking through drywall. Or, if you buy his self-description, snapping his leg on drywall.

Going for humor makes sense. A cult leader’s too involved with himself and sniffing out FBI plants to make you laugh. Eric might be a cult leader. This joke’s like a rubber nose on a skin suit. Humanizing, if you’re dim enough to carry a horror movie.

Consider the fight Eric’s losing. Anyone paying for a Ludy ebook is a follower or future Twain Prize winner. Neither takes Eric seriously enough to call him a cult leader. Until, from his vault of virgin gold, Eric screams “I don’t run a cult. I can’t even spell cult. Would a cult have a vault this nice? Or an installment plan? You’re in a cult, heretic, and I hope you like the punch in hell. Minions! Seize him.”

No Christian has suffered more.

Fair enough. Internet backdraft’s intense. No one wants their virginity cult to trend, however brilliant the writeup. We’re not wired for mockery outside of spear range. That panic attack doesn’t erase the cult. Or the aggrieved ~~book~~ pamphlet about your cult.

Anyway, we learn being an idiot preacher/cult leader/idiot cult leader’s admirable. The one goal worth having. But the pants metaphor sticks around. It refuses to leave. Pants-as-reputation is Eric’s annual thought, and he drags it into winter. After three other deathless metaphors, pants expose the faithful’s true enemy: the faithful.

Again, fair enough. From the pews, satirical nonfiction might as well be a rumor or vaccine. It’s Christian punchlines that hurt Eric’s bottom line. And heart. I’d sympathize if he hadn’t convinced me, point-for-point, that he’s a cult leader with messiah and martyr complexes.

Though Eric has an airtight alibi: the compound’s not finished yet.

I’m convinced. Instead of a cult defense, we have a prequel. Fitting, since human Golden Retrievers crash into nearby lives like cars crash into real dogs. If that sounds like projection, I’ve studied the best.

That’s the power of a dying mind. “Churches get judgey” is the simplest point in the world, and Eric wrote his own indictment getting there. An achievement in uncraft. I didn’t come in convinced Eric’s a cult leader, but now I’m waiting for headlines from Colorado.

In fact, I suspect this self-published, unedited ebook cost Eric money. When one worshipper skips Platinum Bible School (Season Pass Included), Eric lost a Playstation. Selling Are These Really My Pants directly to his base lost him a Best Buy.

That’s our first round. Eric’s folded under pressure like the DNC. Let’s see if Leslie does better on offense.

I’m curious about Leslie’s side hustle. Eric has a lot of bylines, thanks to negative standards. She’d need full-time minions churning out Abstinence Monthly to compete.

Thank you, Lord. Now we have a Mania match. And none of my money goes to the cabinet. Until, you know, Leslie donates. We’ll stick to Issue 36, the anointed free preview.

Set Apart Magazine offers guidance for a fallen world. Whether you’re drawn to men or men, modern womanhood’s tough. Not because of the noise in the news. You have to think of Christ and marriage at the same time, and that’s two things. Team Leslie can help. Take Marli K’s guide to waiting:

She probably means investing. This aching tone comes from a life devoid of human investing. Especially watching the line, or dumping everything into one IPO. You’ll have a richer, brighter portfolio if you spread your money out a bit. And learn more about how the market works, and the world at large.

I assume. I write, most of my net worth’s rolled under the couch. I’ve almost saved enough for lunch.

Dope, this radiates sorrow. I thought Marli might be a mole, but she’s about that deferred life:

Comes with the territory. I’m still excited for Leslie: she’s been Eric’s Luigi since 16. This column’s running long, so I’ll assume he was 16 too. 16-ish. Look, I can’t pause for every groomer in power or we’ll never get through winter. With editorial control, Leslie can diversify. Why retread one courtship when there’s so much to be insane about? God prefers one partner, but allows multiple topics.

Ah, the hits.

I get it: not-dancing got her to the dance. Why would fifteen years change that? Your answer is killing your net worth. Eric tried branching out, and that’ll hit court any day now. And fans have expectations. I’ve seen Mastodon four times without hearing one note of “Blood and Thunder.”

Besides, this is a Q&A, lunch meat’s chosen format. Let’s beg the question:

See, Mastodon? From the jump. White whale, holy grail. Leslie saw a blank canvas, and told it to hide its shame.

If you think about yourself, you’ve already lost.

I learned a bit here. Both Ludys share one mistake: starting defensive and ending furious. But while Eric strangles one metaphor over thirty pages, Leslie hits her thesis in paragraph one. Then, she chokes one clear point to death. Night and sadder night.

For later, note the guilt complex. Leslie’s not super into Leslie.

This is a big one! And a glorified reprint. Cheating with your body is an afterthought: whoredom begins in the mind.

Longtime horseshit enthusiasts might ask if Delilah Strawharlot and her Netflix-fueled fall from grace exist. Or if Leslie, who built her empire around soul mates, should put it in scare quotes. It doesn’t matter. Leslie gets out fast, into “Guard your emotions.” While we’re mocking her first point, Leslie’s trained a Sisters of Battle kill team.

Is Eric more ambitious? Sure. My ambitions are finding a landlord with a soul and carrying Lady Gaga’s sedan chair. Neither’s going well, or very productive. Though I got an interview for the sedan chair gig.

And in the end, we all come together. Leslie wants fewer sinners mouthing off. I want less competition. I don’t disagree with a word here. With God’s way, I’d be the dicky apostate on HBO, laundering the hatreds of the day. And so much closer to that sedan chair.

So far, Leslie’s ahead in organization, content, and sheer self-flagellating madness. They’ll both send me letters for this, but Leslie’s might explode.

I see a tied game. I watch enough wrestling to know Eric’s one flip from turning this match around. The Ludy Kumite must end like all doctrinal feuds: two unreadable, nearly identical books. Welcome to this article’s original concept.

These came out in 2003 with the same goal, style, structure, and suck. Think Pokemon Pink & Blue. Each book teaches a color-coded personality disorder. They’re Rashoman versions of When God Tells Your Love Story. Which was already its own Rashoman.

To both, I posit a simple, word-searched question. What is love?

Leslie has champion’s advantage, so she can go first.

Alright, standard Disney Adult pitch. A little florid, but I get it. Now Eric–

Fifth grade cruelty? How old is Prince Brandon? You printed this. As a guide for your cult’s non-animated lives. Show them some respect.

Oh! She’s snapped. If Eric tipped his hand as a cult leader, Leslie’s confessed to at least three kills.

There you go. Love is, at all times and ages, a gate to misery beyond Verdun.

Here’s an exclusive. My beat covers branding demons, corn-fed nazis, and children’s propagandists. People that, as a rule, should walk into the ocean. But I’ll never type the next sentence again. Leslie hates herself too much.

We’ve set the bar below magma. Maybe Eric can sink less.

…Like an action tulpa? That’s nice, if I skip all my questions. At least it’s in English. We’re two hundred pages into an Eric metaphor, but he’s left Levi’s out of it this time.

Now I get it. I’m ready for my covenant. I thought it was too late, after all my gleeful, constant, unrepentant sin. But each line brought me closer to my bride. To meeting a bride pure enough to overshadow my everything. Or rather, making her.

I don’t need a wife.