Letter From Milo: Back on the Shit List

I don’t know why I ever got into the blogging business. So far, it’s been a huge pain in the ass. Oh, sure, the money and adulation are great. The gifts of liquor and drugs my admirers send me are sincerely appreciated. And, of course, I greatly enjoy the companionship of the nubile blog groupies who hang around our offices.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. I’m getting tired of the constant legal and personal hassles that come with the blogging life. It seems that every time I write something for The Third City, somebody files a lawsuit.

The Third City is keeping our high-powered attorney, Matt Farmer, so busy that he was forced to add two long-legged, busty secretaries to his staff, just to handle the flood of cease-and-desist orders, subpoenas, and orders of protection that arrive every day.

Our attorneys review the latest cease-and-desist order.

Here are a couple of examples of the shit I have to put up with on a daily basis.

A while ago I wrote a dignified, meticulously researched, high-minded piece about the Nobel Prize. In this article I referred to Alfred Nobel, a Swedish icon and the bastard who invented the first weapon of mass destruction, as a “low-life Swedish cocksucker.” The way the Swedes reacted you would have thought I got caught pissing on Gustavus Adolphus’ grave. Within hours of posting the blog our offices were inundated with thousands of phone calls, emails, faxes and telegrams from enraged Swedes, all calling for my head.

In that same blog I wrote about a guy named Joe Stiglitz, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics. Joe is from my hometown of Gary, Indiana, and it’s common knowledge in Gary that the only reason Joe turned to Economics was that he was a complete and utter failure as a bookie, which is what most of the town’s good math students aspire to become.

The very next day I got an email from Joe’s sister, Eloise Stiglitz, a lovely, elegant, highly-educated and accomplished woman, who also happened to be a high school classmate of mine. In this email my dear friend Eloise said that if I ever wrote about her brother again she would come to Chicago, hunt me down, rip off my nuts and feed them to the mutant carp in the Calumet River.

As extreme as those reactions might seem, they were nothing compared to the shitstorm that erupted when I posted last week’s blog about the outrageous and largely unproven allegations about me trying to kill Otis, the rotten, smelly bastard of an alley cat who weaseled his way into my home.

Late one night, shortly after posting the blog, I got a frantic phone call from Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this scabby, flatulent and talentless blogging crew. “Milo, we’re fucked,” he said. “That thing you wrote about your cat has ruined us.”

“Jesus, what happened?”

“I can’t talk now. I’m pretty sure this phone is tapped. You and Benny Jay come to the office tomorrow morning at nine. We’ll discuss it then.”

The Barn Boss was in pretty bad shape when Benny Jay and I saw him the next day. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days and it was obvious he had been drinking all morning. His desk was piled high with papers, most of them looking suspiciously like legal documents.

“Boys, we’ve got problems,” the Barn Boss said. “That thing Milo wrote about the cat has generated 19 lawsuits. I’ve got cease-and-desist orders from the ASPCA, the Humane Society, PETA and Greenpeace. I even got a petition from the Demented Cat Ladies Association of the Greater Cleveland Area demanding that we immediately stop advocating the mistreatment and/or abuse of individuals of the feline persuasion.”

“I thought everybody hated cats,” I remarked.

“Cat lovers have got a lot of political clout. They’re more powerful than the NRA, AMA and insurance PACs combined. They can make our lives miserable.”

“Don’t worry about it, boss,” Benny Jay said. “We’ve been through worse than this.”

“Benny.”

“What?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay, boss.”

The Barn Boss continued. “Who’s this Mr. Choi character?”

“He owns a Korean restaurant on Lincoln Avenue,” I replied.

“Well, this bastard is suing us because you wrote that he served cat meat at his restaurant.”

“I didn’t exactly phrase it that way. All I said was that I thought it was odd that he puts out bowls of Meow Mix at the back door of his restaurant every morning.”

“That’s why I always order from the vegetarian side of the menu at Korean restaurants,” Benny added.

“Benny.”

“What?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay, boss.”

The Barn Boss pulled a short dog of Old Crow out of his pocket and drank half of it down. “I talked to our attorney, Matt Farmer, this morning and he said there’s a slight chance we may get through this. He told me that with a few well placed bribes, a couple of timely death threats, and some questionable legal tactics, we may be able to keep The Third City in business.”

“That’s good,” I said. “A lot of people rely on The Third City for their news and information. It would be a shame to shut it down.”

“I agree. But we can’t survive another situation like this. We’ve got to be careful what we write about.”

“Preaching to the choir, boss,” Benny said.

The Barn Boss gave Benny an ugly look, then asked me, “So, Milo, what’s your next blog about?”

“I’m working on a piece about our worthless, flea-ridden, smelly old family dog.”

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