Family plans intervention after Mumpower’s latest binge e-mailing
ASHEVILLE, MONDAY — When City Council member Carl Mumpower returned home from work on Monday only to discover a gathering of family and friends waiting for him in his living room, he knew they were there to confront him about his e-mail problem.
“I shed one icey, steel-blue tear, thanked them for coming and then locked myself in my home office and fired off a few dozen vitriolic emails to everyone in the city, afraid it would be my last opportunity to ever again do so,” Mumpower said from a rehabilitation clinic his family checked him into later that afternoon. “I knew I was only hurting myself, but it felt so damned good.”
After concerned relatives attempted to break down his door, Mumpower slipped out his bedroom window, got in his car and led police on a slow-speed chase, refusing to pull over until he got his fix by using his laptop to e-mail a missive that connected the dots between Vice Mayor Holly Jones, Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky and Paco the undocumented Sonopress employee.
Mumpower then sent the letter to more than a quarter-million recipients, shutting down several local servers in the process.
When his binge was cut short by a dying battery, Mumpower finally pulled over and emerged from his vehicle “stumbling, veering, seething, snapping, frothing and generally tweaking,” according to a police report.
“I was, for the majority of my weekslong e-mail benders, in a total blackout,” Mumpower revealed. “After I would come down, I read these letters and it was like somebody else wrote them.” Mumpower also claims that he was as surprised as anybody when he later found out he had announced a run for Congress during a foggy m o n t h – l o n g binge.
“It was humiliating,” said Mumpower. “I had been telling anyone who would listen that I had no aspirations of seeking a higher office, but once I got logged in to my e-mail account, I began living a lie.”
His near-fatal addiction was only boosted by his “reckless” decision to begin using a much purer form of e-mail intoxicant, known on the street as “Mumpower E-Express.”
E-Express affects the user’s brain immediately by delivering potent doses of straight-congressional Mumpower to large mailing lists, and once he tried it, the professional psychologist found himself in a “waking nightmare.”
“I was riding that E-Express hard, shooting memos regarding my intentions to personally chase down illegal immigrants, what it will be like when I’m in Washington, crazy stuff. Metaphorically speaking, I was building bus stops, but no bus was coming by.”
Doctors put the addicted candidate on a regimen of methadone and text messaging, to ease him off his drug of choice.
Food drive for latent crossdressers set for Oct. 31
Long, white satin gloves, size-13 heels also desperately needed
Joshua P. Warren kicks Pink Lady off Ghost Tour
Apparition demanding more money or she’ll jump
Community Calendar for Saturday
Poetry Alive! presents the “Meth-lab explosion injury” storytelling contest. Sorry, use of props prohibited. Drawing of “word pictures” encouraged. At trailer park TBA.
Asheville Singer/ Songwriters meet to discuss new acronym. ASS? Come on, people, we’re supposed to be creative here! David’s place. BYO sumthinsumthin.
Amateur Prison Tattoo Guild continuing debate series: “Bic pen or Newspaper ink,” with moderator Charles “Chopper” Davis. In the common room after cartoons.
Halloween is for like giving thanks and stuff
I totally love Halloween. It’s when we eat candy to celebrate the witches with the belt buckles on their hats who came over on the Mayflower to start America and how they wanted to have a big meal but couldn’t find food so they ate the Indians (also known as maize).
Then they dressed up as pumpkins and went around to each other’s huts and ate candy.
My grandma says that Halloween is Satan’s day and it’s a sin. I told her, “Grandma, the pilgrims did it and they started America, so you can’t keep me from giving thanks and stuff and showing everyone that America is #1 by dressing up like a Franken-hooker and getting myself some Smartees.”
Then she screamed at me to stop taking drugs and I told her, “I’m not high, right now, Grandma!” I don’t see how dressing up is going to turn me into a witch or something, like Kathy Smudsen, who only wears black and calls herself a wickie.
She’s just mad because she got turned down for being cheerleader and got caught making out with Cindy Burman behind the football field.
Yuck!
Anyway, Happy Halloween, everyone! And remember to thank the Indians for showing us how to eat them so that Americans didn’t starve and we could fight World War II and get candy!
Outdoor Burning Ban information
Last week, the N.C. Division of Forest Resources banned all outdoor burning statewide due to excessively dry conditions.
However, common courtesy dictates that you may start small fires under certain circumstances, such as:
• You think you hear a little mouse in your pantry and you need to set a small trashcan fire to flush it out.
• You’re holding a cigarette lighter up to your bottom and your fraternity brothers don’t think you can do it.
• You’re a bored volunteer firefighter looking to unleash his inner hero.
• Trees in your yard have those big pesky cobwebs in them, and your neighbor’s trees don’t.
• Your young child has no respect for fire and the only way to make him afraid of fire is to set a really big fire.
• Can you spot a fire in your back yard on Google Earth? Only one way to find out.
• All that gasoline you poured onto the anthill is now just sitting there, being wasted.
• You have a small crush on a local fireman.
• You have a bunch of newspaper and cardboard and grass-clippings and crap you need to make disappear.
Besides the Disclaimer, Mumpower’s emails are usually the funniest, most “what the f&*k?” moments of my week!