I wrote this in 1988 or so. So sorry I seem to have invented online troll threats ...
19. The Violent Threats To Mervyn J Chang Company Of Bunkum, Nebraska
The Violent Threats to Mervyn J Chang Company was founded in the little town of Bunkum, Nebraska (population 12) by Melvyn Barf, an unemployed 32-year-old car mechanic. Armed only with a PC, a modem, and a warped imagination, Barf set out on his crusade to bring down one of the USA’s finest academic minds.
On Sunday 11 November 1990 (Veterans’ Day), he sent the following message to Dr Chang’s Email address:
to: mchang@nysu.edu
from: anon@erisia.com
X-ref: anon@anon.penet.fi
Dear Merve the Perve,
It is with great pleasure that the Violent Threats To Mervyn J Chang Company announces its five-year mission, to make violent and savage threats to yourself, Doctor Mervyn J Chang of New York State University. I am sure that you will be quaking and shitting yourself with astonishment as I, Melvyn Q Barf, announce the range of hideous and sadistic things that I am threatening to do to you.
Don’t you love threats, Doctor? Don’t you just love the feeling of mortal and hideous terror that comes over you when somebody posts you an Email message saying, I am going to cut your daughter’s head off and send it to you by Federal Express from Norfolk, Virginia? Then consider the feeling of abject fear when you are informed that the battery of your 1986 Chevrolet Caprice is wired to a 20kg pack of Semtex explosive, and that when you turn the ignition switch it will blow you to bits.
The New York Police Department decided that this was not a nut, kook, or otherwise person who did not have an identical mindset to that of a New York policeman or of a jamfilled donut (the two are largely indistinguishable), because of the reasonable nature of the letter and also the fact that at no time did Mr Barf express any admiration, longing, or feelings of an otherwise sexual nature for the good Doctor. When this precise statement was made in court, Mr Yail Bloor, prosecuring, stood up and blasted a hole in defending counsel Myrna Loy Beachpolluter, and declared, “You goddam daughter of a hawg. There’s only one good Doctor and that’s the Doctor.” It was later decided that he had to have been referring to Dr Hunter S Thompson, journalist, painter, reincarnation of Hawaiian king Lono, and the most famous denizen of the town of Woody Creek, Colorado. The hunt for the perpetrator then switched to the Family Arsenal of the Worldwide Church of Gonzo, a shadowy organisation devoted to net hacking, weapons, beer, and acts of frightening sadism. The game was afoot.
The Family Arsenal, situated in an old nuclear weapons dump outside Bunkum, Nebraska, was put under siege by two hundred FBI agents armed with bazookas, laser cannon, rocket launchers, miniguns and copies of “The Blue Lagoon” which they played repeatedly on fifty-foot high video screens placed around the arsenal. After forty of the FBI agents had gone bananas and committed such acts as cutting a dog’s head off and fucking the neck hole, holding a competition to throw grandmothers over an electric fence, and ravaged the nearby forest with an intent to kill not only every female animal but also every female plant in the area, this strategy was discontinued. On the 21st day Melvyn Barf gave himself up. The FBI shot him and then decided it wasn’t him they were after. Members of the Gonzo cult would appear standing on the wall, naked and daubed with red and green paint. Their charismatic leader, Marlon Skunkshagger, granted an audience to FBI agent Bernice Thrush on 6 December 1990. She was in there for days. She was even in there for weeks. On Christmas eve the Gonzies arranged giant loudspeakers on the walls and played a selection of songs by Harry Connick Jr and the Doors, terminating with a rendition of “The End” punctuated by the screams of obviously tortured men and women. This was followed by a ten-second silence and then Skunkshagger himself appeared on the wall, naked, arms akimbo, head shaved and painted green. He stood there while the speakers launched into, predictably, the “Ride of the Valkyrie”. As the music grew louder and louder, blood began to trickle from Skunkshagger’s nose and ears. Finally he threw himself off the wall and impacted a hundred feet down. The FBI were all drunk or deafened or both by this point and when the Gonzies burst from the gates of their encampment, armed with machetes and warclubs, the G-men were in no condition to offer resistance. The Gonzies slaughtered every one of them before sunrise.
Then they trooped back inside, congregated in the Great Hall, formerly a hangar for nuclear bombers, and standing in lines, each unwrapped and swallowed a cyanide pill. Several hours later State Troopers broke in and found 453 bodies. There were no survivors; or, as the Gonzies would have put it, there were no failures.
Dr Chang ignored the threats and went down to his car. He sat behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and the resulting explosion took out half a city block.