"'BANZAI!' is what Woodstock would have been screaming had he been wired into a vocoder at the moment."

June 25, 2010 3:11 PM

Funny, apocalyptic cultural-mashup stories circulated as text files from the hoary days of the Internet's early-'90s adolescence: A Peanuts Halloween II: Electric Boogaloo¹ and Apocalypse Now (Or in That General Time Area): A Different Twist on the Final Judgement of Mankind², both by Gary Achenbach (a/k/a Subgenius Rev. Gar Drastic); Day of the Barney³ and Son of Barney⁴ by Brian Bull; and Star Wars: the Purple Sith⁵, by Ali Hadden.

     ¹"It had been a pleasant surprise when it was discovered that the perennially-silent Franklin had been probably the smartest man alive on the planet, even before Van Pelt unleashed his hordes of darkness."

     ²"'SO LET IT BE DONE!' Azag-Thoth intoned, then peeled a carbon copy off of the back of the contract. 'Here's your copy, here's ours...and I'm afraid God still gets one for the records since we haven't actually started the war quite yet.'"

     ³"Jeremy had never known of or seen a Loved One until well after the Great Act of Love. They were mysterious creatures, who spoke no language and communicated in curious grunts and coos."

     ⁴"Look at the poor bastard. He's not lovable. Hell, he's not even purple, more a sickly mauve. The skin's not plush and chubby, rather wrinkled, mottled, and those thick veins sticking out everywhere is a pretty long call from the one we all love and worship."

     ⁵"Don't you understand, Luke? Not only will that sector raise a race of mindless, politically correct invalids, but it will bankrupt us! You might...(she grasps his arms, a horrifying thought coming to her) ... Good lord, Mar—I mean, Luke ... you might have to start doing ... voice-overs."

(Not enough? Next on your list: Pooh Goes Apeshit or Death Zone Purple: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.)

posted by WCityMike (8 comments total)

[this is so fucking good.]
posted by shmegegge at 3:24 PM on June 25, 2010

Oh wow, I never thought I'd see those Brian Bull Barney stories again! I read those when I was in elementary school and they probably screwed me up in the best way possible. Brian Bull had a website called "Into the Purple Abyss" in the 90's, and it featured a lot more stories than those included in this FPP. I remember one that explained how every major catastrophe in history was started by Barney, including the dinosaurs' extinction, the bubonic plague pandemic, and both world wars. Thanks for posting this stuff, you've really jogged my memory!
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 3:50 PM on June 25, 2010

I went to the Peanuts one because I thought there would be a scene in there with Linus breakdancing on a ceiling with a broom. No such luck.
posted by P.o.B. at 4:02 PM on June 25, 2010

Everybody has good days and bad days.

This is a good day. A very, very good day.
posted by koeselitz at 4:28 PM on June 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Here is a copy of Brian Bull's anti-Barney fiction site Into the Purple Abyss from the Internet Archive. The images don't work any more, but the stories are in tact, and there are some that aren't included in the fpp.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 4:48 PM on June 25, 2010

Barney Reich is a personal favorite. An interesting study of the nature of fascism. Not kidding. (or kidding, in the nature of kidding).
posted by ovvl at 7:01 PM on June 25, 2010

Good Lord. And I thought I knew my way around the depraved internets of the subgenius. Great post.
posted by mwhybark at 7:13 PM on June 25, 2010

One Second Before Awakening: "I read those when I was in elementary school"

Oh, that fills me with rich and bubbling laughter and joy.
posted by mwhybark at 7:14 PM on June 25, 2010 [2 favorites]