Chapter V: Duh's Revenge
(May 2004 - June 2004)

"How did children get through school 50 years ago? It's amazing that all these new psychological disorders just suddenly appeared and everyone's got one."
-Annonymous

Heres a chapter provided mostly for the entertainment value, though I do think it contributes to explaining what kind of world Zion was living in. A world where people try to gain mystical knowledge by smoking the Bible apparently. Oh, and there are a few mentions about the Golden Shields... "comedy" website scattered in here too.

I haven't told you a number of insane things that have happened over the last couple weeks. I'll try to think of a few I'm allowed to tell you. For random reasons I had to drive from Estes Park to Golden at really high speeds on curvy mountain roads. Kaitlin yelled at me alot during that drive. Anyway, at some point Arthur asked me for a lighter and I was somewhat distracted by trying not to drive off a cliff. I asked him if he was going to smoke and he told me he didn't smoke cigarrettes. I know he doesn't smoke pot and I asked him if he was going to smoke a cigar, (because I don't let people smoke in my car,) and Arthur said no. Then I asked Arthur what he needed the lighter for and he said something crazy like, "I want to see the sweet flame of fire!!!" At this point I made the monstrously stupid mistake of handing him the lighter. WHY I don't know. That's like something [Zule] would do. I had some motivation, but for the life of me I can't recall or even think of something that would be enough for me to hand him the lighter.

About fifteen minutes go by and I'm lost in conversation with Kaitlin when suddenly I smell smoke. I turn around and Arthur has wrapped some pieces of paper into a cigar and is trying to smoke it. Then I see a Bible on fire - a fucking bible! I slow the car from like 85 to 25 while I yell at Arthur to throw the fucking thing out the window, which he does. Then he goes on for the rest of the trip on how he's really sorry, but he just wanted to try to smoke a bible. Evidently he was going to tear it out piece by piece and try to smoke it. Whether this is atheist blasphemy or some sun induced scheme to mystically acquire knowledge in Arthur's case I don't know - but none of that is happening in my fucking car. And Conor tried to throw a banana peel out of my window today. *Sigh*. Sanity went out the window with that burning bible.

In his next email he made a few other miscellaneous interesting comments:

Things have finially wound down around here. I'm done with all my AP tests and prom is over. I have to try to get a senior prank going at some point, but things have dissolved to the point where I might just have to get five guys together one day and do something.

There may be a ski intensive next year. We have intensives which are like experiencetials at DA. We go on random trips or do something for a couple of weeks. Anyway, for some blasted reason Ari went to the meeting and wanted to sign up. This is going to be a serious trip with serious skiers. She claimed she could ski a black run. I've taken her skiing *once*, even though we've claimed to be going skiing about five times. She skied easy greens. She cannot ski blues or blacks right now, and she seemed awfully offended when I told her that. She just wants to go because her friends are going... but they happen to be able to ski.

DU is ridiculously easy. I'm glad I'm not attending this school next year. I wrote a three page research paper in a half an hour and got 100%, when half the class failed the paper. And I didn't even do the reading and I had missed the last class, (because of an AP exam - I do try to make classes.)

At this point several months had gone by since Zion had invented his scheme to turn the Golden Shields into a comedy website which would be a total rip-off of Something Awful (Something Awful itself was now reaching the end of the time peroid where it was actually funny and was not far from jumping the shark). Thus far nothing had been done because just like with the old Golden Shields Zion was not willing to dedicate the time to make it work. But he now revealed a bit more of his evil scheme.

Anyway, as I believe I briefly informed you a month or two ago, Conor and I are going to launch GS as a satirical site... someday. It'll be a bit like Something Awful, but I expect a few more serious articles than they have on political issues and the like. My bet is you'll be able to access it for awhile, at least until we get popular enough that some restrictive company or the military tags us as explicit content, (as I do not intend for moderation to be a strong point in the site.)

Basic question was whether you'd have time to write an occassional article. That could be every few months, every few weeks, or every week. It would have to be humorous and fairly sizable, but that's really the only restraint. You could bicker about Iraq or write about how stupid it is for Microsoft to launch its new XBox with multiple Apple G5 chips for all I care.

It was still a stupid idea and I still expected it to fail. so I still played along with Zion's evil scheme in the hope that when it did fail he would see the logic in giving the site back to me so I could restart the guild with it.

Meanwhile, the final great showdown between Zion and Duh's school was unfolding.

Man, the last few days have been insane.

I launched a campaign for Peter Lamming for school President, and he won. He was running against four opponents, all more popular, better known, and better speakers than he. (This guy has a girlfriend, Amber, and that's about it for him and the social scene.) I basically ran around and talked to everyone about voting for Peter, and then the day of the election I wrote a one page piece for him and began distributing it around the school. The piece was critical of the school, and mainly addressed the fact that our student government doesn't do anything but plan prom. It also had a bunch of stuff about community and how he loved the school. Well, that's when hell broke loose.

I asked the office if I could put the literature in every advisor's box so it could be passed out during advisory, (which happens at the start of our study periods.) They told me to ask Mrs. Nealy - the faculty liason to the student council. I knew Mrs. Nealy would say no, so I instead found one person in every advisory and gave them the literature to pass out.

Sounds sane. Hell should not break loose at this point. Well I got a call half an hour later from one desperate Amber, saying that Mrs. Nealy was stopping the distribution and demanding to see me. She told me that in the candidate meeting no one had said they were going to distribute literature, (because Peter hadn't known until I showed him it that day,) and that for the sake of equity it couldn't be allowed. I told her that it was my right to distribute it and she didn't have the power to stop me. Perhaps a little more bold than I should have been, but that made her quiet. She demanded a copy of it, and I gave her one, although she wouldn't read it for an hour.

Logically, even though the other candidates weren't suppose to have the material they already had it before everyone else. Cami pretty much gave up, but the funniest bit was that she was mad that "Peter stole her ideas" when I wrote it and hadn't ever heard Cami talk about her ideas.

Later in lunch I'm told, "Mrs. Nealy needs to see you - she's pissed." I'm sigh and say, "I've taken care of that one already." Didn't work, "No, Terence, she's REALLY mad, she says she's going to make a speech in front of the student body on how this document is a bunch of lies."

At this point I'm like, "Oh, fuck." I met Mrs. Nealy in the hall, who was practically in tears. She yelled at me for the document being propaganda and lies. She had three clauses she really didn't like, two of which were factually true, (but she had somehow missed, such as a student being suspended without convening the judicial board,) and one of which called the student council a prom planning committee, which is an opinion I strongly support. She managed to basically say "FU" in a more appropriate, yet equally furious manner, and stormed around the hall telling everyone not to vote for Peter, and how the document, (which everyone is now reading because someone made copies,) is a plethora of lies.

This screenshot of Duh's Website makes Zion's point very well I think. Surely sounds like a Prom Planning Committee to me. They don't even call it a student council!

Well - what would you do if a teacher was demanding that you not vote for someone? I didn't think of it like that at the time, so I talked to Mr. Sapienza and sent Ari to talk to Mr. Syder to block her from making a speech. She was blocked, so she spent her time talking to one of the other canidates, Scott, on what he should say. His speech went like this,

"I've served on Student Council for four years. I have planned prom, organized the student store, and done everything for this school. Peter Lamming has never served on Student Council, never served in an elected position, and has never so much as spoken to anyone on the Council about an issue or signed a petition. He didn't even dress up on the spirit days. A document has been circulating around recently... and I want you to know it's all lies. Vote for me, vote for Britanny, vote for Cami, vote for Jake - but do not vote for Peter."

Obviously that only served to help us. Peter went up and made a horribly bad speech he read, not adjusting for any of the things I asked him to before the speech because "he froze." He really didn't need to, however. His letter made his points perfectly, and Scott depicted Peter as an "outsider" better than I could have done myself.

Peter won by a large majority, which pissed off the exact same crowd that was pissed at me for dating Arielle before. That would be Scott, Ariella, Megan & Megan, and Liz - who by some crazy coincidence had all decided to serve on our pointless student council. They percieved Scott as the heir to the throne so to speak, and were not tricked, despite my attempts, into believing that I didn't write the document. I got yelled at for a couple minutes by them yesterday and at least five today. A bunch of stuff about betrayal and how I never did anything and how they had spent hour upon hour helping this school and all I did was lie about the system. My refutation was fairly simple - although difficult since alot of people kept trying to yell at me at once: Peter won in a landslide - so it *must* be true.

I find it funny that I pretty much singlehanded won the Presidency for a guy that no one knew, (but a surprising amount of people didn't like,) who had absolutely no qualifications to be President. And all of this while insulting the school. I can give you the document if you'd like - but it's a page long and you probably wouldn't be that interested. I actually didn't mean for it to be so damn controversial, in fact Snyder, Sapienza, and Dysart complemented me on how well written and informative it was. But one lesson I've learned in politics is while it's not good to seek controversy, don't try to avoid it when it happens.

Zion may find it funny that he won an election for a guy nobody knew, but I find it much more funny that he insulted the school in the most public way possible and the only person to try and challenge him was a teacher that was apparently too blind or too ignorant to know that everything Zion said was the truth. That is the final proof positive that Duh's school has earned its name. Duh indeed.

But there was still one more thing Zion had to do.

Yeah, I intend to do a senior prank if I have to do it by myself. I'm going to school in acouple hours to do some work and scout out wheather my preparations on Friday were successful. Then I'll hopefully call in people and take action tonight with whatever I can get together. The old plan fell through because nobody did any of the prep they were suppose to. Hopefully I'll have a new plan shortly.

And sure enough, Zion did.

I told my parents I was "going to Ari's house" and would be "late." When asked how late I said 1AM, which raised shocks, "You only have two days of school left - why do you have to stay out so late *now?!?*." Then my sister said, "Ha. It's funny you think 1AM is late," (she just came home yesterday - I didn't know until yesterday morning.) To which I responded, "Sweet, I'll make it two then," and left.

I did go to Ari's, and then around 10:15 I went to go get Conor, calling him frantically since he hadn't been answering since he got home from school. I was counting on him bringing an annoying CD. I went to his house and met his Aunts there who said he'd gone out. I decided correctly that Conor had bailed on me and called up Amber to ask her to make the CD. It turns out Conor was at a strip club and too stupid to tell me.

So I stopped by Amber's house, and her parent's seemed really cool with her doing the senior prank - she told them about it. She said it would take a bit more to burn the CD, which we burned metal, techno, and really annoying loud songs on, (with random things like "Transformer... Transformer..." ect.) So she'd be right behind me.

I showed up to school on time at 11:30. Shay told me from his car loops that there were suspicious lights on and I should check it out. I snuck up to the second floor and heard a running vacuum. At that point I snuck back down to the basement, (where we had rigged a door and a couple windows open - the rest of the school was REALLY well locked up as we expected. DU takes their property seriously,) and waited there. Amber then called me and told me her parents had changed their minds, (they thought she was going to go have sex with Peter - which isn't okay so late on a school night.) So she made me go back to her house and pick it up.

Shay, Mike and I - now the only three on the mission - rendevous again at 12:35. They have me run another sweep into the building, where this time I hear the janitor pushing a cart in the basement. We then figure out that there are trash bags outside the school on one end - and that the janitor will be gone when those are picked up.

So we hang out, smoking cigarrettes, (first time I've ever seen these guys smoke.) They have fun waiving a dildo which they bought for the prank at some girls when we get gas. We then went to Perkins and ate.

A bit past two we go back to the school again - on what must have been our dozenth loop. The trashbags are still there, but most of the lights are out. I did another sweep, and called it clear. We then parked the car next to the school and ran in 80 pounds of catliter and a bunch of supplies in a crate.

Mike & Shay lay out the catliter to spell things all over the floor. I start working on the ceiling vent in the middle of the hallway which I'm trying to take down. Unfortunately it wasn't just painted over - but painted over REAL well with about a centimeter of paint. My knife couldn't get through it, and Shay's drill couldn't budge the screws.

No matter, we had a backup plan. I broke one of the attic locks on Sunday, which is just a bit down the hallway. There I installed a cheap but loud boombox with the "repeat" function on with Amber's CD loaded on top of a vent. It was to repeat a SlipKnot song, (Damn loud - hardcore metal - with lots of cusswords,) that we picked since the boombox could repeat one track infinately but not the whole CD. I waited to engage it and shut the windows of the school so security wouldn't find out too soon.

I then help Mike & Shay superglue a couple of dildos in slightly out of the way places that people aren't likely to notice very soon. They have some trouble with that, so I begin placing the 100 or so condoms we have, (most of which Shay & Mike got as free samples, and the rest condom brands we had but really didn't like enough to ever use again. Like Trojan Twisted Pleasure. Never get those. It feels like a really thick balloon is on your dick - which is pretty close to the truth.) I put them on doorhandles, on toilet handles, window handles, sinks, in urinals, all over the girls' restroom, etc. Shay & Mike finially get the dildos to stick - turns out they were using too much glue.

We then generally turn everything over and cause chaos. Spray random things all over the hall, etc. Then, as the ultimate touch, I turn on the music full blast, close up the attic and the vent, and slap on the original lock I managed to pick on Sunday. Then I grab a file cabinent key out of my pocket and break it in the lock, (hopefully they'll first go get the key to their own lock, see that that won't work and then get bolt cutters.) This was one heavy, good lock too.

Then we get the hell out of there, and celebrate with cigars. I didn't get home until 4:30. Some of the best fun I've had in awhile. It was mostly just social hanging out. We kind of got back what our group lost late Freshman year.

Or so I thought... turns out a teacher - Mr. Snyder - decided to come in every morning this week at 4AM because he thought a prank might happen and he could just do his work at school if it didn't. He brought in a cleaning crew and cleaned up most of it before everyone got to school. He left one nice touch considering he had five people with a few hours to clean it up: he left some of the catliter on the floor, now just spread out uniformly in a very lame way. His "vengeance" was to claim that all that happened was to put a bit of catliter on the floor and a condom on the drinking fountain.

I came in today, and a number of seniors laughed at me. We do have pictures, but I don't know quite what to say. Luckily Snyder didn't get it all. People have been finding condoms all day and a couple of the dildos are still up... waiting to be found. Also, they left a bit of the cut lock on the vent so that the access wouldn't hang down, and they didn't even remove the stereo. They didn't even turn it off - they just turned it rightside up and turned off the volume. It's still there visible in the vent.

This almost seems like a trap. A number of saavy people, not knowing what happened, believed the catliter was Chapter One - and knowing me I'd pull the most ultimate thing ever tonight. The thing is that I have no sleep and really no ideas what to do. Besides, leaving the stereo like that almost seems like a trap.

Zion eventually decided not to redo the prank, but despite the teachers spreading propaganda about what exactly had happened the prank was still hailed as a success.

No, I didn't redo the prank. We decided that a) it seemed like too much of a set up b)the prank had become far more epic in scale than any prank we could actually pull off and c) we were damn tired. Turned out that was a good choice because some other still unknown group tried to pull a prank the following night. They wrote "DUSucks" in lipstick all over and put grayfish in the toilets. Not my style at all - and the pranks would have merged or we would have had to abort after rising at 3AM. To the credit of the rumor mill no one pegged those actions on me. That's just not how I do things.

The prank has become fairly epic, and we're now credited with a bunch of stuff we didn't actually do. All and all I'm dissappointed most people didn't see a good part of the prank - but this thing has become far larger in scale than if people had actually seen what we did. I intended the cheap boombox to be a donation, obviously, but I did recover it a couple of days ago since it was still there. I can share the LP from theCD with you when you get back.

Another screenshot of Duh's Website reveals that the school is now closed forever. Rot in Hell Duh's!

Go to Chapter VI, All Good Things Must End