President Gorlax was hustling nameplates. He didn't need the money, a social lubricant his planet lacked. Blood lubricated things nicely. But he had a vision.
As usual, the essence of what he was trying to achieve was lost. He wanted to bring back fat gold chains and medallions. But most of his hip-hop knowledge came from the Fat Boys' films Disorderlies and Krush Groove. For instance, he thought LL Cool J's arm length was perfectly normal, so he attached cinderblocks to his wrists in an effort to lengthen his own. This made his sales pitches that much more difficult, and it was already an uphill climb.
His medallions were usually Franklin Mint collector plates with vinyl letters charmingly misapplied. Gold was just a color on Gortician, so he used yellow nylon rope or light-weight plastic chains that he spray-painted gold. He usually ended up with half of the paint around his mouth and nose. The combined effect hampered his sales to a large degree.
The other hitch in his plans was High-C and O.D. DrugWar's sideline hobby of killing off rappers, and stealing not only their estates, but their identities themselves.
Not that either of them rapped. But they figured they'd get them all out of the way beforehand, in case they decided to later. Consequently, they were the only people left he could sell them to.
He had managed to sell one to O.D., a Gone with the Wind collector's edition with "Odie Durgwah" written on it in red Sharpie. The kid really wanted a Wizard of Oz one, but President Gorlax wouldn't part with it.
Now he was running a similarly lame hustle on High-C, never realizing that they only wanted them as a joke, and took great delight in making him work extra hard at trying to convince them to buy.
For High, he had constructed a Star Wars chessboard out of a disc of interwoven strips of black and white construction paper, to which he had glued a Monkees album he'd cut off of a box of Life cereal. It was the only copy of Last Train to Clarkesville in existence. High-C wanted to hear it at sixty-six and sixty-six ninety-ninths RPM.
"That's an actual working record," President Gorlax was saying.
"At least it was," High countered.
"Scarcity increases value," PG said.
He had really mellowed that much. You could actually refer to him as PG. With the Space Olympics coming up, he was trying to rebrand himself as a kinder, gentler tyrant.
A homey despot.
It should be noted that punning was punishable by multi-death on Gortician. That fact that that was in itself a pun bothered him. He also usually broke the fingers of anyone who said "It is what it is." Or killed their wives.
"Check yo' premise, bitch-ass muhfukkin' Anton Lavey wannabe, Ayn Rand in a devil suit fucktard," High said.
He and Ode had a running contest to see just how far the could push him and get away with it. It was a little too easy, seeing how lonely he was. Decades of accelerated evilution had left him susceptible to the slightest unexpected kindness. Being nice was sort of the ultimate taboo on Gortician, and so even the tiniest friendly gesture sent him into spasms of delight. He was MC Serch to their Beastie Boys.
Read more President Gorlax, High-C and O.D. Drugwar in Perfect Me, Cure for Sanity, and Zombie Killa.
