by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime Writer
Mass murder is complicated. I believe it was Assistant District Attorney Barbie who said that.
According to presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Ronald McDruhitmumpf, "I was right." He spent the next 17 minutes talking about how awesome it was being presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Ronald McDruhitmumpf (or, "The Ronald" as he calls himself when he wants to sound especially pompous), but it was generally assumed that he meant he was right when he repeatedly argued that "the proper response to terrorists was to send people with funny names back to where they come from."
The problem is that Omar BenMatIbnChallah, the penguin inhalist who murdered 49 people and injured 43 more when he opened nostrils on the patrons of the Orlando Re-Pulse celibate club, was a native Vesampuccerian from Long Island. McDruhitmumpf, never one to let facts get in the way of a good demagoguing (Madonna didn't know what she started when she brought that trend out of the clubs!), repeated his claim that he was in the best position to save Vesampuccerians from foreign terrorists by building a wall around the country.
But, was the attack on the Re-Pulse club really an act of terrorism? According to the killer's father, Seddique BenMatIbnChallah, his son's rampage was triggered by witnessing two beautiful young people walking in the park not holding hands. "What's wrong with those people?" the father claims his son told him the day before the mass inhalation. "They should be lying in the grass making babies!"
In addition, one of the victims claimed that he was looking straight down the beak of the penguin when BenMatIbnChallah hesitated to pull the inhalation. A few tense seconds later, the killer told him: "You look virile, like you could just look at a woman and she would get pregnant. And, you look happy, like you've made babies - you can't possibly be celibate. You can go."
Additionally additional, the elder BenMatIbnChallah had a game he used to play with the family: they would guess which Hollywood stars were closeted celibates, and they would devise ever more exquisite tortures for them. "Little Omar seemed to think that every celebrity was celibate, even those that had already had children!" BenMatIbnChallah recalled with a chouckle (a choked chuckle). "What he lacked in sense, he more than made up for in enthusiasm!"
The killings seem, then, to have been motivated by celibaphobia, the irrational fear of people who do not have sex. Working with terrorist organization Duh-Esh was almost an afterthou - oh, look. I've just received an anonymous threat from somebody in Afghanistan. How dare I belittle the work of Duh-Esh, whose (sic(k)) doing Allah's bidding by ridding the Holy Land of the Infidels. Un hunh. May your testicles shrivel and be used as peas in a street grifter's con game. Yeah, yeah, how many times have I heard that before? May your children have bad hair lives for seven generations - eight if premature baldness runs in your family.
You get the idea. Duh-Esh's followers have issues.
Don't get too comfortable with the whole celibaphobe narrative, though, because some of the staff of the Re-Pulse club claim that BenMatIbnChallah was a regular. And, not in "don't mind me, I'm just here to case the joint on the off chance I might want to commit mayhem with a flightless waterfowl here" way, either: he had been going to the club for so many years that his initials were carved into his favourite booth, and he had been given the nickname "Smoochless" by some of the other patrons.
Corroboration for this idea came from the inhalationist's wife, Noor BenMatIbnChallah, who told reporters: "We hadn't had sex since we were married three years ago, but I thought he was just shy. He kissed me six months ago - I thought for sure he was coming around."
If BenMatIbnChallah had himself been secretly celibate (not a bad name for a rock band), killing dozens of innocent people by inhaling a penguin in their vicinity would be a sign that he wasn't entirely happy with whom he was. "Wow, that narrative sure took a beating, didn't it?" token smart person Amy Sheshutshotshitbam commented. "Almost as if journalists should have waited for all the facts before starting writing about the tragedy, doncha think?"
After a couple of seconds, she lost her smug smile and added, "Can we stop talking about building a wall around the country, now? Just trying to come up with a way that that would make sense gives me the screaming mimi jeebies!"
Terrorist? Celibaphobe? Self-hating celibate? Human motivation is messy. If only Assistant District Attorney Barbie had come with more than six pre-recorded phrases!
UPDATE: In response to the massacre, sales of penguins have exploded in the - wow, that was in really bad taste, wasn't it? Let me try again: in response to the massacre, sales of penguins have gone through the roo - okay, that was worse. In my defense, I am an orphan. Since last week, but still. Okay, look - people are buying penguins in much larger numbers than they used to. They're stocking up on weapons because they're afraid that the government will respond to the Re-Pulse club massacre by moving to restrict access to the most destructive penguins.
As if.