I will warn you right up front. This is a long, involved story, my friends, and if your attention span and constitution are short and weak-willed (respectively), then this is not a voyage worth embarking upon. If, however, you can appreciate the nuances of a tale involving a middle age tramp who, fancying herself a "mistress of the dark," endures extreme amounts of humiliation and public ridicule at the hands of vengeful, immature social rejects (us), then you have come to the right place. And now that our tale has come full cycle, and the masicated, bloated, rotting carcass that was VenusEnvy's Internet persona has been stuffed, piece by bloodied piece, into the dark recesses underneath my porch, I can finally begin from the beginning and tell the tale that must be told. Or something to that effect, anyway. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah. Stupid, thieving Internet broads.

It all began on February 9, in the year of our lord, 2000, when I was contacted by an anonymous party via email (well, they weren't really anonymous, but there's no need to drag them into this mess). This "person" had noticed distinct similarities between our Fruit Salted Plum Suckers review, which is on the left, and a certain article submitted to Writingz.com, a fairly popular essay-submittal website. As you, the keen-eyed reader, can see, after inserting a new first paragraph and changing Ben's name to Fred (a clever, intricate ploy to throw off our rabid fans, no doubt), she managed to completely plagiarize our work while somehow managing to make it stupid and unfunny (unless you thought we were already stupid and unfunny, in which case... why are you here? Asshead).

Obviously, Ben and I were shocked and outraged at the blatant theft of our work, which, as you well know, was gleened from years of blood, sweat, and tears. So we immediately fired off an email to the guilty parties outlining our general dismay with regards to the situation at hand. Please note that Writingz.com immediately removed the offending article and apologized profusely; they had no idea the article had been plagiarized.

Meanwhile, while our email was winding it's way through the vast expanses of this wonderful digital kingdom of ours, another development was simultaneously taking place in the Writingz.com forum. Forum patrons there had also begun to notice the "similarities" between Ms. VenusEnvy's "article" and "ours." And since VenusEnvy, at this point, didn't realize that we were on to her treacherous scheme, she apparently saw no point in bothering to concoct an elaborate but sensible lie to explain her actions. Instead, she decided to lay down one of the most inconcievable, moronic untruths in all the history of mankind. If you are prone to idiot shivers, then you may want to skip this next part. Even now, months after the fact, I still feel retarded for her when I tell people this:

VenusEnvy claimed to be my cousin.

Oh, you're an "incurable paranoid," are you, VenusEnvy? Well, I must be confused, because you just look like a very lonely, pathetic, dilutional person to me. I mean, christ, she may as well have painted a giant red bullseye on her enormous, lumpy ass, because it sure as hell wasn't going to take Willam Tell to nail her apple to a tree.

But it gets even better than this. Trust me.

She made the mistake of not removing all of the other stuff she had stolen from our site. And Writingz.com had logged her IP address. Whoops.

So we did the only thing we could do: we publically annouced that VenusEnvy was the official Jackass of the Universe and launched a bloodthirsty campaign again her and her ilk. Our fans diluged her email, guestbook, and messageboards with obtuse threats and insults. Much thanks are owed to Mr. Craig Hurst, who headed up a particularly brutal email onslaught (though this is where he really hit his stride), going so far as to create multiple personalities and email addresses with which to attack. Craig, by the way, is insane. We also managed to secure a badcandy@envyme.com email account with which to harrass, though it was promptly shut down mere hours later. Meanwhile, VenusEnvy was busy deleting all mention of the Bad Candy site from her page, removing access to her messageboards altogether, and carefully screening every entry posted in her guestbook.

This continued for about two months, until the magical day when VenusEnvy, in her own bizzare little way, conceded defeat. Yeah, I know, she says she took down the site because she is moving. But she also claimed to be my cousin and thinks that she's an Internet celebrity. So don't listen to that crap. We whupped her ass, and we are better people because of it.

The worst part of this whole ordeal? While typing this story out, it occurred to me how pathetic and uninteresting it must be to all of you. "Why should I care," you are thinking to yourself, "what some stretchmark-bearing, spandex-wearing, 'vampire of the night' Vegas whore thinks about Mark and Ben?" Yes, this whole thing makes painfully obvious what an immature dweeb I am, not only for leading a pointless crusade against an Internet nobody, but also for meticulously documenting the entire goddamn thing. But you know what? Blow me. Cindy Brady thinks we're superstars, and that's the only validation I need. And the next time you think about calling us a couple of losers, maybe you should step back and think for a moment: "What has Cindy Brady ever said about me?" Nothing, that's what.

Sincerely,
Mark and Ben

P.S. You can still send email to VenusEnvy if you feel so inclined. I'm sure she'd appreciate it...