“Well I guess high society is just far more of a visual experience than I thought,” pondered Sir Broderick.

“Yea,” Lying Larry laughed, “Really it’s an audio visual experience, though. What you really wanna do if you want to get into the CKC is you ought to get yourself a lute and play them a little love song, a calming ballad. The more mushy the better. That’ll get you in.”

“Fascinating. I really ought to write this down,” mused Sir Broderick, “I had no idea it was such a performance. Why I thought all I needed was the rich person card and some sort of dog adjacent animal. I saw a lady walk a cat in with a leash, so I figured Trash Heap here could be my cat,” Sir Broderick lifted Trash Heap out of her perch in his saucepan and showed the poker players the mangy ferret. They roared with laughter. “You three are an awfully giddy bunch. Why I bet if I smiled and laughed as much as you all I’d already be in the CKC wining and dining at this moment instead of losing all my money to Biscuit Pisser. Seriously Biscuit Pisser stop raising you asshole. Ugh, fine, I fold. Let me see what you had, you insufferable little—Biscuit Pisser you didn’t even have anything! Stop laughing! Ugh!”

“Bithcuit Pithther you’re a lot better at thith than I expected.”

“A lot better than I expected, too,” he admitted smugly as he counted his chips.

“Hey, don’t count your chips so much piss guy, it makes you look like a douchebag,” growled Jerry as he counted his chips.

“You know,” started Lying Larry as he lit yet another cigarette and pointed it at Sir Broderick and Biscuit Pisser, “What you two, in vastly different ways, are experiencing this evening is what’s known as the afterpoor effect. It’s a theory where, essentially, the poorer you used to be compared to how rich you currently are, the worse you treat those that used to be closer to your equal. It’s what Caldonia is founded on, though no one will overtly say it.”

“No one with overtly say it?” snorted Jerry while he snorted some more powder, “Why, you just overtly said it. Old Lying Larry’s up to it again I say.”

“Oh stick a bag of coke in it Jerry. I’m right and you know it. We three all know it, look at where we are, and look where they are. You know I think we’d all be happier if we just turned it all up on its head. Burn all the chickensfeed, tell everybody that cock is dead and start society all over. Run it off communes.”

“Communeth? You know the people in Orwellia have a thector of thothiety that opted out of the thurveillance thtate and inthtead live in communeth in the woodth. I met with them to go on a vithion quetht, actually. It wath very enlightening. They live how we all ought to, I think.”

“Ugh, here he goes again,” groaned Jerry as he folded to Biscuit Pisser, “Limpy George on a kick about communes in Orwellia. Cluck you, Limpy George, and cluck Orwellia. Nobody wants to live there. If you sneeze on the wrong patch of sidewalk you get stabbed to death by trained assassins for insulting the government. I don’t wanna live in a land where the government is organized enough for trained assassins to twerk for them, Limpy George, and none of you should either. All the power should go to the twerkers.”

Lying Larry exhaled a puff of smoke and cackled, “Power to the twerkers? Jerry you haven’t twerked since you were twelve back at that sock factory.”

“We don’t talk about the sock factory. But if you did have to twerk at a sock factory, power to the twerkers would make your life have meaning. It’s a meaningless existence otherwise. You need something to cling to. Why not have power, and by extension money, be that said clingable thing, is all I’m saying. Let the twerkers have their power and they’ll all be too tired from all that twerking to use any of it, but what they will have is a hood chunk of change. Which is exactly what you ought to want for everybody.”

“I don’t want anybody telling me what I ought to want for anybody!” shouted Limpy George as he slammed a fist on the table and folded to Biscuit Pisser.

“Say, what’s this?” puzzled Sir Broderick, picking up a soiled newsscroll from the floor.

“Oh,” chuckled Lying Larry, “Just today’s news. Don’t read too much into it, it’s all a scam to brainwash you anyways.”

The three regulars cackled.

“Not all of it! Look at this! Why they’ve got a humongous picture of my ass in here!” Sir Broderick gaped, displaying the scroll, which had a large, detailed print of a sad looking donkey on it, for all to see. “I mean would you look at that! What are these people doing with my ass?”

Lying Larry squinted at the type. “Pfft. That’s not your ass. That’s Lord Dichtbaggen’s flying wolfhound.”

“Flying?! Wha—That’s not a wolfhound! That’s an ass, I am certain! I mean look at it!”

“Uh uh,” tut tutted Jerry, “Look at the article, guy. It’s just a wolfhound with…chode enlongation, chest jiglification and posterior juicification…not really sure what any of that means, but it’s gotta be a wolfhound. And it can fly, apparently. Though Dichtbaggen complains it isn’t necessarily well trained and can at times be quite flatulent.”

“Huh!” laughed Lying Larry, “I guess the newsscroll got something right. Lord Dichtbaggen has literally no reason to lie about an ass being a wolfhound, trust me.”

“No, you’re not listening to me!” spat Sir Broderick, “That is my ass, and my ass alone! Why I would know my ass anywhere!”

“Yea right, guy,” Jerry cackled, “Everybody knows asses all look the same.”

“All look the same? Why Jerry you absolute buffoon, asses come in all shapes and size! Every ass is unique! There are large and small asses, soft and firm asses. There are asses that kind of smell, and other asses that always seem fresh. Some asses are quite hairy, others not so much. Some are paler, some are darker. Some are even a little lumpy, while others are smooth as a bowling ball. All asses do not, definitively, look the same, and why that in and of itself is the joy of asses. That and that they are often most pleasing to be ridden, unless they’re exceptionally bony. The short and long and indeed even the middle of it is that I know my ass better than I know my own soul, and that is my ass, not any lord anything’s ass, and certainly not the ass of this, this Lord DickBag!”

“Dichtbaggen,” Lying Larry corrected.

“Whatever! Also I fold, again! Cluck, what do I have left, five chickensfeed? This is awful.”

“You know,” Jerry started, “If all the power went to the twerkers, middle-poor like you would get raised up to our station, where money has scarcely much of a meaning other than the fact that we all have way more of it than we could ever use, making your losses meaningless. Why I could go all in on this hand with old Biscuit Pisser here and just throw more chips in, whereas you are scrounging and scrambling because you’ve only really been able to play out of the kindness of Limpy George.

“These kind of issues only arise in a society where twerkers have no precedence for power and no ownership of their own government. If twerkers had already united together and seized the Caldonian government from the clutches of the royals, why, you would be quite well off, and never have to twerk.”

“I mean, I don’t much twerk now as much as I go galivanting on assback, drinking and swindling,” admitted Sir Broderick, “Though I will say I do twerk hard at my swindling.”

“See?!” Jerry pointed a waggly finger at Sir Broderick for emphasis and sniffed, “You are a twerker indeed! Why imagine never having to swindle again, and always just having what you need. That’s what would happen if you got together with all swindlers, formed into a guild of sorts, and laid down rules and protections that keep you well fed and from needing to swindle to simply exist. Then you’d be much better at swindling as a result of the security. You’d probably swindle even more, and better too.”

“I mean I’m not sure I’d swindle at all if I didn’t have to.”

Biscuit Pisser cackled at that. “Come on, Shitface, you don’t mean that.”

“Well, okay, maybe I would swindle, but surely not as much.”