The following mini-biography was commissioned by U.S. Emperor Charlemagne “Charlie” Basura to be read at his 2045 inauguration, following his fourth consecutive election to the highest and only office in the land. The piece was submitted to his campaign manager for approval on December 31, 2044. Approval was not forthcoming, to say the least; however, several copies of the mini-bio were smuggled off-world by an underground network of googly-eyed rocks before Basura’s army of attack ferrets could track them all down. This is one of the surviving copies.
Welcome one and all to the fourth swearing-in ceremony for Emperor Charlie Basura, who is very, very, very happy you voted for him again. Before he takes the stage and rattles off his latest list of grievances against birds—which, as he will prove to you, are still not real—we should take a moment to reflect on how he, and we, got here.
Despite the grandeur that comes with any imperial office, it’s worth remembering Emperor Charlie came from humble beginnings. Born in a lowly hundred-acre mansion in a rough-and-tumble corner of the lower Hamptons, Emperor Charlie spent most of his childhood working his way to the top of the social ladder using nothing but grit, wits, mob hits, public fits, and the $3 billion his dad gave him. Despite some early setbacks, most notably losing his bid for sixth-grade class president to a googly-eyed rock wearing a bowtie, Charlie’s persistence and utter lack of self-awareness soon began to pay off, albeit in unexpected ways. By the age of twelve, the upward-failing wunderkind had gained international notoriety for winning TikTok’s freestyle edgelording competition 782 days in a row, shattering the records previously held by Andrew Tate and Sam Levinson.
Not content to rest on his laurels, Charlie then dropped out of school to focus on giving the Olympic Games what he considered to be a long-overdue makeover. Using his irresistible charm along with several pointed references to his ballistic missile collection, Charlie persuaded the IOC to adopt, and allow him to compete in, nearly three dozen new events that remain popular to this day. These included the 1600-meter trash talk relay; Alpine bellowing, which you could only win if people on the moon were able to hear you; and, of course, scapegoat yoga, a grueling three-day event in which Charlie stood on his opponents and twisted himself into logical pretzels trying to blame them for all the times Courtney from math class refused to go to prom with him.
Shortly after turning eighteen, Charlie was forced to retire from sports because of a broken shoulder (which, his doctor observed wryly, healed in the unlikely shape of a giant tortilla chip). With his Olympic career cut short, the ever-resilient Charlie decided on a whim to pursue a dual master’s degree in world history and creative writing. After two sleepless days of research on YouTube, Charlie produced his now-famous master’s thesis, titled “The Real Reason Roosevelt Lost the War of 1812.” In this extraordinary one-page, quadruple-spaced document, typed without any apparent irony in alternating upper- and lower-case letters, Charlie argued FDR could have prevented both the war and the subsequent fidget spinner craze if he had just outlawed some of the more dangerous radical influences of the time, like history classes and woke cello recitals and women named Courtney. While his thesis committee members found his argument less than compelling and his sources just a tad dubious, in the end they passed him, citing both the refreshing brevity of his thesis and the cookies and beer he provided at his oral defense. Three minutes later, Charlie’s thesis was published online, where it quickly gained a following on social media platforms like frathouse.gov and redditbutdidntgetit.com.
Now a freshly minted intellectual, Charlie set his sights on the ultimate prize: political power. After founding the Armed and Hammered Party and amassing a following of sentient bottle caps, Charlie ran for Emperor and won in a landslide. He was quick to credit his victory to the tireless efforts of his dad’s army of enforcer ferrets, along with the endorsement of several values-centered groups including the Junior Demagogues of Downtown Indianapolis, the Bro-man Catcalling Jerks of Silicon Valley, and a spacefaring cult of J.K. Rowling acolytes known as the Astro-TERFs. (While Charlie publicly welcomed the support of this last group, in private he admitted to wondering what planet they were on half the time.)
Charlie’s first official act as Emperor was to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “Look What You Made Me Do” as the national anthem, a move his supporters praised as “a touching homage to the musical genius of Scooter Braun.” He then demonstrated his commitment to streamlining the government by consolidating his foreign and environmental policies under a single initiative known as the “Kill It with Fire” program. Since those exciting first days of his reign, Charlie has ushered in a new era of extraordinary financial prosperity among his closest buds, not to mention an unprecedented level of uniformity in news coverage thanks to his decision to exile all but two reporters to the moon. Yes, friends, the moon, where some say you can still hear echoes of Charlie’s Alpine bellowing victory from however many years ago it was.
On that moderately poetic note, I would like to turn the microphone over now to our special guest Pope Elon X, who will be performing our national anthem with the Alcatraz Children’s Choir. Our beloved Charlie will then come out to deliver his inaugural rant and, time permitting, give you all a scapegoat yoga lesson so you can show off to your friends. Thank you all for your attention.
The Shellshocked Cassowary Rises 