HAROLD OF THE UNDERWORLD
I'm not sure how to get the correct font so while you are reading this, please just pretend it looks as cool as the prior 8

QUALITY, FACTUAL JOURNALISM. HOT SCOOPS.
THIS IS GOING TO; BE IN HAIKU FORM SEVEN; READ AND BE MERRY

Journalistic quote of the week:

Finally, that bastard falls. Harold is no more, through my convinctions and strength I was able to shut him down. My father attempted to firebomb his entire operations but forgot the golden rule, that one can use guile instead of power. One can simply. Become. Harold.

- Unknown

FRONT PAGE

Harold was fired;

All was lost until Buster;

Like a phoenix rose.

This has been a long time coming, folks. Today I will be bringing you the news, the hot topics, and everything in between. While I am very disappointed to say that Harold has been fired from his very job by Ned, the competition commission leader himself. I am happy to report that I was given his mantle and I will do the best job that I know how.

If anyone would like to send me information for the newspaper, well I don't know how to do that. I don't really understand how Harold did a lot of things and one might say that I'm a bit in over my head. I wasn't born to be a journalist, and this is definitely not my passion-- in fact, I sort of hate the idea of writing a gossip rag.

I'm losing my fucking mind

Dear Readers,

It is me, Buster. This was supposed to be my Arc De Triomphe, my Magnum Opus, and my very first shot at making something of myself in this crazy world. Instead, I'm floundering and I'm flustered; constantly I look around to find something to talk about, and my mind completely shuts itself off from the possibility.

I was going to go ask Balls for an interview, but that's so cliche. So boring. Who wants to hear from a Godfather Chairman these days? We hear enough from them in our everyday life. There's no FIRE in my heart. I want to be walking with the lowest of the criminals, I want to get my hands in the shit and the muck and pull forth something beautiful.

Where's my muse? Where's my inner fire? I close my eyes and just see darkness. I feel nothing. Could this be because I've achieved everything I want to in my life? Or could it be something else altogether? One of my inner circle told me about this shit called therapy, so I gave him therapy with a bullet. I don't need therapy, I just need someone to help me diagnose what's wrong with my feelings and why they've turned on me, but sadly I guess there just ain't shit like that in this world.

Fuck it.

Ned Harrington, you son of a bitch. I'm calling you out here and now.

This isn't a fucking Newspaper anymore. This is me calling out the entire god damned competition commission, it's a fucking fraudulent thing and I won't keep telling myself otherwise. I asked this guy if I could be his disinformation chief and before he could even answer I started writing this piece of shit. I hate it, and I'm not even sure if there's a point to it-- what if he tells me no? 

I didn't think any of this through. I'm in over my fucking head.

Everything sucks now;

I feel myself falling down;

Will Harold help me?

I DONT WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE I DONT WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE I DONT WANT TO

YOU CAN HAVE IT BACK THIS WASN'T WORTH IT I'M DONE. I'M FINISHED. 

I'LL NEVER WRITE COMPETITIVELY OR OTHERWISE AGAIN.

Time stands still;

I hate haikus;

Fuck this one 

This newspaper is over FUCK THIS Harold can have it back

As much as I like this edition I'd be remiss to point out that your first and last haikus aren't haikus. Please learn to count syllables. 

I would just like to state that the views of BusterScruggs do not reflect the views of Mikey or The Church of Guinness, especially where hostility towards The Competition Commission is concerned. We have always been great supporters of The Competition Commission and their never-ending mission to rid the world of competition-related mass murder and the fraudulent awarding of prizes to non-entrants (cough).

TomJoad, it is very interesting that you come out here and say this. In my roughly eight minutes of hard journalism from the time I begged Ned to become his top reporter all the way to the submission of my first and last newspaper, I heard a lot about you from your surprisingly many detractors who all called you "Tom Load" on account of the, and I am quoting someone else here: "loads of shit that you spew for the competition commission". They also called you a few other names, but I don't have time to go through the more disgusting ones. Now obviously as a lesser in your family and one of the most loyal of Wise Guys to Mikey, I spit in the face of these horrible and very anonymous men and would never presume to believe a word that they say. 

In fact, I wish death on each and every one of these men who I'd like to once again remind you remain completely anonymous, as I still hold that one last dying part of my journalistic ethics code, but with all of that said... could they have a point here? Could you perhaps be a bit too close to Ned? If I were still a junior journalist then I would delve deeply into this and leave absolutely no stone unturned in my search for the truth, but alas, those days are far behind me.

These days I am nothing more than a sick and destitute man who accidentally left on the printing presses all night long and accidentally burned through millions of dollars worth of ink and paper. This reminds me, I will be announcing a new brand of Harold toilet paper that will be hitting shelves in nearly every single American store in these coming weeks-- please buy a roll! They're one-ply!

Anyways, yes. What TomJoad says is true. This newspaper is completely unaffiliated with my leader and nothing that I say here should be taken as something that he agrees with. He whispers under his breath something about how surely Mikey would agree if his right hand wasn't a puppet for the commission, it's very low, and Tom most definitely can't hear it. 

He accidentally called Tom Joad the RH under his breath, and while he would happily retract and fix this statement under most circumstances; due to a large fear that he may have to recall what he said in the privacy of a whisper to a larger audience, he instead left it alone and silently respected that Indifference is the right hand and NOT Joad, who would be far more at home being the right hand to the competition commission than that of the highly esteemed and much respected (by Buster, most of all) Church of Guinness.

Ahem. Sorry, I had a slight twitch in my throat. It's better now. 

This is  a prime example of why each city head should have to appoint a media handler.  We must protect the organs of opinion, lest this happen. 

I wake up this morning with an intern at the side of my bed, violently shaking it in an attempt to wake me from my deep slumber, the kind of slumber that one only reaches after an intensive 24 hour stretch of investigative journalism.

The intern holds up a paper, his face being drained of all colour. I sit up in my bed and look at it, it says "The Harold Vol III, No 9" on the top in the wrong typesetting. I am confused. I ask him where he got this from. He says that it was handed to him by a paperboy which wasn't on our payroll.

I read the paper, it says it has "HIGH QUALITY, FACTUAL JOURNALISM" but it doesn't contain any of that. It only contains haikus (or things pretending to be haikus) and the deranged ramblings of a madman. The typesetting is upsetting.

My breathing grows ragged, a mixture of rage and adrenaline starts to flow through my blood. My vision grows red with murderous intent. The intern storms off afraid for his life. Rightfully so.

Did my own newspaper start off as a rogue offshoot of The Herald of The Underworld? Yes.
Did I end up driving off The Herald of The Underworld due to being too successful? Also yes.
Was this The Free Journalism Market functioning as intended due to healthy competition amongst newspapers? Yes again.

But this is different, this isn't healthy competition, this is unhealthy competition. I will not bother to explain why as it should be obvious to anyone but an intellectually bankrupt buffoon, we all know it to be true.

This is such an injustice that I'd almost start indiscriminately shooting Goombas out of pure rage. You're lucky you're not a Goomba BusterScruggs.

Nicklin wanders by and has no clue what he has just read. 60 seconds he will not get back!

Do we have any competitions running because I am very much a competitor who likes to be competitive in all parts of any type of competition.

Nicklin looks in the direction of BusterScruggs and asks what competition do you have and what is the 1st place prize?

Nice try, Nicklin, or should I say competition commission stooge number twenty-seven? I'm not going to even give you a proper response here because I'm so taken aback by your attempt at starting up an illegal competition here in my very ex-newspaper business, but what I will say is that for coming out here I will be sending you one hundred thousand dollars as a participation reward in coming out to my paper.

Congratulations on this victory, which as everyone can see plainly, is NOT winnings from a competition but rather a giveaway.

DON'T TAKE THE MONEY, NICKLIN!

IT'S A TRICK!

Georgette Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax family of Charborough made her way to the streets and upon seeing the latest edition of the Harold she realized that today was going to be a truly fantastic day for everyone who got to lay their hands on a copy of such an esteemed publication. Handing over her coins eagerly, Georgette picked up her copy and happily opened it up to read a few lines, then a few more and then slowly as some realization came over her she lowered it staring at those around her. "Oh dear," she said. 

Mooshie is intrigued by the most recent newspaper issue that has just landed at her feet. She picks it up to read. Well, she is trying to read it while the noise around her is getting louder. People shouting back and forth about this, that and the other that she has no care in the world about. So instead she scans it.. she takes in enough to see that, BusterScruggs has lost his fucking mind. 

"What is this?!" "BRING BACK HAROLD!!!!" She starts shouting while waving the paper around in the air. She begins to chant...

"GET SCRUGGS OUT, BRING BACK HAROLD!

GET SCRUGGS OUT, BRING BACK HAROLD!

GET SCRUGGS OUT, BRING BACK HAROLD!" 

Okay, that's enough. She stuffs the paper into the hands of a random passer by and attempts to push Buster into the nearby casino where he belongs. 

As he wanders past, TheWanderingJew notices an ever growing group of people causing quite the scene. It appeared to be the beginning of an angry mob. Riots were starting and looting seemed inevitable. 
He couldn’t be too sure who started it but a massive pile of these “newspapers” were set alight. Mooshie had a mischievous look on her face. She seemed to be the likely culprit. 
 

This has all gotten out of hand, and due to the fact that now Mooshie is calling for my head I don't even feel safe in the city of Chicago for the time being. Joad keeps asking me to take a flight back home for a big party, but every time he says party he cackles maniacally, and while I may just be a little paranoid due to all of the many death threats since I began my journey as a journalist, there's just something telling me that I should stay over on the west coast for a little while. They've got great Casinos, at least.

This brings me to my rather large announcement. I am going to be stepping out of the spotlight for a few months and keeping my head down, just tending to my businesses as usual and making sure to send Mikey millions of dollars in tribute so that he realizes what a good earner I am. The type of man that you don't kill for Mooshie and Joad. 

While I am keeping this lower status, I am also pleased to announce that I will be suing Illuminatiated for attempting to smear my newspaper and causing me to lose roughly forty million dollars due to a lack of popularity within The Harold brand, something that his poking fun of my haikus obviously lead to.

Buster sighed, as he knew that this was going to be a hard-fought and long battle in the mild-to-medium claims court system and that while he would be representing himself on this one, he'd need a lot of people backing him. While Harold had already graciously agreed to enter the courts on his behalf, would that be enough? Now that his dramatic sigh was over, he had to continue to speak:

Anyone who wants to enter this suit should message me immediately because once this hits the circuit it will take the world by storm and everyone will be paying attention to the case, I expect to be asking for eighty million dollars but I'm also willing to attempt for more if people believe that I can win. So, let me know.

As for Mooshie, if she continues to disturb the peace, I am afraid that she'll be the next to feel the full might of the judicial system come crashing on top of her. For now, though, we will let Illuminatiated light the way.

Thank you all for your time, I will be taking no further questions.