EXCLUSIVE! Now It Can Be Told: How Japecake Brought Down Osama bin Laden

Unless your Western Union messenger has been out sick for the past 48 hours, you’ve no doubt heard that Osama bin Laden will no longer be peddling his brand of sheer awfulness after earning the worst eBay feedback score in history. (I mean, six bucks and eleven days to ship a lousy Devo cassette? Come on.) It doesn’t even matter how it happened or who conceived the complex and momentous operation that took him down—just that “beardy1957” (his eBay ID) and his counterfeit vintage Air Jordans are gone for good.

That said, I take full credit. Because if I didn’t, it would just be a lie, and that’s the kind of thing you expect from Oprah’s Book Club authors—not from the blogger The Atlantic singled out as “the voice of a decade” (i.e., the 1840s). Careful and regular Japecake readers (by which I mean those whose diets include a generous intake of fiber) were no doubt intrigued by not one, but two distinct references to Osama bin Laden in my post of April 14, Oversharing: A Problem For Our Time:

Clark Winslow of Dubuque, Iowa gave the shirt off his back to a complete stranger. That stranger? Osama bin Laden

and

Mrs. Garrett Sloan of East Brunswick, New Jersey shared her hymnal with a visitor during 9:00 a.m. mass at St. Bartholomew’s Church. That visitor? Osama bin Laden.

Only a dullard would assume that the purpose of these two statements was merely to fill out a brief humor piece consisting of ten related low-grade gags. In fact, inspired by the infamous “clues” to the impending D-Day invasion that mysteriously appeared in the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle in 1944, the actual function of the post was far different. With the entire operation an unqualified success, I am now authorized to tell all. Japey took part in—OK, masterminded—a meticulous CIA-backed, blog-based plot to put an end to bin Laden’s shill-bidding tyranny and outrageous shipping charges.

The shirt that made it all possible (Photo: CIA)

“Clark Winslow” and “Mrs. Garrett Sloan,” both Japecake operatives, recognized the “Oversharing” post not only as the marvelous, incisive piece of wit it was, and still is, but as the crucial signal and instructions for the last phase of Japey’s intricate, years-in-the-making scheme. Winslow did his part some two weeks ago by providing bin Laden with the shirt illustrated in the newly declassified photo at left.

Several days later, “Mrs. Garrett Sloan” (actually, in a bit of clever misdirection, Mrs. Gerald Sloan) made a careful transcription and translation of the words bin Laden actually sang to the tune of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” here published for the first time anywhere:

I am O-sa-a-ma,
You’ll never find me
Because I’m hi-i-ding
In a million-dollar compound
In the middle of Abbottabad
Whose name always re-mi-inds me
Of the way the fat guy from Abbott & Costello, I guess it was Costello,
Always used to say, “Hey, Abbott! I’m a baaaad boy!”
Even though it’s pronounced completely differently
Anyway, there’s no number on the house
Just look for the eighteen-foot-high walls
And the cement gnomes out front
You’ll find me on the second floor
Turn left at the top of the stairs
Third room on the right
It’s the one with the race car bed
Oh, the key is under the mat….

Still not conviced that Japey didn’t have Osama bin Laden eating out of the palm of his hand? Why do think that so much of the so-called “humor” you read on Japecake would appeal only to the deplorable likes of a bin Laden? Why do you think Japecake is referred to as “the coup de grace” and “a rollicking good read that makes you want to stand up and cheer” in a soon-to-be retroactively written CIA memo? Why do you think bin Laden kept borrowing his neighbor’s laptop and hogging an entire table at the Abbottabad Starbucks for four hours at a time, nursing only a small short cappucino, even during the lunch rush? Why do you think I created Japecake expressly to lull Osama bin Laden into a false sense of camaraderie and security? Consider a few of the actual, unedited comments left on Japecake over the past few months, then judge for yourselves.

In response to: PAG: Plastic Army Guys in “The Thin Pink Line”:

In response to Hipster Crayolas:

In response to Expand Your Circle of Frenemies:

Well, there it is, America, and no need to thank me. My 100% positive eBay feedback score and Silver Power Seller status is reward enough.