Dawn of The Dufus Part II

Following the Dufus's miraculous return to town, he had become desperate to find some sort of use for his oh so obvious talents in areas of publicity and fund-raising.

Can ya guess who he chose to inflict himself on?

You see, our library board is in the process of raising money to build a new library. And while they have already raised 40 percent of the $3 million needed to start the building process (all without the Dufus's help, I might add) the Dufus felt we were in dire need of his P.R. services and has taken every opportunity afforded him (we quickly learned to stop affording him opportunities if we can at all help it) to sing his own praises in the art of fundraising and publicity and drop a few dozen important names while doing it.

It turns out the Dufus had been hogging our computers for two afternoons to write an article about the library itself, which he hoped to peddle to one or more of our local papers and use as a big weasely foot in the door while stumping for a job to our board.

In the following weeks, he was in a constant state of panic trying to get a meeting with our head Librarian, Mrs. A, in order to discuss his sprawling and unsolicited plans for a marketing campaign. Mrs. A, meanwhile, was in a panic to avoid the Dufus at all costs. Through a series of incredible coincidences, he always seemed to come in to see her just when she was headed out the door on important errands.

It also didn't help that Mrs. A had recently purchased and was living in the former home of the Dufus's grandmother. So not only did he stalk Mrs. A for a job interview but also to beg permission to come by and see the house he spent so much time in as a Dufusy little whelp.

Seeing that he was never able to sync schedules with Mrs. A, the Dufus took to sitting in on as many library board meetings as possible. This is completely cool, as the meetings are open to the public, but the Dufus used the time to continue singing his own praises, listing off congressmen he's friendly with, actors and socialites he personally knows and famous authors who regularly throw him birthday parties, (though I somehow question whether Homer Hickam actually threw the Dufus's weasel-ass a birthday party, being as how the only reason Hickam was in the state in the first place was for a Rocket Boys reunion down in what's left of Coalwood, a party the Dufus no doubt crashed in the first place). The Dufus also went on at length about the tremendous amount of fundraising he did for a library in California and how he could do the same for us. The board actually researched this point. It turned out that the Dufus's part of the fundraising was a miniscule portion of a much bigger project involving thousands of other people, in which he mattered very little.

As you might guess, our board was not at all impressed by the Dufus and his name droppings, particularly since one member of the board already IS a former congressman and another is the heir to the fortune of a major toiletries manufacturing corporation, a lady the Pope might come to for a loan.

They were equally unimpressed a few weeks later, when they heard that the Dufus paid a visit to the state library commission and introduced himself to one of the state officials as the new P.R. man for our library's building project. The official hadn't realized we'd chosen anyone for the job yet, and phoned us up to inquire about it. Mrs. A informed them that we hadn't chosen anyone, but we now had a permanent candidate for the DO NOT HIRE list.

(To Be Concluded)