Dingus of the Week: 2 Dingus 2 Furious

It's a dingus doubleheader with Taylor Kay Phillips!

This has been a week. Although, I suppose that during the Decline of Man, every week is a week.

Picking a dingus this week was a bit like dingus whack-a-mole. So, like the Danny Ocean of dingusing, I had to call in a friend for backup. This week the very hilarious

Taylor Kay Phillips

agreed to write a dingus so we could have a dingus doubleheader.

It’s 2 Dingus 2 Furious.

Dingus 2: The Dark Dingii Rise.

I Still Know That You Were a Dingus This Summer.

Dingus II: The Dingusing

Okay, that’s enough.

Taylor is the author of the incredible A Guide to Midwestern Conversations. She is also a TV comedy writer who is currently on strike demanding the craziest of all crazy things — that she get paid for her work and not have a robot replace her.

The writer’s strike has been going on for 73 days and it appears that the Screen Actors Guild will soon join them. In response to this news, studio executives have said that they plan on starving writers out before they will resume talks. Which is absolutely something a villain in a poorly scripted Marvel movie would say. Honestly, even Megatron was a little more subtle than that.

So, thank you to the paying subscribers who give me the funds to pay Taylor for this writing. ( I was able to pay

Josh Gondelman

last week too! Josh is also on strike! And I don’t understand TV hierarchy, but I do believe Josh is like a leader amongst the masses. But like a real asshole, Josh donated the money I gave him to the strike fund.)

Also, to underscore the importance of writers, I once tried to ask ChatGPT who the dingus of the week was, but they told me that AI doesn’t understand the concept.

So, because in this house we believe that Taylor’s Version must reign supreme, first up we have…

Dingus of the Week (Taylor’s Version): @ChiefsAholic

Usually, when we talk about people doing crimes to afford a certain lifestyle we either mean white-collar crime to fund a life of excess and extravagance (Ponzis for PJs¹, if you will) or petty theft to meet their basic human needs (I do not have an alliterative quip for this one because it is sad and shouldn’t happen!) 

Rarely, if ever, though, are we blessed with the combo of “robs banks to fund chaotic sports betting and attendance at every single Kansas City Chiefs game wearing a head-to-toe werewolf costume.” But friends and enemies of Men Who Yell at me, that is where we find ourselves today.  

And look, I am not a moral absolutist robot. I have a heart, a soul, and a perverse psychosexual attraction to Heath Ledger’s Joker that I can’t quite explain. (Is it that the character’s nihilism feels uncomfortably accurate? Is it the acting tour-de-force that I cannot separate from the narrative? Do I secretly want Gotham’s Joker to be a tortured evolution of Patrick from 10 Things I Hate About You?) 

All this to say that when I read “man takes money from money houses to go to sports games in costume” it’s hard not to think “…that’s kind of awesome? right?” 

Laws are necessary for a functional society.² They claim to adjudicate right and wrong but really their existence and enforcement is about drawing a line between civilized and uncivilized. And sometimes, we humans like to get a little feral. Laws, by definition, create a system within a set of rules. Nature, on the other hand, favors entropy. And sometimes, we recognize, true justice exists outside the law. Like charging your 5:30 AM coffee on your very rich boss’ credit card or Larry Nassar getting stabbed in prison.

We also tend to see bank robberies as heists rather than crimes. “It’s not a disregard for law or disrespect for humanity”, we say to ourselves! “It’s a premeditated, well-thought-out plot. A human endeavor that, when executed non-violently (a violent bank robbery is VIOLENCE and therefore a Bad Crime™) only leaves a few people with some light trauma. A small price to pay for a philosophically-driven rebellion against the status quo that takes currency otherwise hoarded by “the man” and puts it back in the hands of real people.” 

Unfortunately, that is not what went on with @ChiefsAholic a.k.a. Xavier Babudar. 

This man is a dingus. 

Here’s the gist of it: 

According to police, on December 16, 2022, Babudar walked into the Tulsa Teachers Credit Union… I’m actually going to type that one more time. 

He walked into the Tulsa Teachers Credit Union and threatened the teller with a gun while demanding she give him “the hundreds.” Then he jumped the counter and held the gun to her back while she opened the vault for him. 

As for what happened next, I’m just going to quote the article verbatim because it’s too much to pare down: 

Prosecutors say he fled on a bicycle, was apprehended a few blocks away from the credit union and was found with a black backpack containing a paintball mask, ski goggles, gloves, a green zip-up jacket, green sweatpants, black shoes, a black CO2 pistol and a bag containing $150,000.

So, a couple of things. First of all, this entire story reads like “a 16-year-old boy watched a bank robbery movie at a sleepover and then got double dog dared.” Also, did he have two bags? That is, he did not ditch his “bag of crime stuff” in favor of curbing his load down to “one duffel bag of a first-year McKinsey salary?” My man. Leave the CO2 gun, take the [clever wordplay on 100 bills and cannoli]. 

And then of course, there is the immaculate phrase “fled on a bicycle,” which I’d hope is the final nail in the “maybe it was a cool heist” coffin, if “stealing from teachers” wasn’t enough to keep you from anointing this dude the next Frank Abagnale Jr. 

Of course, he got caught, spent some time in a Tulsa jail, and — to the horror and confusion of his devoted fans — missed a Chiefs game. Which tipped everyone off to the fact that they’d never seen @ChiefsAholic and the guy who robbed that Teachers Credit Union in the same room. 

From there, the dominoes began to fall. Again, not because they had been nicely organized and then tipped over, but because an entire cafeteria tray of them had been teetering precariously on the arm of a chair and this guy brushed them with bag #2 as he rode by on his post-crime bike.

He was released on bond with an ankle monitor and tried to get special permission to go to the Super Bowl. Which he was (obviously?) denied. Folks also started connecting the dots between him and many other bank robberies throughout the Midwest. And then, in early March, he cut off his ankle bracelet, left it in the woods, and fled Tulsa. (Lord forgive me for what I am about to do) The wolf was on the lam. (I’m so sorry.) 

He was arrested again this Monday, four months after his escape, in Sacramento, California. An event that the actual United States Attorney's Office announced with a press release entitled: 

Which, you know what, fine. May we all be charged with crimes in a way that recognizes our fandom. 

And as tempting as it is to turn this guy into an impassioned, testosterone-filled Danny Ocean who just wanted to support the 2023 ESPY-Award Winning Best Team³ or as a countercultural fanatic who bucked the US financial system as much as he bucked conventional wardrobe choices, the more the story unfolds the more it just seems like the antics of a man whose thought process went “I need money.” —> “Money lives at the bank.” A theory that becomes even more solidified upon learning that he tried to launder the money at casinos. Famously the most video-recorded money places in existence. 

So, as much as I wanted him to be, @ChiefsAholic is nowhere near the better class of criminal our city needs nor deserves. He is a man known for tweeting, gambling large sums, and dressing up like a werewolf (at least) 16 Sundays a year. And, devastatingly, he robs banks like it. 

—

Taylor Kay Phillips

Dingus of the Week (Lyz’s Version): Bags of Trash

Great week for literal garbage as they retain more rights than people with uteruses in the state of Iowa.

Last month, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected a bid to reinstate a 2018 law that banned abortions after six weeks. In response, Justice Thomas Waterman wrote, “It would be ironic and troubling to be the first state Supreme Court in the nation to hold that trash set out in a garbage can for collection is entitled to more constitutional protection than a woman’s interest in autonomy and dominion over her own body.”

Well, Iowa Republicans took that as a challenge and on Wednesday passed a law banning abortions after six weeks, with very few exceptions. But also, as we now know, exceptions don’t work in practice. Even in states that have wide-ranging exceptions, women are still going septic during miscarriages, because lawmakers don’t understand medicine, and most of them are not doctors. And if they are, they usually think laws like this suck.⁴ Lawmakers are literally some guys who enough people wanted to have a beer with and now they stand on the floor of your local house and senate in off-the-rack suit coats from Kohls and read the Bible to justify why they’re taking away your right to access life-saving medical care. These are men with the personality of rotting skim milk, men who tuck their polos into their pleated khakis and want to know why you don’t just stop having sex, you whore? And they will pass laws to punish you for being able to get laid more than them.

These very same men who do little to no childcare for the kids they do have, can’t snap a onesie, and never know how to find the ketchup in the fridge, decided that people with uteruses were getting too uppity and should be brought down lower than a trash bag. In Iowa, you need to have a warrant to search a trash bag on a curb, but a person only needs to have a uterus before lawmakers demand to go rummaging around in there and seizing control of any fetal matter they may find.

So, congratulations to the trash bag! You did it. No man can open you up with his hands and rummage around in there and take whatever he wants. Good for you, trash bag, you don’t even have opposable thumbs and yet you are more protected than I am. After all, you don’t have to deal with the mawing interests of lawmakers or law enforcement without proper written authorization. If you had any more rights, you’d be an assault rifle.

I’d ask if you were single, trash bag. But I’ve dated enough of you to know it’s not worth it.

---

And Now for Something Good:

This week, Des Moines resident Felicia Hilton voiced the anger of a nation, when she gave Iowa lawmakers a piece of her mind.

Whenever I feel low, I’m just going to play this clip over and over. Thank you, Felicia.

Your girl, Lyzteria, was on MSNBC as well.

And once again, for hope, we look to the sea. And what do we find? But a sea otter attacking surfers. She’s hijacking surfboards like a tiny little pirate queen. “I’m the captain now!” She says causing surfers to surrender their boards completely. She’s dangerous because she’s no longer afraid of humans and is just gonna do whatever she wants. Girl, SAME.

She’s just out there taking pics of her on surfboards, having “boundaryless” inappropriate relationships with men, and hanging out with her friends in unstable places.

Rep. Katie Porter is at it again with her whiteboard of JUSTICE.

What I Am Drinking:

This week, I had a party at my house for a friend who just called off her engagement. It’s a good decision and a hard one. We had sushi and I made a drink called “Pushing Up Daisies.” It’s a pomegranate, mezcal, tequila concoction. And when I told the woman at the liquor store what I needed it for, she said, “Girl, you need the good mezcal.” This, my friends, is the good mezcal. Xicala anejo mezcal.

I have to say, I love the sisterhood of heartbreak. I love the way women wrap around each other to grieve and laugh and process. The way total strangers can offer love and sympathy simply by suggesting the good mezcal. Once, while I was trying to get my ex’s name off my bank account (long and arduous process that made me think US Bank has never seen a divorce before), the banker, a divorcee herself offered me a rose quartz as a token of her empathy. She hands them out to all the women who come to her in moments like that. It still sits on my desk. I do not love that people hurt, but I love the community of Liliths that gather outside of our burning Edens to offer food and drink, laughter, and tears. I have a dear friend with a broken heart, who sometimes apologizes for her tears, but I tell her, and mean it every time, that being able to be her friend at this time is the greatest gift she could give me. That I could hold her vulnerable heart in my hands and protect it for her, until she’s ready to take it again is the honor of friendship.

1. Many of you will not. That’s okay, I just made it up. 

2. Editor’s Note: This does not represent the views of this actual newsletter.

3. Did I mention I’m from Kansas City?

4. This statement acknowledges there are some exceptions. But come on, most medical doctors think abortion is GOOD ACTUALLY, just like most Americans.