Nico Tini was a hard-assed, chain-smoking private dick who specialized in tracking down stolen domains.
Back in 2003, pursuing a hot tip on the purloined BlurkleSpot [dot] cm (which didn't quite exist back then, but still considered MIA by the great Kevin Ham), Tini went into a Florida bar and fired up an unfiltered Camel.
"Hey, Bub, snuff the cancer stick." He pointed at the dreaded "No Smoking" sign.
"Oh, carp. WTF is the world coming to when ya can't even smoke in a bar. A BAR, for godsake!"
The bartender shrugged. "Yeah, it sucks, but what can ya do? If I let you light up, it'll cost me 2,000 big ones in fines."
Nico Tini shook his head and stuck the unlit cig in his mouth and chewed on the end. "What a world we live in..."
"All's not lost, though. I got something right up your alley," the bartend said. "Let me take care of ya!" He went into the backroom, where Nico Tini could hear an awful grinding noise...
"Jesus H., what da hell?"
Mr. Bartoonie (that was the name on his tag, anyway) came back with a tall frozen concoction that looked suspiciously like a frozen daquiri--it was green and lumnecsent like nuclear waste...
"AWWWWW!!! That's a lady drink."
"Looks can be deceiving. This is the house speciality, our frozen coffin nail lime rickey (hold the bananas). There's more nicotine in this frozen froth than six packs of Camels." Mr. Bartoonie pushed the drink toward the now-shaking Nico Tini.
Tini gulped down the coffin nail lime rickey (definitely without bananas), and developed a serious case of brain freeze. "God, that was toxic," Tini said with a smile on his face before he passed out.
***
When Nico Tini woke up, he was laying face up in a back alley, the Florida sun bearing down on him, his head pounding and breath so foul that the feral cats and rats had scattered into a nearby Dumpster. "Man, that was some super s**t!!!!"
Then he saw the note pinned to his chest. "Whas this???"
He pulled the note from his chest and unfolded it. In big red block letters, it said,
MR NICOTINI....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA....
I'M HOLDING BLURKLESPOT DOT CM HOSTAGE AND IF YOU DON'T PAY ME 1,000,000 BIG ONES IN UNMARKED BILLS, I WILL KILL YOUR PRECIOUS DOMAIN.
MR BARTOONIE (NOT MY REAL NAME AND DON'T EVEN THINK OF CHECKING WHOIS 'CUZ IT'S PROXY, BABY, PROXY)
"Aw, Snap," said Tini. He tore up the note, got up, and went his merry way. To this day, the fate of BlurkleSpot DOT cm is uncertain.
Rumor has it that Kevin Ham found it DOA, murdered in cold blood with the rest of the .cm domains floating around in cyberspace.
It seems Mr. Bartoonie was a super-duper triple agent, who is now hiding out in the Cayman Islands with FS, counting his dough and sipping lime rickeys with bananas (hold the nicotine).
The End
