Anthropomorphic

Furry French Bulldog 

Character Portrait

Gregory Fromage 

Anthroxville’s distinctive culture has long been described as a back-alley meat-grinder, where all the cheap, dodgy, and undesirable cuts find their way tossed into the spinning jaws of day-to-day survival; whereupon they are gnashed up, minced down, and mangled around until finally emerging as some glumpy homogenized goo splurting out of the other end. With a taste of despair, a smack of dysfunction, and a tang of disdain, the goo is unmistakably characteristic of the Anthroxville spirit. Of course, there are a number of clustering subcultures that can invariably be found within this grim mélange, such as salmonella, listeriosis, and pseudo-punk; but they are all mere sidekicks of something much greater and more gross. From the outside, this cultural biohazard is subject to much mockery and derision, with scoffing claims that it is not real food (or goo for that matter); but secretly, these traducers can’t get enough of the machine’s abominable byproduct – for it simply hits the spot like no other, and try as they might to deceive themselves and those around them, they continue to dementedly gorge on every last goop of goo they can get their hands on.

This cultural meat-grinder goes some way in helping one understand, or even sympathize, with the timebomb-ticking psyche of Anthroxville’s raggle-taggle mishmash of inhabitants as they go about their business, hopelessly trying to headbutt their way through each day. Whether knowingly or otherwise, the population continues to live up the founding ethos of: “Give me your vile, your abhorred, your huddled feckless masses yearning to deceive.” However, a culture is much greater than the sum of its parts, and the embroidering essence woven into the tapestry of a society is the collective composition of the arts; the conjuring bursts of transcendent inspiration which both capture and coronate the spirit of the zeitgeist, immortalizing the intangible and igniting the palpable. The arts summon something deep and dormant within us all, revealing something we did not know, or perhaps something we knew but dared not express. From a practical point of view, the very best art is entirely pointless, and this is exactly what makes it so nourishing, for it serves as a temporary escape-hatch from the all-encompassing tyranny of utility; the banality, the monotony, the humdrum, and the mind-numb. It doesn’t seek to benchmark, streamline, or get down to brass tacks; nor does it circle back, touch base, or integrate; rather, its virtue is found in and of itself, an intrinsic autoletic dignity without the need or desire for any form of external justification.

History, time, and place give a distinguishing texture to a society’s unique artistic weave, and is further interlaced by the mood and inclinations of the particular epoch. In Anthroxville’s case, the creative idée fixe of the age has always been that of the art of the con. Dating back generations, the con-artist were heralded with oceanic awe as they masterly hoodwinked, duped, bluffed, and pulled a fast one on the unwitting populace. “Just how did they keep on getting away with it?” was the prevailing question of the day, and that the schlubster on the receiving end “should have seen that one coming from a mile away.” So ingrained has the con become in Anthroxville’s long-diddled identity, that many have arrived at the conclusion that life itself is all just one great big swindle.

Now, the devious artistic elegance of the con is aesthetically distinct from the basic buffoonery of the bog-standard everyday criminal enterprise that runs rampant as a matter of course throughout Anthroxville. These heavy-handed misdeeds invariably feature a measure of violence, duress, and intimidation (à la Victor Wallop and John Knuckle). Cons are different, for their victim’s (the knobhead, in con-artist terminology) participation is entirely voluntary. Although they take on varying forms of sophistication and execution, the basic anatomy of the con is devised on two fundamental elements: the crafty acquisition of the knobhead’s trust, and the bait – an enticing but believable reward cooked up by the con-artist to both lure in and disarm the knobhead. The tantalizing majesty of this artform is its guileful exploitation of the mechanisms that are essential to the functioning of society: voluntary exchanges, autonomous decision-making, and, most importantly of all, trust.

With these systems already well on the ropes throughout Anthroxville since the day of its founding, the con-artists’ inspired chicanery served to put them on life-support; however, they were always mindful to never take things too far and actually finish off the ecosystem upon which their craft’s existence depended on. It was a delicate balancing act of symbiosis, similar to a drug-slinger’s relationship to their mischief-making clientele, rooted in pure self-gain and avarice but measured by a modicum of concern for the continued survival of their customer base. In many cases, this concern often evolves into a curious affection, for as with the con-artist, they come to realize that they owe their entire livelihood to these rascals. Hence why throughout the con-artist community there are sacred utterances common to the sector's concern, such as “it can take months to find a knobhead, but seconds to lose one,” and “the knobhead always comes first.”

Having pulled off some absolute corkers in his time, the anthropomorphic furry French bulldog, Gregory Fromage, was amongst the most celebrated of all con-artists in Anthroxville, capturing the public’s imagination with his rousing opus of get-rich-quick schemes. Some of the porkies he told were simply the stuff of legends, and only a fibster of his god-given caliber could keep a straight face when honking-up such outrageous humdingers to his seemingly endless supply of wide-eyed chumps. He discovered early in his career that a knobhead is most receptive to The Lamborghini (Lambo for short) unit of currency when discussing matters of investments and returns. “First off, Slick, it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s multi-level—or rather, multi-Lambo-marketing; and secondly, even with a conservative ROI of at least to-the-moon.HODL% annualized, we’re talking 44 of these puppies in your garage faster than you can say "Cliff Bingo.” In fact, this was the very pitch he used verbatim to reel in a salivating Kingsley Throttle, way back when he was just cutting his teeth in the fine art of conmanship. It worked a charm, for today, rather than cruising to the moon in one of his supposed purring pulse-raisers, Kingsley is lucky if his clapped-out clunker makes it to the end of his trailer park driveway without getting towed and impounded for outstanding debts unpaid.

With swizzling savoir-faire, the furry French bulldog gave the udder of society such a good squeezing that Anthroxville’s Internal Bureau of Statistics (AIBS) had no choice but to start factoring in the impact his “Low-risk, whopping return” rogerings had on the wider economy, and they were added to the Basket of Goods Index: an economic tool used to track the consumer spending habits and measure the subsequent inflation on a weekly basis. To the surprise of nobody, his sleight-handed shenanigans had a staggering effect on the state of affairs, as assets were auctioned, accounts were drained, and debt was loaded up to the gills – all on the jazzed-up dream of bringing home the bacon big-time.

Like all great artists who reach the pinnacle of their domain, Gregory wasn’t prepared to simply rest on his laurels, and he challenged himself in exploring an exotic variety of different styles of con, taking many a tumble during his slip ‘n faceplant phase; seducing many a dame with his honeytrapping stint; and bamboozling many a halfwit by posing as a foreign prince in a funk and in need of a favor in a series of emails. He snookered Louis Battenberg with a bogus vanity publishing operation, and even dabbled in a little medical quackery, during which he flogged buckets-worth of a supposed elixir of beauty to a desperate Agatha Collop. This period of experimentation, however, caused considerable backlash from Gregory’s fanatical fanbase, who felt that he was betraying his art by abandoning the get-rich-quick roots which they had become so enamored with. There was also the reasonable concern that a Jack of all cons, is a master of none, however, Gregory quickly assuaged such fears with stylistic panache, and he masterly hooked, lined, and sinkered his way through every genre of swindle to be had.

Receiving most plaudits of all were his forgeries of well-known portraits of Anthroxville’s citizenry, which he dabbled in recreationally upon the advice of his therapist, Earnest Wafflemonger, as a cathartic outlet from the toils of everyday conage. As Earnest said, with a scowl (after being suckered into playing a few games of three-card monte), if Gregory wasn’t careful, he would hustle himself into the ground. These words rang true for the furry French bulldog, who was feeling somewhat burnt-out after a particularly intensive spree of skulduggery; so, after thanking Earnest and settling up for the month’s therapy sessions with a fake check destined to bounce, he set off to rejuvenate his soul with a spot of painting.

Gregory’s studio was filled with the rich, hoppy odor of his beer of choice (or did it choose him?), Taint-Twister; first gluggingly introduced at his local watering hole by the well-bevvied publican, Erm Wotsischops. A minefield of bottles and cans of this potent amber nectar littered the floor, and the furry French bulldog would find himself hopscotching across the room in order not to slip ‘n faceplant en route to his easel and canvas – a temptation he found hard to resist as he was supposed to be taking a sabbatical from his insatiable chicanery; however with gritted teeth and a vein-bulging brow, he just about managed to hold firm. As for the forgeries themselves, they were to be strictly for his own personal satisfaction and never to be revealed to the public. It is important to note that at this particular juncture in Anthroxville history, the term “artist” was reserved solely with those grandiloquent visionaries who practiced the hallowed con, and that painters, sculptors, musicians, and actors were treated with hostile indifference by their contemporaries, who saw the menial manifestations of these mediums as nothing more than a common form of drudgery. At best, they were swivel-eyed hobbyists, at worst, mentally ill degenerates. “Sorry, I don't have any…” members of the public would mutter, trying not to make eye-contact as they awkwardly stepped over one of the countless painters languishing on the side of the road, “...change comes from within.”

So, the whole prescribed purpose of painting, or forging rather, was to ground Gregory from the dizzying empyrean mania of jiggery-pokery, and help center him with a dose of the prosaic and the mundane in the form of some mindless work to calm his spirits and restore order and equilibrium. “Come back down to earth, Greg,” he remembers his wised-up father saying with a gentle smile, after trying and failing to sell him the deeds to some serious acreage on the moon. “Alright pops, well I have a bridge you may be interested in…” Relations soured after it turned out no such bridge across the famous river Ting-Fam existed, and despite his old man’s repeated voice-mailed promises that he was “...going to hunt you down, you hear me cockflap?!” he hadn’t seen him in a number of years.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. A little while back, he saw a grizzled bushwacking specimen, rollicking about as he simultaneously gnashed his teeth and flashed his knackers at a group of passing nuns. Upon closer inspection, this down-and-outer shared an uncanny resemblance to his estranged father. A few feet in front, surrounded by a scattering of empty Taint-Twister cans, was a cardboard sign advertising his organs on a “Name your price” basis. The caveman didn’t explicitly say that he was his father, but what Gregory did decipher from the gargled grunts coming out of his mouth was something to the effect of “You crafty little cunt.” He also expressed a keen interest as to the exact whereabouts of his hard-earned dough; whether he could expect to see even a lick of it back; and that only a true knobhead could get stiffed sideways by his own flesh and blood, before falling back into his drunken stupor and violently soiling himself.

Despite the shaky but plausible deniability that this wild barbarian was indeed his long-swindled father (it was never actually avowed, proclaimed, or asserted), Gregory felt an unusual pang of uncharacteristic guilt ripple through him as he looked on at this pitiful sight. For a moment, he even thought about slipping the old codger a dollar or two; however, he shortly returned to his senses, remembering that this act would be in direct violation of the con-artist creed of always remaining professionally and emotionally detached from the consequences of one’s artistry, confirmed or otherwise. This was for good reason, for the sphere of art and the realm of ethics are and must always remain absolutely distinct and separate; for once scruples managed to wrangle its way into the party, it would have you second-guessing yourself at every turn, guilt-tripping you into an early retirement – or worse, cowering irrelevancy. Gregory had seen first hand many promising con-artists have their career cut short due to this pernicious affliction. So rather than go down the perilous path of any form of monetary restitution (which would directly implicate him with this steaming mouth-foamer’s state of affairs), he acted under the guise of civic consideration, and dragged him by the ankles to the nearby hospital, Serious Setback General, to get patched up.

In the intensive care unit, Dr. Ralph Whiplash was almost at a loss for words, and after muttering a silent prayer under his breath, he stated that he’d never seen a case of somebody swindled so hard as this poor soul. He winced as the tests came back, bowing his head solemnly as he disclosed to Gregory that it was as he feared: the patient didn’t have a single trace of dignity left. He had, in what they called in the medical world, been "bamboozled beyond repair." The furry French bulldog demanded that they run the tests again, but they came back the same: he was terminally dingdonged. “God only knows what kind of ride he’s been taken on,” the doctor marveled mournfully. “He used to bake gingerbread and was Quantitative Risk Manager at a local firm,” Gregory murmured inaudibly, trailing off as he watched the madman throw up on himself before tearfully pleading with a nurse to tell him what color knickers she was wearing. It was decided that the only course of action was to place him in the hospice and have an ordained financial fraud chaplain sit beside his bed, tenderly reminding him “It’s not your fault,” over and over until he eventually flatlined and checked out.

Gregory was incensed at such a suggestion. “Tell me doc, why would you let one of those spawns of Satan near my—near this poor swindled soul?” Doctor Whiplash explained this was standard palliative protocol for those who had been diddled onto the last rattler. “Taken to the eternal cleaners,” as the doctor put it, patting his pockets as he eyed up Gregory with suspicion. Gregory snarled. These anti-art blockheads had long been the bane of his existence, always getting in the...