Fake News Scoop: English geeks cross fingers for chance to kick "The Raven" filmmakers in the butt

Edgar Allan Poe

Not Edgar Allan Poe

Revelations this week that literary giant Edgar Allan Poe had presciently asked before his premature death that a “well-aimed kick in the parasitic arse” be delivered to anyone who reproduces ideas from his works for personal monetary gain have left literature lovers from English majors to PhDs surprised and ecstatic after the release of “The Raven,” a blockbuster movie that takes its name from one of Poe’s most well-known and loved poems.

“I don’t know about you but my foot is itching,” said Lois Strong, a 36-year-old PhD candidate in American Romantic literature at the University of Southern California.

“I can tolerate plotless movies about aliens attacking Los Angeles or even dopey, pointless movies about big blue avatar people, but why do they have to steal from artists like Poe?” she wondered. “What’s next, a romantic comedy about Mary Magdalene? Oh damn, I probably just gave some Hollywood asshole an idea…”

Petite and bespectacled Strong said she is “ready to open my can of whoop ass,” but may not get the chance. 

After a flurry of interest and fears that “The Raven’s” filmmakers could become the target of a mob of otherwise socially awkward and reserved English geeks looking to kick someone in the ass for the first time in their lives, the literary community launched a lottery to select one person to deliver the ass kick.

A drawing is scheduled for the end of the week.

“Oh, I hope it’s me,” said James Lopez, 17, a member of the drama club and debate team at Kennedy High School, who said Poe is his favorite author. “Pick me pick me pick meeeee.”

Lopez said he was irked that “Hollywood morons” would be making large sums of money for taking ideas from the famously impoverished writer, who lived a difficult life and died at the age of 40 after being found distressed and wandering the streets of Baltimore.

“They didn’t even do it well,” Lopez scoffed. “They took a piece of our culture and made another multi-million dollar piece of shit.”

The revelation of Poe’s wishes for the ass kick was made by scholars at Emory University, who said it was discovered that the writer had made the request verbally and it was never written down.

“We know for a fact he said it based on um, some research that we did, but we don’t have any physical proof,” said John Lewis, professor emeritus for the university’s American Literature department who specialized in Poe's writings. “But we know for sure. We do.”

Lewis said he wasn't opposed to the idea of directing his first and only act of physical aggression at the people responsible for the movie, which he called a “crappy-ass insult to my entire field of work.”

“I put my name in," he said. "Twice.”