Oscar

Oscar is the living embodiment of Lover Boy's 1981 anthem: he works for the weekend. During the week he has a decent job as an assistant manager at Benjamanian, one of those big box carpet stores. It's a pretty good career, given his education consists of being 4 credits shy of a degree in late medieval Icelandic literature. But on the weekend, oh, the weekend. Oscar lives for the weekend. His Friday night routine is sacred. He grills a steak over hot coals. He likes it well-cooked but juicy: Argentinian-style. He accompanies this with a good bottle of heavy French red wine, and then drinks himself into a stupor whilst smoking his pipe and listening to jazz. This week will be a particularly good week. First, it's a lovely, marbled, Delmonico, then, a 2004 St. Julien, and finally, a stack of old Verve 45's he found at a church rummage sale last Saturday. For Oscar, life is very good.

Kelcee

From the time she was about 15 Kelcee was always known as "the pretty one" in her circle of acquaintances. Whilst she was never school-smart, she was never dumb, either. She quickly learned that she could get most guys to do what she wanted by sleeping with them, and that she actually liked having sex. Quite a bit. Unfortunately, she also discovered that although sex for favours was in a legal grey zone, sex for money was a no-no. Or was it?

In a move to operate a high-end escort service, Kelcee opened up a "Pornography Academy". When patrons arrived to meet her or one of her girls, they would also be given a disposable camera, and could then document, should they want, their "pornographic coaching session". The matter is now before the courts. During the trial, Kelcee married the senior partner at her defending law firm. She doesn't like him much, but he is extravegantly wealthy. She figures retail-level sex for money may be against the law, but sole-source wholesale contracts still seem to be very legal, indeed.

Pablo

Pablo is originally from the small Mexican town of Santo Poco. Raised Catholic, he turned away from the church in his late teens because he found that the veneration of mutliple saints in his small village created cognitive dissonance with the dogma of monotheism. Consequently he left his village, which he increasingly viewed as medieval in mindset, and smuggled himself across the US border in a sanitary napkin delivery truck. Even border agents, he figured, were uneasy around feminine hygiene products.

He re-settled in the San Francisco area, and found himself a job as a janitor in a strip mall with a nail salon. One Saturday, he was begged by the salon owner to help with a nails-for-a-wedding-party emergency. She had accidentally double-booked her salon, and two of her nail stylists were out with food poisoning. It turns out he was very talented in the nails department. He was hired full-time, and now has a steady clientele. His best clients are drag queens. Not only is Pablo an excellent manicurist, and cute, but, more importantly, he never judges. He is living the American dream.

Hux

Hux was born Aldous Huxley III. Although he is of no relation to the Aldous Huxley, his father, a broke-ass drunk, named him so after a guy in a tavern once told him that the original Aldous Huxley had died without any known heirs, and that a sizeable fortune rested in escrow somewhere, awaiting to be inherited. Rather than take care of his son, raise him properly and provide him with a decent education, Hux's dad spent most of his son's childhood forging documents to support the claim to the purported fortune. SPOILER ALERT: there never was a fortune. So now, the dad is serving ten to eighteen for a variety of fraud-related convictions, and Aldous III is a broke-ass drunk who hangs out in taverns listening to cockamamie stories, hoping to find his own get-rich scheme.

Obituary - Darla Starrs

The staff of Squirrel Confidential were saddened to hear of the passing of legendary actress Darla Stars. Ms. Starrs passed away Friday evening peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by her family.
Ms. Starrs rose to fame in the 1940's as a starlett of 2nd Millenium Wolf Studios, and appeared several times opposite Heinz Eavestroughing. She was nominated three times for OSMONDtm awards, though never won. 
She is perhaps best remembered for her infamous marriage in 1961 to Benicio Lopez de Lopez, dictator of the small island nation of San Santiago. Though they had three children together, the marriage ultimately failed when  Lopez de Lopez grew paranoid as leftist guerillas attempted numerous assassination attempts against him. Following her divorce, she returned to live quietly in California, and retired from acting, although she did make a few noteworthy cameo appearances on The Golden Squirrels. Ms. Starrs is survived by her son, Benicio Jr., her two daughters, Sharla and Carla, and by her grandson, Benicio III. Family asks that donations be made to the Hide-a-Nut Foundation en lieu of flowers.

Archibald

On paper, handsome and debonair Archibald (a.k.a. Arch) looks like a real catch: Ivy league, New England blue-blood, great job on Wall Street. However, unlike most other squirrels who work in high finance, Archibald does not have severe sociopathic tendencies: he is a complete sociopath. When he's not doing coke and gambling away seniors' pensions in ultra-high risk investments, he's taking advantage of insecure late-twenty-something single professionals, stringing along a half dozen at any time, and then dropping them at the first sign of commitment. Or pregnancy (he has a standing order for Plan "B" at the Duane Reade around the block from his condo). If his ancestors knew Archibald would be such a degenerate douchebag, they probably never would have stepped off the Mayflower.

Ingrid

Ingrid dated a squirrel for a while in college. It didn't work out.

Walter

Walter can usually be found at The Wild Boar Bar & Grill up Highway 7. He sits at the bar and wiill tell wild tales to whomever stops in for some beer and nuts. No one really knows much about Walter. Some say he killed another squirrel back in '72. Others say he lost his shit after a firefight gone awry in Vietnam. Most of the rumours, however, are untrue. Walter's real sordid secret was that he used to run a hamster racing ring in Tijuana. Howver, when the cartels started showing up in the early 90's, they wanted a cut of the action. He refused. When it looked like shit was getting real, Walter tried to skip town, but he and his señorita were caught in an ambush. He escaped, she didn't. Now, he smokes his pipe and tells of his time aboard a Liberian freighter.

Chaandy

Chaandy was raised in historic city of Cochi, Kerala, India. A few years ago, he landed himself what he thought was a pretty sweet construction job in the Gulf States building malls and thirty-seven star hotels. While on the job, he gained a taste for country music, which was always played by one of his workmates. Pretty soon, though, it turned out quasi slave-labour wasn't quite his thing, so he managed to bribe his foreman to get his passport back and Chaandy escaped back to India.

Still not content, he looked up a cousin who was studying engineering at the University of Tennessee. Being himself a Nasrani Christian, he was able to get some scholarships from a few churches in the Knoxville area to begin his own computer science degree at UT Chattanooga. It started out well, but then, after a weekend trip, it all changed. His prior love of country music led him, naturally, to Pigeon Forge, and to experience the previously unimaginable: Dolly's Dixieland Stampede. Chaandy's world turned upside down. For the past two years, he has been working tirelessly to find investors for what he hopes will bring Kerala to the big leagues of global tourism: A Vasco da Gama dinner-theatre spectacle at the heart of his Chaandy's Wild Ponnani! amusement park. He is very close to securing funding for "Zamorin's Revenge", the greatest maglev roller coaster in history, capable of reaching 400 km/h (250 mph).

Todd

Todd isn't particularly interesting as an individual, but rather the contrast between him and his two sisters is an interesting study in the by-products of post-1960's feminism. On the one-hand, Todd's two older sisters were brought up being told that they could do and be anything they wanted, and that no one could tell them otherwise. Expecting that they could have it all, they both became overachievers, and currently try to balance successful careers and each have begun their own families.

Then, on the other hand, there is Todd. He grew up with the implied message that since he was a boy, he would have it easy in a Man's world. Consequently, he was raised with lowered expectations. He is pretty smart, but has a horrible work ethic. Only his athletic prowess was really pushed to any degree. He putzed around university a few years, juggling various girlfriends and majors, and finally stopped going after he became a manager at a sporting goods store. Now, he mostly spends his time exercising his masculinity in those realms that feminism has largely ignored: farting, playing FPS games online, stashing nuts and watching MMA.

Smitty

Smitty found a job as a janitor in a local senior's residence because it allows him to easily do his second most favourite thing: getting high on solvent. He works the night shift, which allows him to fly under the radar. However, although he does enjoy the temporary euphoria from the huffing, he actually does the whole solvent thing because it serves as inspiration for his most favourite thing. Smitty improvises interpretive dance with his mop, and puts on performances for the insomniac residents of the home. Marjory is his biggest fan. Sometimes, she smuggles him the occasional pudding from the dining room.

Raijin

The story of Raijin begins in 1944. His grand-father was a high ranking officer in the Japanese Imperial Navy. He and some colleagues had been on leave for a few days when they were flying back with a few of their favourite concubines. Their plane crashed over a remote South Pacific island. The marooned crew, after waiting months with no avail for a rescue party, accepted their fate and began a thriving little colony on the island. All throughout, word that the war was over never reached the isolated island, and all boys born on the island were trained to be elite warriors, in the strictest Bushido tradition. Once re-connected to the war effort, these men would unleash swift retribution unto any enemy. But rescue never came for Raijin's father, and so when Raijin was born (like his father, he is named for the God of Thunder), a new generation of warriors emerged.

Last year, a Japanese whaling boat wandered upon the island whilst trying to avoid Greepeace activists. The “scientists” aboard were astonished to find the colony of almost sixty inhabitants, Raijin included. Although raised in traditional Japanese fashion, Raijin was completely unprepared for modern Japanese life. Once he got over the fact that they had lost the war (kinda bursting a huge myth bubble of the invincibility of the Japanese warrior), he is now trying to wrap his head around Hello Kitty, amongst other things. He is seeing a shrink thrice weekly. After contemplating seppuku, he instead turned his physical prowess to dominating the Dance Dance Revolution. He's like a ninja at it.

Tyrone

Tyrone took over his Uncle's barbecue joint, Ol' Jumbo's Chicken & Ribs, in 1994, and has since been churning out some of the best ribs in the Carolinas for the past two decades. That being said, so does Jeb's Oink Pit across town. The smoked rib rivalry between the two has been going on since the Johnson administration, and was for the large part a friendly one. But all that changed last year when Jeb passed on the Oink Pit to his grandson, Jeb III (or Junior Junior, as he is called in the family). Jr. Jr. recently got Netflix, and began watching House of Cards. Seeing the success of the BBQ joint in that series, he began a letter writing campaign to all local congressman & senators to patronise his rib joint. Tyrone, hearing of this, decided to follow suit, and added mayors and sheriffs to his mailing list, too.

Each elected official showing up resulted in photos being taken and sent to the rival restaurant. When Tyrone heard that Jr. Jr. was spreading lies that Ol' Jumbo's was making political donations to the other party, he knew the gloves were off. He snuck in one night and replaced all of Jr. Jr.'s sugar with salt, and paprika with cayenne.

The next day, when he tasted his sauce just before opening, Jr. Jr. had a nasty surprise... and had to cancel an order for a baseball tournament. Coincidentally, Tyrone had an extra thirty full racks already done when the tournament organisers called in a panic to find ribs. Ah... Tyrone.... You sneaky bastard.

Eldrige "Chubbs" Ferguson

Chubbs is perhaps best known as the front-man for his band, Chubbs Ferguson & the Hound Harbor Tugboats. The only seven- (Yes! SEVEN!) time winner of the Southeast Olde-Tyme Music Association artist of the year, he was also inducted last year in Mountain Music Hall of Fame. His talent on the dobro is so extreme, it has become commonplace for other squirrels in the music scene to aspire to having "chops like Chubbs". Unfortunately, since "the accident", Chubbs doesn't tour much anymore. He claims it is because of back pain, but many say it's for the shame of it all. Last spring, after a sold-out show in Wichita, his car was found in the morning wrapped around a telephone pole along Route 15. When the police found him, he was unconscious, and two nubile prairie dogs, half his age, were barely clinging onto life in the back seat. The police report states he suffered a mild heart attack, but most suspect the real cause was his penchant for Zima.

Pearl

The story of Pearl goes back to 1934 in Boise City, Oklahoma. Her grandparents owned a ranch not too far out of town, but, at the peak of the dust bowl, they had to cull the herd. They lost everything. Pearl's family packed up everything Henry Fonda-style and they made their way to California. There, Pearl's grandmother had a younger sister, named Pearl, who was a cigarette girl at the Copacabana Club. It didn't pay much, but she let the family stay with her in a little studio apartment until they were on their feet. Pearl's grandmother found a job as a seamstress at MGM, and her grandfather found a job as a line cook at a diner. It wasn't the high-life, but they pulled through. After the war, the family re-settled in Oregon, and as a tribute, each successive generation named the first-born girl "Pearl". 

Now, you'd think that with a story like that, one would be proud to have such a name, but not Pearl. She's in her twenties and she feels it makes her sound like a granny. As with many Millennials, she doesn't care much for what isn't an Apple product, and is quite resentful of her parents. Why couldn't she just be Jessica or Taylor or something normal? It's something she obsesses over quite a bit, actually... Well, come to think of it, she obsesses over pretty much everything. She's kinda like that. Obsessive, I mean. She is organised to a degree which is beyond anally retentive. (If you were to give her a coal suppository, she'd poop out a diamond). However, she's pretty creative too. By making liberal use of her local dollar store, she makes hand-made glittered file organisers and sells them on etsy. Who says you can't be both orderly and fabulous?

Randolf

Randolf was raised by two English professors in a small New England town. He was given the false impression from a young age that everyone should care about how he feels, so he became a poet. Since High School, he has been publishing the pointless drivel that comes out of him in whatever rag he can find. There seems to be an audience for the crap he writes, but it is mostly made up of other “poets” publishing in the same low-rent pits of narcissistic literature periodicals. To wit:

Flower of Winter by Ràndolf – (Of course, he doesn't use his last name, and adds gratuitous accents.)

Today

I am the apostate

I blaspheme with her touch

The warmth of her sigh

Is a bloom under the solstice.

Long, long night

Lonely no more:

The visions I once had

Are now at home in my temple.

And yet, the guilt

Wilts

As a flower of winter

I mean: what the hell does that even mean? It's like David Lynch is sending texts to himself about... pleasuring oneself? Is he cheating on himself? I don't get it.

Anyway, back to Randolf. Chances are he'll also get his PhD in English Lit, once he finishes his MA, and then get a similar job to his parents (though through an endless string of course loads, never actually getting tenure - that's just the way the wind blows these days). And so the cycle continues.

Udo

Remember that European metal band from some years ago (From, I want to say: Denmark?) that had that really big power ballad? Well, the drummer had an older brother, Udo, who is still resentful for his brother's coke-fueled sex rampage that was the 1997 world tour. While his brother was touring the world, Udo had to stay at home and take care of their ailing mother. He had to drop out of school, abandoning his dream of becoming a lepidopterist . Thankfully the mother got better – turns out her veganism was making her anaemic – and he got a decent job as a night custodian at the Lego factory (so yeah, I was right: totally Denmark). He has to frequently change mothballs in the urinals, but that's as close as he gets to his dream. However! Just this weekend, though, he received a surprise visit from his estranged brother, who, in a bid for reconciliation, is sending Udo to a one-month intensive butterfly seminar in Borneo this summer.

Darren and Chaz

Although Chaz and Darren both grew up just a couple of blocks away from each other, they represent very different versions of the modern Australian man. Since high school, Darren stayed in Wodonga. He's a hard working, salt-of-the-Earth kind of fella. Since technical college he's worked as a mechanic at the local Holden dealership. He listens to Slim Dusty, and cheers on his West Coast Eagles (his dad is from Perth). He and Liz have been together for seven years, now. Maybe this Christmas he'll propose.

Chaz, on the other hand, is a complete tosser. After finishing his year 12 at a private institution, he took a gap year. Actually, it was more of a “clap” year. Whilst backpacking through South-East Asia, he left behind a trail of venereal disease with mostly English and American hostel-dwellers. Now in University, having changed majors six times, he might actually graduate next year. In sports history. Not in engineering like he told mommy and daddy...

Mandie

When Mandie was in high school she smoked so much dope. I mean: So. Much. Fucking. Dope. Since the age of fifteen, she has been pretty much constantly high. She thinks her late teens were pretty good years, but it's hard to tell, as it is all pretty much a haze. She thinks she remembers dragons somewhere in there, but that's probably just the summer she followed Phish around on tour, and lived on a steady diet of shrooms and peyote. That was when she was dating Taz (if you can call it that... it was when she was whatever filthy hippies who form a couple do: that). Since then, though, Mandie decided to open up her own store. She sells karmically-aligned gemstones, vegan cookies, and, medicine. And by medicine, I mean weed. She's not rich, though, because she has to pay child support to Taz, with whom she adopted a child while they were together. Well, 'adopted' isn't quite right... it was just one of those World Vision sponsor a child things, but she's way too baked to clue in on that, and Taz has been milking thousands out of her for years. See, kids? This is why you should just say "No!" to drugs. And stay in school. Probably that, too.

McGurley

McGurley was a hard-nosed, hard drinking detective for twenty years. He played by his own rules, and always got the job done. Anyone who knows him knows you just don't fuck with McGurley: with a name like that, you learn to stand up for yourself pretty damned early if you want to survive in the school yard. In 2009, McGurley found out his Lieutenant was on the take from the Russian mob. His Lt. threatened him, so McGurley killed him. In prison, the Russkies sent some guys to shiv him. So he killed 'em too. You just don't fuck with McGurley.

Rhonda

When anyone first meets Rhonda the first thing they want to do is to judge her for her poor life choices. True, she lives off of social benefits with her eleven kids from eight different baby daddies. True, she can't hold down a job. But what haters need to know is that Rhonda never really had much of a chance in life. She was home-schooled by her mom, who went bat-shit fucking crazy after her dad died of liver failure following years of rampant alcoholism. Then, the front door became a revolving door of mom's “friends”. That didn't keep mom from not teaching Rhonda anything about how the human reproductive system works, or condoms, because that just wouldn't be Christian. Like any child, Rhonda, as she grew older, simply imitated the roles to which she had been exposed. Unfortunately for her, she was surrounded only by shitty role models. And to the other haters who are whining that the photo is not of a squirrel, maybe you should note that the marmota  monax is classified in the sciuridae family – ergo, a squirrel. Jesus, read a book.

The Hackney Brothers

The Hackney brothers - Nigel, Evan, and Chumseligh- can usually be found hatching some cockamamie get-rich scheme. Almost always, it blows up in their face and they wind up in some sort of trouble. Impressively, they have managed to accumulate some seventeen ASBO's between the three of them. Most recently, they were selling expired Kazakh smoked oysters in Blackpool, which they'd purchased at rock-bottom prices from a passing Liberian freighter in Bristol. (They have a mate who knows this pikey fella who has a contact at the port). As of this past Friday, however, all three are in hospital after being neck-nominated to each drink three bottles of Buckies by their cousin Archibald.

Ajeet

Ajeet grew up in a pretty normal middle class family in Bangalore (he's a HUGE Challengers supporter), and, when his exam scores were too low to get into university, he found a good job in a call centre.

When he first started calling people in Canada to see if they wanted their air ducts cleaned, he didn't even know what an air duct was. With the help of the internets, he did a little investigation and not only found out what it was, but also found out how much you could charge to do the cleaning. He dropped everything, and moved to join his cousin living in Brampton, Ontario. He enrolled in college, and became an HVAC specialist. He got married a few years ago, and he and his wife, Amolika, own an HVAC business in Mississauga. It's the 37^th largest in the 905. They've made it large. Have YOU made it large?

Casey

The story of Casey is a rather tragic one. He had always been a bit of a loner, spending most of his time finding and hiding seeds and nuts. He had a steady job as a tech support worker for the county. However, one winter about ten years ago, he discovered the game of Mahjong whilst staying at his uncle's ski chalet in Vermont. The initial exhilaration of the game quickly led to a dark path of gambling and compulsive sexual fetishes. Three years ago he convinced his supervisor to send him to an internet security conference in Hong Kong. He boarded his flight, but never registered at the conference, and never returned. It is suspected he went Macau to play hard core (in all senses of the word) Mahjong, and fell afoul of the Chinese Communist Party. He probably made the iPhone you're using right now. His story serves as a reminder to all squirrels of the dangers of etched tiles.

Edward

Edward was actually born Eduardo Fulgencio Gomez. He was adopted as a baby from South America. For most of his life, Edward imagined he was the illegitimate son of Pablo "Bam Bam" Gomez, the legendary Paraguayan charango player, tragically killed in a bus crash the year of Edward's birth. However, Edward has just returned from Paraguay where he went to find out more about his biological parents. After exhaustive red tape and a plethora of bribes, it turns out that his parents were actually an ultra-conservative Catholic Archbishop and the daughter of a Nazi fugitive, both of whom were into some really kinky stuff. His homecoming dinner tonight with his two adoptive gay Jewish dads should be really interesting.

Gwen

The only thing extraordinary about Gwen is how incredibly ordinary she is. She works as a middle manager at a large firm, so she doesn't actually "do" work, or manage anyone: she sits in a cubicle and acts a Soviet-style checkpoint between people who do work, and people who get paid more than her. Sometimes, to assert her authority, she will insist on the use of an Oxford comma. After work, Gwen drives her SUV back to her suburban home where she feeds her children a really neat new prepared meal from the supermarket (Eating chicken tikka-masala helps them be more wordly). Her husband checked out a long time ago, and spends much of his time and money supporting the local sports team. But it's ok: he has a man-cave so that makes him very masculine and desirable. Her two children are 'C' students, but that's the teachers' fault, because "they don't challenge the children enough". Once the kids are in bed, Gwen likes to watch CSI with a nice glass of wine and a couple of Zoloft.

Manolo

Manolo recently broke off his engagement with Jamila, much to her chagrine. Although he still loves her, his one true passion is his art. As a performance artist, Manolo dedicates his entire body and soul to his craft. This coming spring, he hopes to return to his home town of La Coruña and stage a piece on abstinence in the digital age. He plans to ride naked atop a castrated bull whilst playing his gaita, going from church to church delivering wheels of cheese, all the while being followed by a retired prostitute who will be tweeting her emotional experience in haiku form. He has recieved six grants from the European Union for this performance piece.

Gertrude

Gertrude's husband, Herman, died in 2004. He owned a fair-sized tire dealership in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She wasn't too broken up about it, though, because the two-timing son-of-a-bitch spent most of the 80's cheating on her with his secretary: Troy. Model train conventions, my ass!
As soon as he was in the ground, Gertrude picked up stakes and bought a condo in a retirement community near Fort Myers, Florida. Nowadays, when she's in a good mood, she toddles over to Applebee's for the early bird special. She's more interested in handsome divorcees than in the 2 for 1 apps, though (she counts her points closely). Most of the time, however, she's bitter, and deals with her anger by whipping pretty much everyone's ass in Canasta, from Naples to Manatee County.

Tabatha

Tabatha runs a blog about endangered breeds of heirloom chickens. A strong, silent type, she dreams of one day retiring in New England. Probably Vermont. They have good chickens there.