Karl has officially lost his job. He has also been on the run from the police, has suffered from a general lack of structure, and has putting together a To-Do List for getting his life back together (including “Gonna do some ‘shups. At least 13.”)
But the more interesting developments are in the territory of a) articles about Karl and b) possible fan fiction about Karl and c) a book probably by Karl Welzein.
In the articles department, the folks over at The AV Club huff-and-posted out an article about Karl in which they basically just explain who Karl is to their readers and then explain that Karl responded to The New York Times about Guy Fieri. It might be redundant, but it’s a good introduction to Karl (not that any readers of this web-log need to be introduced.)
But the really good stuff out there is in the department of things that make you say “is this fan fiction or canon or what the hell is this?” We have at least one excellent example of this, in the twitter account of Ann O’Brien-Welzein, Karl’s estranged spouse. It’s unclear whether or not this is being written by the same author, or if it’s just written by an overly-enthusiastic fan of Karl. Either way, it’s mildly entertaining without ever reaching the same scale or magnificence as Karl’s adventures. Regardless of its author, Ann’s narrative has begun to spin into other corners of the internet. While Karl has an obsession with Craigslist (useful for branching out with his narrative), Ann has taken to reddit, going to /r/books and starting “Let’s Read It (Together!) The Ann O’Brien-Welzein Book Club For Single Mothers With Rabies”.
Finally, there is something that is either pending fan fiction or an incredible new venue for Karl. That’s right, I’m talking about Power Moves: Livin’ the American Dream, USA Style, a forthcoming e-book that may or may not be actually written by Karl. The question is, what is it? It has not been mentioned, or alluded to, in his twitter feed. Is it a collection of his tweets, in book form? A spin-off narrative? A prequel? Or just more fan fiction? All I know is that the title sounds very Karlesque.
As I believe in giving credit where credit is due, I should explain that my discovery of this resulted from checking what other websites are leading to this one. After a cursory amount of research, I learned that this indeed looks to be likely, as a guy named @TheCaptainLou has been tweeting everything he can find related to it, including page 26 of this and then this.
So yeah, Karl is writing a book. Whether or not it’s going to end up being addressed in the Karl feed or if this is going to be some separate universe from the twitter feed is still unknown. Obviously, this will be blowing up on the Karl subreddit (which, if you didn’t know it, not only exists but has an entire 107 subscribers.)
And finally, I don’t know who made this, but it’s pretty great:
Of course, all of this is just the inevitable lead-up to the eventual Karl Welzein television show, starring Christian Bale.
this post is so money.