INTERNET, USA — It seems that the pale, maligned fans of comedic and heartfelt baseball writing will not need to feel even more depressed than usual, as the famous Internet Weblog NotGraphs was just purchased in a leveraged buyout by famed baseballer and performer-of-business Brian “Banknotes” Harper.

Harper’s company, The Harper Group of Concerns and Equity and Pounding, released a statement this morning stating that after the last out of the 2014 World Series, all future NotGraphs content will take place at BanknotesIndustries.com. Current NotGraphs writers were offered the opportunity to continue their work at Banknotes Industries, at an agreed-upon and much lower compensation level.

When asked for a statement, Mr. Harper did make mention that he was available for comment, but was choosing not to anyway.

More as this story develops.

Dear Cubs Public Relations,

I have your next seventh-inning stretch singer here. All he requires for his appearance is three tickets to Chicago from California, a sippy cup of milk, and a hot dog (perhaps an adult soda for his handler). He might not start out perfectly, but hey, it’s not like Ozzy Osbourne knew any the lyrics to Take Me Out. And anyway, it’s all about the finish. This candidate finishes with gusto.

If you’d like to book this act, please contact our agent, Banknotes Harper, at the cc’ed address.

Thank you for your attention,

Eno Sarris

“Then I guess,” concluded Banknotes Harper from across the conference table shaped like bad-ass tits, “we can’t agree to a sale price.”

“I suppose not,” drawled Col. Harlan Sanders. “The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise will remain mine, as it should be.”

“So it would seem,” said Banknotes Harper. “Perhaps I’ll console myself by instead purchasing …”

Banknotes Harper stood, and his erection flipped the table. Colonel Sanders stood, too, flaccid as silly, floppy pancakes. “You wouldn’t dare,” Colonel Sanders trailed off.

“By purchasing, yep, every chicken in the world, ass-back,” thundered Banknotes Harper.

“No!” Pleaded Colonel Sanders.

Banknotes Harper buzzed his secretary. “Eunice, arrange to purchase all chickens everywhere. For lunch I’ll have some sirloins and then more sirloins.”

“Fuck-stick!” bellowed Colonel Sanders, as he brandished the pearl-handled .38 he’d been carrying in his sock.

Banknotes sprung into action, stripped nude and bounded across the tits-table. He disarmed Colonel Sanders with a textbook Krav Maga maneuver, and then landed a right cross on each of his teeth, individually. Colonel Sanders tumbled to the ground in a heap but quickly ate a bunch of chicken — the last bites of chicken that Banknotes Harper did not yet own (Eunice, moments ago, had buzzed him to say that the purchase order had gone through) — for nourishment. Colonel Sanders rose up with a huge gun and shot Banknotes Harper in the lungs and feet. Banknotes Harper then began punching the crap out of Colonel Sanders, who died.

Banknotes Harper then tied a Gadsden flag to his executive letter opener and planted it in Colonel Sanders’s forehead. It whipped in the indoor business breeze. Watching the whole time had been Barbi Benton. She was sitting on the Banknotes Harper Excalibur’s Choice Office Sofa^TM.

“Eunice,” Banknotes Harper said with his finger on the buzzer. “Hold those sirloins. I’m going to have sex. Give the chickens to the people.”

Banknotes Harper was sitting at a cafe with Baudelaire and Dennis Kozlowski. “Banknotes,” Baudelaire said, “I’ll bet you all the money in Gaul that you can’t bring every notary public in the world to crushing orgasm.”

Thereupon, Kozlowski’s face turned ashen. “Pump your brakes, dickie bird,” said Banknotes Harper. “I don’t like to take money from poets. Their money smells like high-interest debt.”

“Just as I thought,” sniffed Baudelaire.

“Fair enough, pantload,” said Banknotes Harper. “You’re on.”

“My God, no!” wailed Kozlowski.

Just then Banknotes Harper’s smith-forged jaw muscles twitched almost imperceptibly, and for the first time since he winked at the raven-haired lady at the corner table some two hours prior, he blinked. “As for what you have tasked me with doing, it is done,” said Banknotes Harper.

“You see,” Banknotes Harper continued, “my sex organ is talismanic and assumes many forms. It is the parcel carrier. It is the intoxicating gas at the dentist’s office. It is the weather.”

“But my wife is a notary public!” meowed Kozlowski.

“Yes,” said Banknotes Harper, “and now she’s a whore, as well.”

“You contain multitudes,” said Baudelaire.

“In exactly one hour,” began Banknotes Harper, “a low-ranking functionary of mine will present himself. You’ll know him by his remarking, in a Tangier brogue, ‘One can’t find a decent haberdasher anymore.’ You are to respond, ‘Yea, verily.’ He will pass to you a series of offshore account numbers scrawled on Lockheed Martin letterhead. All the money in Gaul is to be wired in even amounts to each account. If this is not done by tomorrow at 7 am, all time zones, then I’ll make you into shitty burgers.”

With that Banknotes Harper rose from his seat, flipped the table with his vast erection and then, as though conveyed by an invisible chariot with erotic scenes in mother-of-pearl inlay all over it, glided over to the raven-haired lady in the corner. It was Phoebe Cates. “Lean me against a sidewalk balustrade and make punishing gigolo’s love to me,” she said to Banknotes Harper.

Then Banknotes Harper power-cleaned Phoebe Cates and carried her outside and did as she asked. Between thrusts, he arbitraged.

He had been double-parked since Tuesday last.

“Hello?”

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As should be apparent by now, “Dr. Internet” is not a specific person. Rather, it is any man who has decided he’s not going to take this shit anymore — “this shit” being the epicene objections of unmanly others on this our Internet.

Recently, a NotGraphs commenter by the nom de Internet of “TheReal” happened upon a Yasiel Puig post by Ham-Nuts Cistulli that, in the service of eroding civilization, celebrated one of Mr. Puig’s opposite-of-elusive bat-flips. TheReal took the necessary step of pointing out that this flourish would not play too well on the streets of fire whence he was forged. But then the lady-lads in his midst predictably took offense. Tired of conversing with his inferiors, TheReal took to the rhetorical top turnbuckle and landed this finishing move:

At this point, you will recognize — in spirit if not in precise diction — the imprimatur and influence of one Banknotes Harper.

True, Banknotes Harper learned business because business wanted to be learned by Banknotes Harper, and the only use Banknotes Harper has for the higher-education asset bubble is the opportunity to make a sherpa’s load of billion-dollar bills via credit default swaps on the student loans of the working poor. Still, the timely wielding of the Business Pecker, whether it be by way of high marks in a possibly-credentialed MBA program or with stacks of redeemable bullion, is something that pleases Banknotes Harper.

And so when Dr. Internet wielded his Business Pecker in order to cow the dole-sucking hordes that deigned to afflict him, Banknotes Harper saw that it was good:

Dr. Internet, you may just have a shot at being an intern to the intern of Banknotes Harper’s interns’ interns.

In 1953, American hero Joseph P. Kennedy commissioned the busts of eight captains of industry to be constructed outside the Chicago Merchandise Mart and worshiped as dollar-gods. On this day, a ninth marble bust was added — the bust of Banknotes Harper …

Banknotes agreed to be honored only if his bust faced a different direction from the others. “That’s because I see arbitrage opportunities that other motherfuckers don’t. Those butt-smell losers are reading the financial pages, while I’m looking up skirts.”

Since his wishes were satisfied, Banknotes Harper himself was on hand for the ceremonial unveiling. “I’m here because nobody knows shit-hot business like I do,” Banknotes said to the assembled dignitaries and media. “I’m going to buy the Merchandise Mart and turn it into a big-ass computer, motherfuckers.”

At that point, Banknotes Harper laid a deep-rooted kiss on Queen Rania of Jordan, unleashed a thunderous air-guitar riff, booted Paul Volcker in the rascal basket and dived into the Chicago River.

“Later, slack-dicks,” he bellowed, as he swam toward shit-hot business.

It’s been a good day at the High-Rise Business Building of Banknotes Harper …

At first, it appeared as though the leveraged buyout of the pharmaceutical concern he’d been eyeballing would fall through, but then, as negotiations frayed, Banknotes Harper locked eyes with Larry Ellison, his minority partner, and thundered, “Get your purse.”

Sensing the seriousness of the moment and suspecting no contrivance, the Business Victims and toothless regulators across the conference table — splintered from an unappeasable pounding — promptly surrendered. Seized with Business Terror, they scribbled their beggarly imprimaturs upon stacks of binding documents, each of which was bannered in 36-point Fraktur typeface, “BILL THE FUCK OF SALE.”

Afterward, Banknotes Harper remained standing — there are no chairs here — surveyed the Business Dead, and unspooled his jumbo member onto the catered platters before them. “On this day, I have arbitraged,” thundered Banknotes Harper.

Then he used his portable handheld cordless telephone to call ahead to Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls, Banknotes Harper’s favorite downtown restaurant. “Steak, rare, hot dog on the side, rolls, another hot dog, scotch, beans, ladle of scotch on top of the food,” he thundered to Herman Crackers, the obliging and tenured maître d’hôtel.

“As you wish, sir,” said Herman Crackers.

“Oh, and Crackers,” thundered Banknotes Harper, “Another scotch and hot dog and beans and steak.”

The staff at Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls knows that Banknotes Harper prefers to dine while sitting on the aftermarket sliding bench seats of a 1977 Chrysler Cordoba. So they accommodate him.

He also likes that Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls understands the visual power of price points. For instance, every menu item is priced not at rounded dollars, but rather at 99 cents on top of the next-lowest dollar amount. Banknotes Harper knows that this helps the customer feel that he’s getting a bargain, and gentlemen like bargains.

Just that same day, Banknotes Harper had closed that leveraged buyout by offering not $100,000,000,001, but rather $100,000,000,000.99. Sure, the conference-table pounding, threats of purses, intimidating deep-knee bends and timely pretend Business Telephone Calls helped, but that strategic price point was the difference. You motherfuckers need to know that.

At Morty Constantine’s Hot Steaks, Cocktails and Hot Dinner Rolls, Banknotes Harper sat on the aftermarket sliding bench seats, ate in silence and thought about compounded interest and offshore holdings. Then his business phone with the dry-cell battery rang decisively.

It was Marilu Henner.

As noted in this space, Banknotes Harper is about business, except on those occasions when he is not about business, and even at those times he is about business.

It follows, then, that Banknotes Harper’s unrelenting business travel schedule requires him to spend every spare moment in the high-level business skies and then arguing forcefully in Tokyo boardrooms, arbitraging on Abu Dhabi trading floors, and — while wearing an Oleg Cassini hardhat — pointing rolled-up architectural documents to indicate various cost-saving-but-against-code structural changes he’d like to see inside a Shanghai factory (“Take that load-bearing beam and have one of your boys make me a cigar-store Indian out of it,” for instance).

As Banknotes Harper will be quick to tell you, there’s no better way to let business know you mean business than by pounding a conference table. “The time for talking has passed,” such a gesture communicates. “Let us now transfer redeemable currencies and deeds of ownership.”

“While I’m interested in having Maroon 5 play the company retreat in Palm Beach, I’m not interested in the rates you just quoted me,” is something else it says.

Dropping a fleshy money hammer on the conference table has been known to send ripples through all market indices in all parts of the world that matter, especially when Banknotes Harper does it.

The problem for the high-ranking global executive is that when he — not she — is, say, attending a groundbreaking ceremony in Seoul or chit-chatting at a $128.6-million-per-plate super-pac fundraiser in international waters, there’s often no pounding-grade conference table to be found. The solution? The Banknotes Harper Portable Conference Table, For Pounding!

Yes, pictured above at its actual size is the Banknotes Harper Portable Conference Table, For Pounding. “Need to cow a recalcitrant regulator while pausing momentarily on the heli-pad?” Endorses Banknotes Harper himself. “This Banknotes Harper Portable Conference Table, For Pounding, which folds out to accommodate no fewer than one Business Soup-Bone, will seal the deal. Folded up, it fits in a tailored suit pocket or cigarette case. Fuckers.”

Available through SkyMall.

Sorry, Bobo Polaroids or whatever your name is, but Brian Harper is going to have to take this call …

It might be regarding the waterfront development project, or it might be regarding one of the countless opportunities for high-level arbitrage of which Brian Harper chronically avails himself. Just know that Brian Harper needs to talk business right the crap now. You can snap your little Donruss picture or whatever the hell this is all about later, but right now Brian Harper is seeing to the business of taking a business telephone call regarding the dollars.

“What do you think I should do?” Brian Harper is asking of his broker or minority partners. It’s a rhetorical query, of course. For Brian Harper knows exactly what the shit he’s going to do, and that’s because when the subject is U.S. American business, Banknotes Harper is the final word on the last word. “That’s what you think I should do?” says Banknotes. “Fuck you. Do the opposite.”

Banknotes Harper knows his way around a racket much like he knows his way around the sex closet at the American Airlines Admirals Club at … well, pick your hub airport of choice and Banknotes Harper knows his way around the sex closet at the American Airlines Admirals Club at that particular hub airport.

Baseball, you see, is but a revenue stream for Brian Harper. Buck Banknotes takes the money he makes from baseball and plows the shit right back into kick-ass interest-bearing vehicles that nobody even knows about yet. Maybe this call is about that. “Pay down the principal?” Brian Harper Buck Banknotes is wont to say. “I’m the principal, and I’m calling you to my office so as to beat your cheeks with a wooden paddle. Dollars.”

When not parking his Duesenberg in his heated garage, Lord God Cabbage Brian Harper is parking ducats in interest-bearing offshore accounts that no one even knows about yet — this is ground-level shit — and realizing boundless capital gains before the next call comes in. And the calls are always coming in. “Margin call?” Coin Skins Mazumah Brian Harper often says. “Call me back on my cutting-edge portable horn when your margins are sufficient to waste my time trying to talk treasure to the hairy treasure chest.”

Brian Harper would tell you it’s just going to be a moment, but it’s not going to be a moment. “Time is money?” Bread Property Doubloons Brian Harper says to you, even though you didn’t say “Time is money” to him.

Then he says something else about a pending stop-limit order, at which point you decide to go take Tim Laudner’s picture instead.