- Joined
- Jun 9, 2014
R. L. Wagner III, 2013
Rick Wagner (born March 25th, 1945) is an American writer and performer from Omaha, NE. In the early 70's, and in a couple of recent years, Rick wrote poetry that he began trying to sell. As a religious man, his poems deal with what you'd expect: people getting AIDS, getting turned down by women, and former US President Jimmy Carter.
With a website right out of the 1990's, poems about questionable material, and backwoods opinions on social progress, Rick Wagner is primed for some serious laughs. But first, a personal anecdote about how I met this man:
A couple of years ago I was spending time in central Texas with some of my family. One thing we always like to do together is go to flea markets and thrift stores to see what kinds of neat finds we can get. We're a family of collectors so it works out that way. One day I was with my mother and two younger brothers at a place called Traders Village in San Antonio, TX. Great place, lots of food and vendors, but sitting on a stool all by his lonesome was Rick Wagner accompanied only by his poetry, laminated and hanging from what I could only assume was a repurposed baby mobile.
It was my two brothers who ran into this guy first as we had broken up our group when I stopped to look at comic books. My youngest brother, pushing 13 at the time, came up to me and said "this weird old guy handed me a poem and asked me to read it". I immediately started laughing and asked what it was about. My brother said he did not know, only that it was called "I'm Just a Kid", because he ran his ass out of there thinking he was a predator. I didn't believe him, and in response my brothers pointed out where this guy was and told me to go talk to him and find out for myself.
Like a scene out of The Little Rascals or something, all three of us peeked around the corner of the row of shops where Rick was sitting, and sure enough there he was sitting around with his poetry. I walked up to him alone to strike up a conversation during which Rick showed me his "Love" poem and asked if I wanted to buy a framed copy for $25. That's a bit steep for a joke, so I declined and he lost interest in selling to me, but he was still yammering about how Obama is ruining this country and that he's going to let "the gays" marry.
I had seen and heard enough, so I politely ended our conversation, went back to where my brothers were standing and watching the whole thing, shook my head at them, and started laughing.
It was my two brothers who ran into this guy first as we had broken up our group when I stopped to look at comic books. My youngest brother, pushing 13 at the time, came up to me and said "this weird old guy handed me a poem and asked me to read it". I immediately started laughing and asked what it was about. My brother said he did not know, only that it was called "I'm Just a Kid", because he ran his ass out of there thinking he was a predator. I didn't believe him, and in response my brothers pointed out where this guy was and told me to go talk to him and find out for myself.
Like a scene out of The Little Rascals or something, all three of us peeked around the corner of the row of shops where Rick was sitting, and sure enough there he was sitting around with his poetry. I walked up to him alone to strike up a conversation during which Rick showed me his "Love" poem and asked if I wanted to buy a framed copy for $25. That's a bit steep for a joke, so I declined and he lost interest in selling to me, but he was still yammering about how Obama is ruining this country and that he's going to let "the gays" marry.
I had seen and heard enough, so I politely ended our conversation, went back to where my brothers were standing and watching the whole thing, shook my head at them, and started laughing.
I was amused, and we laughed about Rick for the rest of the afternoon, and then when we all went back to our hotel room things hit critical mass.
"Did you know R.L. Wagner has a website?" My brother, the one who was accosted with the poem, asked.
Sure enough, www.rlwagner.com was a thing and god damn was it amazing. My brother clicked on the first poem, "A.I.D.S." and we just about lost it.
On the AIDS poem page, Rick mentions there's a full poem that you can see if you have the password. It took my brother all of about five minutes to guess it; "I wonder if it's AIDS backwards?"
Yep. The password is "sdia". On page two of his poem, he gets into the religious reasons behind AIDS because of course he does.
Rick is really proud of his "Love" poem, though unfortunately he does this thing on his website where he censors out most of the poems to get you to buy them. Like a certain lolcow we all know and love, Rick is also bilingual and offers select poems in the tongue of Mexico. According to Rick's website, he has sold over half a million poems in 48 states, 10 countries, and in four languages. Then again on the same page he also pulls a redpill and insults women in the same opening paragraph so make of that what you will.
For the sake of amusement, let's assume that Rick has sold over half a million poems at his steep price of $25. This factors out to $12.5M. Call me crazy, but I don't think Rick is making eight figures on his Google Translate love poems.
Something you've probably noticed while browsing Rick's website is that a lot of the content is broken. I don't think that's a symptom of web rot, because as sporadically as The Wayback Machine hits this website, the links are broken on all versions of the page. He just naturally sucks at web design. To demonstrate this, click around on some of the links; you'll notice that instead of typing words onto his page, he'll print out the content, scan the print out, and then post the fucking JPEG to his website.
Rick is almost certainly crazy. There are so many layers to his website that it would be impossible for me to cover all of them in one post. I figured it would be best to leave you with a tasting sampler of some of the better parts of his website, then let you all pick apart the rest of it to find any other hidden gems:
- A poem (censored) about condoms.
- "How Long's It Been (Since You Loved Someone?)", a song that takes a homophobic tone in its first stanza. Page 1, 2.
- Some pictures of Rick with various trucks.
- According to this page, Rick sent a report to Crimestoppers regarding the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey by means of ripping his report into four pieces and faxing them to Crimstoppers. What.
- A page titled "USA Gun Problem". References one "Georges Bushes".
- An open letter to Mel Gibson asking him to move to San Antonio and to give Rick roles in his movies.
- An open letter to Germany suggesting they take over China's shoe sweatshops. This is apparently a good idea because Rick is of German descent (see point 6).
- Section IX.G on his website, one of the newest parts according to Wayback Machine, references "Stud Services". It's exactly what you think it sounds like, and it's two pages long.
Finally, just for the hell of it, here is a picture of Rick I snapped earlier this year when I went back to Traders Village without my family:
Also of note is he's one of "those people" who think 
as he has a placeholder page for a poem he is threatening to write if Obama takes away any more of his Social Security payments. Why is he getting SSI though, if he's a millionaire 500,000 copy selling poet? Is it because, call me crazy here, Rick is possibly full of shit?!
