Ever since Not the Bee launched back on September 1, 2020, I've lived with a secret. Rex P. Dynamite is not a Tae Kwon Do instructor, nor does he (or she) look anything like his (or hers ... or xers) avatar image. Let me tell you how it dawned on me.

Before NTB launched, there were a ton of poop jokes being published under the NTB Staff account. I thought they were distasteful, as did many of my colleagues, but they kept getting published and they kept getting more and more popular.

Then, something bad happened.

I won't mention specifics, but let's just say that it included many, many depictions of male genitalia on a nude beach and a cover image that was X-rated getting shared "accidentally" on the NTB website. It was shocking, even more tasteless than the poop jokes, and it rocked the NTB community.

I thought that NTB Staff had gone too far, had gotten lazy, had completely lost their marbles. But then...the article views started ticking up. Before we knew it, the controversial "ding-dong" article had skyrocketed to the top of our trending article list, and had propelled NTB Staff to the pinnacle of our writing stable, fully solidifying himself/herself/itself as the crème de la crème of NTB writers.

All of the attention must have gone to NTB Staff's head, or caused some sort of internal feud, because just hours after the article was published, a new staff writer appeared out of the woodworks. Yes, I'm talking about Rex P. Dynamite.

And just like that, NTB Staff stopped writing crass articles. Nothing ... no flatulence jokes or poop jokes or accidental nudity. Just regular old NTB articles. Some say the quality went down, but I found it as a refreshing return to normalcy. That is, until Rex Dynamite started publishing articles under his/her/its new pen-name with a more-than-recognizable theme.

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, but I'm also not saying it's not.

Just keep an eye on Rex. There's something fishy going on, and I'm pretty sure I've seen that Tae Kwon Do instructor somewhere else before.