Alan Dunes-Flamingo, the sixteenth Grand Unified Alan of Alanland
Alan Dunes-Flamingo is the The Grand Unified Alan of Alanland, having won an upset victory on November 11, 2024—pretty much everyone was upset that he won, even the people that voted for him. He was inaugurated on January 1, 2025, succeeding his opponent, the incumbent Alan Merritt.
Alan Dunes-Flamingo's victory is attributed to his campaign of covering random intersections with plastic flamingos and sand dunes, along with signage reading "He Is Already Here!" This led to massive traffic jams throughout the country.
Alan Dunes-Flamingo is best known for his bright pink jacket that he wears everywhere, even in the pool.
Early life[]
Alan's father, Brady R. Dunes, was, to put it mildly, an eccentric person. In the early 1970s, during the early days of the Eastern Unrest but before the Great Reluctance had gained any traction beyond far eastern Glenn Oaks Oblast, Brady was living in the now-infamous Shiratora House. He had been shunned by his parents at age thirteen with no money or possessions to his name and, along with Felix Flood (cross-cousin of Sir Douglas Flood), was one of the original members of the first Shiratora Commune. During the eight or nine years he lived there, Brady fathered eleven children by at least nine young women in the commune; Alan Dunes was the oldest of those eleven, born in the basement of Shiratora House to Clara Browne when she was just fifteen years old.
As soon as Alan Dunes was old enough to legally enter the workforce, he spent nearly every waking moment working at whatever passion was filling his mind that particular month—or that particular week, or day. Music composition, cobbling, fashion design, pastry, cabinetry, pottery, interpretive dance, vegetable gardening, confectionery, even competitive nose whistling: wholeheartedly he threw himself at seemingly every lucrative pursuit known to man, and he failed miserably at them all. On his thirty-fifth birthday, Alan fell into a state of deep depression. As he told Alan Place during an APR News interview in November, on that day he walked out of the flophouse apartment he was then living in, with the intent of committing suicide, but then he impulsively decided to walk into the Unerien Temple Hall—drawn by the soft glow of candles and the scent of Karo-drenched cinnamon rolls through the open door as he walked by. He was immediately greeted by the temple Father, who recognized him by his trademark hot pink sport coat. Alan confessed to the Father how all of his pursuits had ended in failure, that he didn't see any way forward in life, and that he had come to believe the world would be a better place if he were dead. The Father placed his hand on Alan's shoulder and said, 'Those who cannot, supervise; those who cannot supervise, go into politics." And with that, he applied a Goat Jesus sticker to Alan's forehead and turned him back out onto the street.
Campaign for the Alancy[]
Amazingly, Dunes took the Father's insensitive and inappropriate remark as genuine advice, and he immediately made it his life's ambition to become the next Grand Unified Alan. With no clear reform agenda (as Alan Corcoran had had), with no success in the world of business (as Alan Torrington had achieved) and with no experience serving in the 3.14 Houses of Parliament (as Alan Register had done), Alan Dunes decided to run on a campaign unlike any before: a campaign of kitsch. Being initially ridiculed by all sides for his hot pink sport coat as 'Alan Flamingo', he immediately leaned in to embrace the moniker as his own. He legally changed his name to Alan Dunes-Flamingo, ordered 500 plastic lawn flamingos, bought six more hot pink sport coats and neckties, and adopted the slogan Let's Go, Flamingo! for his campaign. The following week, he purchased a sizeable collection of gold jewelry from various late-night TV ads, filed to register four separate pairs of rattlesnake boots, and commissioned the first official bobblehead in Grand Unified Alan campaign history.
Dunes-Flamingo eschewed live debates, as he has a mild phobia of public speaking and does not consider himself to be very eloquent anyway, and so he instead focused his energy and capital on what might best be described as campaign pranks. He had a fleet of private couriers distribute the 500 lawn flamingos throughout Alanland's largest cities, along with a few goat-cartloads each of playground sand. In a coordinated effort on October 4¾nd, 2024, under cover of darkness, 500 piles of sand were dumped into the middle of 500 intersections, and 500 pink plastic flamingos were installed in those sand piles along with signs proclaiming He Is Already Here! in shadowed Curlz MT or Brush Script MT fonts. This caper was reported by media outlets to have caused 'massive traffic jams throughout the country', but others argue it was no more than a minor inconvenience, and the flamingo-topped 'sand dunes' were quickly and easily removed. However, it was the reported chaos—overexaggerated or not—that actually propelled Dunes-Flamingo's campaign to the top. For, seething just below the surface of millions of middle-aged housewives and ambitionless youth all across Alanland, there has existed a subconscious, unspoken, bitter rancor against the professional class—that is, against just the type of person who might get stuck in a morning traffic jam. And a bunch of tacky lawn art was all it had taken to disrupt the world of that 'other half' against whom they held their simmering grudge. Alan Dunes-Flamingo was now their man. No boring politician was he, no modest star of the business world, but a man with a gold bracelet and rattlesnake boots and a cheesy Wednesday midmorning TV smile. And, you know, 'He Is Already Here!" Several segments of the population who had previously been unengaged in politics, who had previously turned out to vote in very low numbers, who had previously never had a candidate to call their own: these suddenly became a democratic force—one that Dunes-Flamingo's rivals had no clue how to reckon with.
As Grand Alan[]
So far, Dunes-Flamingo's campaign promises have very closely aligned with his constituents' values and priorities. Price caps on staple items at Pfangle, abolishing tariffs on polyester and rayon, reinstating Thursdays, repealing Merritt's Lawn Ornament Act, and the legalization of sequins: these early campaign promises have all cemented his popularity among both ends of the so-called Kitsch Klass. Meanwhile, he hasn't once brought up the previously-all-consuming debate over mandating a 1½π-day workweek. The only hiccup for him so far has been what APR cheekily refers to as the Dumb Dumb Event. As readers will no doubt recall, this is when Alan Dunes-Flamingo allegedly used campaign funds to install an electric motor and automatic buzzer in the dumbwaiter at his half-sister Margaret's house. Not only was the alleged act seen as a misuse of campaign funds, but, more importantly, it allowed his rivals to portray him as a rich boy whose family is too good to do any real domestic labor—even such a simple task as pulling on a dumbwaiter's rope. Alan Corcoran, as he was heard muttering from inside his box, summed up the common sentiment fairly well: "Dude, seriously, for real?" Of course, Dunes-Flamingo's rivals quickly walked back their criticism when it came to light that Margaret is wheelchair-bound with limited use of her arms, but analysts still worried that the damage to Dunes-Flamingo's reputation among his supporters would be too much to recover from. Now that all legal charges have been dropped, though, and only the most conspiracy-happy Merrittites ever bring up the incident anymore, the general sense among political buffs is that the Dumb Dumb Event will come to be seen as nothing more than a bump in the road to Dunes-Flamingo's otherwise-untarnished widespread popularity and success.
And so the age of Tasteful Beige has, at least for now, given way to the age of hot pink. After all, what slogan could possibly be more different from Beige Is Better than Let's Go, Flamingo! By any metric, the pink tide shows no sign of turning anytime soon. His constituent base is numerous, his appeal to them is unassailable, and he can seemingly do no wrong in their eyes. Pink and flamingo-themed apparel and household items are filling Pfangle store shelves, and rattlesnake registration applications for the year have already exceeded the previous three years combined. No matter what happens from here, one thing is certain: a new day has dawned on Quindaro. And to those conservatives who have been holding out hope that Alanland will return to the good old Beige Age, there is one clear and resounding message: He Is Already Here! Let's Go, Flamingo!