Publisher Ferret stops it; vetoes most other major ZZ decisions, pissing the pretentious fat ass off
Dear Kyiv Edited Readers:
My name is Zippy Zamazda. I’m the chief editor of the publication you’re reading, Kyiv Edited, an ALTERNATIVE alternative underground online magazine launched by our intrepid publisher, The Ferret, not only because there is a demand for such a publication on the Ukrainian English-language market, but also in response to a highly pernicious publication, which shall go unnamed, which purports to parody and satirize The Ferret, me, and a number of our colleagues, telling highly damaging, indeed libelous, untruths along the way.
In addition to eventually suing said unnamed publication in courts of law, most propitiously we believe here in Ukraine and in England, where (unlike in America and its backward defamation laws) the BURDEN is on the DEFENDANT to PROVE that he DIDN’T cause harm – for besmirching our characters and damaging our reputations, ourselves being public figures – we thought that launching this publication in direct response to that publication would do much to strike back at and substantially weaken that parasitic and viral enemy, and not by way of malicious lies and falsehoods, as they do, but by way of the truth. That’s right – The Truth!!!
Whenever you see a picture of me over my insightful and incisive commentary column, it’s in a black fedora. The hat is my trademark, in which you will immediately recognize me in the street, rain or shine, heat or snow, should you ever see me and be excited by the prospect of a talk, or to simply take some pictures. My door is open, and we can always duck into a café and discuss any issue you might have on your mind.
I want to make absolutely clear that I don’t wear the fedora as some kind of gimmick, derived from a half-baked, cockamamie notion that suddenly popped into my head with the intention of creating of my image a cheap, self-promoting film-noir-like detective-reporter persona in a pathetic attempt to appear as a unique, media-savvy expert on the cutthroat Ukraine market of endlessly jabbering PR clowns and talking heads – fat-assed, obnoxious, arrogant, pretentious, delusional – none of which I know I am. Plus, my wife says that in the fedora, I look really handsome. I mean, maybe I’m a little overweight, but definitely not inordinately so, and I think under the hat, the additional heft gives me a pretty tough, no-nonsense look, and, if I do say so myself, a kind of raw, gritty, stallion machismo and sexual magnetism. In fact, I’m wearing the hat right now.
Before the hat, when I took over as chief editor of the currently embattled and hemorrhaging Kyiv Poster, getting Stephan fired from the position just after he’d hired me, I soon after found myself battling against the tremendous odds set unfairly by Stephan against my success when, before I had returned to the Kyiv Poster in triumph as the new chief editor after my Christmas vacation and deposing him, in what was apparently a rousing secret seditious and illegal speech he gave as he was leaving, Stephan had planted the seed of mutiny, rebellion and betrayal among his newsroom staff, who then began quitting on me left and right as I started, and then I –
Enter, The Ferret, Kyiv Edited Publisher. He says:
Heh, heh, stop. You’re not posting that on my website.
Uh, post what? How do you know what I’ve written?
Don’t ask stupid questions – heh-heh-heh – I just know.
But I thought you said you’d give me free rein with content in the newsroom, Ferret.
Heh – I don’t know what you are talking about. You shouldn’t go spreading rumors. You shouldn’t be writing things about the Kyiv Poster – that’s not our target. Kyiv Unedited is. You’re not allowed to settle old scores with Stephan. He’s dead – DEAD!!! Heh-heh-heh. Thanks to me, you won that battle, and then you went ahead and fucked everything up! You didn’t last a month as chief editor at the Poster. Your time as CE there was a major disaster. Everyone knows it – heh-heh. Yeah, it’s nothing to brag about, Zamazda. You don’t want to go reminding everyone of how you singlehandedly managed to turn a major victory into a major defeat. I’m warning you for your own good; you better stop advertising the fact you were chief editor there, like it’s been the biggest achievement of your entire life. It’s pathetic; it’s a joke; people laugh every time they see it. Heh, heh, heh…
People don’t laugh… they –
Yeah, heh-heh, they do to laugh. Right now, I’m giving you another chance, so you’d better appreciate what you have instead of digging up old fights you can never win. He may be a corpse, but he still kicks your ass.
But, Ferret, our target, as you say, Kyiv Unedited, is a continuation of the fight against Stephan. It’s –
Heh-heh, no it’s not. It’s what I say it is.
Outside the door: I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!!!
Zamazda: Who was that?!
Ferret: Oh, that was Andrew Plumb – I just fired him. Heh-heh-heh…
Fired him?!
Heh, don’t worry about it. I might hire him again. If he’s going to write damning indictments against Stephan, he has to do it without mentioning my good friend Welsh Losser.
But I thought you said this wasn’t about Stephan.
Heh, I do not know what you are talking about, dude.
But, but… I don’t have any copy for the website.
Heh, don’t worry about it. We’ll be okay for now. You write what I told you to write – vicious satire and parody articles against Kyiv Unedited ilk; meanwhile, I’m almost done with an anti-Jack Step piece, an anti-Dirk Dickerson piece, and a piece against Kyiv Unedited in general.
While Zamazda stares out the window, dumbfounded, The Ferret continues:
Heh, heh, yeah, anyway, instead of producing copy for our website, Plumb was using company time rewriting his 800-page Pynchonesque novel, per his literary agent in New York City’s detailed instructions, about troubled adolescents from upper middle-class backgrounds suffering through their torments and wrestling in a circle outside boarding school territory in a town in New York State’s Hudson River Valley filled with local rubes – that’s RUUUUUBES – descended from inbred redneck ilk that had settled the area centuries earlier, and a number of intellectuals, professors, and genteel artists who have moved there from larger urban environments to ease themselves into semi-retirement. Heh-heh-heh…
Filed by Jack Step, July 6, 2013