A Re-editing of Kyiv Unedited’s First Rule of Editing, Which is to Say, of “Unediting”: First Centennial Edition
In the Story Notice to 4.8, “The Rational Man”, we read this about Kyiv Unedited’s editing conventions:
Regarding Editing Conventions on This Website
“By the way, keep in mind that part of this operation’s name is “Unedited”, so let not questions regarding silly conventions, such as whether a comma belongs inside or outside a quotation mark, set your minds on fire. Rather, we are here to put those fires out.”
We realize that we need to revise and “re-edit”, so to speak, the above-stated to bring it up to date with at least some of the latest non-editing conventions in what’s left of the English language worldwide, especially as inconsistently practiced by us on this website, so as to have started to become a sort of loosely-jointed custom around here, to the point of further becoming its own editing convention, with hard-to-remember rules cast in sets filed under categories, with which one needs to be already familiar as a prerequisite to finally finding what you are looking for, only to possibly get it wrong, anyway.
Rather than dreading the prospect of finally beginning to codify Kyiv Unedited’s own editing rules as an outgrowth of this burgeoning phenomenon, we urgently look forward to doing just that. And we don’t have to start big, and get it down all at once – but only a rule or two every once in a blue moon should be enough to end up, eventually, with a comprehensive and authoritative compendium of how not to edit (and write, for that matter) if you want to “write” and “edit” ‘like they do’, as they say, on Kyiv Unedited.
It is a great privilege and honor to have gotten things to this point, because it is the ant that grows into a dragon* – big enough to realize that you are there – and therefore, proceeds to fry your pathetic ass to a crisp without reserve or compunction. For, in the Old Order, had you not been ready, and eager, to crush it under heel? And all it was doing was working for the colony. But no, it was too much to ask that you just leave it alone and let it go on its way. You had to demonstrate your power of life and death over it – and not in its favor. And how did that make you feel? Good? Superior? Strong? Oh, I know… POW…ER…FUL… and IN… CON…TROL… Well, good for you… good for you…
Of course, in all of this, we don’t mean You, Cherished Readers – it was just a way of putting it.
But see, for example, the weepy and repentant Ezra Pound in his Canto 81 (which, admittedly, inspired our didactic metaphor above), when he finally breaks down of his unlyrical recalcitrance, while, oddly, getting over his lifetime’s inferiority complex, to see the error of his unpoetic ways; in a word, when, remorseful and penitent, he attempts to cry out a pledge that from now on, he would write beautiful poetry, but, also at that very same moment, realizes his time is over and that it is too late. He had had his chance, but he’d made a conscious choice to fuck it up, and he can neither go back to correct his errors, rewrite what he’d written, and redeem himself within the poetic record, nor can he any longer move forward, as – especially in this most painful and poignant moment, when he realizes his life’s effort had been a total waste – to do so, to try to do so, would be an effort utterly bereft on any noteworthy poetic consequence or sense.
Paradoxically, in the poem, whilst writing of someone else, a tormentor, he appears to take his own advice, realizing, no doubt, that, as far as tormentors go, he has been his own worst one, and he is actually writing these words to, and about, himself:
“Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity…”
But most of all, in doing this, it is important to us to give our Intrepid, if Idle, Readers a foundation upon which we might all begin industriously dismantling the AP Style Manual, or anyone from Chicago, that they never again even presume to dictate to us how to edit and how to write, because they are all just operatives of the Deep State, hauling coals for ol’ Nick Mephisto Itself.
While we, being just the opposite, are, refreshingly, not. Because it is Freedom that We are all about, People…
And if our Convention here at Kyiv Unedited just happens to coincide with, say, British English Convention, well, we disagree with them, too – bunch of drugged-up, repressed, paid-for, Satan-worshipping tyrants. Just look how far we’ve fallen, indeed.
So, here it goes; the first rule, according to the Kyiv Unedited Un-Style Un-Guide:
Rule Number 1
The first Rule is to, as we have already stated, re-edit our first statement “Regarding Editing Conventions on This Website”, as follows:
Change:
By the way, keep in mind that part of this operation’s name is “Unedited”, so let not questions regarding silly conventions, such as whether a comma belongs inside or outside a quotation mark, set your minds on fire. Rather, we are here to put those fires out.
To:
Rule: Part of this operation’s name is “Unedited”, so let there be no questions regarding silly conventions, such as whether a comma, or other punctuation, belongs inside or outside quotation marks, be they single, or double – or whether they are used at all.
Example: ‘Do not “set your minds on fire”; rather, allow your unquestioning acceptance of this rule to “put those fires out”.
This Book of Kyiv Unedited Editing Rules and Styles Guides will be added to as time and necessity either dictate, or merely allow.
Signed, as Self-Elected, the:
Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board (KUSEB)
One of our mottos:
“We are far more powerful than you think…”
A Timely and Pithy Response to the Above:
Dear Valued Readers,
*If you can find the asterisk in the above text that this asterisk refers to (it is next to the word “dragon”, in bold and italicized), this is what we want to say:
The Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board thinks a little too much of itself, and its “powers”, seeing as how their entire metaphoric exegesis based on Ezra Pound’s Canto 81 ‘ant turning into a dragon’ is a gross misreading and corruption of the relevant line in the poem, as outrageous for its utter carelessness and disregard of the actual poetic text as it is repugnant for the sheer arrogance of its erroneous conceit; for the line at issue reads:
“The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.”
Clearly, the ant does not turn into a dragon. All the poet is trying to convey is that the ant’s world, the world that belongs to the ant, is a dragon world. We do not know why that is, so we must simply take it as a fact, and move on. And in that dragon world, the ant is a centaur. Again, no explanation is given, and we must once more take the statement at face value, or risk losing the sense of the entire poem.
But the ant most certainly does not turn into a dragon.
And that’s all we have to say about this, at the moment. After all, we realize this is not Poetry 101 at Harde Knoxx State Community College.
Signed, The Resistance