Needing magazine materials, Chic Dickie hosts Boss Lard
As we enter upon the scene in-medias-res-like, it is Boss Lard doing the talking:
You were bragging about how great your magazine is doing, and then suddenly, you need materials. So I think you should pay me for this submission.
No, it doesn’t work that way. I pay no one. No one gets anything over on me – never has, never will. You submit the materials, you pay ME for publishing them. That’s how it works; always has, always will. You should be happy –
Who should be happy? I’ve published I’ve lost count already 17 books I think and painted over 700 paintings! I’m a damn artist! Prolific as hell! No one can shut me up! No one! Not even you!
But I thought you were dead!
Ha! Andy Olivka can shove his put-on evil up his ass. He couldn’t kill me even if he tried. And I’m the one who turned out to be the writer, not him. Ha ha ha ha…
But all those books were self-published.
Published is as published does. Published is published.
Okay, look, this opinion piece you submitted in fake Q&A format is a piece of shit!
It seems to me you’re not getting any more materials from the American Chamber of Sexual Congress. And I think you should change the name of the magazine to Doing Things for Money IN Ukraine, from Doing Things for Money Ukraine. Just add the one word, “in” – that’s all you need – so the damn thing’d finally make sense!
The name stays the way it is!
It’s your funeral.
Fuck you.
Well, that’s a way of putting it.
You think you’re so important; you think everyone’s listening to you. But you never say in this piece WHO exactly it is you’ve spoken to regarding your peace plan for Ukraine and WHO exactly has been listening to you. Do you really think you’re going to decide the fate of this country, or that you have some kind of power and authority to do so? It’s almost as if you, and a few others like you, really think they’re running this fucking place. You use the space, obviously thinking ahead that my magazine is going to serve as venue for your tripe, to make those oh-so corny hickory-flavored downhome homespun good-ol’-boy jokes, clearly trying to create the impression that you’re not as smart as some of the people you’ve supposedly spoken to, or anyone reading you, for that matter, but for all that, what you’ve got is a whole bunch of crackerjack practicality, which thereby trumps intelligence. But all of that cornball joking is really a false modesty. Because what you’re REALLY doing is using that false modesty to disguise a heartfelt personal conviction that you REALLY ARE smarter than everyone else.
Well, now –
Easily half the piece is one cornball joke after another, fucking exasperating, before you finally get to what you want to say. Come to think of it, maybe all the joking is also a feeble attempt to cover up how pathetic your stupid argument really is. So why make it at all?!
No, I don’t think –
That’s right, you don’t think, because you’re a doddering old man on the brink of mental collapse, or insanity, whichever comes first. You never listen to anybody! All you do is talk to yourself, and it’s gone to your head! You’ve completely lost it! You’ve gone absolutely loopy! People have been killed in the thousands, and you see fit to make jokes! Bad jokes! Really stupid ones! I’m not charmed, or impressed, or won over by them at all! I said, AT ALL!!!
Well, I don’t see any harm in infusing the situation with some –
Shut up! Why don’t you just finally ever just SHUT THE HELL UP!!!
I told you, not nor you nor nobody can or EVER WILL –
I – SAID – SHUT – UP!!!
Near miraculously, Chic Dickie’s fearsome Englishman’s lionlike roar finally does shut Boss Lard up, shaking him terribly to his foundations.
But Chic Dickie starts in again:
Yeah, everyone’s a fucking writer, Lard. All those books of yours were self-published.
Naturally, Boss Lard replies:
No, everyone’s NOT a writer, Dickie. For example, I’m a writer, and everyone else isn’t, including you, although they can say it as much as they want. You take anyone who claims to be a writer about Ukraine, based in or out, fact or fiction, and I’m top of the heap. If you need any convincing, just check out the latest rundown of so-called writers (except for me, a real writer) in the Kyiv Poster’s latest, er-uh, rundown of, uh, so-called writers in its, uh, latest… uh, it’s latest, uh… rundown – well, which is really an update – “Expat Writers Writing about Ukraine Inspired to Write about Ukraine”. I win every time. I win, hands down, every single cotton-picking time! Always have, do now, always will.
So Chic Dickie says:
I heard you paid for those so you’d come out on top – sticking yourself into the so-called middle of a pathetic so-called pack of so-called writing contenders so you’d look unassuming and modest. And it seems to me you’re trying to pull the same self-promotional stunt in my zine as per your overinflated usual with that endnote at the bottom of your longwinded but otherwise pompousness-disguised-as-sans-souci-brilliance, vapid and insipid comment – a bit much, don’t you think, squeezing all that supposedly absolutely essential personal information into what is alleged to be a simple self-promoting blurb – as if, after 17 books, you’re STILL not sure of yourself and are harboring ever-increasing-in-mental-weight-and-ponderousness doubts about what, if anything, you will leave for posterity – AFTER YOU REALLY ARE FINALLY AND IRREFUTABLY DEAD!!!
Lard:
Of the two types of lies, that’s a damned one!
Which part?
All of them.
Yeah, sure it is.
That’s right. And fat chance on the dead thing.
Oh, sure, sure.
That’s right, that’s right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we pull away from Chic Dickie, and as we do his meaningless voice fades into even more meaningless silence, as he keeps talking and talking, and we are suddenly able to note that there is no Boss Lard sitting in a chair pulled up next to the big dark mahogany writing desk behind which sits Chic Dickie in a high-backed fine-leather-upholstered chair on wheels berating said-same interlocutor Lard.
We are now behind Chic Dickie, looking at his extremely large and wobbling head, thrown out to the right side of the crest of the highbacked leather chair, and even from here we can tell that he looks like Henry VIII… except, we can no longer be sure it is Chic Dickie…
The severe-looking man with the pointed high shoulders and jagged features has gotten up from his small table under one of the gloomy giant darkness-casting windows at the end of the room and moves toward Chic Dickie, who, oblivious to the man’s movements, keeps talking.
The little pot-bellied clown follows the man with quick, desperate, concerned steps.
My name is Outrage Reggie, the man says, talking to an audience he knows is there, as if introducing himself for the first time, without quite knowing where that audience is or via which medium they are listening to him. Nevertheless, he continues, now addressing his clown:
I’m really sick and tired of this Chic Dickie… What do you say we do with him, Binky? already knowing full well the answer and awaiting its delivery to him by the little clown, his excitement barely restrained under a veil of respectable reserve.
E-e-e-e-e-ehhh… I think we should tie his mouth up with filthy rags and wheel him away!
Excellent idea, Binky – capital, dear boy – truly supreme…!!!
From the back, we see the giant Henry VIII head slam against the high back of the leather chair as Binky delivers multi-colored filthy rags out of a belt pouch up to his master Outrage Reggie, who vigorously but expertly stops and ties up the head’s mouth with them.
The figure flails his arms about and for the first time we notice that, in extreme contrast to the rotund and bloated body they belong to, they are sticklike and frighteningly skeletal. Binky catches those arms and presses them against the rests, to which Outrage Reggie proceeds to tie them – with ropes he’s had ready all along. Yes, we are almost, though not quite, certain this is Chic Dickie, even though from the back, the fat giant wobbling and tottering head strongly reminds us of King Henry VIII and Humpty Dumpty.
A door appears in a wall and opens.
Fine work, my boy. Now, as I wheel it away unto its retire, be a good lad and get me my tea.
Yes, my master.
As Outrage Reggie wheels whom, or what, we think is Chic Dickie through the secret door and through unknown dark passages away, Binky goes to get the tea.
Filed March 15, 2015