Bret Boner, chief editor of Ukraine’s leading English-language weekly, lies chained to the huge Rodina Mat (Motherland) statue overlooking the Dnieper River in Kyiv.
Boner: Woe is me – wretched word smith cast out by the community of my readers, scorned by publisher and advertisers alike. Better that I should never have finished journalism school – which in fact I didn’t. Never again shall I don the purple robes of an expatriate executive for a What’s Off photo shoot; no more will I feast on the fatted hamburger of an Irish bar business lunch. The gilded gates of the European Association have been shut with a resounding thump in my face. Its council of elders regards not my greetings, much less my emails; its captains of industry shun the suck-up simper that I manage to muster during chance encounters with them on the street. In short, I feel like a thumb-headed dork out of a job. I can’t even get a date over the Intern…
Without warning, a winged beast that had been circling overhead swoops down on the hapless hero, alighting somewhat awkwardly near his bared and grimy feet. It’s not an eagle of antiquity, the incarnation of Olympian Zeus, nor a pigeon from nearby Podil looking for lunch, but a monkey face perched between two bat wings with its puny torso and lower limbs apparently only added on as an afterthought. It’s Ferret Light Aqua Fresh (Ferret LAF), with new streamlined functions.
Boner: What do you want, you little creep? Can’t you see that I’m in the middle of a dramatic soliloquy that beats any of those self-inflating and cock-strung editorials I used to spew from the pages of the Kyiv Poster?
Ferret LAF: Heh, heh. Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna nibble on your nasty limbs in punishment for your giving freedom of speech to the people of Ukraine.
Ferret LAF grabs a toe on one of Boner’s feet, kind of sizing it up like a tasty tidbit, and then – just to be a prick – sinks his formidable fangs into the ankle on the other leg so that the latter doesn’t have a chance to pull it back in defense.
Boner: Arrrgh! You gargoyle from the depths of Hell! You sadistic simian, cloud-hopping closet J – Arggh!
Ferret LAF continues digging into the ankle, not unlike the way he used to dig into a poorly composed article written by one of the numerous unqualified journalists who passed through the editorial offices of the Kyiv Poster on his watch – indeed, it was he who usually had engineered the hiring of these losers. Moving left to right on the ankle in rapid, mechanical motions, The Ferret’s feast resembles a romp on an old typewriter.
Ferret LAF: Dude, heh, heh, stop squirming. Does that really hurt?
Boner: Shit! For the love of journalism! You’ve gnawed it right down to the bone! It’s over, I’m done.
Ferret LAF: Dude, take it easy! It’ll heal back, and then I’ll swoop back down on you in a day or two to open up those wounds again, while you groan in protest. Heh, heh. Don’t take it personally. You’re not the first former editor at the Kyiv Poster I’ve stuck it to, heh, heh.
Ferret LAF turns, scuttles over to the precipice of the looming monument as if he’s carrying a load in his pants, and then takes off into the sky, heading immediately for cloud cover.
Boner: (still moaning) That’s gratitude for you. O, perfidious weasel. We shared the toil of the pen (although I had a contract and about double your salary); stood arm-in-arm on the lonely plain of the Kyiv Poster masthead against the onslaught of editorial interference from the publisher (although, now that I think about it, you tried to erase your name from that masthead on the Internet version of the paper more than once); we shared wine (at least coffee, at the expense of the publisher) and song (that is, off-color jokes, which make a sham of the politically correct line I peddled publicly from the pulpit of that rag)… Yuck!
Ferret LAF: (peeking out of cloud cover with his pants down) Heh, heh. Sorry, dude.
Bird droppings, or more precisely Ferret poo, slither down the countenance of our noble Titan, as he reclines Greco-Roman style against the cold, impassive structure that symbolizes Ukrainian freedom, lifting his brow to the limitless horizon, chin firm, eyes screwed up in somber reconciliation to his cruel Earthly fate…
Boner: Sing of my deeds, O, Fem Girl nymphs. For I, Bonerus Rex – ageless hero, timeless Titan – have fought the fight, kept the faith, stolen freedom of speech from under the nose of that fat-assed Olympian wannabe Boss Lard. I’ve passed the flame of editorial excellence to a new generation of Ukrainians, shedding light on corruption, putting the torch to post-Soviet parochialism, heating up an indulgent and information-seeking expatriate community with poetry from the gods: “Melt Down!” “White Out!” “Snow Storm!” and other bombastic headlines that don’t tell the reader jack shit about what’s in the paper that week, but which instead are followed by a question mark that calls into question the factual correctness of everything else that follows on subsequent pages.
Ferret LAF: (fully ensconced in cloud cover but surely up to no good up there) Heh, heh.
Boner: And what do I get for my troubles? That lump of jelly in suspenders, that wispy-headed loudmouth from the halls of Washington turned big fish in a small, but more importantly, unprofitable PR pond, chains me to a statue of – of all things – a Ukrainian broad bigger than me! Yes, I passed on the goods – cleverly concealed in a giant fennel stalk, which was itself wrapped in a fresh edition of the paper I put out (there being ample copies available at any newsstand) – to Ukrainian mortals, who, for their part, are being punished by the release of that battle axe Kate Mustard from the proverbial box that she surely belongs in but who instead now has her own talk show…
Publowsky: (climbing up and over the precipice, dressed in a wrinkled toga, the back part of which is stuck in the crack of his ass) Sorry I’m late. I was detained in the park below by a little dark guy trying to hit me up for a chicken burger…
To be continued…
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, April 6, 2013