A thousand-and-one apologies from Kyiv Unedited’s Secret Editorial Hoard. Ladies and gentlemen, this is most un-presented. For it seems that while the before-mentioned frame, “The Trouble with Ferrets – Again”, was down for maintenance, someone slipped onto the site with an old half-written interview (plus something else attached) that would never have gotten past us under udder circus stances. We deeply resent any inconvenience this might not have cost you and promise to be more vigilante in the future.
ON THE MOVE: RETURN OF THE FERRET
Devoted readers of Kyiv Commix may recall that The Ferret, one of the more infamous characters to grace the virtual pages of our online universe, had in early 2013 ended his long-time employment at the Kyiv Poster, leaving all and any to speculate as to his subsequent whereabouts and prior motives.
Even then, however (See Kyiv Commix “On the Move: Farewell to The Ferret”, filed by Dirk Dickerson, Earlier than Creation), at least one anonymous commentator had expressed suspicion that this devious skunk of a journalist in moth-eaten blazer would one day return to resume his largely underhanded editorial activities at “Ukraine’s Window to the World” with the same malicious vigor and utter contempt for transparency and fair play for which he’d become so renowned in real life no less than in the surreal depictions he inspired on this humble website.
“He’s done it before, twice in 2006 and then during the strike,” the commentator so aptly predicted at the time.
Others wondered whether the wily weasel hadn’t “dug one too many holes” … and fell in it.
Ominously, the badger in baggy blue jeans and black zip-up turtleneck had conspicuously left behind a half-full packet of his trademark sissy cigarettes in the newsroom, which in retrospect can only be interpreted as a clear and conscious signal of his odious intention to eventually creep back into the confidence of publisher and public alike, chief editor notwithstanding, and once again wield self-serving – and more importantly shadow – influence over the rudderless rag that is the Poster, kept afloat by the tempest of an ongoing war in a sea of underemployed opinion writers all too eager to serve a steady supply of slop copy for free – unlike The Ferret, who clearly hopes to supplement his meager income while surreptitiously promoting the interests of his hackneyed sources in the business community and enjoying an office environment beyond the confines of his ferret cage, which, as we know from previous editions of Kyiv Commix, is often in an abject state of untidiness.
Therefore, Kyiv Commix has decided to catch up with its star circus attraction, the runaway reporter turned media consultant in his own mind, the hockey player that never was, doctor who never could be, the big fish in small pond that grew tadpole legs and really began to look like a frog before turning back into a small fish in a stagnant puddle.
“Dude, what are you talking about? Heh, heh.”
“I’m talking about you, rat face, or more specifically about your recent, most crudely concealed attempt to return to the Kyiv Poster as deputy chief editor. Really man, don’t you think it’s time to consider a vertical career move? You’re not getting any younger, you know? Those stories about running away from home at 25 after giving up promising careers as both a professional hockey player and brain surgeon must be getting old by now, don’t you think – even to the ears of those basement bar morons whose company you so eagerly seek out in your free time.”
“Hey, stop spreading rumors.”
“I will not, for rumors are the stuff that you are made of, gopher lips. You peddle them on and off the job, mostly to exaggerate your knowledge and connections, to impress and then manipulate the gullible.
“At other times, you use them to insinuate, instigate and defame, whipping up a cloud of fear, envy and distrust from which shit thunderbolts of dissent. When the sun comes out again, someone has lost a job, and you’re sitting pretty just below the chief editor’s chair like a toad at the foot of a prince, who himself is turned into a toad if he doesn’t toe your line.”
“Dude, you’re being childish.”
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The above undated fragment, possibly apocryphal, shares certain salient features with other extant and often incomplete texts from late 2014, early 2015, leading many scholars to conclude that it once comprised a larger and mostly lost compendium of reading devoted to the life and antics of the legendary figure of The Ferret and other contemporary Commix characters.]
BACK IN THE NEWSROOM
“Boner speaking, your dime, not mine.”
[Ed.: Text missing]
“Why you, Bret: You said so yourself when you answered the phone. You old newshound, city desk sleuth with a hard-on for headlines, no-nonsense reporter with nothing good to report, flatfoot with a notepad turned flat-assed one-man wire service wonder, copy-cum-paste me office plant with coffee breath, pincher of pretty interns’ butt cheeks, up-the-ladder apple shiner with nowhere to go but down, softball interviewer with soft-headed leads, paper pusher, glory grabber, man on the scene after the fact with the fact-checking skills of a quality-control clerk at a Ukrainian collective farm…” (1.)
[Ed.: Text missing]
“Alas, the inimitable Cocoa (2.). How does one get into Harvard indeed? A – get good grades; B – pay; C – demonstrate affiliation with an outspoken and grievance-alleging ethnic minority; or D – listen to Cocoa.”
[Ed.: Source unconfirmed (3.)]
“It’s like an outer-body experience,” he thinks, not unlike the one he experienced upon his unexpected return to The Poster’s top editorial position after such an unceremonious exit – he was fired to be blunt – years earlier. But humiliation gave way to exaltation, Jewish News 101 became Ukraine Everyday, and Boner – the hero of his time. “I never expected such success,” he ponders from the heights of the conference hall.
1. See J. Smith: Commix in Our Time, third edition, 1996, Volume II. University Press.
2. See S. Kowalski: The Negress and Popular Breakfast Treats, Monograph, 2002, Popular Press.
3. See A.K. Goldstein: Origins of Commix: Dispute and Resolution, Dissertation, 2006, University of New Jersey: Department of Philology and Modern Folklore.
Filed by Author Unknown, December 14, 2015