A Letter to the Editor’s Desk (From Facebook)
Editor’s note: as part of a project to turn ninaillingworth.com into a central hub for all of my writing (thanks to ongoing censorship of my work by giant elitist tech companies) I’m spending the next little while cross-posting older material from other platforms. Please accept my apologies for any potentially unwanted email notifications in advance.
When Writer’s Block Lasts Months
Ok, so this post is going to be a little bit different for a number of reasons. First of all, in light of the fact that the only place it existed until now is on Facebook, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t dare post even a joke letter about shooting my fictional lawyer in this political climate, I’m just going to copy the whole damn thing here underneath this notice.
The second thing I should mention is that I wrote it after a period of severe depression in my life had kept me away from this website for a number of months. I don’t know if you realize this, but there’s really no way to tell your readers that you caught a devastating sad and barely spoke to other human beings for an entire season, without it getting a little awkward. This letter then, which is ultimately about characters who each represent aspects of my own subconscious, was my attempt to really lean into that awkwardness and try to turn it into something humorous and worth reading even if you didn’t particularly care why I’d been absent for months.
Finally I should note that the letter is of course completely fictional, and it’s written (poorly) in the style of Hunter S. Thompson because when the going get’s tough, the weird turn pro – or something like that.
First and foremost, fuck you Doc.
With that out of the way, I should like to state that contrary to the outrageous accusations leveled by the crooked ambulance chaser you’ve hired to track me down – I am neither dead, nor slinking around spook-infested bars in Caracas with the company expense account at my disposal. Ha, you didn’t think I’d find out you’d sent the Lawyer after me, did you? Folks don’t take to strangers out here and I’ve heard all about that amoral rat bastard interrogating my neighbors, muttering under heavy breaths about breach of contract and treason. Do you even know what treason is? You probably don’t; based on the shit I read in the papers these days, nobody else in America does either – but the Lawyer certainly does, and that be-suited prick has my whole block up in arms wondering if the “gubment” is going to take me away after a daring pre-dawn raid.You tell that twisted nebbish lackey to stay away from me, you hear? We’re armed out here in Asscrack, Nowhere and I’m pretty sure it’s only a matter of time before the fascists running this circus make it legal to shoot all the lawyers. I live in the open center of a giant granite bowl and you’ll never make it to the property line without being spotted; tell that son of a bitch any further attempts to penetrate the perimeter will be met with a most extreme prejudice.
In regards to the note that was left on the windshield of my van – yes you simpering fool, I am acutely aware that it has been eleven weeks since you received anything publishable from out here at the Crow’s Nest. Quite frankly, nothing occupies my thoughts more than the wretched tyranny of our twenty-eight thousand words per month commitment to this media project. If the truth must be told however Doc, things have not been at all well here on the home front and prospects for improvement remain murky at best.
As you know from my previous letters, the Librarian’s elderly cat died just before the ritual slaughter and consumption of credit that is a merry modern Christmas in Zombieland. I must admit that I’ve never been comfortable with open, emotional displays of sadness and after a week of anguished wailing ruined our holiday, I persuaded her to return to writing far too soon. By the middle of February, burnout had predictably set in and she was too broken to write, conduct research or even talk to me.
Was throwing her back into the fire a selfish and inhumane decision? In retrospect, yes; but a deadline is a deadline goddamnit Doc and you of all people should know that the beast is always hungry. Besides, the work was incredible and if the only cost was a slow-motion nervous breakdown? Then I’m all for it.
As for myself, I’ve been hunkering down for the impending apocalypse; getting low, stockpiling ammo, creeping through the tall grass and keeping my eyes peeled for mutant nazis.
The hate seed I tried to warn you all about so long ago is growing rapidly throughout the Pig Empire; choking off hope, reason and sanity wherever its foul fingers roam. We’ll be up to our necks in another war soon, with Iran, or Venezuela, or maybe even both – but even if we weren’t, the war at home on brown people, women and the little pink team remains in full swing. The fascists are trying to get a Muslim congresswoman killed, Trump has the NIMBYs up in arms by threatening them with “swarthy” migrants and we still have no goddamn idea how many children the Gestapo boys at Homeland Security have locked up in what amount to domestic black sites all over the country. To make matters worse, the crypto-fascist liberal establishment has responded by going full Bircher against Russia, attacking Sanders like he’s the fascist instead of Trump and desperately trying to pump the tires on a rotating crew of no hope shit-tier candidates like Skateboard Jesus, Lock Em Up Kamala and Dollar Store Macron. And if that wasn’t enough to scare the shit out of you, now these lanyard lackey dipshits are set on yanking zombie Joe Biden out of his tomb to battle Downmarket Mussolini to the death in 2020 – our death.
We’re objectively fucking doomed Doc; forget America, we’re literally talking about destroying the whole fucking planet now. I dunno about you, but I’d rather spend the last few months of relative peacetime in neofeudalist hell by getting drunk off my ass and re-packing Mossberg shells, not cataloguing the abuses of the Pig Empire for a few thousand readers who’re just as scared shitless about all this as I am. We’re well past the time for persuasion, now is the quiet before the storm and that should really fucking terrify you because, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it really isn’t very quiet.
You write to me about obligations and commitments, but what about your commitment to our little project? I mean here I am, with my finger on the very pulse of the insanity and you can’t even grow my goddamn readership or keep shithead fascists from plagiarizing massive portions of my work on a semi-regular basis! It’s not just the fash either, just this week alone I’ve watched three of my popular Twitter threads become high-traffic blog posts for people who run in the same circles I do and have between ten and a hundred times as many followers as we do. Are you doing anything about this at all Doc? How dare you attack my work ethic, you lazy piece of festering dogshit – I’m a goddamn professional!
Frankly, you suck at your job boss and I can prove it, because only the shittiest editor in the known universe would let a lunatic like me manage our Twitter account. I mean jeezus christ Doc, between calling the backroom smear campaign against Sanders, the rise of Trump/Pig Empire fascism and predicting the exact contours of the 2020 Dem Primary battle to stop Bernie Sanders alone, I should have my own goddamn desk at Rolling Stone by now – instead, you and the lawyer have managed to get my work out to what, maybe eight thousand readers? You running dog filth! How the fuck did you manage to screw up promoting my work on Russiagate? I’m literally the only person in the business who got the entire story right from the beginning and yet somehow I’ve been completely shut out of the accolades in favor of contrarian mayo-boy dipshits like Trike fucking Macey?
My talents are completely wasted under your leadership, you know that don’t you Doc? You sadistic incompetent shithead! I realize you two maggots are completely fucking useless, but can’t you at least get the readers to help by putting my work out there? Lord knows I’ve written an entire book on Twitter in the past month about the ongoing, barely disguised class war being waged against most of the population – what the fuck have you been doing besides sending a creepy ambulance chaser around to harass my neighbors?
The truth is, I don’t know where our venture stands right now at all. The Librarian is still completely burnt out and until she’s back online, I’m down a research assistant – which limits the type of work I can produce until such a time as she feels inspired to return. I have been working on some informal theory articles for the Patreon blog, and I have about twelve thousand words worth of unfinished articles from December through February that I can probably publish the next time I catch a news hook. I’m also considering doing a weekly podcast where I answer questions about world affairs or class war dynamics.
But quite frankly boss, I cannot write our way out of obscurity, depression and being victimized by plagiarists by myself. I’ll put the Librarian back to work as soon as she wakes from her catatonic stupor, but you need to start coming through on your end of the goddamn deal you swine. I need better promotion; I need you to find me more readers. I need you to enlist them in sharing our work and calling out people who steal it. I need a nerd ass techie podcast partner, I need a research assistant, I need someone to manage a fan page/business Twitter account and perhaps even answer my emails because I’m too goddamn crazy to do it myself without having a panic attack. I don’t care how you do it, but you have got to get me some fucking help here you awful pimp – or we will fail and whatever value our little writing project has to the world, will be lost. And for the love of christ man, send me more alcohol!
It’s time. Call off the winged monkeys, instruct the minions to raise the portcullis and tell the readers to expect me. Tell them…
I’m Coming Home.
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
Updates available on Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.
Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites
Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!
“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”
