me, I've been to prison. But also unlike my predecessors, I've had a book (The Redneck Manifesto) published by one of the world's top book companies, a book now in its sixth printing. Unlike my predecessors, I have a new book (Shit Magnet) due to be published in April. Unlike my predecessors, whose only brush with fame might be when they've interviewed a famous person, I've actually been interviewed and featured in just about every mainstream publication you'd care to mention, both locally and nationally.

So no matter how much they moan about me being a talentless schlockmeister, the truth is that I've got them all--combined--beat in terms of both underground cred and mainstream success. And I could whup all their asses in a Spelling Bee. Fuck all o' y'all. Seriously. I hate other writers.

EXOTIC EX-EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH Speaking of despicable writers, it has come to my attention that my immediate predecessor, regarding whom I've tried to be quietly gracious for lo, these many months, recently made an appearance at Dante's to pick up an installment check of the blood money he so undeservedly drained from our esteemed publisher as severance pay. No matter that while in our publisher's employ, said predecessor made it a habit to talk shit about our publisher to whomever willingly endured his whiny milk-cow voice, or that the consensus opinion among other employees is that said publisher just may be the Coolest Boss in World History. No matter that my immediate predecessor was still receiving blood money AFTER he LIED to our esteemed publisher about not trying to snitch him out to governmental authorities about (falsely) alleged illegal employment practices.

The bitter little unsung hunched-over, fingerless-glove-wearing, hand-rolled-cigarette-smoking, too-late-to-be-a-beatnik made it a point during a conversation with an Exotic staffer that he couldn't even bring himself to read the new Exotic, so horribly juvenile and anti-literary was the mag's new direction. He's threatening to take his bad self and his stable of newly unemployed, scarily talented, world-renowned ex-Exotic writers and start his OWN magazine, an announcement which understandably had me trembling.

It's notable that when I started working here over a year ago, I had never heard of our former editor, although he knew who I was. And this disparity, I fear, is what caused all of his animosity toward me. For months, he'd systematically shoot down my article ideas in favor of TERRIBLE, themeless, ill-conceived, rock-band Q&As and aimless cuntly navel-gazing by female scribes on whom he apparently had crushes. On the odd occasion I actually had something published, he'd bury it in the back and made sure it wasn't printed in color.
The suggestions he gave for "improving" my articles were always dreadfully misguided, especially since he let verbal atrocities fly from other writers which never should have seen ink set to paper. I'm sure it irked him that the only articles in the magazine people were talking about were those I'd written.

His own writing smelled like bad feet. This is a man who could pen things such as "my zipper whispered of things to come" and "I was never the hunter, always the hunted" without a hint of the comical irony such phrases beg.

He was curt and graceless in all his dealings with me, despite the fact that I covered his ass by finding hundreds of typos--both in articles and ads--which he was being paid to catch.

He was the sort of person who sucks all the charm out of a room when he enters it. He was a rude little dismissive cunt to friends and girlfriends who'd call or stop by the office looking for me. His repellent personality would have possibly been warranted had the man possessed the merest shred of talent, yet it quickly became apparent that his behavior was engineered precisely to compensate for a lack of talent. No one I know ever had a positive thing to say about him.

The guy was paid a living wage for coming in three hours a month, handing over e-mailed text articles to me from his stable of crappy, unknown writers, then going home. That was his job as "editor," and he should have been grateful that he was getting away with it. Instead, he bleated like an old goat about how horrible it was to work here and what a dick Frank supposedly is. He once told me, with a straight face, that he was the only Exotic staffer who had any vision or integrity, and it was an effort to keep from laughing heartily and spraying saliva all over his shaggy goatee.