I hate my editor. He’s this fucking little prick who thinks he knows everything. The guy corrects my spelling, my grammar and keeps reminding me that I have to dot the ‘i’s and that the god damned double quote (") symbol means “seconds” and the symbol I’m looking for is “ which is the actual opening double-quote, thank you very much (nevermind that Verdana doesn’t show much difference at this point size) — “Oh, and Sergio: ‘goddamned’ is a single word, mmmkay?”.

Just the other day I turned in this nifty little piece on what had happened to the site when it went down for a few days. The asshole looks at it quizzically, picks it up with two fingers and heads straight into the bathroom! He stayed there for 40-freaking-minutes-I-kid-you-not, came out, walked up to me and dropped the copy on my desk without saying a word. It had scribbling all over it: “Two Python references in one paragraph, Sergio? Why don’t you drive a stake through my heart while you’re at it? What next? Spanish inquisition’s going to pop out of nowhere? oh, that would be grand!”, “You know, back when you decided that you wouldn’t show the title for each entry, did it occur to you that you should make your starting sentences at least mildly amusing? — I’m sorry?? — What the hell kind of opening is that? Try ‘I am an idiot’. It goes better with the rest of the entry.” And so on and so forth.

The problem with the guy is not only that he’s anal retentive. He also has a firm belief that there is a One True Way to format a sentence. Anything but the OTW is jerking off and should be summarily dismissed — You don’t commit words to the site until they’re comfortable around each other, ok Sergio? — Hence the following progression for this entry’s opening sentence:

• My editor is an asshole […] — Don’t drop the bomb so early. There’s no call for that kind of language in your opening. People will think you have a two word vocabulary for crying outloud!
• The loathing I feel for my editor […] — Loathing? LOATHING?? Who the fuck are you? Macbeth? Why don’t you throw a damned umlaut in there too? I’ll tell you when you can go shakespearean on me boy! Right now, that crap don’t fly here, ’kay? (and don’t think for a second that I missed that quizzical you rammed into the second paragraph, punk).
• I dislike abhor detest hate my editor […] — Nice. See? Simple does it! Don’t you feel better now? it’s concise, to the point and you don’t come off sounding like an illiterate dumbass. I could do without the Thesaurus lesson, but we’ll accept this one. It stays. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?

I swear, one of these days I’m gonna lose it and kick the shit out of myself.

— sergio on January 21, 2004