By Ben C
The Minutely Marvelous
Maxwell Maxwell sat in the small shabby office of Jerry Jerryson, the editor in chief of a quaint small time local variety rag called the Minutely Marvelous: The Minutiae You Need to Know Each Minute.
It didn’t do that well but it survived on the readership of a small clientele of kooks. He had been writing bits and pieces for them for years. He was not necessarily proud of it all, but it put food in the damp corner of his apartment that stayed cool no matter what time of year it was. But he had heard it whispered around shadowy water coolers that they at the Minutely were expanding their operation into web content also in an effort to stay afloat.
Well, he never knew they had it in them. It was all very high fangled and new tech. It was hard to keep up these days. Until two months ago he had done all his work on an antique Broham manual typewriter. Then the space key had broken and all his sentences started coming out in the way he talked to pretty girls, and when he tried to get it fixed, he found out they didn’t make parts for it anymore. They didn’t make the Broham period. Even typewriters were electric these days. He didn’t even know if he had a power socket in his apartment.
So he had bought a computer from a second hand store and had spent the better part of a fortnight trying to figure out how to set it up. He had been having so much trouble he had asked his landlady to take a look when she came around for one of her illegal drug lab checks – that is to say she was checking for illegal drug labs, although her intrusions were probably illegal too, but what did he care, he didn’t run a drug lab. Anyway, upon surveying his grimy turtle skin grey machine, she had barked out a phlegmy guffaw and remarked that his ‘new’ computer was twenty years old! There had been about five hundred obsolete models made after this one. It didn’t even have a CD-rom drive.
When was Jerry going to say something? They had been sitting there staring off into space for three solid, dust mote hazed minutes…
“Maxwell!”
Here we go.
Investment! It’s a hot topic!
“I’ve got a job for you! Investment! It’s a hot topic! People want to know about it! And you’re going to write the articles that will inform them! They’ll be for a client that runs a fledgling website! Can you handle it!”
“How much?”
“Well, there’s like a bagillion combinations of keywords that inquisitive minds type into their search engines Max! I need an article for each combination, permutation and aberration! So take your pick! It’s practically infinite!”
“No, how much will you pay me for each article?”
“Oh… standard rates now… one cent a word! Around Five hundred words! You do the mathematics! I was never any good at it! I was always best at debating in my school years! I handled the rebuttals! Had the other team scared stiff!”
Five hundred words. One cent a word. Five bucks an article. Standard rates indeed. Good heavens. It wasn’t even enough to buy the kilo of shitake mushrooms that he would need to get his shitake mushroom risotto on, which he had been hankering to do ever since watching that TV chef on the early morning program whip one up. He would have to write… ten articles? Or more? Who was he kidding, he didn’t know how much shitake mushrooms cost. He’d never bought shitake anything before in his life. He just liked saying the name. In his head.
“This is the only job you’ve got for me? I mean I can write anything you need: local council development projects, agony aunt columns, natural disasters, movie reviews, phoney editorials…”
“Good! You’ll write this!”
“But I don’t know anything about investing!”
“Hey! No need to get all hot under the collar! Use your indoor voice!”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, use the internet! Do your research!”
“You want me to write pieces for the internet using information from the internet?”
“Exactly!”
“But it seems like I would just be contributing to the stagnation of a cesspool by scooping algae off the top, using it to grow more algae and then tossing the lot back in.”
“And when you throw the new algae back in it stirs the waters! Stagnation averted! You’d be helping the situation! Look Max, I’m not asking you to plagiarise here – the information on the Internet is all over the place! I want you to synergise! Organise! Prioritise! Summarise! Bite size! I want you to take the wealth of dewdrops swaying in the breeze on that World Wide Web out there and distil them into a crystal elixir that people will just love to chug! They’ll type in their search words and come to our client’s website and just be so god lovingly pleased they’ve found it, they’ll aneurism! Can you do that for me Max! Can you!”
“I guess.”
“Good!”
Sure Fire Pathways to Investment Success!
Just then, Teresa Turnova, Jerry’s secretary popped her pretty head through the doorframe. Max had loved Teresa ever since he had first set foot in Jerry Jerryson’s office five years ago for his first ever freelance assignment – it was a penguin malfunction if he recalled correctly, and he had gotten to the bottom of it! Ah, he was something of a hero in the office that week. It was actually a very strange and, in fact exhilarating case. But that type of thing was all in the past. They thought he was over the hill. The only assignments they gave him now were penis enhancement testimonials and diet pill pseudo-science. Oh, and this investment property hokum-jokum. He could see it now:
Sure Fire Pathways to Investment Success!
Unleash Your Inner Successful Person!
You are a Rich Person Trapped in a Poor Person’s Life!
Ten Secrets To Power Charging Your Dollar Getting!
Catchy indeed. He could write it. He could hook ‘em in and lay ‘em out on the deck until they stopped flappin’. But first he would have to put those ‘th’ and ‘g’ sounds back. Colloquialisms and parochial speech inflections were not the right idiom for this assignment.
“Your wife is on line one sir.”
Oh, right – Teresa was speaking! Beautiful Teresa. Turnova… was that Russian?
“Hi Max.”
She said his name… Max was him!
“Helloteresaturnova…”
Damn! Might he just this once have managed to speak intelligeably?
“Well… See you later.”
“Seeyoulager.”
Damn your lead tongue Maxwell Maxwell. The chief had picked up the phone:
“HELLO! YEAH BABY, I’M GOING TO SEX YOU UP TONIGHT! WELL, KEEP IT WARM FOR ME! HOLD ON A SECOND–”
He put the phone in the crook of his armpit.
“Max, it’s my wife, I’m going to have to take this! You get on that assignment and I’ll see you later! Oh here, don’t forget the brief and the notes! Now remember, you have to repeat each keyword in each of the combinations at least four times in each article! That way the site will get more hits! Get to it!”
“Alright chief. I’m on it.”
“WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WEARING NOW!”
Max left the office and Teresa smiled at him as he walked past her desk. He managed what he imagined to be a ghastly rictus of amiability in return and walked the rest of the way to the fire escape head down, cheeks burning – his natural state. The fire escape. The elevator had been broken for as long as he could remember. Anyone who, for whatever reason, wanted to visit at the Minutely Marvellous had to climb five flights of stairs to reach their offices. “Keeps us all sprightly!” The chief would say.
***
To Be Continued
