Surreal Football

Ethan,

See, I told you we’d end up doing another ebook.

Alex

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Alex,

Yes, and who’s it made happy? A couple of egos boosted when they got the invite to write for it before we told them it was only for a tenner, meanwhile you’ve managed to lose even more friends and I’ve stormed off from uni saying I’m never going back again in a sub-mental breakdown. Okay, Callum still hasn’t found a way of getting any lower, but that’s hardly a success story. If this is winning, what the fuck does losing look like? Have you read some of the stuff that’s made it in? Well, I haven’t, but I assume it’s horrendous.

Ethan

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Ethan,

You say ‘only a tenner’ as if we didn’t learn from the disastrous financial mistakes we made from the last one. Let’s just say that selling three copies (all to your mum) at £3 each wasn’t enough to cover the costs at those rates.  We were about two days from the bailiffs coming in and taking all of our plates as payment. Both of them. These pathetic arseholes aren’t even getting a tenner, they’re getting a share of the profits. Of course I told them that’s about a tenner, but they’ll be lucky to get enough money to cover the electricity for a broken lamp for five minutes.

Callum’s stuff surprised me, actually. I knew he was incompetent - insultingly incompetent, even compared to the brain-damaged examples we had write the other stuff - but you should read his guff.  It cheered me up. I’ve not laughed so much since I pushed him into that ditch in Corby. He still doesn’t know it was me.

So, are we going to do another one or not? I’ve got a great idea for it, and I can do it for the ebook because not a single editor who pays has accepted the idea. In fact, most of them explained to me point-by-point exactly why it was unsuitable for publication.

Alex

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Alex,

Share of the profits? At least we’ve got one good joke into this then. Fucking morons. Which ones swallowed that without kicking up a fuss? Thinking about it, probably all of them - just pleased to be wanted, I bet. This is why I refuse to work with anyone with any self-esteem - it’s a lot more hassle than dealing with drones like this. “600 words for a share of the profits.” “Yes, sir.” LMAO.  

I haven’t read Callum’s stuff. I was planning to take a look after I read yours, but I didn’t get past the opening paragraph of that before deleting the file and taking a sledgehammer to my laptop and then all of my family. Maybe I’ll look later now you’ve said that, I could do with a laugh. Pushing him into the ditch would’ve been funnier if he’d also been run over.

Regarding doing another one I think we should go with a policy of wait and see. You wait here, I’ll go and see if I’ve got anything I can get a noose out of. I can say more certainly than anything I’ve ever said that if I work with you again on anything it will be the last thing I ever do.

Ethan

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Ethan,

It’s true. Just think, Nick Miller, Gareth Parker, Rob Smyth and Andi Thomas all have something like respected careers either writing about orworking in football, and yet all of them slavishly came to us - with threats, sexual favours or sexual threats - trying to persuade us to let us have a piece of the action. As much as I’m ashamed of ourselves for ever stooping this low again by producing this piece of shit, I’m more embarrassed that those fools have so little do with their lives that they’ll happily dance for the smallest bit of attention.

By the way, I’m fairly sure Callum did get run over after I pushed him into the ditch. Have you seen his new haircut? That’s the action of a man with a fairly serious and untreated case of bleeding on the brain.

Ethan, if you’re saying the next ebook will make you kill yourself, I’ll be honest: I’m very upset that it wasn’t this book that managed it.

Baked beans at six?

Alex

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Alex,

Yes, I see that angle. Is it true Miller offered to wash your hair for a year just to get involved? I heard that but I didn’t know if it was true or just representative of the truth. In some sense I take comfort in knowing that Smyth’s coming down with us, but I also wish I didn’t have to share the journey with him, you know what I mean? Also, who the fuck is Gareth Parker? 

To be fair, Callum told me that haircut was meant to be ironic. He’s looking and acting and sounding and smelling and tasting like a fucking idiot as a comment on fucking idiots in society. As soon as you start taking everything he does as a joke it becomes very clever.

I might be late for the beans, I’m collecting my Pullitzer at five.

Ethan

The Surreal Football ebook, featuring all sorts of washed up hacks, will be out next weekend. Probably.