The ballad of the sorry

So I just heard more stories tonight about a certain unfortunate person. Let's just call him Sorry Ass.

To give a bit of a background story, this Sorry Ass tries to start a magazine. Let's just call this sorry creation Ass Wipe. He enlisted my help as the editor. I helped him in vain for 7 months before I realised he doesn't know shit about doing business in general. So I quit.

It's been 3 months now since then and Sorry Ass has found the guy who took over the editor job. Let's just call him Mo-Editor. One day, Mo-Editor and Sorry Ass were meeting a potential client to fund Ass Wipe. This forms case number 1.

The potential client asked Sorry Ass: "So why do you think I should place my ad in Ass Wipe? What good is it gonna do me?"

Sorry Ass answered nervously in broken English: "Ass Wipe is so good. It is very elite. The articles we carry are only about high-end luxury brands like Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton..."

"Yeah, I know. But those are articles. You guys don't actually have ads by them," the potential client said.

Sorry Ass was desperate: "But Ass Wipe is even better than Harper's Bazaar!"

And with that, according to my source, the potential client pulled out of the deal.

Case number 2. Sorry Ass has this acute dislike for a certain media competitor. Let's just call it Toilet Paper. Toilet Paper is actually quite successful as a media brand, except that, well, it's made out of newspaper and so I think it's best used only for toilet business, just like Ass Wipe. Anyway, basically Sorry Ass hates Toilet Paper's editors with a passion and thinks that Ass Wipe is already better than Toilet Paper, even though Ass Wipe hasn't put out one issue yet.

And so Sorry Ass thinks whoever works with him on Ass Wipe absolutely cannot write for Toilet Paper. Which is exactly what Mo-Editor did. Now I don't know if Mo-Editor did it out of spite or if it was just purely coincidental. But basically Sorry Ass went nuts and told off Mo-Editor, saying that he couldn't write for any other media other than for Ass Wipe. Mo-Editor was said to be confused because in his contract with Ass Wipe, there was never any obligation to write only for Ass Wipe and not for other media.

Mo-Editor has been heard saying to his friend that he wants to quit Ass Wipe. Not one issue is out yet but two editors are already walking out of the project.

On to case number 3. Sorry Ass has just done the second dummy of the magazine and all he's got in it are articles which are poorly edited and 5 pages of copies from a dated LV catalogue. I am so sorry to admit that when I was still working with Sorry Ass, I tried to defend the first version of the dummy which looked a lot like this in front of my friends, saying that it was just a 'work in progress'. Now I've learnt my lesson and found that this is actually Sorry Ass' definition of Vogue, or in his words, Harper's Bazaar.

And the icing on top of the cake is case number 4: it's been almost a year since the idea to start Ass Wipe was thought up, but until now Sorry Ass hasn't even registered an Australian Business Number yet. The reason? Because Sorry Ass is the director of the Ass Wipe brand and so he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Including putting himself in jail if they find that he was practising business without licence.

I just love stories like these. I did say pointing out people's mistakes are useless, but this is more like knowing that at least there are people more unfortunate than us so we should be grateful with what we have.