St Remedius Medical College: “The Neonate, In More Ways Than One”

Introducing Michal Kasparek, The Last Editor of Creative Onanism

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

The Dallas weekly newspaper Creative Onanism could never present itself as “serving the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area” with any of its staff doing so with a straight face. A paper so notorious for suppressing stories that might hurt the publisher’s mimosa brunch members’ feelings that the editor’s traditional nickname was “Spike” for nearly 50 years. A paper that only slid into real stories, as opposed to endless “Thousands and Thousands of the Best Doctors/Lawyers/MBAs/Realtors In Dallas” advertising supplements, every few years when the paper’s owners had to encourage people to read it instead of picking up stacks solely for packing materials. Its original slogan, “Ne Peuro Gladium,” switched to the less obscure “Let’s Shake Hands With Your Prostate” in the mid-1990s, with an puerile, amateurish, and infantile promotional strategy that itself proudly received the nickname “A Three-Legged Stool Sample.” The number of very deliberate errors and omissions added by its editors to articles that might get more readers and responses than their own work did an excellent job of driving off writers, photographers, and artists who might have raised Creative Onanism to a minimum standard for Dallas journalism, and its staff was inordinately proud of the number of Katie Awards it boughtwon in the increasingly distant past. Those unfamiliar with Dallas could assume with good reason that Creative Onanism was allied with infernal powers, but with the exception of its longstanding and extremely profitable patronage by the demons Titivillus and possibly Levamisole (the latter leaving its favored servants with their distinctive pattern baldness and necrosis scars), the paper was remarkably free of outer influences, with one very big exception.

Michel Kasparek was the consummate Creative Onanism editor. In a paper where staffers generally lasted for weeks to months, editors who managed to last for five years were pretty much guaranteed a job for life, mostly because no other publication would have them. (Editors in the past had managed to chew through their manacles, jump out windows, and seek freedom in a frantic naked run through downtown Dallas, but the last was found screaming atop the median of Highway I-35 in 1999.) Mr. Kasparak eschewed the nickname of “Spike” in favor of “Milord,” which he claimed shortly after starting at CO, when the title of his weekly column, “The Witty Wit,” was declared a case of fraudulent advertising by the attorney general of Texas. In his rapid climb up the editorial ladder, he proudly declared himself “the heart and soul of Creative Onanism,” with local journalistic wag Edgar Harris noting “‘the heart and soul’ and ‘the insufferable narcissist most responsible for driving off staffers, freelancers, readers, and advertisers’ can always be hit with the same bullet.” As years as editor turned into decades, most mere mortals would have been concerned with their legacies, or at least with their funerals consisting of conga lines of spectators paying top dollar to each drop a 15-kilo green Taco Bell turd in their coffins, and half of of those spectators paying twice that if the interred were still alive and conscious when the lid squished shut. However, Kasparek had an edge. Ethics investigations, sexual and mental harassment suits, random passersby finding him jogging in the middle of the street in his neighborhood and asking themselves “Are there any witnesses who wouldn’t cheer?”: everything slid past him like olive oil on dog shit, and not just because of rich patrons and his ever-doting publisher. Kasparek had an additional edge, one that inadvertently and unknowingly made him a major player in the Quantum War.

Michel Kasparek was a Chosen of Some Guy. Instead of ascending to his expected role as one of the Outer Gods, he remained a neonate, keeping larval traits while living a full lifespan. He wanted worshippers, he needed worshippers, but had to settle for terrorizing his staff and anybody who thought his opinions mattered outside of Dallas. In any other circumstance, his tantrums about freelancers getting more reader mail than him and not being recognized at sporting events by international bigshots would eventually lead to him splitting the skin on his back and emerging, fresh and new, as the latest cosmic horror. However, that was not meant to be. Instead, he continued to squat in his office, hair sliding off his scalp and onto his back (staffers occasionally muttered, looking over their shoulders, “Old Elvis’s physique, Buddy Holly’s glasses, and Billy Corgan’s hair won’t make you a rock star”) while others watched, entertaining dreams of morning DJ shock jock slots and cameos on national television dramas and throwing ashtrays at interns if they weren’t fanatically enthusiastic of those dreams’ inevitability. Realistically knowing that while he might live into his 600s, at one point he would become too necrotic to move and would spend all of his days behind that desk, fed and wiped by a never-ending line of interns who would do ANYTHING to get a letter of recommendation, so long as Creative Onanism stayed in print. So long as he and his staff continually and eternally catered to a Dallas clientele who had their sexual awakening while watching From Beyond, there was no concern of the paper living even past him.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

Creative Onanism Michal Kasparek Outer Gods Some Guy St. Remedius