Okay, we're going backwards here. But what came before the first issue? It's ISSUE ZERO!!!! Back before we knew about things like Electricity and the Big Bang. A time when things were simpler, people were stupider, and the magazine was simply called,


         And it only had one article. It was about a man. Specifically,

"The Man."
       He walked down the hall, thinking about People, and the Places they go, and how they get to the places they go, sometimes in a car, sometimes in the trunk of a car, and sometimes walking, which this man was particularly good at, and which he was doing right now.
       Right now or five minutes ago (or five hours, months, or eons ago, for that matter) -- that did not matter. The only important things were that he was walking and that he was thinking about walking, and that his name was Ernesto the Pimp.
       "Pimp," the passersby would call to him. It was the call of the pimp, meant to denote the pimp as a pimp once and for all, to brand him, to single him out, to make a spectacle of his pimply ways so that people would not be confused as to whether or not he was a pimp, which he was. In fact, he was Ernesto the Pimp.
       And he walked like a pimp ought to walk. And he talked like a pimp ought to talk. But the main thing about him was his hat. He had the same hat that I did.
       I think it made him feel like less of a pimp, for some reason, that his hat was in a sense, "old hat," that it was not unique. I would walk by him in the hallway, and he would shout and scream and get in a big huff and call me names like "Julien" and "Francis."
       "Don't call me Francis," I warned him.
       And he listened to me, because he was scared.
       So we would sit around his place, leaning back in our rocking chairs and drinking and listen to him telling me stories about his girls (since he was a pimp and all). But one day he went too far. I think he went as far as to say that all cereal with more than one kind of grain were brazen overindulgences, a by-product of the eighties.
       "THAT'S QUITE ENOUGH OF THAT!!" I SCREAMED. I HAD HAD ENOUGH.
       I JUMPED UP ON THE POOL TABLE AND STARTED THROWING POOL BALLS ALL AROUND AND I SCREAMED AND SCREAMED OH MAN DID I SCREAM.
       AND THEN HIS GIRLS JUMPED UP ON THE TABLES TOO AND THEY STARTED SCREAMING AND THROWING BEER GLASSES AT HIM AND EVERYONE WAS SCREAMING AND THE PIMP WAS TURNING CONFUSION CIRCLES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MELEE, SUFFERING THE OUTRAGEOUSLY THOUGHTLESS EMBODIMENT OF HIS PARANOIA. LITTLE KNEW HE ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF EXTREME PARALLELISM FROM SIBLING TO SIBLING WHEN ONE OF THEM HAPPENS TO BE A PIMP. BUT I KNEW IT. AND HIS GIRLS KNEW IT. AND THEY SCREAMED SOME MORE. AND THEN IT HAPPENED.
       I ate my hat. And the pimp was my brother.

And that is the story of Issue Zero.

What the heck is this. I didn't come here to read your imaginary issues that had no business popping into existence in the first place, all stupid with their idiotic stories that don't mean anything and a title for the magazine that's not even a real name; it's half a name. And what do you have with half a name, anyway, you miserable little cretin? I think you know the answer as well as we do, you have nothing; nothing except a stupid, stupid, dumb article that wishes it were even half the article it could have been, but I liked it anyway. Take me back to Issue 1.