I do love that tagline: “It’s not the Hills…” Hahahaha!

At first I saw that Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader were making a movie together and I was all, Yessssssssssssssssss.

Then I processed the fact that they’re doing a Kickstarter project to fund it. Something about “creative control BLAH BLAH BLAH, not relying on the industry or a studio WANK WANK WANK.”

GUYS. Kickstarter is for people who are not Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader. Kickstarter is for us poor suckers who want to someday be Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader.

“A kind of DIY mentality, shooting with friends, shooting on low-cost equipment, then it moves to setting up a website, going on Facebook, and the next step is you’re going on Let It Cast to start casting, next step is you’re all of a sudden going on Kickstarter to bring in an audience base….and it’s all part of a new way– I mean, I personally think that films, right now, are sort of where they were 100 years ago, they’re being reinvented right in front of our eyes.” — Paul Schrader

OH MY GOD. Paul Schrader, we have a DIY mentality and we shoot with friends and shoot on low-cost equipment because we have no other options. Because we don’t have access to studios, or expensive equipment. And we’re hoping and praying and selling our souls that one of our “friends” turns out to be the next Bret Easton Ellis, we are not actually working with Bret Easton Ellis. 

You made it! You don’t have to do this crap anymore! You’re being nostalgic for when you were young and broke and poor and no one knew your names. That is the worst kind of indulgent, narcissistic, amnesia-fueled midlife crisis there is. If you really want to do a Kickstarter project, you should all be required to eat nothing but cereal and Top Ramen for the duration of the project, and you should have to beg your parents to keep paying your cell phone bills and also ask if maybe you can use their garage for a shooting location if you promise, promise, promise to clean up?

Look, I get that with the advent of the Internet, making art has become a free-for-all. How can “real” comedians be expected to survive when any jackass with a Twitter can make jokes all day long now? How can “real” authors survive when anyone can self-publish? But as Richard Russo points out, in a Seattle Times interview about Amazon publishing, all this technology isn’t bad for people who have “name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, Amazon is good for writers like us who have name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, they provide an outlet. It’s the mid-list literary writer who gets squeezed out when the market contracts.” 

We can worry about the mid-list artists, yes. But Kickstarter is for those having a hard time breaking in. Special report to Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis: you have name recognition.

Just look at what they’re promising to funders— For $5,000, “Bret Easton Ellis will read and review your novel and have that review appear on an international blog or website” (cue angry, drug-fueled white boys coming in their pants). For $5,001, “Have your script covered by Paul Schrader– Notes to be delivered in person (NY or LA) or skype” (cue film majors vomiting on their own feet). 

They’re ruining it for the rest of us. How do we stand a chance against that?!? Sure, I can offer to read your script and deliver notes in person, but unless that comes with a sexual favor, I don’t think you’re going to care.  

Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader, you should be funding Kickstarter projects, not pitching them. I’m sorry if you don’t like being famous, but that’s just too bad. Maybe you can make an angsty commerical about it. Look, I get that you two aren’t Tom Cruise and Michael Bay, but you’re certainly not that college kid with a video camera and a skateboard for a tracking shot. You shouldn’t be trying to recreate your lost days of obscurity and despair that the world might not let you do what you loved. 

You should be in the process of giving back by giving some young unknowns a chance, the way somebody once gave you one. You’re siphoning our dream gasoline! Step away from the straw. It’s too skinny and there’s too little fuel for all of us to get a hit as it is.

I hope this is a hoax. Internet, would you do some research and get back to me? I’ve got to go burn all my hopes and dreams.

MM

This means that someone actually noticed that women buy and read a) romance novels and b) smut. Maybe it means that someone noticed that women have sex? I doubt it, though. That seems farfetched.

For whatever reason, this particular one has caught on and women aren’t “ashamed” to pass it on to their friends. As the Jezebel article says, “Another anonymous woman said that her friends were obsessed with the erotic novel, which was the first of its kind that they felt comfortable discussing openly. ‘Women just feel like it’s O.K. to read it,’ she said. ‘It’s taboo for women to admit that they watch pornography, but for some reason it’s O.K. to admit that they’re reading this book.’

I keep picturing moms in the grocery aisle opening their raincoats or reaching a hand between their torso and their front-carrying baby backpacks to pass the e-code to the book off. They slide by each other saying, “Oreo’s? Oh, no, honey, those aren’t good for you.” 

Look, this is what we’ve known since the kindle arrived: that electronic reading would make smut more widespread– or at least, more often read in public. 

But still, I’m unclear on why women who weren’t “passing” their smutty books around before this one suddenly feel compelled to share Shades of Grey. Do they feel like it’s “ok” for some reason in this case? Do they feel like it’s so good it would be selfish to keep it to themselves? Shades of Grey, despite what these women may think, is not the first of its kind.

Yes, women don’t often discuss their favored arousal media. It’s still pretty taboo. Is it because unlike porn, which we all assume men are watching, we don’t assume our BFF has a stash of smut? So trading favorites requires first a confession (and an unpredictable reaction) before getting down to brass tacks? But how often do men sit in the boardroom or watch their kids on the soccer field being like, “You catch Jessica Rubber’s latest stretch act in Cumby?”

WAIT! Before you leave due to the awfulness of my made-up porn pun:

1. Did I mention IT DOESN’T SOUND SEXY? Or like a healthy expression of sexuality?

The smut in this novel– which is supposed to be an exploration of BDSM, remember– doesn’t even sound that risque. One of the women who writes at Forever Young Adult (who, yes, spends her time reading and reviewing young adult literature, so it should’ve been pretty easy to push her literary sex boundaries, since one can imagine she mostly reads awkward make-out scenes) says, “Y’all. Y’ALL. Look, I knew this book was not going to be good, OBVIOUSLY, but I thought AT LEAST the sex scenes would be good! Or at least so shocking that I was a little bit prudishly appalled by them. BUT NO…Ugh, I actually turned to my boyfriend this weekend (why was I reading this while with my boyfriend? I don’t know) and told him that the sex in this book was turning me off sex entirely. (His response?  ’Let’s find you something else to read.’)”

And obviously all of the sex takes place in a monogamous, heterosexual, committed relationship that is based on love. That is the only way women like their sex. 

Did I mention that she’s a virgin when they meet? She hesitates to commit to his demands because, while she loves him, she doesn’t know if this is what she wants/likes. He makes her agree before she ever has sex for the first time. Healthy! 

2. Did I mention that IT’S FAN FICTION?

Christian and Anastasia are based on….drumroll….

EDWARD AND BELLA. The author even cops to this, saying that the book “reimagined the Bella and Edward love affair set in contemporary Seattle, Washington with Bella as the young college graduate virgin and Edward as the masterful billionaire with secret sexual predilections” (from the Jezebel article). WHOOOOOOO. This is in case Stephenie Meyer’s G-rated prose isn’t to your liking. (Which– remember– Meyer’s Mormon. This is why Bella and Edward only kiss until they get married. But after they get married…Edward breaks the headboard and leaves Bella covered in bruises. Sure, Meyer skips writing the play-by-play of actual sexing, but.) So 50 Shades of Grey steps in like a superhero!

Just like all that Harry Potter fanfic: that sexual tension between Harry and Snape can’t just go unresolved, guys! Just like how we really, really need to see Elizabeth give Darcy a good old-fashioned BJ because we can’t imagine it in our heads if that’s what we want to see.

(I’d like to point out here that this is actually a subgenre of fan fiction called slash fiction whose primary purpose is to make the character’s bang their nasty bits together. Fan fiction, as a greater category, is anything that adopts someone else’s characters and continues their story with the new author’s vision.) 

3. HUGH HEFNER IS ASHAMED OF US.

All of which leads me to this: women may not be ashamed about passing this book around but they should be. Not because it has anything to do with sex. Not because it’s softcore porn. Not because it’s BDSM. Not because they’re getting their jollies from an e-book. Because it sounds poorly-written and not sexy. 

Now the publishing industry is going to think this is what we want. Now they’re going to make it into a movie. It contributes to this whole social regression to a time of sexual oppression (rhyming!). Don’t know what I’m talking about? The media is calling it the “war on women.” (If we rebrand it as a “war on sex” do you think more people will get outraged?) Come on! We’re disappointing Hugh Hefner!

Don’t disappoint Hugh Hefner. Read better smut than 50 Shades of Grey. Find a sex blog you like and share it today.

xxx,

M

So why? Why do we hate timeline? Why do some of us (guilty) hate it so much that we continue to hold out, hoping against hope that Zuckerberg will just never notice us lurking in the corners?

We carefully avoid that stupid little button that says “Get Timeline Now” like a hyperactive kindergarten teacher shilling naptime. You know it’s not really for your own good. Even as kid you were all, “Yeah, and what’re you going to do while I sleep?” Now that we have friends who are teachers we know: check Facebook. (How’s that for a transition?)

1. It’s stupid hard to find things on people’s profiles, even stuff you saw just a minute ago and you know definitely is there.

It’s even harder on Timeline than it used to be. Speaking of, why doesn’t FB have a better topical search button yet? It’s called “google search” and my understanding is that it’s basically HPV: already there, just waiting to be found.

2. You have to be a graphic designer to use it and what if I’m not, Facebook, GTFO.

Seriously. Timeline requires some sort of aesthetic/graphic aptitude: your cover photo and profile picture have to complement each other. Have you seen someone’s profile where they don’t? It’s ugly as sin. AND WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE GRAPHIC APTITUDE, FACEBOOK. YOUR MOM HAS IT.

I already have to make graphic design decisions concerning this blog and god, shoot me now. you’ll notice it hasn’t changed in two years, and didn’t change in the 2 years before that. And every time I do post a photo I realize– oh wait this has to look not-barfy against that yellow banner. Do any of you want to come draw sketches for me?

3. Have you even looked in the mirror lately, Facebook? That isn’t body dysmorphia disorder. You’re weird now.

Timeline does not look good with FB’s surrounding layout– the way that little bar at the top scrolls down with it? The settings buttons at the top which keeps the cover photo from truly being a banner, which is how we’re accustomed to seeing it work on blogs? It’s like a truly terrible tumblr theme.

It only took me seventeen tries to get a decent cover photo / profile pic combo! You?

The huge gaps in the profiles of people who almost never use FB look awful– thus forcing you into an “all or nothing” sort of use. That is, if you want your own wall to look palatable. You know how you know it’s a bad design, though? Even if people do post photos all the time, if the pictures aren’t through the same filter, or taken with similar lighting, they look strange lined up next to and against each other. Our eyes can’t reconcile them. There’s a reason movies don’t generally film every other shot with different tints to them. Film editors are paid billions of dollars to fix such discrepancies.

All those “buttons” under the cover photo (“friends, maps, etc.”)? First of all, you have to use those functions for it to be visually appealing, which most of us don’t. See that blue box with “158″ and the thumbs up in the picture above? It looks dumb. It needs an image. Second of all, the colors of them also should be in the same color family. (Right? “Color family” is a thing? See above lack of visual design ability.) But you have no control over what those buttons display.

4. What it leads to: the apocalypse and paid Facebook wall designers.

Just wait until FB figures this out and allows us each to change the color schemes of our backgrounds on our individual profiles. And the fonts. And the size of the fonts. More decisions! More people let loose with their own ideas of what looks good. (More like MySpace?) Every page different until you can’t tell where you are or what you’re looking at. How will it be different from any of the blog sites currently running? Good question.

Wasn’t FB’s original point that it controlled the aesthetics in a clean, blue and white format that corralled us all into a common space? We were like cows, with a more sentient being in charge of the barn layout. Now it’ll be like cows, fenced in, but each allowed to decorate their own corner of the field.

Oh wait, I know what that is: cubicles. An essentially ugly workspace in an office where everyone else is decorating, thus putting unnecessary pressure on you to make this space homey and cute even though you are only here by necessity.

The next step: bribing a visually astute friend to do it for you. Then: Facebook decorators. Wall designers.

You’ve seen Beyoncé’s tumblr, right? You think she’s designing that thing herself?

5. But I don’t WANT to take pictures instead of using words and you can’t make me! Or can you?

In Timeline, any text space– anything other than a photo, really– looks like blank space. Your eyes entirely skip over it. Ergo, FB is now image-based. But they didn’t have good image structuring. So they bought Instagram. And we’re very, very trainable. You don’t believe me? Read this article about the takeover.  (You know how usually we hear the word “takeover” and we assume the people taken over sort of shuffle off looking broken albeit rich? Does anyone not picture the Instagram founder skipping and yelling They fell for it! with cash falling out of every pocket?)

6. Can you at least let me resize the damn picture?

But I’m NOT an image-based Internet user. I take TERRIBLE photographs. I rarely TAKE photographs. I use FB because I DON’T use Instagram. Plus, until FB lets you edit photos within the photo upload, I can’t even find photos that fit appropriately, and how hard can it be to at least put in crop and resize features? Obviously I have no idea how to create such a program, but it can’t be that hard.

I have about five applications on my iPhone that can do crop, resize, fix red-eye, and make me look 100x cooler than I am by putting my life in sepia or Technicolor (it’s always more or less with us, isn’t it). I don’t use any of them. Pretty sure I didn’t download any of them. They just crept on there during the night. Have you seen the size of an iPhone? iPhones are why they spent all that time splitting the atom.

7. Timeline is meaning-making out of the little it knows of our lives. Feed it carefully. No, really.

What is interesting to me about Timeline is the fact that it’s forcing a sort of seamless narrative into our FB lives (and soon, otherwise): whereas before, we lived online by anecdotes. It was clear that posts were skipping stones. Timeline makes it appear as if this is one long, inevitable road, and whatever we post is merely representative of the exact next step we took after the last one.

We were curating our online personas before in terms of information and persona-creation. Now we are curating them aesthetically, visually, creating galleries that require sensitive artistic impulses, a constant checking to be sure the image is displaying correctly on the wall (and how aptly named, that wall). Just wait. Soon FB will be offering a scrapbooking service, similar to iPhoto’s, where you can ask them to make you a physical book. An objet d’art: a record of your online life, made physical, to put on your coffee table IRL. Full circle.

On the glass of the coffee table itself will be a projection of Facebook, a constant stream of your friends’ updates and pictures, a moving, living art surface with a manufactured idea of real-time, so you don’t ever lose your sense of simultaneously connecting and losing touch with everyone you have ever known.

technologically inept but yours anyway if you’ll have me,

MM

Should I even bother to replace the olive oil? What size should I get? How many ounces of olive oil do you use in a month?

I have the strangest impulse to keep buying books. This is my last month of graduate school! I should leave here with a complete library of every book I’ve ever loved and ever meant to buy, every book on my reading list. I should read all of the books I own that I have not read before I am allowed to leave. 

The stacks of paper in my apartment are taking over. I live in a studio. When there are stacks of paper and books on every flat surface, there is nowhere to sit, no other room to go to. I’m surrounded, essentially, by failed drafts. 

On the other hand (there is always at least one other hand, if not more)…

I am running. I have to be in a very specific state in order to want to go running. It’s a sort of restless, humming energy. Maybe anxiety, but it has to be anxiety without conflict. When I’m anxious because of conflict, I want to sleep, watch tv, argue, and eat. I want resolution. I want to finish the damn conversation. So: anxiety without conflict: I’m wide awake. I shuffle papers, I tap my feet, I can’t sit down to finish reading a story.

People ask me if I’m really taking off the weekend after graduation. Yes. It’s time to go. I don’t know what the new thing is, but it’s time for it. Time, at least, to be thinking about it. 

I have papers to grade. I have to sit down and finish reading these stories.

Only grading could make running look attractive to me. I hate running. But yoga? Yoga now? No way. I’d probably start compulsively humming, just so some part of my body could be continuously moving. I’m in one of those strange lives-alone-as-a-single-person phases where I want really physical contact: handshakes, hugs, to lean up against somebody while we watch TV. If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about. But then I do see a friend, and they offer a hug, and I shy away. Skittish. Jitterbuggy.

I think this means I should go out dancing. 

And then, you know, I stop. I remember that I only have a few weeks left here, and this is a nice place. This is a good shower. This is a good window. This is a sweet little apartment that I have been in since the second day I arrived. This is a plant that I have kept alive through all of that time. This desk is where I wrote everything– everything– for the past three years, where all of those hundreds of pieces of paper came from. I can throw all of it, I can pack it all up and ship it home, I can read through it all or just let it go.

But I really do need to do laundry.

And if you’re a person who lives where I do for this pocket of time, I really do need to see you before I go. I’ll wear clean clothes. I promise.

xx,

MM

I know you’re winning, but suck it! You basically hate words and you have a terrible search function!

…So I’ll see you in a few months to a year, when I finally adapt and come around, ok? I’ll bring prosecco? No? you guys only drink local microwbrews over there? Sigh. What if I wear overalls with iron-on patches that I crotcheted myself? 

…Best practical joke ever, right guys?

(From the never-ending brilliance over at xkcd.)

Because I’ve had this cold/flu/stomach flu/cold/fatigue/sneeze all week…everything’s been tasting bad. Even— nooooooo— rawr—- my coffee. The only thing that’s retained its original flavor is salt. Everything else tastes like kleenex.

I woke up at 7:20 this morning, one of those great eyes-pop-open to a beautiful day way before the alarm clock goes off. I thought, “I should get out of bed!” Then I rolled over and had a dream about eating an amazing meal with an ex’s family, in which I couldn’t decide what to order that would taste most like itself, and everyone kept getting up from the table to take their turn in the shower, and his sister put on a full-length strapless gown, which really confused me about the dress code, since his aunt was wearing a towel.

Maybe if I add salt to my coffee…..

Yes, this blog just became a taste / dream diary. WELCOME.

MM

Why is it that people think walks in the rain are romantic? If this were true, Seattle would be the most romantic city in the world.

It’s not.

Let’s approach it this way– if walking in the rain was inherently romantic, then walking the dog in the rain should also be romantic. Not in a bestiality kind of way, but in a dreamy, introspective, beautiful world kind of way.

the Mona Lisa of dogs

Instead, walking in the rain with a dog is TERRIBLE. All you can think about is how wet your feet are, and how when you get home you’re going to have to wipe her feet off, and maybe give her a bath, and there’s rain sneaking along the side of your hood into your ear and if that car splashes you when it goes by, you will slash its tires, so help you god.

And you are hoping to end up walking around with a bag of poop in your hand. That is your best case scenario: poop. In your hand.

And look, I like my dog a lot better than anyone I’ve ever dated.*

We think that taking walks in the rain is romantic because the movies TELL US SO. And the movies don’t lie! They’re like the internet: truth machines.

Even better than walking in the rain: kissing in the rain. Have you ever made out in the rain? I grew up in Seattle. I’ve made out in the rain. Making out in the rain = not romantic. You can’t tell where the wetness is coming from— Raindrops? Saliva? Tears? Snot? You end up feeling like it’s all tongue. Everywhere. In your eyes. Hair. Up the sleeve of your jacket. Mashed between your noses.

Hot, right?

The whole idea that movies are trying to sell, I think, is that when you are with your one true love, you don’t notice what’s going around you— ie, you kiss in the middle of the street in NYC and you think you won’t die**, you get engaged on a roller coaster and don’t see the kid puking behind you into his dad’s cupped hands…. and you don’t feel the rain. Or at least, you don’t mind it. But do you seriously not notice wet socks just because the dude next to you is dreamy? Wet socks are the WORST.***

True love deadens all your nerves. Even as it pulls you into a state of transcendency and bliss.

….apparently I’ve been dating the wrong people. As in, not wizards or gods. Or really good anesthesiologists.

MM

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*Then again, you’ll notice “dated” is in past tense. I guess it’s not surprising I like my dog better than my ex-boyfriends.

**Let’s think of this from an evolutionary perspective. Say “love” does keep you from noticing your surroundings. Wouldn’t you die before you could procreate? It just doesn’t make sense, biologically. Then again— maybe you don’t notice your surroundings so that you’ll hurry up and procreate anywhere. Regardless of circumstances. Hmm. Will think on this more. Because like I said, the movies are truth machines, so they can be explained by science. You just have to find the right science. Michelle Bachmann-style.

***I tried to come up with a “He better have ___________ and ___________ if you expect me to forget wet socks.” But the best I could come up with was “bulletproof abs” and “the sensitivity of a trained therapist” and that didn’t seem to nearly cover it. Also bulletproof abs sound uncomfortable, and I’d really rather my bf wasn’t a therapist. He’d be so damn understanding whenever we fought. Then I tried “Show me the guy who can make me forget wet socks and I’ll show you Rhett Butler without the rape-y tendency.” That didn’t seem sufficient either.  Wet socks really are the worst.

It’s that time of year when the Internet makes lists of things for you to give to someone you know very well (right? I hope? I mean, if you’re letting them touch you on a consistent basis?)  and who the Internet has never met. The idea of this makes no sense— I mean, sure, your boyfriend might be exactly like the article author’s boyfriend, but I’m going to say chances are slim. And that if the similarities are too exact, you might want to look up the author’s FB profile and see if her boyfriend IS your boyfriend.

So instead of creating my own list of things you might give, I’m going to engage in that time-old tradition of ripping apart what someone else has said.

Jezebel has posted an article titled “Gifts for Someone You’re Planning to Dump.” OUCH.

Let me say this: the premise of the article rests on the assumption that dumping someone just before the holidays is worse than stringing them along for an extra month, dragging them to all your family functions, having them happily introduce you to grandma’s secret fudge recipe (and to grandma, possibly on her last Christmas; how awkward will that photo shoot be?), buying them a gift strategically chosen with said break-up in mind, and then leaving their frozen ass to thaw out on its own in January.

Morality is SO HARD, you guys!

Anyhoodle. The list includes a series of things that are great for mourning break-ups, including headphones, a quilt, boozy accessories, and food. Ok, whatever.

And then it includes a few things to get your ex started on a hobby: a plant or a cookbook. Let’s discuss.

My opening argument: WTF.

Who wants their new hobby to be GIVEN to them by their ex? How condescending is it to be all, “Hey babe, you’re going to need something to fill your empty, lonely, terrible hours with once I’m gone, so….here’s a thing….every time you look at it you’ll be reminded of me….just try to ignore that.”

So of course now I’m thinking about the love fern in How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days– remember that? Kate Hudson, in her role as obnoxious girlfriend, gives Matthew McConaughey a plant and tells him it’s their love fern and they have to keep it alive as a symbol of their relationship. He lets it die, of course, and then she fake-cries, and then at the end of the movie it’s on the back of his motorcycle when he chases her down….

And people say rom-coms give us unrealistic expectations for relationships.

Or, alternatively, there’s this story: my sister’s ex-boyfriend gave her an orchid (when they were still together). After they broke up, she did what any sensible person would do: she stopped watering it.

Look, guys, it wasn’t a puppy, it was a plant, and I’m not a mind-reader, but I’m guessing she didn’t feel like looking at it every day and it’s hard to wrap your mind around throwing something out that’s still alive. Passive resistance is okay once you break-up. In fact, it’s sort of the name of the game, no? I would guess a lot of us can’t quite throw out things our exes gave us, but we can hide them / accidentally knock them over / treat them badly / lose them. This is why there’s so much talk about protecting the kids when people go through a divorce. OH GOD I JUST SAID THAT. WATER YOUR BABIES, GUYS.

But my sister’s roommate was a devoted plant caregiver and he kept watering it. That thing lived forever. Orchids are super delicate, you guys, and that plant would not die. I think she convinced the roommate to take it with him when he moved out two years later.

The only thing worse than giving someone you’re planning to break up with a plant is giving someone with cancer a dog:

PLEASE DON’T COMBINE THESE STORIES AND GIVE SOMEONE YOU’RE BREAKING UP WITH A DOG. OH MY GOD. That’s like handing them a stack of cuddly, warm, peeing bills that will come due right around the time you flaunt your new girlfriend in their face on FB.

MM

PS. This is also my sister who I had the following conversation with:

Her: I don’t understand why people get engaged during the holidays.

Me: Yeah, I did the opposite and had a holiday break-up.

Her: No, you didn’t.

Me: What?

Her: It was Thanksgiving. Doesn’t count.

Me: You’re not going to give me this one?

Her: No. You can call it a Thanksgiving break-up if you want.

Me: Really? You’re really not going to just let me have this?

Her: No.

I’ve been having dreams where I get rejected. No telling whether this has to do with my personal or my literary life. Last night I was on a boat going up a river when it happened, and I have to say, the setting was beautiful. The water was crisp and clear, the life preservers were a crisp orange, the sun was shining, and my hair looked great. I stood at the boat’s railing and watched a crocodile go by as I was shot down. Lovely.

In honor of my subconscious, I’m going to share today my first experience with (not) publishing in the literary world. Names have been changed to protect the guilty. I call it…

Up the River of Denial: and I hope You all like Me

The first literary journal to accept a poem of mine for publication never published my poem. I submitted to Great Review in the South (GRITS) in the youthful blush of my first semester in an MFA program. Full of panache and coffee, I sent packet after packet of five poems tied with bright, shiny bows of hope off to literary editors whose offices were filled with similar bits of dead trees.

Months later, by the time I received an email from some woman in Connecticut, I’d forgotten who I’d submitted to, why I’d submitted to them, and what poems I had submitted.

The email came from “poetry editor” and started, “Dear Marggaret.” I thought, everyone makes typos.  The next line read: “We would like to publish ‘At the KFC in Wallingford.’” The poem was actually titled “At the QFC in Wallingford,” but details! I was going to be published!

I read on: “We request that You submit a bio and pic to appear with the publication. Please include the name as You want it to appear in your bio text.” Wait. Why were the “you’s” capitalized? No matter! A bio and a pic! How professional! They were going to publish my poems in Great Review in the South (GRITS)!

I eagerly looked it up. A Confederate flag waved in my face. I blinked, looked again, google-searched “Confederate flag” to confirm. Yes, that was a confederate flag gif on the banner of their website. Their mission statement said, “We at Great Review in the South (GRITS) are proud to publish quality literature of all kinds. . . and We thank You for the opportunity to read Your work.” No matter what page I clicked on, every header and every sidebar boasted a Confederate flag. Perhaps more disturbing was the fact that every pronoun was capitalized.

I sighed, and then I emailed out my good news to friends and family anyway. I replied to the mysterious “poetry editor” email address with the correction for the title, worded as politely as I possibly could word it, clarifying that “QFC” is a grocery store chain in the Pacific Northwest—since “KFC” is an actual place of business, and a food-related one at that, I was fairly sure she would not realize the typo without my help.

But the poem was—and is—about a very old woman named Bettylu who works at the deli counter, ghoulishly slicing lunch meat with a thickly bandaged finger, and such things do not exist in KFCs. They sell fried meat, not lunch meat. I wrote a bio, I painstakingly chose a picture, and I asked which issue I might be appearing in. I did not capitalize my pronouns. I did not point out that Margaret has only one “g.”

Three days later, I received an email saying simply: “Margaret …fogive me the publication has QVC correct, it was just my letter to you.”

Who knew there were so many chains with three letter acronyms, so many variations on “QFC”?  Were this to appear as the title, the poem would make even less sense. Does QVC sell food? At least she spelled my name correctly this time. Even if she did forget the “r” in “forgive.” Maybe this woman had bandaged fingers.

Months went by.  I received an email from a Reginald one day that read, “We invite You to read the new edition of Great Review in the South (GRITS) and We thank You for Your continued support.” My heart beat slightly faster. This was it! I clicked on the link, I looked at the Confederate flags, I spent five minutes looking for the journal content and finally, I downloaded the unwieldy PDFs from the website. My poems were not there.

I am an unusual breed of persistent. I emailed the mysterious “Reginald” back and congratulated him on the new issue and its fine literary merit. I typed out a quick account of my email exchange with “poetry editor,” pointing out that she had not responded to my question re: what issue my poems would appear in, and—what the hell, I thought—I clarified again that “my poem is titled ‘At the QFC in Wallingford’ (rather than KFC or QVC).” I said I was honored to be included in the journal and thanked him.

I tried to force myself to capitalize my pronouns. Clearly it was part of the culture of this journal. What ever lead them to that place, I could not imagine. Dark forces of self-importance? Mass delusions of royalty? An overly developed sense of an unseen “you” as an omnipotent force?

…The spoiled Prince faced His last moments as the Dark, Brooding Funder of the Arts towered over Him. “Please, don’t kill Me,” he said. “You shall have all my riches and my dignity, too.  I’m begging You.” Each time I read an improperly capitalized pronoun, my mind increased its volume, its emphasis, the depth of the groveling bow until finally, its speaker hit his head on the floor. And died.

I could not and did not capitalize my pronouns.

Reginald emailed me back saying, “She has left the journal and all the work from Her time has been published. If you would like to resubmit We have a new Poetry Editor. and thank You for the compliments.” I stared hard at that lower-case “and” at the beginning of the sentence, willing it to switch places with either the “We” or the “You.”

His email signature was “giving some back and some in new places,” a spectacularly dirty phrase which made me think not at all of literary sharing, but rather, of herpes.

I did not resubmit.

No one else has been interested in publishing “At the QFC in Wallingford.”

I adore libraries. Obviously: they’re buildings with books. For free. Even if books aren’t your style, they have movies. My one complaint is that they should allow food. I hate reading without eating.

And I understand that I’m part of a school system– the California State Universities– that is hurting like a stake stabbed under your thumbnail right now. They’re hurting so badly that when the graduate student union asked the president of my university to waive tuition for TAs (a standard practice across the country so that the meager sums they pay us to teach their courses don’t immediately go back to them in the form of US paying for OUR classes), he said that we shouldn’t worry about tuition. Because the university might shut down. Tomorrow.

If that isn’t a reason to exercise fee deferment eligibility, I don’t know what it is.

But, Library! I turned that book in on Monday! I don’t think hitting me up for late fees for a book that you lost is the way to go.

Me: So I turned that book in. To the box that says “Return Books Here.” Was I not supposed to do that?

Library Guy: When’d you turn it in?

Me: The day it was due.

Library Guy: It says here you haven’t turned it in yet.

Me: ….

Library Guy: Ok, I’ll fill out this form here claiming you SAY you “turned it in.”

Me: What then?

Library Guy: We’ll look for it. You’ll hear back from us in about five weeks. If we can’t find it, we’ll charge you for the book.

Me: But I turned it in.

Library Guy: Sure you did. If we can’t find it, then we charge you for it.

Me: Really? That’s how you’re going to play this?

Rumor is they charge more than the book retails for. Rumor is this has happened to at least 4 people that I know. I think I’m getting scammed. By the smallest, most white-collar, liberal-intelligentsia crime ring ever. You’d think they could just ask for donations.

What’s even better is that it’s a book that was sent over from the nearest University of California school. A system which gives their graduate TAs tuition waivers. It was a book that my poor, broke-ass library doesn’t even have.

OH THE INHUMANITY.

MM