Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for the ‘Happy Horseshit’ Category

You Know It’s Christmas When . . .

— It’s 3am and you’re being blinded by the neighbor’s outdoor lighting that seems to get more elaborate every year.

— Every radio station is playing Christmas music ad infinitum.

— You go into the supermarket on a saturday afternoon and there’s a bunch of employees in Santa hats serving free food samples (try the crab cake, it’s delicious).

— You see a commercial for Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds perfume.

— You find yourself humming the Heat Miser’s theme song from A Year Without a Santa Claus.

— Your sunday newspaper is stuffed with 4 times the usual number of sales inserts.

— Your getting 100 times more spam email in your inbox.

— People are being unsually rude to you while others are being unusually nice to you.

— Somewhere a television station is running a marathon of one of these holiday movies: A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life or The Santa Claus

— You hear a Salvation Army bell ringing.

— You start craving sugar cookies.

— Everybody and his brother seems to be holding a food drive or a toy drive or a clothing drive.

— You’re injesting cocoa and egg nog through an I.V.

— The president tells everyone that they need to buy shit or the world will end.

— You get a letter from Santa informing you that you’re on the naughty list yet again.

— Jack Frost is nipping at your nose, the chestnuts are roasting on the open fire and you’re half-naked at an office party doing body shots with an intern and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

— You see Mr. Hankey waving at you one morning after eating a large bowl of bran flakes.

— The Ghost of Christmas Past appears in the form of some relative who only shows-up around the holidays and hits you up for money.

— You’re trying to find something Christmas-y to blog about just because it’s December.

Merry Fucking Christmas to You Too!

I must admit, I was in a pretty decent mood yesterday. Thursday morning, at a routine doctor’s appointment, I was given another good report and I got some quality work done on my laptop at the county library. Later, I caught-up with a couple of friends downtown and engaged in a line of conversation that inspired me quite a bit. Had a good meal for dinner. Good health, good works, good friends, good food — I was on a roll, but I knew that warm fuzzy feeling couldn’t last. What the fuck? It’s December. The weather’s getting colder and the nights longer.

However, after dinner, while reading new messages cluttering my inbox, I came upon a message from a disgruntled poet I’d rejected a few days ago. A guy named James Kirk (No, not Star Trek Kirk) had sent me this poem that I wasn’t too keen on publishing:

From:
To: theeditor@asteriusonline.com
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 6:56 PM
Subject: Submission

Dear Mr. Erianne:
Please find attached as RTF a single poem entitled “Imaginary Place” for your consideration. I thank you for the opportunity to submit and for your time and consideration in this matter.
Sincerely,
James Kirk

Upon being underwhelmed by the single poem he’d sent, I replied with this form response:

From:theeditor@asteriusonline.com
To:
subject: RE: Submission

Thank you for your interest in Asterius Press. Unfortunately, I cannot use
your writing. Best of luck placing it elsewhere.

— JCE

Okay, it is a form response, but is not impolite or mean-spirited. Certainly, it wasn’t the kind of thing that warranted a rude, ignorant response (or any response at all, for that matter), but this is how Mr. Kirk chose to respond:

From:
To: theeditor@asteriusonline.com
Subject: From Bob Hicock

Fuck you! How’s that for prosody!

Now it’s not really a novel thing for me to get responses like this from some writers. Some rejected writers react to rejection in the most unprofessional manner possible. Initially, I considered that this James Kirk guy might be an alias for some turd who had a grudge (think Michael Pritsos, B.T. Manheim et. al.), but didn’t want me to know his true identity (it’s happened before — again coughcough Michael Pritsos coughcough). The poem he’d sent was pretty mediocre, but it was mediocre in a way that made me think he was just trying to get something past me because he is one of those jerks who thinks ezines have a lower quality standard than print literary publications do. The guy never included a bio and I didn’t really know anything about him just from the name. So, a little while ago, I did a reverse search on the email address to see who it would turn-up, thinking that it would point to someone I’d dealt with in the past who was having a little fun at my expense. Afterall, there are lots of listings for “James Kirk” around the Internet. There are a lot of listings on Poetry.com, alone, but none of those James Kirks’ poems were anything like what I was sent and had rejected — for one thing those poems were all rhymers and the one I rejected was not. What shocked me was that the James Kirk that my search turned up was a poet who lives in my own back yard (well, close enough to it) and not only has some decent publication credits under his belt as well has being a 2-time winner of a grant from the New Jersey Arts Council, but a guy who teaches writing at the college level. What shocked me wasn’t that such an educated, widely published academic poet could produce something as mediocre as what was sent to me, but that such an educated, widely-published poet would be so uncouth as to respond to a rejection in such an immature manner. A newbie doing something like that, you can understand because they’re insecure and don’t really know any better. Some frustrated asshole who’s tried and failed to get published year after year — okay, sure, I can understand that even if I don’t like it. But a seasoned poet who’s been widely published in reputable places, who lives in that publish or perish world of academia? Whose career lives or dies by how many poems he places and can ill afford to alienate literary editors. A guy who has probably received lots of rejection slips in his day, who fucking well knows the drill? What is this fool’s problem? And what is that “From Bob Hicock” bit about? I like much of Bob Hicock’s poetry — at least what I’ve read of it. But what does Bob Hicock have to do with my rejection of James Kirk? Is this some attempt at a witty retort and I’m just missing it? A poor attempt at a joke? Or is this guy simply fucking retarded?

In my confusion I replied to his reply, poking him a bit so that he’d elaborate and, thus, clear-up my confusion: “You’re kidding me, right? I sincerely hope you can do better than this.”

So far he hasn’t responded. I’m thinking he probably won’t but, if he does, I’m surely going to post his response on this blog. In any event: James Kirk, Merry Fucking Christmas to you too, buddy!

I Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me Pt. 2

My friend Mike, said to me the other day, “All that time you spend on the Internet, aren’t you afraid of getting your identity stolen or something?”

Well . . . no. I think you have a greater chance of getting your I.D. stolen offline than online, but even if there was a correlation between the amount of time one spent online and getting your identity stolen, I can’t imagine an identity thief wanting mine. Afterall, steal my identity and you get my bad credit to go with it. In fact, when I think about it . . . okay, no, but I have been thinking about what I should do about my finances. I’ve been scraping by these last few months, hoping things will turn around on their own, but giving the nosedive the economy has taken of late, that doesn’t seem likely. Bankruptcy is the option of last resort and I’m not quite there yet but, given that the debt consolidation loan I took out last spring didn’t cover all of my debts and the company recently issue me a letter saying that they are closing my account and won’t issue me anymore credit to consolidate any more of my debt, it looks like I may be screwed unless I win the lottery or something. That’s a big part of the reason why Asterius Press isn’t doing any print media projects right now (the real cost of print isn’t in the printing — it’s in distribution and promotion. If a zine or a chapbook could sell and ship itself that would be another matter. As it is, I’d just as soon burn a chapbook as publish one), and since I did manage to pay my webhosting through 2011, and I have plenty of space for Web projects, I’m putting all my eggs in that basket for now. In fact, I have a new ezine devoted solely to short fiction in the works for Summer 2009. I’ve got my fingers crossed.