spleen

two dreams

One:

I am at a restaurant with S., a friend who lives down the street from me (and from whom I haven't heard in a couple of weeks). The restaurant is a buffet (I usually dislike buffets). The restaurant is fairly crowded, and sitting next to us are two women, a mother in her fifties and a daughter in her twenties or thirties. S. and I are arguing about something, and as usual I'm irritated and he's amused at my irritation. The more amused he becomes, the more irritated I become. At some point I realize that the women next to us are amused to, because I'm arguing with no one. S. somehow got up halfway through our argument and went to the buffet. He comes back, and I explode. I feel hugely disrespected. He is totally indifferent. As we leave the restaurant he says, "And she thought you wouldn't react if she fucked with you." I realize he's referring to a woman from another dream, someone who was interested in me but who really wasn't my type.

I insist on walking home from the restaurant, because I'm so angry I don't want to be in a car with S. The restaurant is miles away from my home, and it's snowing. I'm adamant, though. S. reminds me that I left my backpack in his car, so we have to walk across the parking lot to get it. He's amused the entire time. The parking lot is covered in a slimy wet snow, and the walk to the car is difficult.

Two:

I wake in the middle of the night and walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. I see some small black thing moving across the floor, and I'm surprised when I realize it's a baby frog. The baby frog hops to the kitchen doorway and comes to rest between two adult frogs. They are all luminous and green, almost tropically beautiful.

I decide the frogs need to die. For some reason I have a fishing spear in my living room — a long pole with a long thin spike on the end. I walk to the living room to get the spear, and the baby frog hops after me. It's a strange frog, very friendly and animated. It hops around me, hops onto the bed, and rolls onto its back like a dog waiting to have its belly scratched. I pause for a moment, but for some reason I'm insistent that the frogs must die. I thrust the spear into the baby frog's thorax, and it lets out a high-pitched squeal. This horrifies me, but at the same time makes me feel safe. I walk to the hallway and look down at the two adult frogs. They are watching me anxiously. I display the bloody head of the spear then throw the spear lamely towards them, and the frogs hop away in fright. Suddenly there are frogs coming out of the walls — black, green, white, large and small, a whole rainbow of frogs. Among them are large white frog-like creatures with multiple long spindly legs, like a cross between frogs and spiders. They're horrifying. I climb up on a chair, unarmed, and watch as frogs fill up my apartment.

Interpretations:

The first dream represents my anxiety that people don't take me seriously, and specifically my resentment towards S. in this regard. It also indicates my anxiety that others feel I don't take them seriously, especially women. I try to make it a point to listen to the ideas of women, because I think men don't do this enough.

The second dream is a cautionary tale. Don't kill beauty. It's not worth it.

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the lit mag rant

Things that I think fatally undermine online literary magazines:

1. Rampant nepotism and favoritism (read: in-breeding)
2. Lack of literary standards (relates to number 1)
3. Lack of any real knowledge of literature (relates to number 2)
4. Poor design and content management
5. Preference of the dark, sexual and/or shocking over actual good poetry
6. Lack of professionalism with regard to intra-staff dynamics, authorial communication and the like
7. Lack of freshness and variation in all areas of the publication

Stirring, the magazine I worked for at one time, is guilty of nearly all the above. Stirring epitomizes for me everything I would never want in a literary magazine. It has a static and uncompelling design, largely flat and uncompelling content, and a poor management strategy (in which the fiction and poetry staffs never communicate, design is controlled by one person who knows little about design, and titles (such as my title, senior fiction editor (Huh? How the hell did I become a fiction editor?)) are arbitrarily handed out to friends and likable writers). The magazine's senior editor is a 21 year-old poet whose knowledge of literature is limited, and who wastes far too much time lamenting the fact that she's not a famous poet yet (she's 21, for christ's sake). Worst of all, the magazine caters to its favorites — it seems to almost indiscriminately publish writers it likes, mostly friends of the editor, resulting in a highly mixed bag of one or two good pieces per issue awash in a sea of literary mediocrity and awfulness. Many (maybe most) literary magazines are guilty of this last point, of course, but this doesn't make it acceptable or right.

In short, magazines like Stirring are little more than a glorified version of the zines we all used to make on photocopiers in the pre-web age, the ones in which we'd include poems and lyrics by all our friends. Those zines made us look so important in high school.

Let's learn from Stirring's mistakes:

1. A good online lit mag does not engage in nepotism and favoritism — it publishes and keeps its eyes open for fresh, quality work. And it never, never publishes work by its current editors.
2. It establishes and maintains a high standard, both for the work it will accept and for the presentation of that work.
3. It aggressively seeks out new writers and artists.
4. It employs a staff of individuals knowledgeable in literature and online publication - not just writers, not just good writers, and not just good writers who read. Individuals knowledgeable in literature and online publication.
5. It acknowledges that presentation is a crucial part of the online literary experience, and works constantly to present a dynamic, accessible and beautiful magazine.
6. Its first and foremost concern is the location and publication of high quality work.
7. Its system of compiling and managing content is methodical, efficient and open to comment and criticism by staff.
8. Nobody gets total say over any one aspect of the publication - the staff structure is bent toward equality and dialogue.
9. The entire staff actually gets to fucking meet one another. It's such a basic thing.
10. The entire staff meets on a regular basis to discuss the state of affairs and to suggest ideas and improvements.
11. The magazine does not bore the staff. The moment it bores the staff, it's a sickly magazine.

None of this seems like very much to ask, in my opinion. Most of it is just good business and publication sense, and remember, the restrictions here are different — an online magazine doesn't have to worry about the cost of ink, press time or incorrectable errors. Anyone who has ever worked in publishing or the document industry would probably acknowledge these things as quite basic.

That said, name me three online magazines that adhere to these standards, or that at least aren't guilty of the seven deadly sins I've outlined above.

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sitting around in Minkowski space, bored

For what it's worth, I wrote a simple calculator for special relativity energy-mass equivalence (E=mc²). I thought about writing a short tutorial on special relativity, but there are piles of them out there already.

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adv: you may have won something! but probably not

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must. get. life.

Fell asleep in front of the computer last night. Well, this morning, really. I am a major loser.

Last night (er, this morning) I dreamt someone gave me a love letter concealed in a half-deflated balloon. The balloon was bright yellow, and the letter was parchment brown. I had another dream in which I read a magazine article about the history of the United States, a history in which Ty Cobb had been president. There was another article about a lesbian photojournalist who discovered that a major terrorist organization was run by a violent woman. The journalist suspected that the terrorist was in denial about her sexuality, and determined to become her lover and thereby save the world. I'm not sure how it turned out (didn't read the article to the end, I guess), but I know the journalist ended up in D.C. — I saw a black-and-white picture of her asleep on her apartment floor, curled up among a clutter of photographs and notes. I spend all night talking with Jervais and then I dream of lesbians. Hmmm.

Which reminds me - last night I told Jervais about my new entrepreneurial scheme, something that will make us filthy rich. Homemade ice cream made from human breast milk. Breast cream™! She seemed to think I was joking, but she won't think it's so funny when I have a top-floor office and every household in America is reeling from the motherly goodness of chocolate breast cream™.

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