Scott Tries a Mean Monday

I'm in a bad mood. My laptop died. I lost 1500 some words of a new story that's been slow in coming....

So I'm going to say mean stuff about Booth, the forthcoming online mag of the Butler U. MFA program. How can I dump on a mag that doesn't even exist yet? That's not the question. The question is how bad a mood I'm in.

I've seen Booth coming, to tell you the truth. With state budgets everywhere in the red and parents of college-age kids hurting, colleges and U's are feeling the squeeze. Even the most last-century English dept. chair probably isn't going to pull for the funding necessary to launch a new print mag. They'll say, Go online. And they're going to be pushing the eds of their print journals to do the same (Gulf Stream is one recent example).

Here's my problem with Booth: they don't accept email subs.

You're Butler's MFA program, and you want to launch an online lit mag, but you don't accept email subs? What in the hell are you thinking? Let me be more precise about that. What the fuck makes you think that I'm going to spend time licking stamps and running off copies and standing in line at the P.O. to get in your nonexistent journal?

You're freaking Butler, man. All you've got are some words on a white screen.

But I'm being disingenous. I know what Butler is thinking.

Butler is thinking, In the old days, people would have been happy to dump long stories that no one would read in our Butler U. M.F.A. print mag. They'd have been glad to put 'Booth' on their CV's, and we'd have been happy to do the same. In May of 2009, more people will be happy to dump long stories that no one will read in our Butler U. M.F.A. online mag. They'll be happy to put 'Booth' on their CV's, and we'll be happy to do the same.