Still Educating Sam Hasler: Monday Rainy, Maybe Shooting the Whole Day Down

Up early but moving slow. Outside, it is wet and drizzly. I hit the email and hoping this does not set the tone of the day, another rejection of "Problem Solving":

Thank you for your submission to Olit. Although we must decline your submission at this time, we appreciated the chance to consider it.
I noticed that in your bio, you mentioned being unsure if being a felon would be a problem, so I wanted to assure you that we have no issue publishing writers who were incarcerated! That had no bearing on our decision, so please don't let that discourage you. I hope you continue to pursue your passion and submit your work to magazines.
For future submissions, I recommend double-spacing your work and breaking it up into paragraphs. It makes it a little easier to read. :)
We wish you the best of luck placing this piece elsewhere! +

Best wishes,
Nicole Balsamo
Olit

Great. It was supposed to have been double-spaced! How Eff did that happen? On the other hand, it was a nice note, even though the story is told in a very long paragraph and a short one.

Paul Pelosi continues to be a news story. Let me get on the record to say this attack was abhorrent, but even more abhorrent is all the Republicans who will not condemn political violence. That the opinion is now there will be a Republican takeover of the House and possibly of the Senate, makes this acceptance of violence as an acceptable means to their end of retaining power for the sake of retaining power ever so dangerous.

I continue shopping "Problem Solving." I deleted the variants, including the single-spaced version. Here is where I sent this story: Guernica, Identity Theory, The Tonic, LIT, Leavings, Lammergeier, and The Journal,

I found this really cool looking magazine, Hennepin Review. I did not submit here. I read State College by Doug Paul Case on Juked. It is what I think of as flash fiction, but this one is more than just a stunt. I went ahead ans submitted "Problem Solving" to Juked's print edition.

Checking out Hindsight Magazine, I read Piano Down by Joseph Michaels. Very short, it hits hard. I decided to submit "Colonel Tom" since "Problem Solving" is too long.

I want to note Leavings is a collective. This I find very interesting - for all I think I am too old for this group!

Another I am not sure about is JuxtaProse Literary Magazine. Aber by E.J. Fry impressed me - fishing and more. Hemingway did good with his fishing stories, and so did this Fry. I decided, nothing ventured, nothing gained; "Problem Solving" went to this magazine.

10:54 - laundry done, had a snack, found I have no envelopes.... grrr. I would like to take a nap. lol!

12:13: I have read Literature Versus Content: On Dubravka Ugrešić’s “Thank You for Not Reading” and Must Sex Always Mean Death When it Comes to Horror Movies?, and turned them into a post for next month. I ate a large chef's salad for lunch.

I am getting out of here for a while.

Except I did not get very far. The bus did not show up. I decided to take a nap from 12:40 until 2. I made it an hour when there was a banging on the door. This banging I knew, it is like the Drug Task Force come to make an arrest banging. It was my PO. I felt like I had been asleep for hours and my arms cramped. He asked his usual prurient questions about my non-existent sex life. He always leaves me feeling like I disappoint him with my negative answers, that he wants me to be out ready to pounce on someone. He has never asked me what kind of life I want to live. I would tell him what I am doing right now is the life I want to leave - quiet unto the point of boring, alone, and nobody interrupting my naps. He did ask if I was always so grumpy when I woke up. I told him I was. Also, he let me know he has not heard from Mr. Wykoff (and I told him Wykoff had been trying to reach him without success; he let me know the counseling should be weekly. I am thinking that is up to Wykoff; definitely above my pay grade; and a warning about not opening for trick or treaters. The last he did not tell me last year. He left with a urine sample that will disappoint as much as anything in our relationship. Oh, did he ask about the novel, and I told him it was coming along.

My PO also wants me to get rid of the broken Gabb phone. I guess the fate of the Republic depends on this.

I am still grumpy. It has been gloomy all day, and now there is a light rain. Trick and treating looks very unlikely at 7 pm.

More submissions of "Problem Solving" were made:

In between, I could not resist reading The 50 Best, Worst, and Strangest Draculas of All-Time, Ranked. Law’s Force, Law’s Farce, a book review was attempted, but unfinished. I made it this far:

In this moment of right-wing revolution, one might be tempted to ask: Of what use are “imaginary laws” if they suggest no remedies? They may offer escape into futurist fantasy, as in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’s Ad Vitam Aeternam Act, which has mandated eternal life for all “humans.” They may offer a glimpse of utopia, as in Aristide Antonas’s protocol for a State of Mobile Rooms that circulates among host cities, guaranteeing security to its refugee citizenry. They may offer the perverse pleasures of lampoon, as in Pierre Schlag’s account of the 2048 Judicial Conference at NYU-Bermuda, where the old Constitution is discarded piece by piece until all that remains is the Postal Power—a private corporate entity that now sustains the legal fiction of the “United States.” They may offer lyric history, as in Piyel Haldar’s account of the epiphany of the antiquarian Alfred Watkins, who, on a hillside in Herefordshire, suddenly saw that the Earth herself had drawn “ley lines” (law lines) in the landscape at the dawn of time.

But, in this moment when Rome is burning, is it not somehow obscene to dally with poems about law?

Maybe. But it is also surely too much to demand a solution to our current catastrophe, even from a book about law. We tend to insist that books about law be useful—that they intervene in the world to fix a practical problem. We don’t demand the same of works of art or literature. In moments of anguished soul-searching, we may ask if they are ever any use, but, at other times, we think: The more useless, the better.

Maudlin House and Monkeybicycle got "Colonel Tom."

I talked to Joel C. for about an hour.

"Problem Solving" went to Short Story.

Since it is Halloween, I listened to WXPN's Spook-tacular. Now, some Halloween music for you from The New York Dolls, Warren Zevon, and The Cramps: