Prayers, etc.: * 06:15 – Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, followed by praying The Angelus. * 06:20 – praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Traditional Holy Rosary in English, followed by the Memorare. * 09:00 – Readings from today's Mass include – Lesson: Wis. 5:1-5 and Gospel: John 14:1-13. * 09:20 – making an Act of Contrition then making an Act of Spiritual Communion, followed by praying Archbishop Vigano’s prayer for USA & President Trump. * 09:30 – Today's Morning Devotion Daniel3 as found in Benedictus Magazine, followed by the Canticle of Zacharius (Lk 1:68-79). * 12:00 – praying The Angelus. * 14:50 – Thought for today from Archbishop Lefebvre: For those who do not live in the world of Revelation, of faith, in this world which the Credo and theology describe for us, their life is illusion; they live in error. It is horrible to think that a person can spend his whole life in error, in the most total illusion, in ignorance of the most important things there are to be known. * 15:00 – prayerfully reading The Athanasian Creed * 18:00 – praying The Angelus, followed by today's Evening Devotion, (Psalm 110), as found in Benedictus Magazine, followed by the Magnificat: Luke 1:46-55. * 19:00 – praying the hour of Compline for tonight according to the Traditional Pre-Vatican II Divine Office, followed by Fr. Chad Ripperger's Prayer of Command to protect my family, my sons, my daughter and her family, my granddaughters and their families, my great grandchildren, and everyone for whom I have responsibility from any demonic activity. – And that followed by the Wednesday Prayers of the Association of the Auxilium Christianorum.

Health Metrics: * bw= 217.93 lbs. * bp= 156/93 (68)

Diet: * 08:45 – pizza * 11:00 – 13:30 – took the wife out to a favorite restaurant for Mothers Day meal * 15:00 – 1 fresh apple * 16:30 – pizza

Chores, etc.: * 07:20 – follow news reports from various sources * 11:00 to 13:30 – Mothers Day lunch at Lin's * 13:30 – following the TX Rangers vs Detroit Tigers MLB Game * 16:30 – listening to relaxing music, quietly reading

Chess: * 20:40 – moved in all pending CC games

posted Sunday, 2025-05-11 ~20:55 #DLMAY2025

The day almost got away from me. But it's been a good Mother's Day Sunday. Took the wife out to a favorite restaurant and she ran into a group of women who recognized her from her old hometown in the Philippines. They laughed and chatted and had a great visit. That was pretty cool!

posted Sunday, May 11, 2025 at ~8:43 PM QNMAY2025

I do not know if I dreamed the turquoise, or if it dreamed me.

Slower than most, this Sunday has produced little other than a chance to rest and care for my sickly bride. She is making progress but it is slower than either of us would like.

She mostly sleeps, with brief periods watching television or scrolling instagram.

The day started late when her illness kept us awake again. I was early enough to join my friends for worship. Though a foul mood kept me from enjoying it fully. I found myself picking apart failures of those charged with making it meaningful. :–(

Even if it is true, I should look for the positives. The silver linings.

I think I needed sleep more than amens today.

I treated a visitor to lunch, which was hectic, it being Mother’s Day. I wasn’t much for conversation, but I was dutiful and performative enough I think to make them feel welcome. The rest of the party picked up my slack.

He and his wife drove in and gave us a public discourse on faith and loyalty. Good info, but I was hoping for more heart.

We must be patient with those learning to be effective speakers. Some, it will take a lifetime. And there was nothing wrong with his delivery per se. I was no doubt seeking inspiration more than edification.

I am acutely sensitive at the lack of those I can call friend today. In truth, I think it’s just a natural emotional ebb . My thoughts were wild last night leaving me restless until just before dawn.

I opened my phone to 10 or so tabs in my browser that I only vaguely recalled starting. A variety of research projects on turquoise and western towns and classic motorcycles.

I don’t know if I had a dream and then started researching or vice versa.

I dreamt about hunting turquoise with Paul Riser and Paul Rudd. Taking a communal shower— or not exactly communal, but a shared space that made me feel very uncomfortable. The showers were very short, requiring me to hunch down to get a solid dousing. I was having a lot of anxiety about it.

Eventually I meet a big Spanish family who run a restaurant. A beautiful woman wore a huge snaking turquoise necklace that had some kind of power to see through time or to travel through time.

I’m not sure what the Jungian explanation of this is. Some anxiety, no doubt. And possibly some desire for exploration or new?

I’m trying to write a short story based on it:

The Turquoise Trail

Chapter One: Dust in the Pipes

He rumbled into the forgotten place with his boots caked in the memory of three deserts and the taste of the southwest parching his lips. Parking his rattletrap like a tired steed. The old two-stroke held together with baling wire and wishes.

Dismounting Paul Rider snatched a beat-up duffle from the sidecar, hitched it and turned to find lodging. When he walked the bag rustled and jingled faintly—turquoise chips in a canvas pouch, the sound of hope and hunger.

The place didn’t have a name so much as a suggestion: Los Agotes, hand-painted on a crooked sign that swayed like it might blow away if the wind ever bothered to come through. A mining town once. Now, more heat and ghosts than gold and people

Paul had heard of the place from a man in a bar who’d lost two fingers and a tooth to a turquoise boulder he swore was alive. He said the mother vein ran somewhere near here, deep under the foothills, bleeding into riverbeds and old family heirlooms. There was a story about a necklace the size of a snake worn by the daughter of a woman who cooked like God’s own abuela.

He walked up main—more dust than road—and passed a string of worn brick facades with once-polished display windows. Who knows what they were in their glory, now half-closed tiendas and obscure offices. A single payphone, cracked receiver dangling like a dead limb. The town smelled of mesquite and oil and old, sun-baked wood.

The Miner’s Cave stood across the cracked and patched blacktop. Not much more than a long, corrugated shed with a faded sign and a busted screen door that shrieked in protest when Paul pushed through. Inside: bunk beds, sagging mattresses, a humming Coke machine from the ’90s, and a small office where a fat man slept with a fan pointed at his stomach.

Paul signed the ledger and got a key marked “Shower A.” He eyed it like it might bite him.

There was no joy as great in the world than a good hot shower after a long dirty ride. A ride that had worked the dust through his garb and into his bones. Paul swore he could feel grit in the synapses of his brain. Pushing open the door to the narrow tiled stalls and mildewed plastic curtains didn't give him the sense of relief he had hoped for. But it did instill a feeling he expected, disappointment.

The hiss of pipes was like a prayer blessing this holy communion of clean water and a dirty body. Paul wasn’t just washing away the road and grime, he was flushing out exhaustion.

In spite of the accommodations, being clean made life tolerable and practically enjoyable. He lay on his bunk, eyes on the ceiling, listening to someone cough through the wall and the occasional burst of static from an old TV down the hall. He held the pouch of turquoise close to his chest.

Tomorrow, he’d ask around. About the necklace. About the girl. About the Serpent’s Spine.

Tonight, he just wanted to be left alone with the sound of the crickets, the mysterious neighbors and the whisper of his own thoughts—fantasizing about that fabled river of turquoise.

-

I’m not sure where to take it. I think he’ll need the fair senorita and run afoul of a rival. Time travel could be fun.

Short stories are new territory.

For now, I think I need to get out of these 4 walls. I’m going stir.

#NSFW

This post is NSFW 19+ Adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

---

Aoi Ibuki had undergone no cosmetic surgery whatsoever at the time of her debut. Notably, the natural aesthetic structure of her body was exceptional. Her sharply cinched waist curved fluidly into hips that swelled with elastic fullness, drawing a perfect S-line rarely seen in other AV performers. Her firm thighs and taut gluteal muscles hinted at the athletic beauty of a former school cheerleader. And above all, what seized the gaze was her magnificent, voluminous breasts—plump and luscious like soft marshmallows, their snow-white surface topped with small, cherry-like areolas set with perfect precision.

However, her face stood in stark contrast. Unlike many typical AV performers who exude a hypnotic sexual allure, Ibuki's is utterly devoid of seductiveness. Every bit the ordinary next-door-sister, not even the typical kind of cute. Her jawline formed a distinct inverted triangle, and her facial features were boldly defined—by no means conventionally attractive. Judged solely on her face, one might expect her to have little chance at achieving broad popularity in the AV world.

While Ibuki's body is undeniably erotic in its visual stimulus, the marked contrast with her facial impression creates a kind of psychological disjunction. Her unsexy face instead radiates mischief, cheerfulness, brightness, and vibrancy. Fascinatingly, for many viewers, this “disjointed state between face and body” elicits reactions like, “This is objectively obscene, but somehow it's funny,” “Strangely entertaining,” or “Weirdly addictive.” As a result, her face began to be interpreted as “endearing,” “kind of cute,” and “full of life.” This unique affective space—where she offers something no merely pretty or sexy actress ever could—constitutes the singularity of Ibuki's presence and points to a new level of Humanities of the Obscene.

#AV #japan #debut2020 #AoiIbuki

---

Meet me at freezing point

on a night with no stars

the hamburger wrapper stuck to your shoe

cheese glue.

your persimmon eyes

divide the planes of the wall

like half-drawn sword, an obelisk

or an ear of corn.

This spire is a macrocosm of the knife

Dull compared to this bundle of rooms

The room which is part snake.

The railway line a torus

A desert or another keyboard

desert sharing the keyboards

with clear snakes

to let the clear snakes type some too.

Beer church circumstance:

In the Droplet you see your unlocked tomb

in the bucket of atomic soul illness.

The Planet is crying urine.

A pause button on the water

Wheel canopy at one o’clock tonight.

Spiral paper ancient

Shell of calls, round throat. Throbbing:

On fire. Double.

As an excited toolbox

Tooling form external

Your name a love letter.

Crucifix installation

To be made of a scoop

Of death, a game of protection.

The book hammer hammers out

Oak trees. The oak trees oak me

in way not above mentioned

as if they were microphones.

A curved arrow of blood

Shovels betrayal across a red felony

Stars in clouds hanging.

From id forebrain

Alchemical trombone train station

Postbox tigerbox paperback.

Arrow crescent crescent

Crescent cripple crocodile crocodile

Crocodile crocodile.

Castle withdrawn from nose

Rooter’s nose a lizard teacup

A cow face double.

Bubble buddha principal:

A kindergarten looking map

for the sponge owl night plunger.

Here is a god face with a round grapevine

A plant sign undergoing a minute fragrant cyclone

White milker violin operation.

Orphan palms flower blockade

Ancestral evil in fluids

Tearing tearing tearing.

Yesterday’s medicine

Is tentative as a speech balloon

For popcorn nesting dolls.

Tentacle ears button

Blue sound to the air as a gift 

Only for beginners.

From heaven and refreshing

As an arrogant yellow crayon

Horse plot is cloud height.

Orangutan ballet tree

The modern anniversary

Of the comet arts video.

And her golden necklace

In lord umbrella cowboy union

The trademark registration.

Human inability

An inaccessible vegetable plate

Spiral monkey path.

Man utility

Vehicle bomb unexploded

Calendar spider.

Man Utility Vehicle Bomb Unexploded Calendar Spider.

マンユーティリティビークル爆弾不発カレンダースパイダー。

And crescent crescent

Moon goddess of liberty

Kitchen knife white square.

And a crescent moon, a crescent moon, the Statue of Liberty, a kitchen knife, a white square.

そして三日月、三日月、自由の女神像、包丁、白い四角。

Great telephone receiver

Telephone arrow cat heart

Fickle anger outburst.

Awesome receivers, phone arrows, cat hearts, whimsical rage bursts.

素晴らしい受信機、電話の矢印、猫のハート、気まぐれな怒りの爆発。

Button blood and private

Fast running as woman blowfish

Storm incomprehensible.

The storm of blood splattering the buttons and the heavy breathing of the woman's private parts is 

incomprehensible.

ボタンに飛び散る血の嵐と女性の陰部の荒い呼吸は理解できない。

Elephant face with

Rolling rain play or stolen

Metamorphosis.

The elephant's face, wet from the pouring rain, creates a sense of playfulness and change.

降り注ぐ雨に濡れた象の顔は、遊び心と変化を感じさせます。

Like it or not, email is a critical part of our digital lives. It’s how we sign up for accounts, get notifications, and communicate with a wide range of entities online. Critics of email rightfully point out that email suffers from a significant number of flaws that make it less than ideal, but that doesn’t change the current reality. In light of the facts, I believe that an encrypted email provider is a must-have for everyone in today’s age of rampant data breaches, insider threats, warrantless police access, and targeted advertising. If I can get access to your emails, I can get a range of sensitive information including where you bank, communications with medical services, calendar reminders, news announcements from family, and more. So this week, let’s look into the top encrypted email providers The New Oil recommends and their features to help decide which one is right for you.

Defining “Secure”

Before I offer my suggestions, I should take a moment to explain how I define “secure” email since marketing can mean basically anything. “Secure email,” to me, means an email provider who enforces zero-knowledge encryption; that is to say a provider who cannot access your emails as they're sitting in your inbox. It’s not enough to simply pinky promise to respect your privacy. If they can access your data, so can an attacker who gains access whether a cybercriminal, a crooked employee, or a government with a court order. Likewise, services should apply that encryption automatically wherever possible. The onus should not be upon the users for you to go generate your own PGP keys (or whatever security protocol the provider is built upon) and apply it yourself. I also expect the clients (aka apps) of the service to be source available so that qualified, interested parties can verify that everything is implemented correctly and doing what it claims to. Security is important and easy to mess up. Readers can see my full list of criteria here.

Notes: This list is in alphabetical order. It also contains affiliate links for Proton and Tuta that will help support us if you choose to use one of these services.

Proton

Image courtesy of Proton

Proton is by far the biggest name in the privacy space, particularly when it comes to email and VPN, though in recent years they’ve begun to roll out a full suite of products like cloud storage, a calendar, a password manager, and a Bitcoin wallet. Proton is aiming to become a user-friendly all-in-one suite, a great replacement for Google or Apple geared toward mainstream users. Of course, there is something to be said for not putting all your eggs in one basket, but for those who prefer the ecosystem approach to their services, Proton is a powerful service. In addition, Proton is compatible with PGP, meaning that other PGP users can initiate a secure conversation with you even if they’re not Proton users (though you will have to dig through the settings to find your public key first). Proton offers a free tier you can use to test it out if you so choose.

The main drawback of Proton – in my opinion – is feature parity. Proton operates under the philosophy of “if something is usable, why wait to publish it?” As such, they are notorious for publishing apps that – while functional – are still missing a number of features and need fine-tuning or that may be available on one platform and not another. On the plus side, this allows them to prioritize much-wanted features thanks to the immediate feedback from the community. On the other hand, this often results in situations where a feature in the iPhone app is missing from the Android app (or vice versa) or a Windows app is available while Mac and Linux are still in beta (if available at all). I also have to note personally that lately Proton's support has been abysmal. I've contacted them several times recently only to get emails weeks later basically saying “sorry for the delay, do you still need assistance?” I'm still waiting for assistance. And I'm paying for the Unlimited plan.

Tuta

Image courtesy of Tuta

Tuta – formerly Tutanota – is Proton’s main competitor, and unlike many competitors in the tech space they do actually set themselves apart quite considerably. Tuta is based out of Germany and currently offers a calendar in addition to their email. On the user-facing end, Tuta users will notice a much more consistent user experience across the board compared to Proton: all the apps should more or less have the same features regardless of your operating system. Behind the scenes, Tuta is not based on PGP directly (you can see more details here for technical readers). The advantage of Tuta's encryption implementation is that it protects more metadata than traditional PGP, such as the email subject line. The drawback, however, means that only other Tuta users can initiate an end-to-end encrypted conversation with you.

Tuta's drawbacks compared to Proton consistent of fewer features, fewer offerings in their suite (there's cloud storage coming in the future, but no VPN or password manager), and the apps are considered by some to be a bit slow and dated in appearance. But for those who aren't bothered by that, Tuta offers innovative, strong features with a consistent experience, and great support.

Proton and Tuta are the two most popular encrypted email providers, and with good cause. They check all the boxes and users really can’t go wrong with either. However, some users may find that these providers don't meet their needs. So in the interest of offering more options to readers, here's a few honorable mentions worth considering.

Honorable Mention: Posteo

Image courtesy of Posteo

Posteo is a Germany-based email provider that includes a calendar. Their main features are their reliance on green, renewable energy and their commitment to privacy and ad-free services, even for unencrypted accounts. Therein, however, lies the main reason Posteo is an “honorable mention”: they do not offer end-to-end encryption by default. Users are expected to generate their own PGP keys which they can upload to the service to enable zero-knowledge encryption. For advanced users who aren't afraid to self-manage this kind of stuff, this is great. It creates the maximum level of trust and allows you to manage everything yourself. However, for non-techy users, this can create a false sense of security compared to Proton or Tuta, especially when the website uses (arguably) tricky wording like “all data can be encrypted.” While they do specify on the features page that they use TLS by default, this all can still be confusing for a non-technical person to parse. As a double-edged sword, Posteo has no free tier (but they do offer a 14-day free trial and their pricing starts at a very affordable €1/month). On the plus side, this creates a sustainable business model that doesn't have to rely on selling data to fund the service, however it is a barrier to entry for those on a very tight budget.

Honorable Mention: Mailbox

Image courtesy of Mailbox

In a similar vein to Posteo, the other honorable mention worth considering is Mailbox. Mailbox is also based in Germany and promises renewable energy sources. Like Posteo, Mailbox offers a free trial (a generous 30 days compared to Posteo's 14 days) and their lowest tier is €1/month. Also like Posteo, however, Mailbox requires users to add their own PGP keys, and thus has the same pros and cons of Posteo. The main difference that seems to separate Mailbox and Posteo is target audience: Posteo is marketed more toward private end-users while Mailbox offers a number of features aimed at organizations (though they both appear reasonably user-friendly). If you're a little more advanced, Mailbox will likely speak to you with their additional privacy and security offerings.

In Defense of Encrypted Email

Critics of encrypted email will note that in most cases, using such a provider is only a half-protection. In nearly all email exchanges, you're corresponding with someone who's not using encrypted email – perhaps Gmail or Microsoft – so the email remains accessible on their end. This is true, however to me this is a defeatist argument. While it is important to keep that caveat in mind when communicating, by using a secure email yourself, you're cutting your attack surface in half. Your emails still can't be accessed without your knowledge. A data breach, illicit password reset, or warrantless access will only result in the attacker gaining access to a bunch of unusable gibberish. Also, if the other party gets compromised, only the correspondence you've had with them gets compromised. Depending on that other party, that may be limited to something innocuous (like a support ticket) or something serious (like financial or medical information), but it won't result in all of that getting compromised like it would if your inbox got accessed.

When I ask these same critics for their proposed solution to the problems with email, the response is invariably along the lines of “people should be using something like Signal instead.” While that would be nice, my bank isn’t going to Signal me notifications any time for the foreseeable future. Or my veterinarian, or a job interview, or a receipt for an online purchase, and so on. I have a longstanding challenge to show me the person who functions in modern western society – has a job, pays bills, has a social life, etc – without email (truly without email, not “my grandpa never uses it, my grandma handles it for him.”) To date, nobody has produced such a person. Like it or not, email is a critical component of modern digital life. Perhaps that will change someday, and if it does I’ll be quite happy to revise my stance. But for now, it’s a necessary evil and therefore – just like every other facet of digital life – we should strive to reduce the risks as much as possible. If you’re not using an encrypted email provider, I strongly to encourage you to start immediately. There are likely other great options out there for more advanced users who want different features, but for most mainstream users one of the choices on this list will be a great place to start.

I took last week off from writing a blog because I was busy with stuff for both After Happy Hour and Scribble House—things like getting ready for the return of the Send It! group next week and wrapping up the Issue 27 reading period, but mostly finishing up a workshop I did yesterday through Chill Subs about common mistakes made by submitters. Doing that has made me think a bit more deeply than I usually do about why we reject work for After Happy Hour.

People have asked me this question before, of course, mostly during events like AWP or other conferences when I'm at the AHH table wearing my Managing Editor hat. I feel like they're usually a bit annoyed by my answer, because the truth is, the best way to get an acceptance from us is the same generic advice you get from every journal: Send us your best, read what we publish, follow our guidelines. And, yes, this is stuff every writer has heard before. But there's also a reason editors keep saying it over and over again: Almost everything that we reject at After Happy Hour, it's because the writer didn’t do one (or more) of those things.

I took some notes on why I rejected things at AHH this past reading period. In a big-picture category sense, my “no”s broke down like so:

Interpreting that a bit: “process errors” are those simple-to-fix mistakes that writers make during the actual process of sending us their work. In our case, these are pretty much all folks who attach the wrong file to their submission—there are other mistakes writers make during this process, like sending their stuff using the wrong form, but these rarely result directly in a rejection. The only time they do is when the form is for something with a limited call, like during our recent reprints-only issue—we had a few submitters send unpublished work for this call, and rejected it out of hand because it's simply not what we were reading.

Guideline errors is fairly self-explanatory: Rejections that could be avoided if the writer follows our guidelines. I think the main thing writers need to remember here is that each journal has their own specific things they want to see. Yes, there are some things that are likely going to be true everywhere, but there's always an exception—for instance, while you'd be right to double-space prose 99% of the time, you'll find those rare journals that ask for it single-spaced. The point is, it's always worth taking the time to find and read each journal's guidelines before you send work to them, but that's usually more a matter of getting in the habit than writers not understanding what they're supposed to do.

With the other two—sending your best and reading what we publish—they are a bit more vague, and I can see how writers who are fairly new to the process of submitting work might not completely understand what journals mean when they say this, or why they're saying it in the first place. So here's a bit of a deeper dive of what After Happy Hour means, at least, which may not be exactly the same as what you'd hear from every publisher but should hopefully at least provide a bit of insight and context to help writers get their work published.

What publishers mean when they say “Send us your best work.”

I'll admit, publishers could phrase this in a better way—”best” is a highly subjective term, which does make it a bit useless. I can think of plenty of times in the past when I've genuinely thought I was sending a journal my best, not realizing the piece still needed more work until after it got rejected and I re-read it. I tend to give submitters the benefit of the doubt on this point when we get submissions that aren't what I would consider to be publishable. I don't assume the writer is sending us unfinished work on purpose—they likely thought the piece was ready when they hit submit. I just don't happen to agree with that assessment.

Now, within this broad category there are a lot of gradations, so what editors actually mean when they say “not ready to publish” could be a few different things. It could mean:

• The work still reads like a rough draft. The bones of a good story or poem might be there, but the author hasn't put any apparent work into drawing it out. There are still big-picture issues like plot holes, inconsistencies in the voice or characters, insufficient setting details to ground the reader in time or space, a lack of clear arc or plot development, or weak writing at the sentence level that's riddled with excessive errors, just to name a few common problems.
• The opening is weak. It's common for writers to “ramp up” into a story or poem and come around to find where it really starts on a later draft. We often get poems that are fantastic from the second stanza on, or stories that really hit their stride on page 3. Every once in a while, if we love the rest of it enough, we'll work with the author on edits—but if the beginning is weak enough, it's possible we won't even read long enough to find out where it gets good.
• The ending is weak. This is another one that can take a lot of forms. Often, writers keep going after a story or poem should end, and need to trim back a bit to really nail the landing. Other times, they don't really know how to end it so they just stop writing, or tack a paragraph on that's meant to tie everything up, leading to endings that feel abrupt or unsatisfying.
• The story is too long and/or overwritten. Almost always, writers end up with more words in early drafts than they truly need. I would say this is slightly more true for prose than poetry, but whatever the form, I think of it like if you're cooking a sauce: reducing a sauce makes the flavor more potent. One of the steps that makes a piece feel polished is trimming out wordy phrases, unnecessary sentences, or other words that you can lose without diluting the meaning—in other words, you're cooking off the water and leaving just the flavorful bits behind. It's very clear for editors when a piece hasn't been edited from this kind of standpoint.
• The work still needs refinement at the sentence and word level. By “refinement”, I don't mean that the piece needs to use highfalutin' language and flowery descriptions. The voice can be matter-of-fact, with simple language and sparse sentences, and still read as refined if it's consistent, clean, and every word has impact. Refinement comes from the writer zooming in on the details, reviewing the piece line by line to perfect the phrasing and language.

...the pieces that fall into those last two categories are the ones that are the most painful to reject as an editor. Sometimes, we love the core elements of the piece, but it just needs too much work at the sentence level for us to publish it.

And that's really what it comes down to when we say “not ready to publish”—it means that the piece still needs more substantial editing than the folks who run the magazine are able or willing to invest into it. Usually this comes down to the “able” rather than the “willing” part of that.

I think some submitters who haven't seen the other side of the process think that all literary publishers have massive teams of people. This is often not the case. University-run journals often have entire teams of slush readers at their disposal in the form of students (though, ironically, they're often the slowest to reply to submissions, and often no more likely to accept work that needs substantial editing). There are other larger, well-known publications that may have full teams, some of whom might actually get paid for their efforts. Spots like the Paris Review or the New Yorker, for instance, probably do have the hands available to undertake significant back and forth edits, but those are the same markets that get thousands of submissions a year and don't really need to work with something that isn't ready, so you're really back to square one as a writer.

For the rest of the publishers out there, their teams look a lot like After Happy Hour's: a handful of people who love words enough to volunteer arguably excessive amounts of their time reading through unsolicited submissions, communicating with authors, and doing all the other work required to put each issue into production. If we really, really love something that isn't quite ready, then we'll work with the author to get it there. But, realistically, we don't really have time for this even when we do it, and we definitely don't have time to do it for more than one piece in a given reading period.

I will say there's no one type of editing or writing problem that leads to a “no”—when I kept track of the issues I saw during the most recent reading period, it was fairly balanced across a few of those issues I already mentioned above:

So the next question is: how do you get your piece publication ready? There's no easy answer for that one, either, but it comes down to lots and lots of editing. It definitely helps to get some outside eyes on it, too. That doesn't need to mean paying someone, and in fact I wouldn't say you should ever feel like you're required to hire a professional editor for short fiction unless you're aspiring toward those Paris Reviews of the world. It is definitely a smart move to get some kind of feedback from other writers, though, whether that's an in-person critique group or posting it to an online feedback site. Just a word of warning on that latter option: Make sure you're using a site where only other members can see the piece, to avoid having it accidentally be considered “previously published” when you're trying to send it out to places.

Why should you read a journal before sending to it?

On that graph earlier in the post, there's a fairly sizable chunk labeled “Market Fit”. These are submissions that are fairly well-written, and I could see getting published somewhere—and might have even enjoyed reading it, even as I know it's definitely not something we're going to publish.

On the poetry side, this often comes down to a matter of form and structure. The After Happy Hour crew across the board isn't a huge fan of rhyming poetry, and will rarely publish it even when it's well-done. We also aren't likely to publish any blackout or erasure poetry, and our poetry editor specifically gets annoyed by two-line stanzas. We don't reject these out of hand, of course, but we get a whole lot and only take a small percentage of them.

On the prose side, this usually comes down to the type of tension or conflict in a piece. For realistic genres, we look for either high stakes, high emotion, or humor—a quiet story about a breakup isn't likely to catch our eye unless it's told in a really unique way. That “unless” part is why we don't just say “no breakup stories” out of hand. We have published them, and likely will in the future, but it needs to be well-written and to do something new with the well-known tropes. The only way you'd know that, as a submitter, is to read the relationship stories we've published in the past.

We're more open to pieces with a quiet, low-stakes plot if they're set in a slant reality or completely made-up world, but we still want work that has strong forward momentum and compelling characters. An intriguing world or plot set-up isn't enough. There's one journal I like whose guidelines say they don't want “HAITE” stories, which stands for “Here's an idea, the end”, and I've thought about stealing this language for AHH's guidelines because we get a decent amount of these, too—speculative stories that have a solid concept but haven't yet fully turned that concept into a story.

These are all fairly subtle distinctions, which is why we don't call them out in our guidelines. We don't want to be too prescriptive to the point we stop someone from sending us a piece we'd actually love. But that does mean, to get a true sense of what fits with us, you probably first need to do a bit of research into what we've published before. This is why reading a journal before submitting to them is a smart idea. You get a sense for how to match the style, tone, and content they gravitate toward, and that increases your odds of getting a “yes”.

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Any time I write a post like this I feel the need to add at the end that writing is subjective, and every editor approaches the publishing process in their own unique way. But hopefully this sheds some insight on how editors think about the submissions they receive and what leads our team, at least, to turn something down.

See similar posts:

#WritingAdvice #Publishing

Hello, world

once more into the silly breach

Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Tom Gauld!

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Da lacht er wieder – Der Türke. im Treppenhaus, ganz laut. Der Türke lacht wieder.

Saw a dirty white cat this morning. He had a little dangling booger on his nose, and his fur was shaggy and unkempt. He kept circling around people’s legs, as if aching for attention, while staying alert to a dog wandering nearby. I watched him for a while, then couldn’t hold myself back anymore—I leaned down and petted him. He immediately pushed his head back into my palm, and a hoarse, raspy “MEow” came out. His face looked like he had the flu. I had to gently push him away with my foot before stepping into the elevator, so he wouldn’t follow me inside.

Primero debo confesar que yo llegué muy tarde al mundo de la música electrónica, por lo que este post se basa en conversaciones con aquellas personas que he conocido ahí y que llevan en décadas lo que yo llevo en años.

“Hubo un tiempo en que la música electrónica no tenía marcas,” me dicen, “ni sponsors, ni VIPs. Solo ritmo, desiertos, fábricas, bosques. Aquello era un rito. Hoy, en cambio, es contenido.”

Aparentemente el techno está pasando por un proceso muy similar al de la industria tech, algo que Cory Doctorow bautizó con precisión hace un par de años: enshittification. Un término feo, incómodo, pero necesario. Se pensó para describir cómo una plataforma de tecnología se degrada progresivamente a medida que sus creadores priorizan la extracción de valor por sobre la experiencia humana.

Saco esta cita de Wikipedia:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

Es una historia en tres actos y que lamentablemente aplica también a aspectos que están fuera de la tecnología. En el caso de la música tecno, podemos pensarlo así:

1. La etapa del valor: el mito fundacional

Los festivales nacen como actos de pasión. Autogestionados, arriesgados, honestos. Gente que ama el sonido alquila un generador y lo monta todo en medio de la nada. Se eligen los lineups por emoción, no por algoritmo. Hay polvo, errores, magia. El público es parte activa del ritual. El cuerpo importa. El momento importa. Se baila con los ojos cerrados.

2. La etapa de la captura: la profesionalización

Llega el éxito. Más asistentes y más visibilidad, lo que a su vez genera más atención. Se afina la producción, se sube el precio. Aparecen los sponsors. El line-up se adapta a los “que venden”. Los DJs emergentes van a las 16:00 y nadie los escucha, incluso no ha llegado ni la mitad del público. Se construye una narrativa de marca: “el festival más loco”, “la mejor experiencia del verano”. Pero el baile ya no es el centro, da paso al contenido grabado en móviles.

3. Enshitification total de la experiencia

Todo es postureo. Todo es performativo. Se va al festival como quien va a un showroom: para demostrar que se estuvo, no para estar. La gente no llega antes de las 2:00am y no es porque no puedan, sino porque nadie quiere grabar stories con poca gente en la pista. El main stage es el único punto de interés. Lo importante es tener el vídeo, no tener el recuerdo. Se baila mirando el móvil. Se escucha lo que ya se conoce. Se sacrifica el momento en favor del algoritmo.

Y sí, existen también grandes corporaciones y fondos de inversión involucrados, como en todo. Superstruct, Live Nation, etc. compran todo lo que puedan empaquetar. Elrow, Sónar, Brunch, Monegros y otros son convertidos en franquicias de sí mismos. Pero sería cínico señalarlos solo a ellos. El público también tuvo la culpa, porque a nadie le importa ya el DJ, sino su outfit. Porque nadie comparte música nueva, pero todos suben reels con filtros. Porque la pista no vibra: posa.

Quizás no se puede volver atrás. Quizás todo lo que fue auténtico está condenado a este ciclo. Pero aún hay reductos. Raves clandestinas. Festivales sin apps ni QR ni pulseras cashless. Gente que llega temprano, que se queda hasta el final, que baila aunque no haya señal o que incluso apaga el móvil antes de entrar. Ahí, todavía, la música es algo más que una excusa para grabar.

No es nostalgia, porque yo no lo viví. Es una advertencia habiendo vivido el proceso en el mundo de la tecnología, el internet, las redes sociales.

Porque nadie te quitará lo bailado y aquello que no se baila, se olvida.

It happened. Again.

Last year, I attended my first optimism walk in scenic Dunwoody, GA (just outside of Atlanta) to raise money to fight #ThePark. My parents flew down to walk with me. We arrived at the park on time, registered, and started walking with the big group. Then, my dad decided to stop so he could check into his flight exactly 24 hours before departure, hoping to get on the upgrade list for first class. Then I got distracted when I noticed that the park had a disc golf course, and I had to explore a couple of holes on the course. By the time we were done with all that, the group had moved on. We continued walking, but without the group to follow, we went the wrong way and ended up in an entirely different park than where we started. We eventually realized our mistake, retraced our steps, and finally made it back to the correct park long after the walk had finished. I finished last—even though it isn't a race—in a group of mostly elderly people with a movement disorder.

But this year would be different. The weather was cold—probably below 50 degrees—and raining. My parents brought an umbrella and rain jackets, while I only had my Adidas hooded sweatshirt to protect me. But the weather wasn’t going to stop us. We were ready to walk. We knew the park. We knew where to go. Or so we thought.

The Uber driver dropped us off at a baseball field. Realizing this wasn't the right place, we noticed a cluster of white pop-up tents across the road. Registration. Just like last year. No big deal, we just walk across the way and… It was actually the weekly farmers market, selling peaches, boiled peanuts, pecans, things of that nature. This was not the right place. Looking up the hill, I saw another group of pop-up tent. Finally, the registration tents.

When I got up the hill, the pop-up tents were sheltering a pack of young dudes. All dudes. Polos. Khaki shorts. Dudes. Was this some sort of Dudes Against Parkinson’s group that was walking in the walk. No, reader, it was not. It was a meetup of Phi Kappa Alpha (or something like that) frat boys. These dudes were useless. I left and continued my search.

While I was on my little excursion up the hill, my dad had found a police officer and asked her where the Parkinson's Walk was. She explained that the group would come along a certain path and then walk up the hill to the pavilion at the top. So, we walked up the hill to the pavilion and finally met up with the group as they were finishing their walk. So this year I didn’t finish last. Because I technically never started. We arrived just as they were starting to serve lunch.

Fortunately, the registration table was still set up, so I was able to register after the walk had finished and get my T-shirt, insulated cooler bag, and certificate for raising money for being the #13 fundraiser at the event. So I attended the 2025 Georgia Optimism Walk but the only walking I did was trying to find the event.

Thanks to generous donations, I raised twice as much money as I did last year and would have been on stage in the circle of hope, or circle of optimism, or circle of friendship—whatever it's called—but I missed out on that because I was too busy wandering around the wrong end of the park. Again. Next year, my goal is to raise twice as much money and to not get lost at all. I’ll buy a damn handheld satellite GPS, if I have to. Mark my words: I will (eventually, one day) start AND finish this walk.