Currently, there’s a huge medium that’s being ignored by advertisers, and that medium is the Catholic Church. But this will change in the future—specifically, it will change on Maypril 45, 2123 AD. I learned this from a friend of mine who travels back and forth from the future and who will remain nameless, mainly because they don’t officially use names in the year 2123. This friend’s handle is XR78844A. He’s also known (unofficially) by some of his friends as Jorge Posada XV.

According to Jorge Posada XV, product placement will be very prevalent in future prayers. Take, for instance, the Lord’s Prayer. There’s a point in a Catholic mass where you stand up and hold the hand of the person on each side of you while reciting the Lord’s Prayer, also known as the “Our Father.” However, in the future, this prayer will be slightly altered from today’s version:

“Our Father who art in heaven

hallowed be thy name.

Thy Magic Kingdom® come.

Thy will be done

on earth as it is in 7-11®.

Give us this day our daily Wonder Bread®,

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us,

and lead us not into temptation,

but FedEx® us from evil,

by Mennen®.”

After reciting the Lord’s Prayer, everyone sits back down in the pew. Jorge Posada XV sits in the pew sponsored by Folgers: The Best Part Of Waking Up Is Folgers In Your Cup As Well As God.™

According to Jorge Posada XV, you’ll also find advertising in various religious texts, including Scripture, which, by the way, will only be available in electronic form. Here’s a passage from Romans 8 in the New International Bible Sponsored By Ford—Have You Transplexed In A Ford Lately?™:

⁵Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.

⁶The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

Of course, there are many other elements of Catholicism that will feature various forms of advertising in the future. I can’t list them all—that would be a long list!—but here are just a few other examples:

• Communion wafers sponsored by Zappos.com.
• An 8th Sacrament called Warren & Warren, which is the name of a law firm specializing in divorce.
• Wicker offering baskets advertising the home goods section of TJ Maxx.

…………………

Obviously, advertising will find a welcome home in the incredible world of Catholicism—a religion usually known for its hands-off approach when it comes to society. But don’t thank me for this little glimpse into the future. Thank XR78844A. Also known as Jorge Posada XV.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Since this writing, Jorge Posada XV’s handle has changed from XR78844A to XR78843A due to a death in his neighborhood.

Every morning from the age of five until I was eighteen, they made me pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America; so I’m duty bound to think, like rock and roll and spray cheese in a can, the short story is American. We get in, kick ass and get out before we hit 5000 words or a prolonged insurgency. Yanks achieve in a couple sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 what effete European hands couldn’t manage at Gandamak pass armed with an entire ream of A4.

The truth is that economies of scale and a more established MFA industrial complex have given the USA a larger and varied ecosystem for the short story. There are five times as many Americans (309 million) as people in the UK (62 million), but there are twelve times as many publishers of short stories (2278 in the US vs. 183 in the UK)*.  Whatever your genre, style and tolerance for rejection, the land of the free has a home for your story.

Here in the UK, a national short story award was recently handed out. Each story on the shortlist checked all the boxes for what makes a good story, but there was nothing in them that would have surprised Katherine Mansfield. The same breed of stories exists in the USA, Selected Shorts, but the difference is the size of the American market has enough room for, even at the national level, more than the meat-and-two-veg short story. There is Eggar’s Best American Non-Required Reading, and the New Yorker, hallowed be thy name, is capable of surprises.

The world of the short story used to be a seller’s market, which unsurprisingly is referred to as the golden era. Then it became a buyer’s market and the buyers, the people who edited and produced costly printed journals, decided courtesy be damned; there are too many submissions and too many are shit. So they made rules: no simultaneous submissions and expect waits of more than six months before a response (if a response is sent at all) to be shoved into an SASE the writer paid for.

We are now in a hardly-anyone’s-buying market. There is even more shit being submitted and the good stuff that is published goes largely unread except by editors, publishers and a small subset of submitters. Journals, online and print, have had to embrace submission managers such as submishmash, automated responses, and smarter workflows to handle the fire hose of slush. As a side note, US markets read 33.5 times (60,266 US submissions) as many submissions as their UK counterparts (1,798 UK submissions).

Despite the different sizes of the markets, the UK and the USA are comparable. On both sides of the Atlantic, journals accept roughly the same percentage of reprints (16.9% USA, 15.3% UK), electronic submissions (84.9% USA,  85.2% UK), have comparable percentages of non-responses (the most obnoxious of journal practices – 10.4% USA, 12.2% UK) and there is only a slight difference in choosiness (9.7% USA, 15% UK).

The only significant differentiation is the acceptance of simultaneous submissions. 48.6% of American markets allow them whereas only 20.2% of UK markets do, which might partly explain the 33.5 times as many submissions the American markets had to read. The reason for more Americans allowing simultaneous submissions might be competition. With twelve times as many journals chasing after the one-in-a-thousand story, it is in their interest to have more favourable writer guidelines. Although it is difficult to imagine that any writer of quality is going to exclusively send their best piece if they have to wait six months to get a response, it is impossible, troublesome and pointless to compare the quality of journals by these gross measures.

The closest we come is the percentage of acceptance but, considering a negligible 5.3% difference, equity is the most likely conclusion. I’m happy to call this one a tie. Anyway, if my nine years as a foreigner has taught me anything, it is that it’s all pretty much the same, everywhere.

* I would like to thank Duotrope (duotrope.com) for going above and beyond to get me the response statistics used in this article. Their donation-supported website is an indispensable tool for any writer submitting short stories. They would also like me to say that these statistics are based on what Duotrope’s Digest currently lists, which may not be entirely accurate or indicative of the market at large. For these reports, we are only including markets that accept fiction.

** We do not list a market as accepting SimSubs unless they explicitly state that they do accept them.

*** Non-responses include submissions reported as lost, never responded, assumed rejection or withdrawn by author.

Jarred McGinnis is a London-based American short story writer.

—

Submit to London Calling, a special issue of British and Irish writing, here.

My son’s first girlfriend was Alyssa Milano. He was three. She was twenty-seven. Alyssa was on the cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine that year and my son cut her out with his child-safe scissors then stuck her to the refrigerator with a couple of his ABC magnets. He told me, “Mom, this is my girlfriend.”

That same year, my son developed a crush on Poison Ivy. Uma Thurman Poison Ivy; cartoon Poison Ivy; plastic action-figure Poison Ivy. He carried that action-figure around for weeks; everywhere we went the boy brought Poison Ivy.

One day, my son left Poison Ivy in a store by mistake, and when we went back for her, we had no luck.

“Honey, do you want me to buy you another one?”

“No, Mama,” he said.  Some things, you can’t replace.

My son will be fourteen in forty-seven days. Already I worry about him driving. Sure, that’s two years away and maybe if I worry enough now I won’t worry as much when he’s actually driving. How does any parent live through this rite of passage? It’s a big one.

I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to my son. Perhaps my father suffered the same anxiety. Car accidents kill more teenagers than anything else.

When my son was ten he said, “Mom, when I’m old enough to drive and I ask you if I can have a car just tell me no. Driving is dangerous.” Now he says, “When you get me a car, just make it a junker since I’ll probably wreck it.” Jesus. Effing. Christ.  How am I going to sleep at night? Never mind. I already don’t.

I know a man who rolled his Camero at sixteen and never walked again.

My son likes video games; he likes his air-soft gun. He knows quite a lot about guns for a thirteen-year-old. He can knock off types, calibers, whatever you want. He recognizes particular guns in movies. The best thing you could do is show my son your gun collection. He’ll love you for life. Or take him to the shooting range. Even better. Now you’re stuck with him. Our friend, Rich, took Kiddo to the shooting range a few weeks ago. Rich now refers to my son as “Dead Eye Dan.” Apparently, my son has great aim. When Rich asked Kiddo if he wanted to shoot something for real—a bird, a squirrel, something—my son said no.

Three months ago, my son said he wanted to join the military so he could go to boot camp and handle weapons but he didn’t want to go to war.

There lies the conundrum.

“I couldn’t ever kill a person, Mom.”

I’ll never forget when my son told me Jesus was a Black man or when he said George Bush was dumber than a baby.

I’ll never forget four months ago when he sent me a text message. “Mom, what would you say if I told you I have a girlfriend?”

Here’s the thing: my son has hit all his milestones when he was ready. I never forced or thwarted anything.

When he was three months old this woman told me I held my son too much. “He’ll never walk if you hold him that much. He’ll cling to you.”

Excuse me, but he’s three months old, and he’s not heavy: he’s my baby, not to mention if my son wants me to hold him I will. Fuck you. Jesus. I held my baby. I breast fed him until he weaned himself. He sucked a pacifier until he was two-and-half then, pop! It fell out of his mouth, and he forgot about it. My son slept with me for years. Don’t let your child sleep with you. He’ll sleep with you when he’s in high school. I can assure you that isn’t true. I also got a lot of flak about not rushing my son into potty training. Two weeks before his third birthday he said, “Mama, I want to wear big-boy wares now,” so he switched from diapers to underwear and started using the toilet.

He’ll be fourteen in forty-seven days. I’m not allowed to stand in the doorway when he leaves the house in the morning because his friends wait for him in the street.

Two days after he had a girlfriend, he broke up with her. “We’re friends,” he said. “I’m not ready for a girlfriend.”

Girls are a buzzkill, he says these days. He sure gets a lot of text messages from them.

When my son wanted to dye his hair blue I let him. When he wanted to dye it green I let him. When he wanted to dye it red, green, and blue I let him. I let him dye his hair black. I let him paint his fingernails black. Six months ago he said he wanted to get snake bites in his face when he turned sixteen and I said, “If that’s what you want, okay.” My son has a beautiful face. I think it would be a shame. Still, what would be worse? Snake bits or him getting a girl pregnant? When my son was five he saw a condom commercial and asked me what a condom was, so I showed him. I mean I took one out of the package and showed him. And I explained its functionality.

Straight talk, people. You don’t want to end up a father before you’re ready. You don’t want sores on your dick. You don’t want to die from AIDS.

I’ll never forget when my son said he didn’t want to grow hair on his balls or when he said his absentee father was an asshole. When he was four, he asked me why his father didn’t love him. I’ve tried to forget that day. I wanted to shoot myself in the face.

My son came out of me beautiful. I know every mother says that.

And I’ve said this before too: when you decide to have a child, you’ve signed a contract with the universe.

I’ve no patience with any parent who doesn’t understand this or any one who can’t get his or her shit together for the sake of his or her child. Fuck you. We may accomplish a great many things in this life but none so great as cultivating a child.

Ripple effects, my friends. This is bigger than you.

In honor of poetry month, Buzznet, the web’s largest social magazine written for youth by youth, has partnered with BUST Magazine and actress and author Amber Tamblyn, to launch a poetry competition which invites aspiring young writers, poets and creatives to share their work for a chance to be published.  Users can enter by visiting the competition’s official Group Page located at www. buzznet.com/groups/PoetryMonthContest and submitting their poems.  On the Group Page, Amber’s fans, Buzznet members and the contestants can also see the work of others and share their favorite poems via Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.  The winning poet will be selected by Amber Tamblyn herself, receive an autographed copy of Ms. Tamblyn’s book Bang Ditto, be prominently featured on the Buzznet homepage, and have their work published in BUST Magazine.

“I’m super excited to collaborate with BUST Magazine and Buzznet in honor of National Poetry Month and all of you budding writers out there,” said Ms. Tamblyn.  “BUST is, of course, the Cagney to my Lacy– the Tegan to my Sara– the leopard print to my Real Housewife of Fill In The Blank.  They have made me a cover girl, let me interview a cover girl, and given me my own poetry corner in their magazine.  And Buzznet has a wide reach of incredibly talented and creative people, so it made perfect sense to make a sandwich out of them.”

As April is Poetry Month, the contest will begin on April 1st and run through April 30th.
Once the submission period has ended, Amber will choose the winning poem to be published in the August/September 2011 issue of BUST Magazine and seen by over 80 thousand international subscribers, in addition to the exposure they will have received to Buzznet’s more than two million monthly visitors.

After nearly five years in London, one wedding, three different types of visas, and a pact that my husband and I would not give in and pay an immigration lawyer, I found myself registering to take the United Kingdom’s citizenship test. And, oh, did I grumble about taking it. I’d had enough interaction with the Home Office and their various counterparts to last a lifetime.

But, to be honest, I also had a bad track record of test taking in England. Specifically: the driving test. It was clear from my first lesson, which resulted in scraped doors both for my car and an innocent VW parked on a narrow Hampstead street, that twelve years of claim-free driving in suburban America weren’t going to help me. After many months of excruciating lessons, I still slowed to a crawl as soon as I glimpsed an oncoming vehicle. The ensuing cacophony of horns that greeted this reflex, would, of course, cause me to slow down even more. Neither demonstrated the appropriate level of confidence (read: aggressive disregard for safety) that the examiners wanted me to demonstrate.

Plus, there was a bizarre requirement about being able to reverse around a corner, ending up in a straight line no more than six inches from the curb. This was not a maneuver I would ever consider undertaking in America.  “In fact,” I would say to myself as each dismal attempt ended in some variation of the car being parked vertically to or diagonally from the curb, “You could probably get arrested for doing this in the United States.”

So as the day of my citizenship exam approached I could only hope that the driving test debacle – which I eventually overcame with the aid of Natalie, a jolly chain-smoker who filled our lessons with tales of her domestic dramas – wouldn’t haunt me. If I could pass the driving test, albeit on the fourth try, then surely I could pass a test of 24 multiple-choice questions about life in the UK. After all, no one was going to ask me to reverse around a corner were they?

No, but I did flounder on the meaning of the U film rating – in the end convincing myself that it stood for “unrated”, a classification I craftily invented on the spot – and therefore was suitable only for adults. Had I read the Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship study guide a bit more carefully, however, I would have known that a U-rated film is  “universal”. You only have to be four years old to be admitted.

But I passed, and thus fared better than the other two immigrants taking the exam alongside me that day.  As we were handed our results I could feel despondency set in on the young man I had chatted with in the waiting room. It turned out that he had family living in my hometown of Washington, DC. He was so relieved that they were somewhere safe – somewhere that was not Afghanistan. And unlike me, he had been making a new life in London because he had to. I had merely followed a British beau.

Kicking myself over the U rating question as I left the test center, my certificate clutched in my hands, I kept thinking about a film I had seen a few days before. An art house flick titled Nuovomondo, it follows a family of Sicilians and a mysterious English woman (played by the enviably beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg), who joins them as they make their way to America in the early 1900s. They finally reach Ellis Island, where they are scrubbed, scoured, and then given a wooden block puzzle to test their intelligence. If they passed, the doors would open. If they failed, they would be sent back. I had rooted for the father, Salvatore, as he began the puzzle with gusto, and sadly applauded the stubborn grandmother who refused to do it at all. They only had one chance…perhaps some things have become kinder with time.

So do I understand more about the UK and what it means to live here as a result of the citizenship test?  Do I feel more British for having passed? Not so much. But as all immigrants discover, it’s the day-to-day aspects of living in your adopted country – whether it’s learning to name the teams in the Premier League or to spell words with an “s” rather than a “z” – that lets you gradually feel at home. And to tell the truth, these days, the times when I feel the most British are when I’m behind the wheel. Who would have thought?

Sara Henkin lives in London where she writes non-fiction and blogs about cities.

—

Submit to London Calling, a special issue of British and Irish writing, here.

We’ve reached the holiest time of the year, where Jews celebrate their escape from bondage in Egypt and Christians celebrate the torture and brutal murder of Jesus Christ. This holy moment for the Jews culminated in Moses the Law Giver, climbing Mount Sinai to receive the laws that became known as The Ten Commandments.

Here we present the original transcript of Moses’s historic conversation with the Almighty. Ghostwriters for God later edited and truncated the raw material for use in the bestselling books, Exodus: The Story of a How a Tribe Wandered, Partied and Eventually Found the Promised Land and Deuteronomy: The Collected Speeches of Moses M. Lawgiver. Both books later were bound into a collection titled The Holy Bible: Tales of Sex, Violence, Incest, One Magical Kid and a Beast With Seven Heads Ten Horns and Ten Crowns and later adapted for the silver screen as the The Star Wars Saga.

Moses, several hours late for his appointment with God, is winded after climbing Mt. Sinai. God, in the form of a burning bush, gives him an annoyed look.

MOSES: God, I need a cigarette. Got a light?

GOD (looking at his watch): You’re late Moses. Didn’t I say 7:30 a.m.? Did you think I said p.m.?

MOSES : Sorry man, it was a real long trip out of Egypt. I’m still kind of tired. Thanks for parting the Red Sea by the way.

GOD: No problem, brah. You know how I roll.

MOSES (mumbling to himself): Would have been nice if you didn’t keep hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

GOD: What’s that?

MOSES: Uh, nothing, God. So (holding a cigarette) can I get a light?

GOD: We have a lot of work ahead of us. I only set aside 40 days and 40 nights for this and now we’re behind. Let’s get started.

MOSES: Come on, man. Without a smoke I’m going to be on edge—

GOD: I’m allergic to smoke.

MOSES: But you’ve taken the form of a burning bush. Just a little off the side. Don’t be like that.

GOD: Number one—

MOSES: Got a pen?

GOD (sighing): Just chisel them onto those stone tablets over there.

MOSES: Alright, what you got?

GOD: Number one: THOU SHALT NOT BE LATE TO THINE APPOINTMENTS.

MOSES: Seriously?

GOD: What? I’m just saying you should be respectful of people’s time.

MOSES: Don’t you literally have all the time in the world? Besides, you try hiking up a mountain in the same raggedy sandals you fled Egypt in.

GOD: Who told you to make the trek without a decent pair of hiking boots? By the way, those sandals stink. Could you leave them somewhere downwind? Thanks.

MOSES: I’m not feeling that first commandment.

GOD: Fine, how’s this? THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.

MOSES: Isn’t that asking a bit much?

GOD: I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

MOSES: Yeah, but—

GOD: I didn’t see Osiris or Isis or any of them helping out. You should have seen them sitting around laughing.

MOSES: OK, what’s next?

GOD: THOU SHALT NOT MAKE UNTO THEE ANY GRAVEN IMAGE, OR ANY LIKENESS OF ANY THING THAT IS IN HEAVEN ABOVE OR THAT IS IN THE EARTH BENEATH, OR THAT IS IN THE WATER BENEATH THE EARTH.

MOSES: All those artists like Michelangelo and those folks who are going to make portraits of you and the angels in heaven—

GOD: Yeah, they’re all going to hell.

MOSES: Gotcha. Next

GOD: OK, what have we got here? KEEP MINE NAME OUT THY MOUTH.

MOSES: How about: THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD IN VAIN?

GOD: Yeah, I like that. Let’s go with that…REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY, TO KEEP IT HOLY….FOR IN SIX DAYS THE LORD MADE HEAVEN AND EARTH AND SEA—

MOSES: Uh, God. You’re kind of rambling.

GOD: Sorry. HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER….THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

MOSES: You really think that one should be so late in the list. After the business about graven images and honoring mom and dad?

GOD: Look, it’s late, I just want to get this done.

MOSES: OK, Thou shalt not kill…even Dathan?

GOD: Even Dathan.

MOSES: God, you’re making life hard.

GOD: THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

MOSES: Dammit!

GOD: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL….THOU SHALT STOP THY SNITCHING FOR SNITCHES GET STITCHES.

MOSES: God, I’m totally with you on the stealing one, but I think you need to be clearer on the snitching one.

GOD: How about, THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR?

MOSES: But my neighbor’s a jerk.

GOD: THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE, THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S WIFE, NOR HIS MANSERVANT, NOR HIS MAIDSERVANT, NOR HIS OX, NOR HIS ASS, NOR ANY THING THAT IS THY NEIGHBOR’S

MOSES: Look, God, I’m not interested in my neighbor’s ass, I mean to each his own, that’s just not my thing—

GOD: Are you sure about that?

MOSES: Wait, what have you heard?

GOD: Nothing, but out of all of the things I tell you not to covet that’s the first thing you talk about? Kinda strange, Moses.

MOSES: No, I was just trying to say–

GOD: I mean, it’s fine if that’s what you’re into and all; you know, if I made you that way…look, I’m not here to judge—

MOSES: No, I was going to say, before you cut me off, that it’s fine that you say not to covet and all, but have you seen my neighbor’s wife? That’s an ass I’d like to covet.

GOD: Now it just seems like you’re trying to cover for something.

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.