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M c S W E E N E Y ' S N E W S . This page will be updated occasionally, notifying readers of developments, special offers, etc. from McSweeney's. All offers are real, unless they are obviously not real. - - - - OCTOBER 30 Some notes to much-valued submittors of writings: 1) We are just now catching up with submissions from as far back as May. To accomplish this catching-up, we have spread the task of reading everything to a number of helpful helpers. So, chances are you will hear from someone with a name like Paul Maliszewski, John Warner or Joel Lovell. They are good readers and we are both lucky to have them. Yes. 2) If you are wondering about the status of a submission, it always helps to attach the submission with your request for a status report, even the second or third time around. Asking "Hey, what did you think of my story?" is slightly less helpful than "Hello, friends, here's my submission again." 3) Also, once again, if you are attaching a story, you must put your name on the actual attached file. Being an attachment, when we want to read your piece, it will be instantly separated from its cover letter, so if you do not have your name, address, phone number and email address in your attached document, it will be useless, as we will have no idea from whence or whom it came. 4) Also, please title your attachment with the same title that your story bears. Titling your story, as about 100 people do every month, "McSweeney's story.doc" will make it difficult to trace. 5) Speaking of identity, once again, we will not field any submissions credited to obvious pseudonyms. If your return address says "Texaco Montana" or somesuch, it will not be read. Save the funny names for the chat rooms. 6) And finally, we cannot stress how important it is to include in your letter where you have gone to school, if you have an MFA and from where, and what other magazines have recently or will soon publish your work. Without this information, we will not know if your work is any good. 7) Finally, please note: Under no circumstances should you send your submission in a way that requires us to sign for it. Any submission sent this very intrusive and time-consuming way will be thrown out. We are very serious about this. Regular mail is fine. Do not FedEx, UPS, or Priority Mail your submission. Please. Please. Please. - - - - OCTOBER 26 Amendment to the last entry, regarding the ringing of the McSweeney's HQ doorbell: A few days ago, at about noon, the bell rang. We looked down at the visitors, a man and a woman in their late twenties, and said Yes? The man, crew-cutted, asked if this was indeed the McSweeney's HQ. Yes, yes, we said, reluctantly. The crew-cut man then said that he was looking to buy a T-shirt. The M.R., kind of miffed at having to get up and all in the middle of the NFL pre-game shows, nevertheless asked him his size, and then went and got the shirt, a large. When he (yes, the switch from first person plural to third singular, so what) opened the door he learned that the visitor was Dan McSweeney, of the letters section. Turns out Dan lives somewhere in the area, and is a Marine, and is nice, as is his ladyfriend, whose name, we think, is Kristen. Or Nora. The point of the story is that while you are still discouraged from ringing the bell at McSweeney's HQ, if you are a Marine fighting for the freedoms that make all this possible, whose name is the same as the M.R.'s beloved Uncle Dan, then you are welcome to visit and ask for a T-shirt, provided you have the requisite $16, in cash. - - - - OCTOBER 15 Recent events have necessitated the following pleas: 1) Though we encourage your submissions, and appreciate your enthusiasm, please, please, please, do not come to the McSweeney's HQ to personally deliver your manuscript. Or rather, should you want to personally deliver your manuscript, slip it through our mail slot, but do not ring the bell. Ringing the bell will require the M.R. to descend three flights of stairs in the middle of a meal or shower or favorite television program, and then the M.R. will want you dead, greatly hurting the submission's chances. Also, please do not feel it necessary, as one recent fellow did, to wait across the street, on the steps of the B'Nai Jacob synagogue, for four hours, hoping to hand-deliver his submission, a two-page interview with a monk. Such acts of enthusiasm will not endear you to the McSweeney's staff. Such acts of enthusiasm will only cause us concern, and your name will go on a list. 2) Please do not send manuscripts via certified mail. This will require a member of the McSweeney's staff making a trip to the Post Office and waiting in line, listening to mothers talk too loudly to their children. There is no need to send your submission via certified mail. The names of certified-mail senders will be put on the list, and their submissions will be buried in the back yard. 3) Lastly, please take us off all cc email lists, even if you are being kind enough to send us news of the latest AOL-Microsoft fantastic money giveaway. We appreciate such notices -- we just closed on a summer house in Maine, and all we had to do was open our email! It's true! That's all we did, and they gave us $200,000! -- but these notices have begun to clog our email arteries. Thank you for understanding. 4) Have a very, very, very nice day. - - - - OCTOBER 8 McSweeney's is looking for a little part-part time design help. The helper must have his/her own Macintosh brand computer and scanner, must know Quark, must be able to read, would ideally be young and impressionable, must live in Brooklyn or be very, very okay with getting out to Park Slope regularly, must be able to do things very quickly, and must like the way McSweeney's things look. There will not be a terrible amount of from-scratch designing happening -- things will follow the general look already established -- but the position involves working on books that will be published by actual publishers, and credit will be given. The job pays, too. Not all that well, but it pays, and is available immediately. Interested people should email a note to us at mcsweeneys@earthlink.net. Do not send resumes, and do not direct us to websites. - - - - Read McSweeney's News:
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