So you know how I submitted my Open Letter to Ayn Rand poem to the Occupy Wall Street poetry collection and a fella read it down at Zuccotti Park and alla that?

Well, apparently, a friend of his is an English professor in Pittsboog and was tapped to curate a special OWS-themed issue of a relatively prestigious British literary journal and... they picked my poem as one of the ones for said journal.

It's nothing locked in stone but he e-mailed today, wanted me to write a short bio for the contributors page and wanted my address to send me like a fifty or sixty dollar honourarium and... yeah.

It's looking like in July, I'm gonna be published in a real literary quarterly, not just... you know... self-publishing myself at a Kinkos.

Most important, though, is how proud my dad seems of me. He's always supportive but he is rare to show unprovoked joy about my things and... I'm so happy he's happy.

A lot of what I do as a writer is about trying to make my father proud, you know.

My mom loves me but... ah... she ain't ever gonna be proud of me for what I wanna do with my life and I've accepted it. I'm trying to learn how to deal with the fact she's disappointed that I will ultimately succeed or fail as a writer of passionate swear words and that's that.

But my dad, my dad I CAN make proud.

And I still want to.

I guess I'll definitely have to spend the honourarium on lottery tickets.

Anyway. Just wanted to... let some light in, in opposition to the thing I wrote last night.