Columbia Blog & the New Yorker

The "BWOG" is the blog arm of Columbia University's Blue and White Magazine. It's exactly the sort of thing I would have done in college, if only I had been smart, funny, hip, and in a prestigious University in New York City. Oh, and also if only the internet had been invented, and if data entry on a computer hadn't required punch-cards. Instead, I wrote occasional features for the Concordiensis, including one which ended with the how-did-I-write-this phrase "olfactory orgasm".

But I was going to say when Truth broke in with all her matter-of-fact (literary reference alert - this reminiscing is bringing back my English major self), that the Bwog is lots of fun. From the insightful profiles of graduating seniors (Would you rather permanently give up oral sex or cheese? Cheese. I'm mildly lactose intolerant anyway.) to updates on what's going on in New York, it's worth a bookmark.

From a recent posting, though, comes this spirit-crushing anecdote of a cruel world

Our source sez:

The New Yorker poetry department receives over 1,000 submissions every week. Each of these is destined to be lovingly rejected by an intern, usually a Columbia grad student, with a carefully handwritten note. It's understandable then that sometimes things get backed up. Really backed up. According to one of the interns, there has been a box of unanswered submissions that have been languishing in the office since 2003. Like a girlfriend who's worn out her welcome, it just sits there, increasingly hard to ignore, but even harder to get rid of.

So it was with much fanfare that the interns were told that they were finally going to throw out the box. But first wouldn't they be so careful as to go through the submissions and remove all the self-addressed stamped envelopes? Why? To save the stamps, of course. Yes, the poetry editor of the New Yorker had her interns cut out each and every 37 cent stamp they could find, even though these stamps on their own were useless without a two cent supplement to compensate for the 2006 cost of postage.

Midway through their task she stopped them. Touched by the hand of reason? Of common human decency? "I just wanted to make sure...neither of you has a blog, right?"