Submission for McSweeney's Worldwide Fondness
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This is avery real submission from our friend, Gershom Bazerman. He braved the McSweeney's submission policy and was rejected, so we will now publish his piece, unedited and unread. We love you, Gershom. We hope this wonderful piece, not quite good enough for McSweeney's, but plenty good for Über, will make up for our first ever missed deadline yesterday. You have to realize, of course, that due to the pre-Fourth celebration, we were all drunk.
Don't forget, you too can be published here at Über! All you've got to do is be rejected by McSweeney's first! The author of our last submission, Cameron "Jane" Blazer, will shortly be recieving in the mail a very special present. Wouldn't you like a very special present too? We think you know what to do.
Gershom writes:
Dear Uber people. I wrote this thing a long time ago. I sent it to McSweeney's. They rejected it.
Dave Eggers writes:
From: Dave Eggers <mcsweeneys@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: submission for mcsweeney's worldwide fondness
Thanks for this. Didn't get it, though.
McSwys
And now, without further ado, the original not-ready-for-primetime piece of writing.
This is a true story. Some time ago I dreamed that I was eating an eyeball. A giant bloodshot blue irised confection larger than my head. I sliced it with a serving spoon and laid it on an elliptical silver platter. Think of a particularly smooth ice cream cake, or maybe flan. The gouges left behind reflected back scattered overhead track lighting, which was finished in brushed steel. The eyeball slices slid down my throat without flavor. The waiters came and went periodically, replenishing the white wine. Maybe the dream was a premonition, because a few days later I picked up the campus newspaper. The advertising insert was a half sized glossy of entertainment weekly, campus edition, promotional at thirty two pages. Bijou Phillips was on the first four of these, an interview and photo spread. Her facial features, body, mouth, attitude, "daddy" tattoo below her hip (left side) reminded me of somebody I had dated. I kept that issue, and the next five I found, scattered around the newsstand. They slid easily from inside the daily paper -- and were easily discarded. The next day they were strewn throughout the campus. Her breasts followed me everywhere I went, and torn pages lay open to other candid thoughts. It was though my memory had conjured an image which weighed over my paths. The five original issues remained in my bag. I paged through them during classes. In the subsequent week it rained and the entertainment weekly issues remained, now wet, now dry, pictures grown wrinkled and dotted with residue. I had heard of Bijou Phillips earlier, but had not desired to buy her album. The other photographs I had seen did not remind me of anything but other glossy photographs of other glossy people. I still have not heard her music, and the janitors eventually came to collect the magazines. Aside from the five copies that I have, more tied in my mind to the dream than the ex, my memory has not spoken to me since.
Über loves Gershom even though Dave doesn't