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Drug-Related Photoshop Art - My Rejected "The New Yorker" Cover Submission

On May 28 I received an email from Françoise Mouly—art editor since 1993 of The New Yorker—ostensibly expressing admiration for my "2,000,000mg Xanax," published earlier that week on the internet. Mouly complimented my toy poodle imagery and "careful application of bright colors" and for "not shying away" from cultural references (re Electric Literature, I think; she didn't specify). The actual purpose of her email, I assumed (correctly), was to gain contact information for the Thai dealer from whom Schopenhauer ordered his giant Xanax; in exchange, I sensed, Mouly would earnestly commission me to draw the cover of an issue of The New Yorker.Within minutes I emailed Mouly the Thai dealer's email address and began to draft my submission in Photoshop. 40 minutes later I received a mysteriously convincing email from an AOL address stating in a concrete/literal prose style that if I featured a Xanax bar in my submission I would be PayPal'd "six-figures" even if my submission was rejected (if accepted the amount would be "significantly higher" and in either case I would also receive "a lifetime supply of Xanax"). My submission (seen above), which Mouly "loved," as did "most everyone" at Condé Nast (the cover had "gone viral" internally, apparently; Anna Wintour "could be heard giggling, in her office, throughout the day"), except Sasha Frere-Jones who "neither liked nor disliked it," Mouly confided to me via email, "but it did not go well with the ad/business departments," and so—understandably, unsurprisingly—was rejected. To my initial "extreme, 'seething' anger" and eventual "silent resignation," I was never PayPal'd "six-figures" nor, to my knowledge, did I gain "a lifetime supply of Xanax." The New Yorker did pay me a modest "kill fee," however, and Mouly extended a sincere-seeming invitation to "please submit again," which I did, a few days later (5 weeks later, after my 4th follow-up email, a robot rejected me via form-letter).

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Previously - A Sea Turtle Killing Itself with the Drug That Killed Ol' Dirty Bastard