I have something very special to share with you this evening. My very first rejection letter ever. 

   Ok. that's not really true.  I've been rejected before. but this is the first one that has ever meant something.  why...you might ask why...feel free...ask why.

   I'll tell you in a second, first, because i love you so much i have transcribed the letter here.

Mike,
     Many thanks for sending your work to Geist.  We appreciate the chance to consider it but don't see a good fit between it and our current preoccupations, so we must decline to offer publication.  WE hop you will receive this news as another example of the idiosyncratic business that is magazine publishing, and that you will continue to draw, photograph and/or write down the world as it unfolds around us.

Jill scrawl
of Geist.

 It should be noted that the this is indeed a form letter. In fact it was pre-printed without a name on it.  My name, the date and a signature was hand-written onto the document. I have no idea what her real last name is, the signature is really quite illegible.  I guess i can't stalk her now.

   So, as you can see it is from Geist.  It is a print magazine.  To me it is probably the print publication in Canada i would have the biggest thrill in being published in.  It is basically a canadian cross between Harper's and the New Yorker.  You know, it's literary...things don't get in it unless they are really well written or they are extremely well thought out.  It would be the supreme confirmation of my being a writer if something i wrote was in there.  (ok, ok, i guess the governor general's award might rate a little higher).
   So, if you will pardon the expression, i am just jizzed that i have received this rejection.  It's miraculous and wonderful, it truly is.  You see...first off it is practically a pretentious work of art in and of itself.  I don't fit their current preoccupations?  It's almost silly.  It is definitely a work of Geist.  And to make something this pretentious and full of itself into a form letter?  It's just grand.
   But more to the point...i have been rejected by the magazine i would most want to be published by.  This means i that i submitted to the magazine that i would most want to be published by. I am making steps and inroads.  I am on my way.  It's a great step.  So i'm not depressed, or upset or even disappointed. I think i should be the last, i mean it would have been great had i been published...but...you have to start somewhere, you know?

   A funny thing happened on the way to the fair...i spent last saturday night at the home of some good friends.  i had agreed before i went out there to make for them a lemon cheesecake.  My friend asked if she could just buy the ingredients on the recipe in my entry.  i was of course honoured.  (as were they to have a cheesecake made my be)
   Well, ask me if i was concerned when i got there and she showed me the stack of ingredients and there was everything i would need.  Except...one...can of evaporated milk.  Well the recipe i use, uses condensed milk.  As you might know these are very different things.  if you do not, evaporated milk is a sweet, thick cream.  Condensed milk is only semi-liquid, is really nothing like milk and is basically sugar sludge. They don't just work straight across, if you get my point.
   The first thing i did, was check the recipe, you know because i was all worried about you guys, making cakes that didn't work.  (no, honest, it had nothing to do with the fact that i didn't want to be wrong).  I was, in fact, wrong. Plain as day, it said, 'evaporated' in the recipe. 
   I put my worry about you guys aside and wondered what i was going to do about this cake.  Even though i had been assured by a friend that knows a lot, and i mean a LOT about baking, that there is nothing i could use to substitute out condensed milk, i decided to give it a try. 
   So i did.  Here is what i did.  I filled a coffee cup (so about a cup and a half) 3/4 of the way up with white sugar and a bit of honey.  To this i topped it off with evaporated milk.  Then i discovered something else.  Within seconds the sugar had begun dissolving in the milk and the level in the cup went from full back to 3/4.  I kept adding milk and a bit more sugar until i had a thick consistency milk/sugar thing.  Only about half as thick as the condensed milk but i don't think as sugary.
   I figured this might do it and went ahead and used it. It made a good cake too.  The cake tasted dead on right.  But instead of being a thick, rich, almost solid cheesecake it was a lighter, fluffier version.
   So anyways...i have changed the recipe but if you printed it out or something could you please do the the same.  Thanks.

ok,,,,good Samaritan spad is out of here.