I. If you enjoy it when people come over and casually browse the spines of your bookshelf, you are a nerd.

II. When your literary journal is a wordpress/blogger subdomain using one of their templates, I imagine someone who felt they wanted to be an editor for 20 minutes, during which time they started said journal.

III. When your literary journal has per inch/pixel ‘wrap text’ margins (vs. defined paragraph width), despite how wide the browser is, such that a full paragraph reads as one single line the length of a child’s arm, I feel bad and don’t read the stories.

IV. When your blog’s color/font specs are antagonistically provocative (blaring colors, extremely small or large fonts) only crazy or bored people who think you’re charming will read your blog.

V. When your friend with the ’20 minute set-up’ blog template journal nominates you for a pushcart, it just means he/she put an envelope with some paper in it in the mail, sorta like sentimental recycling. You weren’t ‘realistically’ nominated.

VI. When you diss on someone more successful than you, you’re just being human. When diss on someone less successful than you, you’re just being a dick.

VII. When you dismiss people for either having or not having an MFA, for being or not being a particular gender or race, or for just liking a book, band, movie that you don’t like, you are being provincial.

VIII. When your third-person bio is longer than the flash fiction piece it’s accompanying, that’s fucking lame.

IX. If you are lucky enough to get ‘fan e-mail’ and you don’t respond (even if it’s just “thanks, I appreciate it”) because you are ‘busy,’ or in some sick way you think not responding to fans further legitimizes your fame, you are an asshole.

X. If you think I’m a dick, you should have a drink with my dad.