You made the front page of Daily Kos last friday.
With site’s half a million page views per day, you’re probably extra famous this week, at least among the hard left.
Oh cool, though they seem to be crashed now, I’ll check it out later.
Thanks for your kind words.
Re the consternation: I dunno, maybe it’s my Catholic school upbringing. While I’ve lost the whole faith part, I retain the politeness and the guilt. It seems very impolite to me to write a story about someone and ignore them when they respond to what you wrote.
That’s what I mean - if the magazine was from far away I could kinda see their not contacting you but it’s Wisconsin! You’d think they’d want to talk to a home-grown winner. No need to invite you to a fancy hotel for an interview with photographs but at least email you about it! Well clearly it’s common in the journalism field but I still think it’s weird.
As for the contest dumbing-down literature: I’m pretty sure dumb or barely literate or un-well-read people can neither win the contest nor understand the entries: only people who are familiar with terrible writing vs. decent writing. Uneducated (formal or otherwise) people will just say, “Well what’s wrong with that sentence that won? It sounds pretty good to me.” Maybe a couple of them will wonder WHY it sounds good when it’s not supposed to be good and go figure it out on their own. Seems like a good way to get people to get more interested in literature.
Look, I’m a busy lady. I’ll try to do this somewhere between staring at the wall drooling and looking at chairs online.
Well Boyo, you know who to write about for next years competition.
I know a lot of people who don’t read more than a line or two of any message or letter. Perhaps he never got to the rest of it. Probably would have been better to try to get him on the telephone. Same with the editor of the publication.
I agree that the illustration doesn’t do your masterpiece justice.
[Slight hijack]if there are any ip lawyers around, I have a question: Does that quote now legally belong to the contest and not Jim here? Just wondering if Jim was feeling especially malicious, he could sue them with a chance of getting something out of it. [/hijack]
That depends on the terms of the contest.
Boyo Jim, chafing over his rejection – a rejection that scalded him like a thousand burning suns, and not little suns, but great big ones like you see on those astronomy websites that compare the earth to the size of the sun to make you feel all inadequate, kind of like on that first date with Mary Lou back in high school, when you bit into your burger and drenched your ruffled shirt with ketchup and Mary Lou snickered and wouldn’t let you get to first base, which was okay because you were never really sure where first base was, having grown up in a house where sports metaphors were looked upon with disdain and suspicion – went out and bought a shotgun.
Jim’s lips–manly lips they were, rugged and battle-scarred–pulled back in a sneer–a rather attractive sneer, he thought, spying his reflection in the freshly-polished surface of his Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest trophy–as he pictured the illustrator–for some reason, Jim pictured him looking rather like an effeminate Bruce Willis with a harelip–recoiling in terror as he opens the box–which had been carefully packaged by Jim’s friends at Mailboxes ‘R’ Us, who insisted on using real popcorn for packing material instead of Styrofoam popcorn because it’s better for the environment–containing the horse’s rectum–he wanted to use the whole head but the shipping would have been too expensive–that he sent as a Godfather-style threat.
Ok, InvisibleWombat and Chefguy are obviously angling to take my crown, or my trophy, except I don’t have either.
Actually, I am going to pictch this idea to the contest people in an attempt to wangle a free trip to CA, a “passing of the crown” ceremony. I think it would be funny even on the cheap, FedEx could sponsor it, and videotape me putting the crown in a FedEx box, and next year’s winner taking it out of the box at the other end.
Of course, I plan to win again, but no one’s won it twice.
Which reminds me, three months to the day from today is the deadline for the 2008 contest. I will start a thread about it in CS.
I must be a chair, because I look at ladies online and drool. (I think that’s how it works)
Is it possible that for some reason, the mail server identified you as a spammer or other undesirable?
Could you post the body of the “undeliverable” response (with any identifying information stripped out)? I’m curious to see what exactly it says. Often there is an error code that might give further information on the cause of the error. Sometimes those error messages are misleading.
Would a new signature cheer you up?
“I’m not an idiot-I’m just drawn that way.”
I don’t think you’re missing out on much if you never get a copy of this illustration. Because it’s fucking horribly drawn. It’s like he learned to draw by reading how to do it from a book.
I didn’t care for the picture, myself. For one thing, the structure of the sentence, (gloriously) abominable as it is, never led me to believe that the protagonist was peeing in his pants.
Sorry, I didn’t keep it.
Boyo Jim got-but first decided to post about the current events on the Straight Dope Message Board, a board about fighting ignorance, not that he really worries about things like that much, and besides he’s really here for the people, whose satire burns like when you pee after having really rough sex, sex that makes you want to wake up the next morning, even when it’s cold outside-upset.