A contest
Since the beginning of time, the human landscape has been characterized by mutual strife and striving, whether warring on the martian field or playing ultimate frisbee on Mars Hills College's campus. We see it before the high walls of Troy, at the funeral games of Patroclus, every year at the Big Game (go Cal!), and now here, too.
Yes, that's right! I, in concert with Bitch PhD and with the gracious permission of Rudbeckia Hirta, am having a writing contest of sorts. Hosting, really, since I won't be doing any of the judging or any of that kind of shit.
Here's the basic idea. Write an essay starting with either sentence two or four from this post of Hirta's. Let's say it should be no more than ... two pages. Let's call it 500 words. That's about 1.5 pages at 12 points of Computer Modern with LaTeX's default margins. Maybe it can be around 750 words. Let's be honest, no one's going to count. Anyone who writes, in response to Beginning Sentence Two, a brief history of the attempt to measure longitude and its solution with the invention of accurate naval chronometers will be summarily shot.
Essays essayed, the enblogged can post it to their blogs and include a link back here or use the trackback mechanism or make a note in the comments or some such. The disenblogged, or those who don't want to sully the purity of their blogs with this kind of drivel, can email me their entries and I'll post them in some fashion.
You should do all of this by the 18th of April, by which time I will have set my life on some kind of alterable and doubtless regrettable course, and on which date there will be a VOTE! AMONG! the ENTRIES! The winner will receive Glory, by which I mean, "maybe I'll ask someone who knows how to do that kind of thing to make some kind of button-like image, and then you, the winner, can display that button-like image as your fancy dictates".
Ok? Ok.
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.
[Update on the 18th: In fact the voting or whatever will be tomorrow. I'm about to go out, and most of the entries have come in today anyway.]
[Update on the 19th: Vote here.]
Comments
on 2005-04-10 20:23:54.0, Adam Kotsko commented:
Bitch PhD really is trying to take over the entire blogosphere.
and, further, on 2005-04-10 20:54:12.0, eb commented:
Too bad we can't use sentence 3:
Bitch PhD is everywhere in everyday life, and we see her constantly, often without realizing that we are doing so.
and, further, on 2005-04-10 22:06:32.0, bitchphd commented:
We are Locutas of Borg.
and, further, on 2005-04-10 22:13:18.0, ash commented:
For many millennia, man has tried to create ways to measure time.
We think! We're not really sure! Let us get back to you!
Damn it, we got rid of causuality, but then everything started happening at once.
ash ['HEP! HEP! I'm drowning!']
and, further, on 2005-04-10 22:19:11.0, ash commented:
subtitle: not just for the humanities any more
That's right, friends! Porn is not just for the humanities anymore! Tired of having to get your nipples and dicks via tired, neurotic academics? Well come on down and see the latest invention! PORN-O-MATIC! That's right! PORN-O-MATIC! It slices it dices! It creams your jeans!
Look! YOU can see people having actual intercourse at the lowest possible cost! Ever heard of a facial? Now you can SEE a facial! Wondered what it was like when the man stuck his 'penis' into the the female reproductive organ? Tired of reading vague Victorian descriptions of 'her sex' and 'his sex'? Well now you can actually see a man insert his penis in a woman's vagina! What a breakthorugh!
No wading through a hundred pages of witty descriptions of people getting around to doing it! Now you can skip that shit and SEE IT LIVE!
Only 19.95$ is you call NOW NOW NOW!
ash ['Comes free with this Find the WMD's: the home game! This bonus package is worth 19.95$ by itself! But now, you get it FREE FREE FREE! Call now! Operators are standing by!']
and, further, on 2005-04-11 4:13:34.0, ash commented:
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.
Say...why do you want the UN to alter your contest? Amoungst secret BBS'es and stuff?
Are you one of those black helicopter people?
ash ['You're going to EAT MY BRAIN, aren't you????']
and, further, on 2005-04-11 9:11:50.0, Michael commented:
Gee, am I the first announced entrant? Trackback's not giving me love—here's my essay, and here's my post introducing it. How's that for overkill?
BTW, I'd encourage people to go for verisimilitude with this, rather than the cheap bad-writing laugh. My ideal target is the inadequate-but-honorable C essay: an effort to reproduce the texture of half understanding, missed connections, and word-count sweat that constitutes the real pathos of the middling.
and, further, on 2005-04-11 10:43:51.0, Thane Plambeck commented:
Here is my contest entry
http://plambeck.org/archives/2005_04.html#000936
and, further, on 2005-04-11 0:52:06.0, ben wolfson commented:
Sweet.
and, further, on 2005-04-13 11:20:36.0, bitchphd commented:
I gotta have a "first sentences" contest. I am staing at a paper that begins:
"The word superimpose means to place one image on top of another so that the second image can be seen over the first one."
Argh.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 13:53:20.0, Anti-Anti-Kamala commented:
My entry, fuckhead.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 15:28:26.0, bitchphd commented:
And mine.
Anti-anti-Kamala has some hostility issues, hmmm?
and, further, on 2005-04-18 15:45:39.0, ben wolfson commented:
I find it charming, like the 11-year-old who just learned how to cuss and thinks it makes him appear sophisticated and worldly.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 15:55:52.0, bitchphd commented:
Wait, cussing doesn't make you sophisticated and worldly?
Shit.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 16:28:37.0, Adam Kotsko commented:
I have PARTICIPATED in this <a href="http://waste.typepad.com/waste/2005/04/a_contest.html>CLUSTERFUCK.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 17:49:36.0, Anne commented:
Made it! My submission:
http://creatingtext.blogspot.com/2005/04/waste-essay.html
and, further, on 2005-04-18 18:24:16.0, c commented:
Phi. The Golden Number. For centuries the concept of this figure has baffled and intrigued the mind of man. It is unknown exactly when this great mystery was discovered and applied by man, nor is the extent of its usefulness known. If its usefulness becomes known, man will not be baffled by it any longer. Man was baffled by it many centuries ago, and many are still baffled by it. It is very baffling. It is also very intriguing, because it is baffling. It intrigues the mind of man, which is also baffled by it at the same time. How can the mind of man be intrigued and baffled at the same time? This is a very difficult question. But that is why phi is such a great mystery.
The mysterious concept phi is mysterious because man does not understand it very well. When man started not understanding it very well is not known. That is a mystery also, because it is very mathematical. Mathematics is not easy instead it is very mysterious and no matter what you think you know there is something else you do not know and what is more it usually turns out you did not know the thing you thought you knew. Why you did not know the thing you thought you knew is baffling too.
The figure of this concept of the nomber phi is intriguing also. It is intriguing because it is interesting that we do not understand. This is useful, although we do not know how useful, because it is useful to be intrigued because it gives you something to think about. It also gives you something to write about. Otherwise you would have nothing to think about or write about and then where would you be. You would not even have a mind because you would not have thoughts to think in your mind and then how could you know you did have a mind. Or that you did not have a mind. You can see why this is baffling.
Therefore I have shown why phi is useful and intriguing and baffles the mind of man. Although we do not know how useful it is, we can hope that its usefulness will be understood better and that the mind of man will have new things to be intrigued by also. I think it is very good that we have things to be interested in because this is what makes education so educational.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 18:33:12.0, ben wolfson commented:
Hey, what the hell, c? That wasn't one of the approved sentences!
and, further, on 2005-04-18 19:25:32.0, sundre commented:
I have a toy LJ that cannot do fancy grown-up things like Trackback. I don't think. So here is a small entry because I found out about this an hour ago while catching up on Bitch PhD's blog. Very nice contest idea. I wish I could do it justice.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 23:25:58.0, c commented:
Yes it was Ben, the first. Nobody can accuse me of doing the wrong assignment. And on time too.
and, further, on 2005-04-18 23:50:43.0, dave zacuto commented:
and, further, on 2005-04-19 15:23:42.0, amoebic commented:
It is an old adage that numbers do not lie, that within numbers lies the truth. yet, however, if numbers lie within the truth and lie-ing is not telling the truth, then numbers make the truth itself lie. Robert Langdon from the da vinci code tells us, in the da vinci code, that phi is the number in everything, even shells and pine cones. could phi be in the truth?
In my analysis of this phenomena, i hope to crack open the pine cone's shell of truth and reveal its numerical pearl. To do this i shall draw upon the works of the masters of auspicion, will Nietzsche, sigmund Freud and the great charles Darwin, who all claim to know the truth about truth.
These three great philosophers may well have used numbers to learn this truth, although time is yet to tell whether this is true. Certainly, there is truth in the adage that theres safety in numbers. Like sometimes when i ride my bmx i look left then right then left then right, which means i have looked left twice, and right twice, which means looking in two directions twice. This is called being auspicious, and is usually timely. the question of time, however, is a question for another time.
The truth, then, cannot be considered to be true without numbers, unless it is a truth about something which numbers might disprove, like the bible, which the masters of suspition were auspicious of. In my opinion, the bible can be about numbers if you want it to, but this might not be the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but not the truth if you are swearing by it.