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Monday Miscellany

1. Last week, Nathan Bransford ran a first paragraph contest, where people could submit their first paragraphs and win stuff. I read all of the entries (ALL 2093485604 of them)*, and while I was doing so, there were some that really caught my eye. So I thought to myself, "Jay, you should tell these people that you liked their entries."

So I did.

Except that I discovered that some people, writers, who have blogs, do NOT HAVE THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES ANYWHERE ON THOSE BLOGS, which is really ridiculous, because if you have a blog, and you update it regularly, and you want to be a writer, then shouldn't you have some way for people who want to talk to you about your writing to get in touch with you? Seriously, out of 29 people I wanted to email and say "hey, I really liked your first paragraph--you RULE," 21 did not have email addresses on their blogs.** TWENTY ONE! I know.

2. Something else I learned from Nathan's contest -- Nathan and I really don't have the same taste in books. Or, at least in opening paragraphs. The ones I liked and the ones he liked have, literally, no overlap.

3. It's cold here in Ohio, although it's still early October. I hate being cold above all things.

4. If you aren't reading the Monkey See blog over at NPR, you really should be, at least the posts by Linda Holmes. Her perspective on pop culture is simultaneously insightful and entertaining. Like this quote, from her post on how to name your action movie:

It's kind of amazing that the new Jamie Foxx movie is called Law Abiding Citizen, isn't it? And I don't just mean the missing hyphen, although ... there is a missing hyphen. Technically, the title Law Abiding Citizen is more like a newspaper headline announcing that the law is patiently tolerating a citizen, sigh, probably because it is the law and it has no choice. "Law Abiding Citizen; Citizen Still Kind Of A Pain In The Neck."

...Furthermore, the synopsis of the movie says that the main character takes justice into his own hands. That is not the act of a law-abiding citizen. That is the act of a law-ignoring citizen. Wouldn't it be better if they had called the movie Law-Flouting Citizen? Now that, I might have attended. Law-Flouting Citizen, with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler!

hee! I love her.

~~~

* Actually, there were 2651 entries.
** And this doesn't count the entries from people who don't have blogs at all.
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