we aren't the champions

2002.04.21
So, today's entry is coming to you live from John Sawers' house. And from a Mac, which is probably a first as well. None of the little keyboard things in side a textbox (hop to the end of the line, etc) work right.


Quote of the Moment
"You make me sick, Homer. You're the one who told me I could do anything if I just put my mind to it!"
"Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you."
"Gotcha. Can't win, don't try. "
Bart and Homer from the Simpson's Episode ``Homer at the Bat'
...and as Kurt Vonnegut points out in "Bluebeard":
A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications puts him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.

Link of the Moment
The Oulipo Compendium has some really interesting examples of Oulipo, highly formal methods of restricting writing. (Like, not using the letter "e" throughout an entire large piece, or replacing every noun with the seventh following it in the dictionary.) Check out the Excerpts page for more examples.