Michael the Girl

Internet Sentence Contests

I lo-oove internet sentence contests. Need an anonymous net denizen to create a slogan, headline, or haiku (I'm crap at limericks), and I'm your girl. There's something really nice about writing something short and sweet with near instant gratification.

My first brush with the internet sentence contest culminated in a Jack Shafer article for Slate:

"And finally, Michael Dobbs devoted his pop-music energies to the new-hed [headline] generation contest with these submissions:

For a review of Maureen Dowd book, Are Men Necessary?: 'All the Things She Said,' a title to the song by the faux-lesbian Russian pop group t.A.T.u.

For an article about PT-141, the new nasal-spray aphrodisiac: 'My Chemical Romance.'

For a review of a Monet exhibition: 'Those Blue and Yellow Purple Hills.' "

So Jack didn't realize I was a girl (I will forgive him, hoping that he didn't think these suggestions came from his Washington Post colleague). It's not like it's the first time it's happened.

But right now I'm in the middle of the Wired Suggest a Better NASA Slogan Contest. I've submitted four of them. The contest will be over in three weeks and I came up with four slogans in less than an hour (actually more, but those were the good ones). Easy, no pressure writing that was kind of fun.

No wonder people go into advertising.

posted by Mike @ 9:29 PM