An entry in which I announce an exciting new contest, reminisce on creativities gone by, and steal a disclaimer for which I will probably get sued, but they didn't have a disclaimer about their disclaimer, so maybe I won't. Enter the contest!
Monday, Nov. 24, 2003 - 10:57

Friends and lovers,

Due to the overwhelming success of my exciting May writing contest, I have decided to hold another one, an exciting December writing contest. It's a December contest and not a November one because it's practically December now, and I just realized that I should have waited until the first of December to hold this press conference, but I couldn't do that because I wanted to announce it NOW, but it's still a December contest even though it's currently November because the actual awards ceremony will take place in December. So it's a December writing contest.

And I was just reading some of those older entries and I'm taking some time out from this announcement to reflect on how creative I used to be. I am enamored with those old entries. Wow, I was brilliant. Right now I'm empty, I'm sucked dry, I have nothing to say, I can't even find the words to express that I have nothing left to express. And that's why everything in here has been sucking ass lately. No, that's why I haven't even been writing in here lately. I haven't been writing anything.

(I was being sarcastic when I said I was brilliant.)

(But I actually did laugh out loud when I read the part where I called it The Melancholy Death of Dough Boy and his Infinite Sadness, because, come on, that's just funny.)

Okay, but back to the announcement:

This is, in essence, a poetry writing contest, but since I don't write poetry, it's not really a poetry writing contest. Before I get to the point, let me tell you about my relationship with poetry: Poetry and I don't get along. I don't write it because I can't. I have no control over the language, I have no rhythm, I have no rhyme, and everything I try to write is either horribly sappy and disgusting, or it's horribly flippant and irreverant.

But haikus are a whole nother story, so this is a haiku writing contest. Contestants are required to submit one haiku about one of two topics: what they eat for breakfast, or aligators. Haikus about any other topics will be disregarded, so don't even try it! (Unless, of course, no one else does this, in which case whoever writes anything will win, even if it's not a haiku, but pretend you don't know that and get to work right now writing a haiku about breakfast or alligators.)

When I said I don't write poetry, that's not entirely true. A few months ago I accidently (or is it accidentally?) wrote this gem:

It might have only been three fucks, I can't remember. I wasn't trying to write poetry, it just came out while I was writing something else, and actually I didn't even know it rhymed until I reread what I'd written. But for accidental poetry, I think it's not too bad.

Okay, and then during the summer I saw the Orlando Ninja's haikus, and I was all, "Dude, haiku, that's the way to go." And I never forgot about them. But I never wrote any until one day in October when I was on the train from New South Wales to Victoria and I was bored and suddenly I started writing haiku after haiku and they were excellent and fun and it changed my life.

Here are some of those ground-breaking haikus:

Sitting on a train
Writing haikus and yawning
I'm very tired

Hey, why are we stopped
in the middle of nowhere?
Where the hell am I?

This morning I walked
through early morning Sydney
without a jacket

Maybe it's trite, but:
blotchy pens, scourge of my life -
along with robots

Man pulling my seat
He has bad stinky armpits
Go away, old man.

Travelling is fun
Hmm, I think I lost a book
It wasn't my book.

The fields are spring green
The lambs are tiny and white
They run together

I'm liking haikus
but you shouldn't write about
liking haikus, right?

All I needed was
a change of earrings and a
change of scenery.

Fat sheep running by
or crouched and taking a crap
look like dogs or deer

Big gray rocks sitting
smooth and round like elephants
lying on the ground

Entrants are required to sign my guestbook to let me know they've written one, duh, or else how will I know, sillies? Huh?

Once again, if no one enters, I'll be forced to be the sole participant myself, and then everyone will be all mad when I give myself the grand prize and they'll think I'm cheating and there will be riots and it will probably get ugly.

In sum: 1. I don't write poetry. 2. I used to have more to say than I do now. 3. Write a haiku and win!

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This Exciting December Writing Contest is an independent contest and is in no way aligned, affiliated, associated or represented by anything. All sponsorship, organization, judging, and prizes are not nor have been endorsed or subsidized by anything. The Exciting December Writing Contest upholds an author's exclusive right to their haikuitry as defined in the United States Copyright Office, The Library of Congress under Protection of Copyrights and Trademarks, and in accordance with The Exciting December Writing Contest's Eligibility Requirements, Number Nine, under the section sub-titled, "WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO ENTER THE EXCITING DECEMBER WRITING CONTEST", that the submitting haikuetress/haikuer owns the exclusive right to the haiku submitted for consideration to the contest. Participation in the contest, by no means, infringes upon the haikuetress's/haikuer's exclusive right to their respective haikuitries. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, I stole this disclaimer from a different contest, but this isn't even the whole of it, they have a lot more, but everyone's bored now so I won't copy any more of it.