Who Says Your Vote Doesn’t Count?

It’s been a good time on My Yahoo!. Almost every morning, there’s news of Barack Obama’s increasing momentum in the presidential primaries. It’s exciting to support a candidate that might actually have the opportunity to do something.

But it wasn’t delegate counts or debate news that first caught my eye today, nor was it the Word of the Day, which is the Dickensian “foundling.” (I save my excitement for the really good words, like last week’s “quaggy.”)

No, what got me worked up was learning that The Bookseller magazine has announced the shortlist for its 2007 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. The Bookseller is published in the UK, but you and I can cross the cyberpond and vote for our favorite title in an online poll. Right now, the leader is If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs, with 25% of the vote. But right on the, um, heels of that title is I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen, with a solid 23%.

My favorite candidate, Cheese Problems Solved, is not doing as well as Barack, though it is currently running a respectable third, taking 19% of the vote. I was sad to learn that a couple of titles, including Squid Recruitment Dynamics, were disqualified for procedural reasons, but we still have a field of fine contenders from which to choose.

Last year, the top prize went to The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, by Julian Montague. The winner of this year’s contest will be announced on March 28. So get out there and vote.

Similar Posts

  • When Things Change

    I’ve been surprised by many things in the past few weeks. For one thing, I am surprised by the number of people diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who think it’s good to post pictures of their distressed colon on the Internet for the whole world to see. That will not be happening here. Mostly…

  • Who’s Your Granny?

    I drove from Berkeley to Big Sur this week, determined not to go faster than 60 mph. I had just paid for my first $4 gallon of gas and it freaked me out. I just can’t imagine spending $60 every week or so to fill my 15 gallon tank. And I know that one great…

  • |

    Apricity

    Today on Facebook, a good friend who is caught in deep winter asked her friends for a story “about how outside their door the sun is warm, the leaves are green, and there’s fruit hanging in the trees.” The first thing I wanted to tell her was that I recently learned a new word that…

  • The Way of the Dad, Part II

    There are good things and bad things about having two fathers. Thankfully, for me, almost all of the bad things happened in the distant past, when I hadn’t yet grown up enough to learn that being an adult does not necessarily correlate with knowing what to do — especially if you’re a very young adult,…

  • |

    Letting Birds Be Birds

    I’m not in the habit of committing copyright violations, but I had to post this picture I snapped of my favorite postcard. The photograph was taken by Martine Franck in Nepal in 1996. To me, it says everything about life. Surprising intersections of being. Humor. Acceptance. Pigeons. Things haven’t been going according to plan around…

  • You Are Beauty

    The other day I walked into the gym and on the massage sign-up board, someone had written “You Are Beauty.” This prompted in me a huge, instinctive internal eye roll. I was cranky and, even on my best days, I’m not big on affirmations — especially when there’s a price tag attached. But then, when…