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.
