(no subject)

[theweaselking]

This year's Ignobel Prizes have been awarded!

Comments

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

Not as much fun as the Darwin Awards:

http://www.darwinawards.com/

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The Darwin Awards are pointless, stupid, pandering dreck, because they make absolutely no attempt to verify whether any of the stories actually occur.

If I wanted to read urban legends written by idiots and passed off as fact, I'd watch The O'Reilly Factor.

and other sources of amusement

[mejeep.livejournal.com]

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ that's the yearly contest for bad writing (well, writing the first line to a bad book).

http://snopes.com/ is entertaining for debunking Urban Legends

And The Eye Of Argon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon is infamous for being the earth equivalent of Vogon Poetry.

The Eye of Argon (TEoA) is an infamously bad heroic fantasy novella, written in 1970 by Jim Theis and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then. The story subsequently came into use as part of a common SF convention party game and is popularly known as "the worst science fiction story ever written".

When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout, and invoke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase that is used to describe an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (e.g., having the protagonist wake up and realize it was all a dream or an angel suddenly appear to solve all the plot problems of a story that won't resolve itself by the characters). The phrase has been extended to refer to any resolution to a story which does not pay due regard to the story's internal logic and is so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, though more palatable, ending. In modern terms the deus ex machina has also come to describe a person or thing that suddenly arrives and solves a seemingly insoluble difficulty. While in storytelling this might seem unfulfilling, in real life this type of figure might be welcome and heroic, due to the low probability of such an event occurring.