Super Shorts

Today, I have a couple smaller topics to jump on, so I'm just going to handle them with my typical wit and aplomb, but combined into one posting. I'll call this my eco-friendly blog post.

Anchorage's edgiest newspaper, the Anchorage Press, is having their 5th annual Super Shorts Micro-Fiction contest. Essentially, the gist of it is this - you have 200 words to write a short story and it has to fall in one of the eight categories that have been provided to you. They are the following:

1. A letter to my constituents (from jail)
2. Last call
3. Bettles, 60 below
4. Flight lesson
5. "It's not gay at man camp"
6. Why I lost the Iditarod
7. The polar bear's last will and testament
8. Use six of these eight words or phrases: lackluster, Valley Trash, delete, fisticuffs, search and rescue, aped, wastage, Sean Penn.

As the world's laziest and worst aspiring writer, this is ideal for me. Only have to write 200 words? Don't have to come up with my own topics? Sign me up. So I've now written one for each category (2, 5, and 8 if you were wondering), and will submit them all before the deadline on Thursday.

The winners get published in a special edition of the Press, get "showered with prizes and notoriety," and get to read their work at a Gala Event. With that said, I'm not really in it to win it, more just to have fun. Perhaps I'll post my stories later on, but I need to tighten them up before I get to that.

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So the Music Festival I've been waiting to be announced officially revealed their lineup yesterday. The Sasquatch Music Festival, held annually in the Gorge in George, Washington, will be May 24th to May 26th and features an eclectic and very quality mixture of musicians.

Musical attendees include R.E.M., the Cure, Death Cab for Cutie, the Flaming Lips (U.F.O. Show!), Modest Mouse, the New Pornographers, M.I.A., Built to Spill, Flight of the Conchords, the National, Battles, Beirut, Rogue Wave, Okkervil River, the Kooks, Tegan and Sara, the Hives, Mates of State, David Bazan, etc. etc. Plus there is going to be a comedy tent (unannounced participants as of yet, but Sarah Silverman was the host last year) this year and there is word that the Flaming Lips are going to premiere a movie they made called "Christmas on Mars." Now how is that for a slice of fried gold?

I'm debating on whether or not I'm going to fly down to see it. Not because of the lineup (which I think is stellar, and there are rumors of the Mars Volta being added along with others) but because a) I'd be by myself and b) what do I do in between? It's not like Bumbershoot, where you can explore Seattle when not watching bands. You are literally in the middle of nowhere for three days. Now b would be solved if a had a solution. Who has a solution for me?

Sasquatch addendum: If Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground is added, I will be there if neither a nor b are resolved. I want to see them absolutely, ridiculously desperately. Three consecutive "ly" words. That's how you know it's serious business.

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As a follow up to my post from the other day (click here for that post), Amy and I actually informally started up our very own Cover Letter/Resume Writing business. We made posts on Craig's List advertising our services, and got more practice by updating Raechelle's cover letter and writing one for my sister. We don't have any clients quite yet, but we feel as if this is something that will happen any day now.

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DESIGNwatcher.com received the Blog of Note title from the Blogger gods today (congrats!), and I checked it out. A very cool site, but I had to make one comment about one post on there. The linked-to post discusses some eco-friendly chairs that are being sold, called the Cain Collection. The chairs are "lead-free, HAPS free, low to no VOC and water borne/solubles." That's fantastic, but my god - they are $380 for 2 dinky little chairs! They aren't even remotely cool looking, they are just the world's most rudimentary chairs made with eco-friendly substances.

If you're going to make chairs to help save the environment, why charge so much for them so people won't purchase them? Do you not want more people to purchase them to increase the environmental effect? I guess it just proves that everyone really is all about the green, one way or another.