Dumpster Diving Flash Fiction Challenge

I'm currently putting together the first issue of greensburg magazine, and we've got a definite trend towards articles about dumpster diving, thrift store shopping, and other fringe practices. I'd like to challenge you to write a flash fiction story of 300 words of less about the art of dumpster diving.

Whether you like the practice or not, I'd like to read what you have to say. We'll publish the best entries in the upcoming issue of the magazine, which will glean for you a contributor copy plus a whole lot of goodwill. Further notes: the theme is "salvaged love" and the first issue comes out on Valentine's day.

(Thanks, Teri of EditRed, for the inspiration!)

The Best Radio Station In The World

Have you ever heard of Pandora Internet Radio? It's an excellent music source.

Basically, you create "stations" by inputting the name of a band/song that you enjoy. Then, you further customize the station by adding other bands that you like, practically an infinite number can be added. Then, Pandora creates a customized listening experience for you by the use of musical analysis and magical fairies pixies that play music the pixies think you will enjoy. They figure this out, naturally, by burrowing into the soft recesses of your brain while you are distracted by the AWESOME music.

Then, in order for the pixies to give you an aura of control, you get to rate each song "thumbs up" or "thumbs down", which is a good way for you to rate the music, but kinda pisses off the pixies since slave pixies never have thumbs. After a while, the great pixie god well tell you to just "enjoy" the music already, but you can totally ignore the little thumbless runt.

After you've created a kickass radio station, you can tell both of your friends about it through the "share" feature. The station then becomes your friend's station, who can use his thumbs at his own risk to further adapt the station to his own needs.

Need help getting started? Here's the station I'm listening to right now. Cool! You can listen to the same music as a Literary Tease! (It's old school, but good.)

Actually, this whole experiment (omniously titled "The Music Genome Project") just proves that music is the devil, and, since after all the evils left Pandora's box back in the day, the only thing left was hope. I hope that you check out Pandora. You should act fast, because something this cool won't remain completely free for long. And, I'll tell you what, when they start charging for it, it will be so worth it.

Oh, and P.S., I have 11 different stations right now, and the Great Pixie God hasn't cut off my station-creation abilities yet.

Undergrad Conference Needs YOU

In today's mail, I got a flyer about the upcoming National Undergraduate Literature Conference. The conference is March 29 - 31, 2007 in Ogden, Utah. This is the only conference that requests submissions from undergraduates only, and accepts submissions in literature research and creative essays, fiction, & poetry.

I was accepted for the conference last year, and thanks to help from a lot of people on campus (Dr. J especially, thank you!), I was able to attend. I even wrote an article about the experience for the Setonian. (Which I would link to but the search feature isn't working for me.)

If you have even the slightly inclination to submit to this conference, you should! It was an amazing experience, Utah is a wonderfully weird place, and when I went, I was able to stay on campus for $9 a night. Awesome! You might think that you can't afford to go, but I say you can't afford not to try. :c) *cheesin' it up*.

In fact, if anyone out in the blogosphere is interested in applying (and submissions are due January 26th), I'd like to offer my help as a reader of your submission, if you need it. Plus, I can tell you all of the Ogden hotspots, where -not- to eat on campus, the best places for free coffee, and where -not- to go in SLC (stay away from anyone with smooth, fresh skin and giant cow eyes.) It'll be great. Really.