THE IRON READER CHALLENGE
I follow a blog called Defective Yeti, written by a Seattle humorist/web-programmer named Matthew Baldwin. A few years ago he joked that there should be a "NaNoReMo"-- a "National Novel Reading Month"-- for people too lazy to do NaNoWriMo.
But then he decided: wait, that's actually a good idea. So he went ahead and did it, reading Moby Dick cover-to-cover in a month and posting snarky insights about it along the way. Now he does it every November. (Not Moby Dick, of course. Oh God no. Nobody's that masochistic. Last year it was Lolita; the year before, Catch-22.)
I mention that because I have a similar idea right now. It all started with THE IRON NODER CHALLENGE (all caps mandatory, bitches). I remember being all psyched-up about it when Dreamvirus first mentioned that thing, but when October rolled around I was so preoccupied with life (and books, and video games probably, and other junk) that by November I still hadn't written a. single. goddamned. node.
I haven't posted any since either, for that matter, partly out of shame I guess. The truth is, I don't think I even read 30 nodes during the entire month of October. E2 has just slipped way down-radar lately. And that's a shame, because neat stuff is still getting posted every day. Sam512's this was supposed to be a parable about the power of the imagination is a nice example. It's not earth-shatteringly great, but it's fresh and it's clever. It still leapt to mind days later, which means that it's memorable. I'm glad to have read it.
And that story was, coincidentally, the very first node posted in the month of February 2009. So... screw it. I'm not going to promise to post a whole bunch of w/us in February because, let's face it: that's crazy talk. But I do promise to read every writeup posted this month, from Sam's node on up. And I'll probably post some more daylogs as the month goes on, just so you know I'm not fakin'.
That's the challenge. Make me regret it, peeps.