My METAtropolis “World Without Oil” Haiku Contest Winner
Posted on June 9, 2010 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
It is from Wendell Shank, because I giggle every time the image it provides pops up in my head:
Mennonite cousins
Laugh at my rookie attempts;
I’m a buggy noob!
In other news, “Buggy N00b” is the name of my next band. It will be all-acoustic, of course. And no, for oil-related reasons, we won’t be doing a world tour.
That said, as noted earlier, this was a tough contest to judge, because there are a whole lot of genuinely excellent post-oil haiku in the contest thread. I really do recommend cruising through it and reading them. Some of them are funny, some of them are poignant, and some of them are even hopeful. I have to say this has been one of my favorite contests I’ve run, so far.
Want to know who won the other METAtropolis contests? Here they are:
Congratulations everyone who won, and thank you to everyone who played along.
Oh, and: Hey! The Tor edition of METAtropolis is now out! Look for it in your local bookstore or at your favorite online retailer. And yes, it’s available electronically too, via Amazon, iBookstore, Barnes & Noble and other electronic outlets. Go get it and make five of your favorite science fiction authors very happy.
Disappointment weighs
Lighter, like winters snow mist
By Wendell, we’re pwned!
I might as well toss in my most pork-related haiku:
from piglet’s first steps
its staggering purpose clear
pork tenderloin, yum!
Well done!
O Terrible Judge of Contests Scalzi,
Magnificent She
Dissed again by blacklisted
blackhearted Scalzi
The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club
Did not want anyway –
“Buggy N00b” is quite funny,
And these grapes taste bad.
Amish Ohio I lived
The poem I understand true
A joke it reminds
“What do you get when you cross an Amish man and a moth?”
Congrats Wendell!!
Next up: urban fantasy with faeries and their angsty kin in Amish Country. I guess the buggy n00bs would be a common feature of the new ‘haypunk’ genre:
The sky above the farm was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Or at least, he assumed that’s what a dead channel looked like. He’d never seen one. He’d never seen anything powered by electricity unless it was some gadget carried by the Englisher tourists.
“It’s not like I’m using,” Hiram Yoder heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of Chat’s Feed Store….
Rob K @5
I’m going to guess, “A man of the moth.”
Congrats Wendell!
Lots of really good Haiku. I really enjoyed this. Can we do it again?
My haiku wasn’t
good enough.
Writing poetry
sure is tough.
Burma-Shave
Nekussa @ 8:
I so totally hope John’s next contest is Burma-Shave verses.
Or dirty limericks.
“There was a young lady named Zoe,
who had a remarkably flexible toe…”
(Toe-ey?)
Deb @ 7
A Miller.
“Oh, and: Hey! The Tor edition of METAtropolis is now out! Look for it in your local bookstore or at your favorite online retailer.”
Tis in my stack of to-be-read books… ;-)
So, after w00tstock the other night, I elegantly told my fiance I was going to make a beeline for the potty. I then told him Beeline for the Potty was my Barenaked Ladies cover band, in a casual, unthinking way, then slapped a hand over my mouth and realized that after five hours of cover band jokes I had just caught the disease.
I blame you, John Scalzi. You and your little friends.
Yay for METAtropolis! Yesterday, on my way out from the bookstore that laid me off, I used my employee discount one final time to purchase every single book of yours that I didn’t already have. Which was a nice pile of books, considering I am a relative Scalzi n00b. METAtropolis was one of those, and now I have lots of free time to read it and all the others. :)
Rob K. @12
Haha! I should have known.
(I had a photography professor who was raised Mennonite and had been a Miller. She always had a thing for light.)