Gnu Yorker

The New Yorker does a cartoon caption contest at the end of every issue. This was only the second time I've entered something, but the perfect caption seemed obvious to me.

"Brother, can you spare a lime?"

Today I checked to see what captions made the finalists for voting, and there at the top is "Brother, can you spare a lime?"
With somebody else's name getting credit.
I have no doubt many people submitted "Brother, can you spare a lime?" It's like back at Major Greeting Card Company, when we went through everybody's card ideas and picked out what went on to production: people would write the same card independently. If there's something that fits perfectly, more than one person is likely to come up with the idea.
But according to the rules of the caption contest, if multiple people submit the identical caption chosen as a finalist, they select the "winner" by lottery. That seems totally lame to me. Why does one person get all the credit? Caption printed up with his name under it, like he's the only one in the world. One of my life goals is to be published in the New Yorker, and I suppose this is cheating, but dammit, I want my name on everybody's coffee table, too. Even if it's in a list of the 100 people who all wrote the same thing. Get my name in that magazine before I hit 30 and I can work on writing great works of creative nonfiction later.

I want to be in bed. It's cold outside and all the pretty plants and flowers are shriveled and dead. I want hot cider and down comforters and hibernation. Is there a warm, sunny place on this planet with stable barometric pressure?

I tend to scoff at and avoid consistency, but maybe I would love it. I had the two parents at home thing growing up, but neither of those parents are particularly regimented. Is it too late to learn without being a fuddy-duddy asshole or born-again religious freak?

I'm wearing my glasses. And on the computer. Each of those things separately hypnotizes me into zombieville. Right now I'm toast, only instead of popping up when I'm done, I sink lower and lower into the chair.

Mmmm...toast...