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 Outside the Beltway 

Best Post Title Ever Contest

Bumped to top from 0910 May 18.

Jim Henley, who knows from post titles, nominates Stephen Frug’s “When All You Have is Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Head” for Best Post Title Ever. Certainly, it’s a fine post title, playing off a well known aphorism with a slightly obscure — but not too obscure — Beatles reference while implying a wee bit of insanity and thus adding value as well as cleverness.

But the Best Post Title Ever?

Surely, if a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare, fifteen million bloggers posting several times a day will eventually produce a better post title than that?

So, let’s have a contest wherein readers nominate and link their choices for Best Post Title Ever.

The American way to settle this would be to have several rounds of competition and have the nominated posts vetted by a committee consisting of a lesser member of the Jackson 5, a former Laker Girl who had a hit record or two twenty years ago, and an acerbic Brit. And preferably a call-in component wherein the technical limitations of the system make the outcome artificially close. Alas, I just don’t have the resources to put into that sort of thing.

Alternatively, we could have a system wherein people from each state — excepting Michigan and Florida — would each pick their favorite blog post title using whichever rules they came up with over a period of several months. The second, third, and fourth place winners in each state would get almost exactly as many points as the winners, so as to avoid hurt feelings and to ensure fairness. Unfortunately, using such a method wouldn’t reveal an answer until late summer, by which point we’d all lose interest.

So, instead, I’ll just make the decision unilaterally later in the week.

UPDATE: To clarify, just put your favorite post title in a comment below, highlight it, click the LINK button, and insert the URL.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Comments
 

If there's a Steely Dan category: Babble On, Sister

Otherwise, Hans Brix Can't Nix Prix Trix

Posted by charles austin | May 18, 2008 | 08:50 pm | Permalink
 

Is there a time limit? Does it need to be current? Because I think "the Jesus Bread-Golem Project hits another snag" from 2004 is the paradigmatic blog post and has the best title.

Posted by rm | May 18, 2008 | 09:06 pm | Permalink
 

I hate to rain on my own parade, so to speak, but a blog post title I myself have always liked is:

Plato's heaven manufactures more metaphysical mystery than it can consume locally

Anyway, you know what they say: it's an honor just to be nominated...

SF

Posted by Stephen Frug | May 18, 2008 | 10:39 pm | Permalink
 
Posted by Olo | May 19, 2008 | 12:00 am | Permalink
 
Posted by So Not Eric Martin | May 19, 2008 | 12:09 pm | Permalink
 

I had a few to pick from, but ultimately I went with this:

"Endorse is endorse, of course, of course"

The post itself pales by comparison.

Posted by CGHill | May 19, 2008 | 03:42 pm | Permalink
 
Posted by nocomme1 | May 22, 2008 | 12:18 pm | Permalink
 
Posted by Robert Waldmann | May 24, 2008 | 10:18 pm | Permalink
 

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