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 James Joyner
[...] I don’t win this thing, you people have let me down. Posted by Jim Henley @ 10:15 am, Filed under: Main « [...]
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Titles wanted…
James Joyner has begun a Best Post Title Ever contest, and there’s at least a measurable chance that something of mine might be worthy of consideration, though I tend to be the worst judge of my own work and have……
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If there’s a Steely Dan category: Babble On, Sister
Otherwise, Hans Brix Can’t Nix Prix Trix
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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.
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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
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My Lai or Yours?
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The Mook, The Chief, His Strife and Its Lovers
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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.
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I have always liked my own, Where Wright Was Wrong And Obama Was (Almost) Right (Even Though He’s Left)
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I Sought the Serif (but I swear it was in self-deee-fense)
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