Worst. Lead. Ever.
Posted on March 1st, 2008
I’m working on a review of a book about the Web and yesterday found that I’d written an opening paragraph that is a potential winner of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton award:
As the boa constrictor of culture swallows the large, furry mammal that is the Web, you can see the lump traveling further down the alimentary tract, getting more fully digested day by day. How you feel about books explaining the Web depends on where inside the snake (oh, metaphor, don’t let me down!) you are.
I’m confident that my new opening paragraph is better, simply because, well, it has no choice.
Can we please pretend I was joking?
This is what I love about you, David. You have such a willingness to share these tragic moments of your life with us. It’s so, well, rare.
I’d say the boa constrictor was the incumbent broadcasting and publishing cartel in the middle of an attempt to eat the elephant that is culture – just about having dislocated its jaw to get a few inches of one of the elephant’s feet in its mouth.
How you feel about books explaining the Web depends upon how confident you are of the snake engulfing the entire elephant before it wakes up.
Bulwer-Lytton would be proud, David. And the “furry mammal” metaphor for the Web is apt. You could have picked any class of animal, but the Web is so populated with boobs that mammal is appropriate.
Oh! I thought this was going to be about the story I read in the local free newspaper (bus-seat-protection). A pet python swallowed the family’s chihuahua, after having already previously feasted on the cats and hamsters. The father said he was worried for the kids.