I hope they spent a lot of money on this.

I am responsible for reading most of the help requests sent to Slashdot. Most of the mail I get in a day is what you would expect, comments and concerns about postings, user accounts and Slashdot itself. There are a very special group however that get passed around the office due to the inordinate level of anger, lack of understanding and just plain weirdness they possess. Through the years I've collected many and still get such gems on a regular basis. We thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite rants, ramblings and ruminations with the rest of you. I give to you the first of many installments of Slashdot's disagree mail. The names have been changed to protect the idiot — hit the link below to drink it in.

41-year-old Garrison Spik, a communications director and writer, took the top prize in San Jose State University's 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with the following mental nightmare, "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'" Sexy. Terrible writing hopefuls are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The contest has many categories, with awards for "purple prose" and "vile puns." The top winner receives a $250 prize and is urged to throw away his pens and pencils.

David Gerard points us to a story by Kim Komando, the CyberSpeak columnist for USA Today. Kim wants to alert parents to the growing menace of digital drugs. This imaginary terror uses binaural beats to simulate the effects of marijuana and heroin, and — some claim — to help develop telepathy and psychokinesis. Not to perpetuate a story that is clearly scare mongering, Kim is nice enough to add that, "many are skeptical about the effects of digital drugs. Few scientific studies have been conducted on binaural beats." I want a copy of mutant powers on tape and a whistle that will make women drunk when I blow it.