{"id":1155,"date":"2008-06-30T00:02:10","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T07:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2008-06-30T00:26:11","modified_gmt":"2008-06-30T07:26:11","slug":"200-words-on-the-appearance-of-a-spoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/2008\/06\/30\/200-words-on-the-appearance-of-a-spoon\/","title":{"rendered":"200 words on the appearance of a spoon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/birthday.jpg\" alt=\"The thought was good, the execution a bit sloppy\" width=\"216\" height=\"231\" align=\"left\" \/>I’m guessing something is in<\/strong> order as Singlebarbed turns “one” today.<\/p>\n<p>Blogging is hellish enough and a niche subject like fly fishing reminds me of a High School English assignment, “write 200 words on the appearance of a spoon.” “Round and shiny” comes easily enough but there’s still 198 more words left and you’re dry.<\/p>\n<p>428 posts in 365 days is a lot of practice. I’d always been taught that writing is like a muscle and must be exercised to keep tone. The slow evolution of stilted, unfriendly prose to labored and ponderous – suggests something’s changing. It appears I require a lot more “reps”\u00a0 before the “Ghosts of English Teacher’s Past” will stop rattling those chains each night.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe cutting those classes <em>was<\/em> a bad idea..<\/p>\n<p>1000 valid comments and 4000 attempts to sell you Viagra. I’m not sure whether the fishing fraternity has a problem with tumescence, but the spam ‘bots think you do. This is strictly, “don’t ask, don’t tell” from my perspective, but if you’re interested in offshore Viagra made from Kitty litter and Agent Orange, I’ll send you some links.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Contest That Was Never Announced<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The winner of the Singlebarbed “<em>Contest That was Never Announced<\/em>” is Singlebarbed reader, <strong>San Mateo Joe<\/strong>. SMJ commented about twice as often as other readers, on 40 pieces total, and has earned his choice of 40 dozen trout flies – or a new Orvis T3 9′ #4 rod (with a <em>prominent<\/em> “R” on the cork), and 20 dozen flies of his choosing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/2008\/06\/17\/its-not-a-kiss-and-tell-more-like-a-curse-and-tell\/\">Knowing he sat on the last one<\/a> and may have nothing to wave in anger, requires us to assist. It should prove a sturdy backup should his arse get a taste for more graphite. Comments are as rare as 20″ trout, and even bad writing is a lot of work, it’s nice to know someone reads this stuff besides <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">my Mom<\/span> me.<\/p>\n<p>SMJ, you let me know what’s needed, but you can forget about the #18 married-wing Silver Doctor’s …<\/p>\n<p>My thanks to all of you for enduring the last 12 months of split infinitives, outright made up words, and dangling participles, and I’m looking forward to some serious misspellings, crazed hyphenation, and outright lies next year.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Bare<\/span> <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Bear<\/span> Bayer with me.<\/p>\n<div id=\"scid:0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:6d950c8f-0352-421e-bd8e-e2c844b637a2\" class=\"wlWriterSmartContent\" style=\"padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px\">Technorati Tags: <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/singlebarbed.com\">singlebarbed.com<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/blogging\">blogging<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/damn%20that%20was%20a%20lot%20of%20work\">damn that was a lot of work<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Singlebarbed.com turns “one” today, and after 428 articles, 1000 comments and a lot of spam, we ain’t much better than when we started. Practice makes perfect, and there’s plenty of english that I haven’t bent, warped, or misquoted. Stay tuned for next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-web-site"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singlebarbed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}