Gag me with a spoon!

[B.R.Stateham]

I get up this morning, fix breakfast, sit down with it and open the newspaper up to read. And I immediately throw the paper away and dump the breakfast in the trash in disgust.

The first story I read is a about a college student, about to graduate as an elementary teacher, getting a publishing contract from a major publisher. Her first time trying to write something and she gets a contract!

What really pissed me off was she wasn't trying to get published! Her professor gave the class an assignment to write a children's book. She did--and was awarded with a major contract.

And here I've been trying to get a major publisher to look at me since the year after the biblical Eve started wearing dresses! I'm tellin'ya, it's enough to make a grown man want to camel hair shirt and go eat locusts out in the desert.

[I. J. Parker]

Yup. The world is full of pretty, nubile girls with fat publishing contracts. Watch Galley Cat, a site that specializes in promoting youth. Part of the madness in publishing. They are "reaching out to the next generation."

[Benjamin Sobieck]

This isn't a surprise at all. The Year of Our Lord 2009 has been drenched in undeserving rewards, suffocating all those swimmers trying to navigate economic currents. Bailouts to the left, stimuli to the right, the waves have engulfed the best of us. It only follows something perceived as this unfair happens.

What's that saying? "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." I propose a follow-up. "Those who should, write. Those who shouldn't, get contracts before graduating college."