Subtitle Required
The Most Puzzling, Ridiculous, and Downright Stupid Publishing Rule on Vocal
No matter how much I think about it, and it is actually way too much I cannot for the life of me imagine what potential justification there could be to require every article or story published on Vocal.media to have a subtitle. An article without one cannot even be submitted for screening by the censorship board (sorry I mean submitted for review to the moderators) without one. Can you imagine what the world would have been/be like if this were an ironclad rule of writing and literature and had been since the beginning of the written word? Luckily, you don't have to as I have imagined it for you below. Consider it a companion piece to my recent screed railing against the ridiculousness of a 600 word count minimum for poetry. Normally I would have ended this introductory section right there. Right at the period after the word poetry. However when I had completed the piece and did my now customary word count I realized I was only at 394 words. So, after yet another round of curses, head slaps, and sighs I had to think of a way to stuff more words into this crap fest of an article and this was the best I could come up with. Essentially what you are now currently reading are the train of thought ramblings of a mad man. In other words you are reading the words coming out of my head currently, totally unfiltered, exactly as I experience them in my head, at this very moment. Or, I guess, actually for you the reader, it will be at some later moment but hopefully you take my meaning. Now, can you imagine having to live with this person 24/7 365 days a year. Ouch, right. Welcome to my world. Do you think I have hit 600 words yet? I am gonna say no, probably another one hundred or so to go. See how I typed out the word one hundred instead of using the numerals one and zero and zero. Smart right? And then I did it again in the sentence right after the first one. I could have typed out the numerals as numerals each time but that would not have padded my word count in the same fashion as fully typing out the words that the numerals stand for, or is it the numerals that stand for the words? Hmmm. That's a weird thing to think about isn't it. Which stands for which? Wow. Got just a little off topic there. What was I talking about again? Who are you? Where am I? Gheesh wake up dummy. Oh right, I am here on Vocal.media writing some dumb article about some dumb policy and trying to pad the word count. Or something like that. And it is called stream of consciousness not train of thought you dumbass. Who is that talking? It's me dummy. Who? I gotta get out more...
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Tale of a White Whale
or
A White Whale's Tale
or
A Whale of a Tale
The Odyssey - Homer
Not Homer Simpson, the Other One
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Guide to Pubic Hair Styling
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
A Not At All Funny Account of Life in Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between
The Catcher in the Rye
A Book for High School and College English Classes
Heart of Darkness
Apocalypse Now
David Copperfield
A Magician's Guide for Learning to Survive Challenging Encounters with Distress and Misfortune
The Count of Monte Cristo
A Swashbuckling adventure featuring a quick and easy sandwich with ham, turkey and swiss slices, dipped in an egg/milk mixture and fried to a golden brown
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
A Perverts Guide to Middle Age
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Yep, This is Where That Came From
1984 - George Orwell
Vocal.media's Homework Assignment
Author's disclaimer: Publication of my works on Vocal.media do not represent in any way an endorsement of their outrageous and unjust censorship policies. I do not support those policies and in fact find them absurd, abhorrent, and an affront to free societies everywhere. Thank you for reading my works here, but know they are published under conditions in which freedom of expression is being muzzled. Therefore, any works of mine you read in these pages will not reflect the full range of my interests and certain topics will be by necessity greatly minimized or entirely absent. Please accept my sincere apologies on behalf of the editors and moderators of Vocal. Since they won't do it for themselves I will do it for them.
About the Creator
Everyday Junglist
Practicing mage of the natural sciences (Ph.D. micro/mol bio), Thought middle manager, Everyday Junglist, Boulderer, Cat lover, No tie shoelace user, Humorist, Argan oil aficionado. Occasional LinkedIn & Facebook user
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Dear Vocal Reviewers
Dear Vocal Reviewer's Let me start by giving you a ton of credit for the job that you are doing. I can only imagine how much awful, terrible, craptacular writing you must encounter on a daily basis (e.g. see this very sentence) and I give you mad props for maintaining your sanity and faith in the general goodness of humanity in spite of it all. I have not doubt that when you graduated from college with a degree in English/creative writing/history/philosophy/fine arts you never thought you would have been given the opportunity you now have in front of you so early in your career. For most people, the chance to be a professional censor does not happen until much later in their lives when they become old fuddy-duddies, but you are tasting the intoxicating power that comes with holding the power of digital life and death in your very hands right out of school. You have proven all the naysayers, including your very 0wn friends and family wrong, and gotten a real job with a degree from an actual 4 year college and not obtained online. And, you did not study data science or machine learning or artificial intelligence like your grammie and granpa insisted you needed to do if you wanted to "go anywhere in life." Who's going somewhere now grammie? Who? You, that's who.
By Everyday Junglist3 years ago in Journal
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