Perhaps this entry will one day win a Pulitzer

The Pulitzer Prize board announced today that more online content would be allowed to be submitted for next year’s awards, given out for content produced in 2005.

The public service category has allowed online content since 1999, but now the other 13 journalism categories will allow online content, too. There are some weird restrictions, and it has to come from a newspaper’s website — before you go all wacky “blogs get no respect,” remember that these are newspaper awards — but this is a good move all around.

In other Pulitzer news, they’ve also changed the guidelines for the feature writing category guidelines from “prime consideration to high literary quality and originality” to “prime consideration to quality of writing, originality and concision.” Which is good, of course, because there are too many overwritten features, and shorter is almost always better.

But it’s also good because, well, short and online? Hey, that’s my blog! (Except for these essays.) And so I’d like to nominate this entry about tax reform and puppies. All I need them to do is change the description to “prime consideration to snarkiness and cuteness” and I’m set.

Pulitzer Rules to Allow More Online Entries [AP via Yahoo!]

Blogicized: Training day

• Matt at The BM Rant picks his “Top Songs of 2005″ and, for some reason, he decides to do 24 of them. Aw, come on! Just one more and it’s all neat and tidy! Okay, 24 will have to do, then. [The BM Rant]

• Apparently, machines control our world and they are our new gods. Eh, maybe. I think robots will really control our lives when they become sentient and we can interact with them even more than we do now. For now, I’m still into the whole money/celebrity worshipping. Bonus fun fact: In writing this, I learned how to spell “sentient.” [Pax Ramano's Ramblings]

• I saw this Reading Terminal Holiday display last year, and it’s okay, I guess — if you’re into the whole train thing. You are? Heh. Alright, then. Oh, and this year’s display is apparently different, but that doesn’t make me any less snarky about it. [Phillyist]

• Finally, some those poor souls in Manayunk and University City can finally watch some Lou Tilley sports shows. Viva la CN8! [Philebrity]

I guess you could be undecided

The “November Poll” from Philadelphia magazine, currently on the website:

Yep. I’m not quite sure what you’d put for “Other” as an answer to this question, but that was the best I could do.

Phillymag.com

Snark is the new black

Every once in a while, a politician says something that’s actually quite amusing. (Or, in this case, snarky.) I know, baffling, right? There’s a state rep in Bucks County, Paul Clymer, who’s been trying to derail the building of slot machines in Pennsylvania since the bill legalizing them passed. He’s sent letters, filed lawsuits and publicly denounced gambling. He says it’s an addiction and a bad thing for the commonwealth, etc. You know the drill on these things.

Now he’s written a bill that would repeal gambling, much like the pay raises were repealed. Cute, right? It has little-to-no shot of passing. But Bucks County State Sen. Robert Tomlinson has a theory behind Clymer’s motivations:

“You talk about a psychological addiction. The guy doesn’t want to give up.”

Oh, snap. He got served.

Clymer bill would repeal gambling [Bucks County Courier Times]