I found a great one when I was in a bookstore this past weekend: Waste is a Terrible Thing to Mind, about a state agency's attempt to discreetly dispose of waste.
The title is, of course, a transpositional pun on UNCF's motto, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste." Wildly popular and award-winning, the motto, credited to Forest Long of the Young and Rubicam ad agency, was first used in 1972.
The contest also includes clever word & visual play:
Examples include The New Yorker's play on John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me with "Green Like Me" for an article on environmental stunt writers and Green America transposing Tommie Smith and John Carlos' raised arms at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 on the arm of the Statue of Liberty on their new t-shirt design.
Now it's your turn. Let the chocolate & arugula transpositional pun/word & visual play contest begin! Act quickly. You have just one week. Email your submissions (as many as you like) to mmcquirter@gmail.com by Wednesday 7 April 2010.
The clever winner's prize will be either Camille Dungy's Black Nature or Dianne Glave's Rooted in the Earth (due out August 2010). The winner's choice.
Share & submit!
at bedtime, every single night and in the quiet moments of some days, i have played with this. mainly, i have been super derivative making a mental map of the US out of arugula (thinking of that book United States of Arugula). then i started thinking about the significance of april 4th. and it hit me:
ReplyDeleteI have a dream today.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their compost.
obviously? i am still working on this.
i love it!
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