KnowEm

This is useful: KnowEm checks the availability of your brand name, user name or vanity URL on 120 popular Social Media websites.

Unfortunately, it doesn't (yet) include Dreamwidth.

This is hysterical

What if Buffy Summers met Edward Cullen instead of Bella Swann?

Bulwer-Lytton winners for 2009

The Bulwer-Lytton winners for 2009 have been announced. Here's this year's grand prize winner:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

David McKenzie
Federal Way, WA

The Winner for Fantasy fiction is:

Fantasy Fiction
A quest is not to be undertaken lightly--or at all!--pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited--all this though his years numbered but fourteen.

Stuart Greenman
Seattle, WA

although I will admit I'm very fond of the runner up as well:

Towards the dragon's lair the fellowship marched -- a noble human prince, a fair elf, a surly dwarf, and a disheveled copyright attorney who was frantically trying to find a way to differentiate this story from "Lord of the Rings."

Andrew Manoske
Foster City, CA

See the rest of the winners and enjoy the awfulness here.