only an egotistical author like Peggy Atwood would come up with this!

[canadian]

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/oddities/story.html?id=2619df3d-cd1b-444d-96d0-66813bbcf2e0&k=17931

I mean, really ...

Sad thing is, she's probably gonna make money from this.

[Ed]

   That's ridiculous

[doolols]

I can't imagine many bookstores buying this - either paying money for it or buying into the idea. I mean, would you go to a famous author booksigning to be presented with R2D2? Silly idea.

Mind you, I said the internet would never catch on.

[Geoff_N]

LOL  I want to be on the receiving end of Jeffrey Archer using one. Only I would have a cheque book he'd be signing instead of his books.

I'd laugh all the way to the bank.

Geoff

[doolols]

  You really expect a bank to accept a cheque with "Jeffrey Archer" as the account holder's name?  I know I wouldn't. He seems to do a good line in brown paper bags full of cash, if I remember correctly.

[Walker]

I could have used one of those in public school. I once got relegated to the corner to write 1000 lines. I can't even remember what it was I wrote, probably something like 'I won't swear in french at the kindergarten students.'
Anyway, I did get pretty good at writing with 3 pencils at once, all taped together of course. Only problem was that I'd have 3 lines that were absolutely identical, then the next three the same and so on. I imagine the teacher was on to me, but she didn't say so. Maybe she even admired my ingenuity. D'ya think? Took me the better part of a week to do that.

[Geoff_N]

Then along came computers and BASIC

10 FOR N=1 TO 1000
20 PRINT "I must not look up girl's skirts in school."
30 NEXT N

Geoff

[Ed]

We never got lines very often - most of the teachers seemed to settle for lobbing the blackboard rubber at your head.  And boy did that hurt  One time I got so angry that I threw it back.  That didn't go down very well at all

Funny how times have changed, isn't it?  Now all you hear about is teachers getting assaulted, but back then it was the other way around - I had one teacher called Mrs Gunn - wirey old woman, who threw me across the room and into some desks, walked up to me and threw me again, and again, up through the classroom, until I can to rest with a drawer handle rammed into my spine at the back of the class, winded and bent double in pain.  She then checked the drawer herself and found, as I had said, there was no paper left in there.  I was ten years old, and I'll never forget it.  Painful.

[doolols]

10 FOR N=1 TO 1000
20 PRINT "I must not look up girl's skirts in school."
30 NEXT N

Nice software, Geoff! Brings back a heap of memories.

Yep, blackboard rubbers, bits of chalk (from the wimps). I was being groomed to be a maths teacher, until I saw how we treated a history teacher.  He was our form teacher for a while, and we waited in during lunchtime for him. When he came into the room, we all chucked paper darts (some tipped with ink) at him. He went nuts. We laughed. I couldn't face the prospect of turning out to be a teacher like him. So I became an engineer. Even now, people say I'd be a good teacher. I laugh, and remember ink-tipped paper darts 

My only corporal punishment was a ruler across the open hand (X 5) for carving a message in a wooden desk. Glenda Wilby, where are you now? And no, she's not on FriendsReunited. Not that I've checked 

[doolols]

UPDATE

*snigger*

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1724405,00.html

[canadian]

Yeah. That one went off like a lead balloon, didn't it? [snickers up her sleeve]

[Ed]

Bloody stupid idea

[Geoff_N]

Not THAT stupid. Many authors are housebound but would like to interact with their readers in this kind of way. Some of her nightmare booktour moments clearly gave logic to the idea.

Near me in Liverpool lives the writer of historical romance books, Ruth Hamilton. She finished her 17th best seller at Christmas under huge pressure from Random House to meet deadlines while meeting her commitments to do signings, readings etc. She is now very ill and would have gladly done video-conferencing and longpenning from the sanctuary of her house!

Geoff