Pay Per View:

Two hundred pages of quality literary + genre fiction is a lot to bite down on. With Twitter all the rage (even LiveJournal is cutting posts down to 140 characters!), we see the need to offer GUD in smaller bites. To this end, we'll be introducing a new payment option, based off of our current "Single-item PDF" purchasing system.

Buy just what you can read! Can't handle a whole story? Buy a paragraph! If you like it, buy the next one! Can't afford a whole paragraph? We have some pretty cool words. Buy five words for the price of four! (Please specify if words should be sequential.)

Here's a sample of some of the fine words you can find in GUD Issue 4 (note that these are not _necessarily_ in-sequence):

embarrassed, predator (from "Unbound" by Brittany Reid Warren)

sly, mourns, boundaries (from "Unlike Red Tape, the Yellow" by Lida Broadhurst)

Translations:

These are a work in progress, in conjunction with the excellent folks at "learn to speak lolcat"  and Google's community-driven translation learning engine. It's important for a magazine (and for the written word, in these times) to speak to "the younger generation". While making the content accessible in shorter bites is a good first step, today's Twitterzens are speaking a very different English than the generations before them.

Here's a paragraph from Shweta Narayan's "Daya and Dharma":

SPARROW HOPZ INTO PACH UV TURQUOIZE. FETHERS GO BLU AS TEH STONZ. IZ WIERD.

DAIA STARES AT HIM, LOOKZ UP. DERE BE STRPS AN SWURLS AN DIMINZ OV GLOWIN COLUR. SURYA HE BE ALMST OVRHED, LIKE BRITE VEILD SURCLE.

TEH STONZ IZ NOT BLU SEZ, TEH LIGHT ARE BLU. AN YELLO. AN REDD. DAYA LUKS BAK AT BURD. "ORLY?"

Happy Wednesday:

Oh. And we're changing our name to GÜD. Mad props to SyFy and TÖRdötCÖM! Word out!

21 comments; 11 subscribers

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 00:30:48

xenith

Are the two and three letter words the same price as longer words?

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 01:20:11

kaolin

Some number of "common" words (such as would be filtered out by MySQL searches) will be sprinkled in your word-bag gratis, but beyond that there will be no price difference for varying word lengths.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 01:26:58

xenith

This sounds like a good idea then. I've always found it frustrating to have to pay for words I didn't want.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 03:32:16

mmSeason

Wot?

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 03:56:20

skankityspence

ROFL

ORLY!

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 04:23:53

Shweta

YA RLY

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 04:33:01

Debbie

I can haz LOLZ?

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 04:42:10

Michael Roderick

NO WAI

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 05:32:41

Sal

this is the kind of innovashun that will hurl us into the damp maw of every reader in teh worlds! yee-haw!

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 05:33:36

kaolin

NOM NOM NOM!

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 06:05:18

sue

WAI.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 06:58:31

grayrose76

I'm afraid that words are too long for me. Can I buy single letters instead?

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 07:46:44

Debbie

Unfortunately, only the letters a and f are available to purchase singly at the moment. Either will cost you one cheeseburger.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 09:26:41

Frank_Ard

What if I want a grab bag of non-sequential words? Could GUD make that happen for me? I can't afford to pay much, mind you, and words are sort of an indulgence at the moment...

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 09:47:10

kaolin

Name the wordcount and we'll provide you the words :) Given the time involved in putting the bags together, though, I don't think we could discount further than every fifth word free.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 11:33:38

Debbie

We could throw in a cheeseburger wrapper with every third bag, though.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 12:04:26

skankityspence

hahaha Debbie, your avatar is perfect for this!

Two cheeseburgers, how much does that give me??

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 14:21:20

Debbie

Two a's, two f's, an a and an f, or a superposition of a/f f/a.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 14:31:53

Frank_Ard

Another question: do rare letters such as x, z, and q cost more? In addition, q never comes alone, so does that mean I have to pay extra for the u? If so, I won't be buying any q's, thank you very much.

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 14:36:05

kaolin

We only have a's and f's available for individual sale. All other letters can only be gotten by-the-word (which we select for you). You may hint that you would like a word with some particular letter, but we make no promises (and charge no extra).

 

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 / 15:37:46

Debbie

Unfortunately, sales of the letter q are prohibited under a little-known amendment to the Constitution. So only our readers outside the USA will be able to purchase them.