Gaiman Naming Auction

Embedded Geek writes "Neil Gaiman is auctioning the opportunity to help pick a name in his upcoming novel Anansi Boys. Proceeds will go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. "I've got to name a currently unnamed cruise ship in Anansi Boys. I have no idea what to call it, and, a couple of days ago, realised that my utter lack of inspiration could do good things for the CBLDF. If you wish, you can bid to have the ship named after you, your loved one, your dog, or even your favourite word." As of 10AM PST the bidding is up to US $2,225.00, but surely some slashdotter who cashed out of the bubble at the right time can bid it up. Be warned, though - the auction indicates "Successful bidder agrees to pay actual shipping costs.""

Comments

Maybe some of us....

[BWJones]

surely some slashdotter who cashed out of the bubble at the right time can bid it up.

Yeah, so the problem is that while some of us cashed out at the right time, we reinvested it in the stock market and lost our collective asses just like everybody else. Since I was tech heavy (hey, I was in my twenties and did not know anything about investing at the time), much of it disappeared as paper worth. Given that we are five years out from the crash, it is interesting that many estimates say the NASDAQ is another good decade from reaching the levels we had back then, which should teach you younger folks here about the value of market diversification.

Re:Maybe some of us....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tons of diversity: 1) A high interest bank account protected by deposit insurance, 2) GICs.

Both guarantee me interest short of a bank collapsing. Everything else suffers from gamblers syndrome: people remember the wins and downplay the losses.

To all those that made a lot of cash off the internet bubble: congratulations. But make no mistake about it, no one could predict the boom would be that grand because no one could predict how insane people were when it came to buying into hype. The bubble bursting, on the other hand, was so painfully obvious it's not even funny.

Re:the worrisome implications

[fireduck]

i doubt this is really writer's block, but rather an attempt to help an organization he genuinely likes to help. He's been involved with a number of auctions with proceeds going to CBLDF.

Certainly he can come up with a name for a boat; just about every character in his writing has an interesting name. This is likely just a case of "I'm going through draft 0 of the story and realized I still have USS (insert name here) in the text and need to correct that. Let's try something fun and unusual and worthwhile for one of my fav organizations."

Goldenpalace.com ...

[Zombie91836]

... will get the winning bid. Goldenpalace.com has been bidding on any and every high profile auction in recent history as a means of getting more publicity. See how it's worked? I'm sitting here mentioning their URL right now because of other auctions they have won.

Sneaky Goldenpa. .. I almost said it again!

Re:More Info

[tverbeek]

If any /.er puts in a bid, and that bid turns out not to win, I'd like to formally challenge them to send the CBLDF the money (or a substantial portion thereof) regardless. Or if you prefer a more humanitarian (i.e. less political) charity, send it to ACTOR, or to Comic Relief or some other good cause that Gaiman supports.

After all, if you'd be willing to part with the money in exchange for something as trivial as this, shouldn't the more weighty reasons for these charities themselves be motivation enough?

For that matter, if you balked at the $2k+ current bid, figuring you couldn't possibly bid more than $x... why not send them the $x?

Awesome

[kuzb]

So .. let me get this right. I'm supposed to pay you for the chance to do YOUR job FOR you?

Am I the only one who finds this ironic? ;)