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It's been a rough week. The Dubuquette is sick, and refuses to eat anything not in the shape and flavor of watermelon. Did you know that the watermelon is the least nutritious of all the fruits? It's true, maybe. Not only that, she learned the word "mine" last week and has taken to physically covering her possessions with her writhing, prostrate little body whenever anyone looks like they're threatening to share her stuff. She demands access to our cell phones at all times by shouting "mo-babies", and then uses them to watch videos of herself, in a psychological display that I don't even want to consider right now. My wife's working overtime, I've been eating liquid food two meals a day, college basketball is ruining twitter. Just a bad week.
You don't care about this, of course. I'm a name in a byline, not even a particularly familiar name. My job as a Writer is to present you with content, and to impose as little of myself on you in the process. I have already failed at this, on purpose. This is because I am a bad writer, and a good writer.
A bad writer is one who adds their own filter over their subject, thereby lessening it. But so what? Everyone does that now. Beloved authors like Sarah Vowell and Mary Roach tell the stories not of their expertise but the journey by which they obtained that expertise, appointing themselves the protagonists of their own little odysseys. Novels no longer even pretend to be anything other than 100,000-word autobiographies. And everyone loves it. America wants its journalists and its authors to be celebrities. It wants David Muir to take selfies in the middle of news broadcasts. (Note to people under the age of 40: David Muir is a network news anchor.) Because a good writer is one who connects to their readers, makes them feel what they feel, makes them understand. And there's no easier way to connect to a reader than by literally telling them how to feel, with overdramatic musical scoring whenever possible.
That is all I'm doing here. I'm making you feel what I feel. And I'm doing it through a Sporcle quiz.
Hands on buzzers!
Your job, one that you will almost assuredly fail at: name all the players to have been drafted in the first seven picks overall in the MLB draft that have played for the Seattle Mariners baseball club. I will give you everything I can. You are given the team that originally drafted them. You are given the position they played for the Mariners, and the year(s) they wore the trident/compass/ugly giant S. You are even given a small dose of optimism to carry you through this test: you are smart and you will do well at this.
(You are smart and you will not do well at this. This one is hard.)
Leave your epitaph in the comments, taking care to use the spoiler tag when necessary. And remember: the Lookout Landing meetup is this Sunday, in case you still weren't aware. Show up! Maybe we'll do a live communal Sporcle quiz together. Not this one, though.