"Tossed dice at birth. Still rolling."

Today's headline is taken from the Smith magazine site, publishers of the popular Six-Word Memoirs books.

Legend has it that author-of-few-words Ernest Hemingway (seated above in Paris, 1924) was once challenged to write a story in six words. The result?

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn"

You'll find some terribly clever (and some not-so-much) writing on the site from celebrities and common folk. "Not quite what I was planning" probably speaks for a lot of us, while wordsmiths have to appreciate "It-girl married IT guy. Capital mistake."

This was on my mind for some reason yesterday, and job-hunting descriptions started to emerge:

Putting my all into a vacuum.

Slim odds, excessive self-promotion, tenuous hope.

Jumping through hoops to get nowhere.

Here's my résumé. Hello? Anybody there?

An exercise in reduction. It certainly brightened my dour mood. Try it and see. If nothing else, it's a worthwhile diversion from the task at hand.