Newcastle — Peter Stoddard, originally of Juniper Station, N.B., has been writing dozens of articles over the past week, hoping to be published by The Manatee.
“I’ve written some things that I thought were pretty funny. I don’t know how they passed on my story about the dog with crutches. I mean, can you picture that? A dog with crutches — that’s ridiculous.”
The Manatee is an online publication dedicated to bringing the untold tales of New Brunswickers to light. With its poignant stories sweeping across the newsfeeds of Facebook and Twitter, the publication has seen a sudden influx of unpublishable material.
A spokesperson for the publication was contacted and asked about Stoddard’s unpublished stories. “Although I can’t speak directly about the stories submitted by Mr. Stoddard, I can tell you that we get dozens of stories throughout the day that we simply cannot publish. Most of them can’t really even be considered stories; half of them are just words and punctuations thrown together in a sad attempt at creating something relevant and funny.”
Stoddard was inspired by a story he saw on Facebook about a man who arrived at the wrong place for an interview. “I just thought that was such a normal story, and thought I’ve got all kinds of stories like that. One time I went to Burger King and ordered a Big Mac by mistake — now, there’s a story.”
Stoddard vows to continue submitting his stories to The Manatee until he becomes “rich and famous from writing stuff.”