Yes, it is perverse, but I really want to come in dead last in Time magazine’s “140 Best Twitter Feeds.”

Why? Well, there’s no way I am getting near the top with the likes of Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga in the same list, so I felt the 140th–get it?–slot on a Twitter poll is the next best thing to aim for.

Here’s the deal, according to the magazine’s Web site:

“TIME picks the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the conversation. Take a look and vote on whether you think these top tweeters should be on our list.”

The list is split up into categories, such as authors (Neil Gaiman, who is #1, and Margaret Atwood), celebrities (Gaga and the inevitable Justin Bieber) and companies (Zappos and Whole Foods).

There is also a technology group, with luminaries such as New York VC Fred Wilson, man-about-Web Kevin Rose and, of course, the King of Tweets Robert Scoble.

I am in that group too, with the description: “When this woman reports a rumor, you can pretty much count on it to be true.”

Thanks…I think–although I prefer to call it reporting a fact.

In any case, early on, I was doing badly in the voting–as I had hoped and is entirely correct considering I am unknown to anyone but certain geeks–and was right near the bottom with some suspect deal sites.

But by last night, GigaOm’s Om Malik had dropped below me, along with Wilson. I was at the unacceptable 131 spot.

This will not stand! Thus, so I can shoot the moon, I urge everyone to vote for:

132 Mike Allen
133 Om Malik
134 Amazon Deals
135 Fred Wilson
136 DealDivine
137 Nieman Lab
138 Best Buy Deals
139 Coupons.com
140 Steven Johnson

A well-known writer and entrepreneur, Johnson has 1.4 million followers on Twitter and does not deserve this ignominious loss as much as me.

Tweet that.

“[The Kindle's text-to-speech function] presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry,” the group said in a statement released Thursday. “Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon’s promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it’s far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly….we recommend that if you haven’t yet granted your e-book rights to backlist or other titles, this isn’t the time to start. If you have a new book contract and are negotiating your e-book rights, make sure Amazon’s use of those rights is part of the dialog. Publishers certainly could contractually prohibit Amazon from adding audio functionality to its e-books without authorization, and Amazon could comply by adding a software tag that would prohibit its machine from creating an audio version of a book unless Amazon has acquired the appropriate rights. Until this issue is worked out, Amazon may be undermining your audio market as it exploits your e-books.”

Hard to view the sort of roboticized nondramatic “reading” that the Kindle provides as a “significant challenge to the publishing industry.” If that was truly the case, you’d think the industry would have gone after Apple (AAPL) for VoiceOver (could it’s “Hysterical” and “Zarvox” voice options be any more realistic?) Beyond that, the idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech just seems ludicrous.

“When you buy a book, you’re also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc.,” says author Neil Gaiman “This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one’s going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors’ societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what’s good about them with it.”

“[The Kindle's text-to-speech function] presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry,” the group said in a statement released Thursday. “Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon’s promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it’s far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly….we recommend that if you haven’t yet granted your e-book rights to backlist or other titles, this isn’t the time to start. If you have a new book contract and are negotiating your e-book rights, make sure Amazon’s use of those rights is part of the dialog. Publishers certainly could contractually prohibit Amazon from adding audio functionality to its e-books without authorization, and Amazon could comply by adding a software tag that would prohibit its machine from creating an audio version of a book unless Amazon has acquired the appropriate rights. Until this issue is worked out, Amazon may be undermining your audio market as it exploits your e-books.”

Hard to view the sort of roboticized nondramatic “reading” that the Kindle provides as a “significant challenge to the publishing industry.” If that was truly the case, you’d think the industry would have gone after Apple (AAPL) for VoiceOver (could it’s “Hysterical” and “Zarvox” voice options be any more realistic?) Beyond that, the idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech just seems ludicrous.

“When you buy a book, you’re also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc.,” says author Neil Gaiman “This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one’s going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors’ societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what’s good about them with it.”