I’ll never be an A-Lister.

My writing contest, which I thought had some pretty cool prizes up for grabs, has yielded a whopping THREE entries. And since I just happen to be giving away not one, not two, but three prizes, I guess I don’t really need to go through the whole agonizing task of reading through thousands of entries to narrow my choices to the top three and then fend off a slew of angry emails from all the jilted hopefuls.

In a strange way that could almost be considered a plus.

Anywaste, to show my three loyal minions just how benevolent and generous I am I’m going to forego the whole first, second, third prize thing, and simply offer each of them their choice of which of the three prizes they want. Each of them can choose any of the three they want with no penalties should two, or even three of them want the same thing. So they can all choose to have an item from the TMG store, or two can get something from their Amazon wishlist, or they can all get different things.

Aren’t I a great guy?

You may be asking yourself, who are these lucky SOBs? Well, wonder no more for I shall tell you. They are;

• Cableman for “Bird World”
• Michelle S. (no website given) for “A Living Nightmare in Periwinkle”
• and, Solonor for “Quack Another Day”

Congratulations winners! You have just proven that you have no lives.

It’s contest time!

At about this time last year I held a fun little contest where I asked you, my loyal minions, to send me your wackiest, weirdest, wildest and funniest sentences. Choosing the ten sentences that I deemed the best of the bunch, I did my best to use them in a logical and meaningful way while writing a funny short story. I thought it would be simple. I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be easy.

It was not.

Incorporating ten disparate sentences supplied by weirdo’s like my crazy readership was a whole lot harder than I originally thought it would be. In fact, it was so hard that I don’t think I ever want to do it again. Well, at least not until I know I have a whole week free to write it so I can take my time and make it a little more coherent…

Wait. What the hell am I saying?! I’ve got to stop smoking the Crack.

Anywaste, this time around I think I’ve come up with a fun little twist on that old contest that just might interest some people out there. Not only will it be immensely more fun for me, it will also be exponentially less stressful and thus much simpler and easier, which will make me happy. And isn’t my happiness all that really matters to you?

Good minion. Have a cookie.

This time things will be different because I won’t be doing all the hard work. You see, for this contest I’ll be supplying the sentences and you’ll be supplying the story. In fact, just because I’m a lazy S.O.B., I’ll only give you the very first and the very last sentence of the story so you can be as creative as you want.

Plus, there are prizes for the winners!

So, since I can see some of you want me to stop with all my jabbering and get right to the whole contest thing, let me lay down The Rules.

1. Entry Application
   Your entry must be emailed to: geekman (little ‘at’ symbol) themightygeek (period) com. The email must have the subject line, “Minions Write To Win Contest” and must contain the following information in the body with each piece of info on a separate line;

   Your name and/or alias
   Your email address where you can be reached
   Your website URL (if you have a website)
   And the title of your story

   All stories must be sent as an attached Word file, or at the very least as an attached plain-text file. No WordPerfect files, HTML documents, Adobe PDFs, scanned images of typewritten pages, snail-mailed stone tablets, or any other attachment aside from Word or plain-text will be accepted. Each story must be a minimum of 500 words. There is no maximum word count.

2. No Strong Curse Words
   This is a PG-13 site. I don’t use any words stronger than what you might hear on an American TV soap opera and you shouldn’t need to either. Entries with strong curse words will not be considered for this contest, but I will take great joy in printing them out and marking each curse word and/or phrase with a fat, red pen and then mailing the printout to your mother. With a bar of soap.
3. No Entry Limitation
   You may enter this contest as many times as you like, but each entry must be sent in a separate email.
4. I Own It
   Once submitted, all entries become the property of The Mighty Geek. The Mighty Geek reserves the right to use, or to not use, your entry for any reason whatsoever. The Mighty Geek also reserves the right to publish any and all entries in any format and at any time.
5. Deadline
   All entries must be received by 11pm EST, Monday May 10th, 2004.
6. Judging
   The three ‘winners’ will be picked by The Mighty Geek on using purely arbitrary methods of divination possibly including a ouija board, some soggy tea leaves, his own judgment, and/or the psychic hotline. These three ‘winners’ will then be publicly judged using a method to be determined by The Mighty Geek at a future date, which will most likely be a cheesy online poll. There will then be three prizes awarded.
7. Prizes
   There will be three separate prizes;
   • Any single item from the TMG store chosen by the prize winner.
   • A single item from the winners Amazon wishlist worth $25 USD or less.
   • A PERSONAL website designed, or an existing PERSONAL website redesigned, for the winner by The Mighty Geek.

   The entry dubbed the best by the public judging will choose one of the three prizes. The second place winner will then choose from the two remaining prizes, and the third place winner will receive the castoff leftovers, because let’s be honest here, third place is just a polite way of saying that you’re the loser of the winners. The website prize is subject to the following qualifications;

   • Winner will receive two to three jpeg images of design concepts for the website which will be created by The Mighty Geek.
   • The winner will choose one design of the three.
   • Using only HTML and CSS, The Mighty Geek will create a website template for the winner.
     The Mighty Geek will not do any back-end programming, flash creation, database implementation, troubleshooting or anything else other than design a website. The Mighty Geek is not responsible, nor can be held accountable, for any damages, losses, snafus, maladies, data corruption or harm that may be incurred to the winner due in whole or in part to the design supplied by The Mighty Geek.

   Basically, I’ll design and code a really nice site for you and give it to you free of charge, but I won’t be responsible if something goes wrong when you’re uploading it to your server. If you use Movable Type for a Blog then I might help set that up with the new design I give you, but if something goes haywire don’t blame me. I’m a designer, not a code monkey.

For those who couldn’t make it through all that, let me sum up;

If you send me an email by May 10th with your story of more than 500 words that’s written in Word and containing the two sentences below, you could win one of three fabulous prizes. Should you lose, you can’t blame me. If you win and don’t like your prize, you can’t blame me. If your prize causes you problems of any kind and you want to beat the heck out of someone or sue them until even their children’s, children’s, children’s paychecks are being direct-deposited into your bank account, you can’t come after me.

Basically, write a story, win a prize and don’t blame me.

Got it? Good. Because now’s the time for what you’ve been waiting for; The Minions Write To Win contest is about to begin. Below are the two sentences that MUST be used in the story you submit. The first sentence below MUST be the very first sentence of your story, and the second sentence MUST be the last sentence of your story. Remember, this is supposed to be fun, so try to enjoy yourself. OK, everyone ready? Great! Here we go!
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