Mental Magma

This week’s poll was a close 3-party race.  Alex, Greg, and Fuzz on the concept all had a chance to win, but at the closing bell Fuzz O.T.C. had the most votes.

We shan’t be surprised if Hallmark contacts Mr On The Concept and offers him a job.  The quip that earned him the win was:

Hoping all your hallucinations are harmless this Holiday Season!

F. on the C. will receive a $35 gift certificate to the MM online store.  Our MM Participation Rewards winner this week was Dana, who wins a $20 MM online store gift certificate (We doubled the amount to $20 in honor of contest 20).

This was a merch contest, so we’ll be making real cards out of some of these card ideas and selling them in our store.  We’ll try to have that done and announced in the next week so you can send them out as holiday cards.  Let us know if you have a favorite you’d really like to see make the cut (merch selections can be chosen from any entries, not just the finalists).

As we close another chapter in the saga of the Mischievous Time Traveler, I wonder what the story behind the mischief is.  Is she working for a shadow organization or is she operating solo?  What’s her obsession with pantsing?  And where (and when) will we see her again?  We’ll have to content ourselves with her latest chaos-inducing operation, authored by Soleil, the change to the bill of rights:

Second Amendment – Right to keep and arm bears.

A grizzly (ha!) alteration to American history indeed.  Soleil takes home a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate.  In a moment of prescience, Soleil predicted his own win last week after winning last week’s participation reward.  What’s next for Soleil, the title of first 2x MM champion?

The randomly chosen winner of this week’s MM participation reward is Stevel Knievel.  Stevel earned eligibility by voting while logged in on this week’s contest and making a comment (which was quite useful) on the Contest #19 post.

Whatever you do in life, do not mess with either Amueth or Snoconegrl.  They each have enormous posses, and they will mess you up.  I infer this from the fact that they each received more votes than the average of total votes in a normal poll.

Maybe it’s just that people were already in vote mode as this week was historic, not simply because of MM’s first photo contest but also because America elected its darkest-skinned president yet (Bill Clinton was, of course, our first black president).

When the voting deadline passed, the chads stopped hanging, and the Diebold guy finished monkeying with the voting machine, user Ameuth came out on top by a single vote.

Ameuth wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com and will be remembered forever in songs of Mental Magma as Lord of the Photo Contests.

This week I will begin the winner announcement post with no preamble (other than this no-preamble announcement).

The winner of contest #18 and the person whose cup of fakelore runneth over with creativity is Alex. Soon the Internet will be filled be people chiding each other for not knowing the real story behind Hansel and Gretel.  See the full text of Alex’s answer here.

The winner of the the MM participation reward this week is Soleil. We’re giving him a $10 credit for the MM Online Store.  Remember, you can be eligible for the participation reward just by voting in the finalist poll (while logged in) and participating one other way on MM (see the above link for details on MM participation rewards eligibility).

We hope to see every back here soon for a political filled week.

I’m glad that we have so many close finalist polls here at MM.  That probably means that all of you have as much trouble as I do when trying to figure out which entry is the best.

The 17th member of the exclusive MM Champions Club is Lalaith.  The number 17 is indivisible (you know, mostly) and her answer was invincible.  Should you find yourself in medieval Britain pitching bumper sticker ideas, remember Lalaith’s brainchild:

I ♥ York

The winner of the the MM participation reward this week is Greg.  We’re giving him a $10 credit for the MM Online Store.  

Next week is going to be an unprecedented one for MM.  We’ll be having 2 contests;  a standard contest will be announced tomorrow and then the Halloween photo contest (with further rules description) will be announced later in the week.  Prime your minds for the workout.

Not to steal any thunder from our finalists and contest winner, but how about our new winner logo here?  It’s so shiny & sophisticated; I feel like I should avert my eyes.

The vote totals were tight between our finalists this week, but when five o’clock came, nmrboy stood atop the heap.  Should you be the recipient of a colossal check that you’re nervous about cashing, just look the teller in the face and say:

The sultan of brunei’s left eye twitches when he’s bluffing.

The winner of our MM participation rewards this week is Taylor.  He will receive a $10 gift certificate to the MM online store.  He was eligible for the prize just by voting in the finals (while logged in) and participating in this week’s game.

Thanks to everyone who participated this week.  Be sure to return tomorrow when we announce contest #17 and news about our first photo contest.

Many weeks on Mental Magma the 1st place and 2nd place vote totals are different by 1 vote.  This was not one of those weeks.  I intend no disrespect to the other finalists when I say that Etmoose continued his impressive debut on MM with a Kim Jong Il-esque sweep of the votes.

In addition to the main contest win, you can be sure you’ll be seeing this Star Wars PSA on youtube soon:

[We see Leia in the golden bikini, chained to Jabba the Hutt. Cut to Luke cornered by the Rancor. Cut to Darth Vader, standing back to the camera, looking out a window into space.] 
Narrator: It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?

It was a week of changes.  We saw the successful implementation of the double-thumbs up system.  We introduced a participation reward system (and have our first winner).  We also finally unveiled the MM forum (which already has some good discussions going).

But none of that takes away from the real reason we’re here:  To celebrate the winner of this week’s contest, SomeGuyNamedDoug.  The benefits section of the MSAT will definitely include this question:

It’s always surprising to me how much voting fluctuates on this website.  Following last week’s record high voting, we had a small showing.  Well, no matter, the contest itself was a wild success.  I don’t think we’ve ever had a merch contest that created such a large number of creative and clever entries.  There are so many good merch candidates that we’ll probably have to release them over multiple weeks.

Which brings us to the entry voted the favorite this week, Zabo’s alternative hazard:

Notice: This shirt has been changed from its original format, it has been formatted to fit this body.

Congratulations to Zabo, he earns himself a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate and a $15 Mental Magma Online Store gift certificate.  Like I mentioned, many of this week’s entries are destined for our online store (including ones that didn’t make the finals).  We’ll make a merch announcement when we have the first wave of them finished.

Internet historians of the 22nd century may remember Contest #12 as one of the most controversial of MM history (second only to Contest #666: Make a pact with the devil).  We’ll have to wait to see if the controversy shakes up the way we do things here at MM, but we do have a winner for you.

We had a record voter turnout for this contest.  It was an extrememly tight race between two users.  In what is increasingly becoming the fashion here, our returning champion was bested by one vote by a user making her debut.  Shiradee is our newest champion.

Here is the villainous limerick that won her the crown:

If Clark Kent had battled Lex Luther
He’d have ended up an ex-toother
So Superman stepped in
With his winningest grin
Now Luther is quite a bit…couther

On a side note, I was curious to see if we had more female or male champions.  I just counted and we’re tied at 6-6 (assuming I’m correct in all my assumptions about who is male/female).  Shiradee’s reward is a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate & a How to Rule the World book.  Thanks to her and to everyone who participated this week (yes, even you who participated in the attempted coup).  Be sure to check back tomorrow; who knows what will happen here?

Some weeks, one user’s entry just knocks it out of the park, returns it for a touchdown, or delivers a one-punch knockout (depending on which sports analogy you favor).  This was just such a week.  Long-time MM user, Greg, landed a triple salchow and then karate-chopped this contest in the throat (metaphorically).  Not content to win with a simple plurality, Greg garnered over 60% of the votes this week.

Whenever the movie production arm of MM gets going, you better believe our maiden production will be Elves (see Greg’s full entry here).

For his pitch, Greg gains a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate and can add “Mental Magma Contest #11 Winner” to his CV.  Congratulations to Greg and thanks to everyone who entered this tougher-than-usual contest. Lastly, for all of you who emailed to ask about the next round of merch (from the portmanteau contest), we should be able to reveal it midweek.

Although most of the previous weeks have been very tight races, voters showed a clear preference for user c2 this week.  She adds her name to our illustrious list of contest champions.  The next time you settle down to a nutritious and delicious meal of ramen, you’ll be unable to forget her addition to our lexicon:

Spiceberg - that lump of stuff that floats to the top of your Top Ramen before it gets warm enough to melt.

Congrats to c2; with her win, she bagged herself a $25 Amazon gift certificate and a $15 Mental Magma online store gift certificate.

We’ll announce our merch selections from this week’s contest as soon as we finish the artwork.  There were many good entries this week; we’ll likely add several of them to our MM merch line.

Instead of crowning a two-time champion this week, we have a new name to add to the list of one-time champions.  Bunny Slippers is this week’s champinner (champion + winner) or winampion, if you like.  Be thinking of your ideas (which will hopefully be superior to mine in the previous sentence) to the following contest:

Create your own portmanteau word (a blend of two (or more) words) and give the definition for it. It can’t exist already so you’ll need to google it before posting your entry. Examples: wikipedia (wiki + encyclopedia), chocoholic (chocolate + alcoholic), brunch (breakfast + lunch).

It will show up in some future contest (maybe tomorrow, maybe on MM’s 10th anniversery; you know we like to keep tight lipped about this sort of thing).  As I’ve mentioned before, many of the other entries were spectacular and will show up as well.

Congrats to Bunny Slippers.  She’s earned herself a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate AND a USB Powered Missile Launcher.

For the third week in a row, it’s been an extremely tight race until the last minute between two finalists.  This week it was evil pun mistress, Sherry Baker, and returning champion, Mrs Sara.  In the end, it was the new kid on the block who claimed the win.  Congrats Sherry, sorry, no cake and balloons this week, but you have earned yourself a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate and that fabulous Executive Desk Gong you’ve had your eye on all week. :)

So, when the internet gets around to having its own Olympics, don’t be surprised to see the headline:

GOOGLE HACKED. INTERNET GAMES POST PWNED.

Thanks to all who entered the contest; see you tomorrow when we announce contest #9.

The race for first place was decided by one vote this week.  It came down to a battle of MM newcomers; Benji led for most of the weekend but Jakutz had the most fans in the end.

In a way it’s unfortunate for Jakutz that he had to publicize his plans for the perfect minion.  His answer lets us all know what to choose.

My minions would be kittens with the poison glands of black widows. Kittens are really cute and they can melt your heart with one meow. When you see a kitten, you can’t fight your urge to pick it up and pet it and talk to it like it was your baby. That is why you will die.

Congratulations to Jakutz, he wins himself a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate and a 4-pack of Screaming Slingshot Flying Monkeys.