Mental Magma

We’ve got a problem here at Mental Magma.  Way back in Contest #13 Zabo wrote this entry:

Warning: This beverage may cause structural instability.
Below would be a picture of the Kool-Aid guy busting through a wall.

We thought it was swell and made this design:

The problem is that we can’t make this design into merch because of the inherent copyright issues.  Now we have a set of 11 shirts where we wanted a set of 12.  The solution to the problem: Slap Zabo a high five, say “sorry buddy, intellectual property snafu”, and choose another design to make into merch.  That’s where you step in.  We’ve decided to give you a voice in the decision.

I’ve made a poll for you to help us choose the 12th design.  It’s different from our other polls in that you can choose up to two options to vote for.  Vote for the top two designs that you’d like to see made into merch selections.  We’ll probably just make one, but choose two just in case we go wild and do a 13 for contest #13 thing.

Vote for the 2 designs you'd most like to see become the 12th merch selection from Contest #13

• Caution: Objects in reality may not exist
• Caution: Ugly person reading shirt
• Beware-May become aggressive in the presence of bacon.
• Warning: I cross the streams.
• If you punch me, I will apply an equal force to your fist
• NOTICE: Today is not the first day of the rest of your life. WARNING: Tomorrow doesn’t look good either.

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For this contest you must imagine you are living in a post apocalyptic world.  In this world, the apocalypse was caused by a zombie outbreak that spanned the globe but was eventually quelled…mostly.  Our story involves you discovering that there are still some zombies in the wilderness surrounding your town.

The contest this week is to write a classifieds ad that will find someone who will help you eradicate the zombie infestation.  The trick is that you can’t be obvious about what you need.  If the government goons spot your ad and think there’s an outbreak, they’ll nuke the whole region.  You must get the right person for the job without revealing your predicament.

Limitations: Imagine you are posting this ad in the surviving regional newspaper.  It can be any kind of classified ad (garage sale, personals, help wanted, etc) as long as it has the goals described above.  You must be succinct.  You are allowed no more than 3 lines, each with no more than 10 words per line.

Standard contest timeline and contest rules apply this week. By leaving an entry you are agreeing to those rules. The entry voted the favorite by MM users will earn its author Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide & their choice of a $15 Amazon.com gift certificate OR a $20 gift certificate to the MM Online Store.

Contest Summary
Assignment: Write a classifieds ad covertly seeking help with zombie eradication
How to enter: Post your ad in the Contest Entries section 
Deadline: Friday, November 21st at 5pm EST
Prize: choice of gift certificate and Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide.

Photo by Flickr user Dr_Doom

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).

Hallmark Shmallmark is right.  You guys rocked this week.  What can’t MM’ers do?  Compose classical music?  Beethoven Shmeethoven.

Given that we limit the finalists to the top five entries, each week we like to take the time to recognize some of the other outstanding submissions.  The following entries were either staff or crowd favorites: Etmoose’s terrifying traditions, Pennydreadful’s magic finger, Gig661’s birth control admonishment, pjmomof3boys Aunt Agnes, Etmoose‘s holiday car, Lisa‘s winter wonderland, R.E.D.’s drunken sot, Beverly‘s Goodwill jester, jupchu’s they’ll behave, SomeGuyNamedDoug’s unspeakable name, Arkansas‘ handkerchief boob job, cgomez‘s nativity scene, erumpleton‘s Hasslehoff cover, Taylor‘s chloroform,

Mental Magma Online Store

Introducing the 2nd set of six designs from:

Contest #13: Alternative Hazards.

Telescope by fooly cooly	Molten by Jakutz

Fist by Ella Minnow Pea	Format by Zabo

Yield by Zabo	Kangaroo by nmrboy

We’re also announcing a total redesign of our store. The new store has been upgraded, enhanced, and then sprinkled with bits of unicorn horn.

The new store sports:

• More merchandise options (like hoodies and $12 value tees)
• Larger display images
• New Designs & Top Designs sections
• Better organization
• Less dark matter

Feedback is appreciated. Let us and the users who came up with the ideas know what you think of the new designs and the new store. Post your thoughts in the comments section (of this post) or in the forum.

We’ve been doing this for 20 weeks now and we’re proud to be out of our teenage contests.  I know some of that new website smell is wearing off, but we’re just getting started.  We’re focusing our ingenuity beam on a new topic this week: the holiday greeting card.

The contest this week is to write the inside text for a holiday greeting card. You’ll be writing these captions for your choice of the images below.  This is going to be a merch contest so we will be choosing some of the entries and making them into actual holiday cards available in our online store.  Who wants to send their relatives bland and banal cards when you can introduce your loved ones to the output of Mental Magma minds?

Standard timeline and contest rules apply this week. By leaving an entry you are agreeing to those rules. The entry voted the favorite by MM users will earn its author a $35 gift certificate to the MM Online Store.

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.

This week the MM Mob showed that they only need a single word change to able to cause mayhem, mischief, high jinks, and last but not least, tomfoolery.

We have several extra entries to mention this week.  These were all entries that, despite missing the finals, were either crowd or staff favorites.  These included Silent Tuba’s right to keep bear arms, fuzz on the concept’s right to keep koala bears, Lalaith’s civil trial by fire, pennydreadful’s due process for zombies, erumpeltin’s right to bear Chuck Norris, and Alex’s powers reserved to the Fonz.

First off let me remind everyone that we’ve also got Photo Contest #1 going on right now.  Go and see the creative costumes.  If you haven’t uploaded your Halloween costume photo yet, the deadline is Tuesday @ 9pm EST.

With this week being America-gets-a-new-president week, we thought we’d get into the political spirit with a contest concerning government and legislation.  As the title of this contest suggests, the M.T.T. has another mission.  For those of you unfamiliar with the M.T.T.’s work, see Contest #1.  This week she’s got the itch to travel back in time and alter some historic documents.

Your assignment this week is to modify the American Bill of Rights by one word. Your goal is to maximize the creative mischief of the one word change.  You can insert one word, delete one word, or change one word into another.  After you modify your one word, you can fix the sentence to be grammatically correct (by adding an “s” to another word or inserting an extra preposition or something).

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.

This week’s contest was ambitious.  Some said we were Icarus flying too close to the sun.  I think we proved that, no matter how formidable a contest is, the MM mob will rise to the occasion.

Now that we have our pool of entries, we have to decide which author composed the best fakelore and which fakelore we want to spread around the internet (possibly, but not necessarily, the same entry).

We just have a few extra people to mention this week, but I’d like to thank everyone who competed.  Staff or fan favorites included Billard’s Jacqueline Dowell, Garrett’s Uncle Jack (and S.G.N.Doug’s Uncle Jack song), greg’s night before All Saints Day, and Mach3’s sobering-perspective-lore, (as named by giraffe1089).

The five fakelore finalists this week are Ian Randal Strock (with his dentist-engineered Halloween), jupchu’s kin of pumps, Barnaby Hayes’ regifting Santa, Tiago’s mad arab Al-o-ween, and Alex’s more macabre Hansel & Gretel.

The time has come for Mental Magma to enter a new era and a new medium for contests: the photo.  You’ve got cameras, we’ve got a website; it just makes sense.

We’re starting you out with something you were probably going to take pictures of already…Halloween costumes.  So don your most creative costume and snap a photo of yourself (please read the rules below).

Rules: You may only submit photos of yourself.  If you see someone else with a creative costume, tell them about the contest and get them to join MM.  If they register, list your name in the “referral” field, and then win the contest, you will receive a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate as a referral bonus.

Sometimes in life, you read a word on Wikipedia and you just know that you’re going to make a blog contest about it.  This week I came across the word fakelore.  Fakelore is manufactured folklore that is presented as if it is genuinely traditional.

Your assignment this week is to whip up some Halloween fakelore. This can take many forms.  You could come up with a fictitious origin for the holiday.  You could create a fake tradition and describe it.  You could even invent a faux-historical Halloween mascot.

Something very central to this contest is the idea that fakelore must be intentionally deceptive.  This means that we must never speak of this contest again.  The fakelore generated herein must, after the contests ends, be spoken of only with the hushed and reverent tones of true believers.  We must make other people believe it is real in order for it to qualify as fakelore.  Maybe we can even have some games later involving spreading our new Internet memes.

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.

In the very early days of MM, we were on easy street when whittling down the entries into five finalists.  Usually there would only be about five that were really standouts anyway.  This is a stark contrast to recent contests, which have taken a herculean effort to narrow the field down.

With an increasing number of people showing off their prodigious contest skills, it increases the pool of entries that are in the category amazing-yet-not-chosen-for-the-finals.  Some good news is that we’ve decided this will be a merch contest.  We’ll announce our selections for those in a few weeks.