Mental Magma

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.

We need more people to enter MM contests, not because we’re not getting enough high quality entries, but precisely because everyone’s answers are so freakin’ good.  I’m trying to separate the wheat from chaff and you people aren’t producing any chaff.  So, please tell all of your bumbling, ineloquent, creatively-barren friends to come on over to MentalMagma.com so you guys can have some people to make look bad.

Anyway, we loved the entries this week.  You all came up with so many good ideas that we’ll be mixing them into our contests for years to come.  Keep in mind that, just like a merch contest, ALL of the entries are in play for possible future contests, not just the finalists.

I wanted to give you guys a look at the USB missile launcher that’s up for grabs this week.  If you want to see more of them in action, just search for USB rocket or missile launcher on youtube.  People have done all sorts of interesting things with them like connect them to ultrasonic radar or make a multi-launcher-synchronized-battery of them.

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You pet.

And this is why you die.

Jakutz’ unassumingly deadly conception:

Contest #7: Make-a-Minion.

The Kitten Widow	by Jakutz

Photo by flickr user keso

How about some more fun with the internet?  Now this game has been around for a while, but it’s probably new for a lot of you.

The name is Googlewhacking.  It involves using Google to do searches that return precisely one result.  Your search should include exactly two words without quotes around them.

I haven’t Googlewhacked in a while and was also unable to find one today while preparing for this post.  This was my progression:

For this week’s contest, you’re going to have to meditate and become one with the internet, the cosmos, and Mental Magma.

This week’s contest is to invent the best Mental Magma-esque contest. I know what you’re saying, “But Gabriel, you’ve just done that with Contest #9 here.”  Okay, point taken, but go ahead and give it a shot.

To create a MM-esque contest, you’re going to have to be familiar with our mindset.  If you’re relatively new to the site, you’ll probably benefit from giving a quick look to our previous contests.

If you’ve submitted a contest idea via email to us before, you may submit the same idea for this contest.

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.

For anyone not familiar with the term, see the definition of leet here.  This week’s entries raised a point we’ve debated on MM before.  How far can people stretch each contest’s specific instructions before they’ve gone too far to be in the running?

The short answer is that we’ll have to decide on a case by case basis, mainly dependent on if we feel the entry is within the spirit of the contest.  So entries this week that wrote more than just a headline are fine.  The entries that wrote a headline but didn’t include something about an Olympic internet event are not really considered.  My best advice is that if your entry is pretty good, and just bends the rules a little bit, go ahead and submit it.

This is from a favorite online comic Xkcd.  It relates closely to the game we’re introducing this week: Wiki Walk.  For this game it helps to be the kind of person that enjoys a bleery-eyed Wikipedia clicking binge.

With Michael Phelps on all media (including a venomous version coming in second place in last week’s contest), we’ve got the Olympics on our minds.  We here at Mental Magma are probably not going to be medaling any time soon in any real world events, so we started wondering what an Olympics of the Internet would look like.

Your assignment this week is to think up Internet-themed Olympic events and write news headlines for them. Let me give you an example: Americans take gold in pop-up event with 83 windows closed in 60 seconds. Your headline can be about anything as long as it looks like a newspaper headline and includes your made up event.  Leave your headline in the Contest Entries section.

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.

This week’s contest seemed to bring out the best in everyone.  You all sparred verbally over whose minion would best lead to world domination, but you did it with a sense of decorum.  That’s what is missing in the world - aspiring evil doers with a sense of civility.

Before revealing the finalists let me mention a few evil geniuses and their minions who, despite missing the finals, were beloved by the community or the MM admins.  There were Tiago’s hippopotami with kangaroo legs, Mrs Sara’s teddy bear hamsters with jaguar claws, Mrs Sanchez’s cheetah with a T-rex head, Ian Randal Strock’s flying elephants, Mannequin’s human Males with mule bodies, and Dlawhon’s tigers with scorpian tales.

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Inspired designs from the

Deity campaign trail!

Check out some of our favorite shirts from:

Contest #6: Poseidon for President.

Cyclops inspired by Bunny Slippers	Bacchus inspired by Mrs. Sara
Atlas inspired by Tyson22	Ares inspired by Brendan

I have another game for you guys this week.  The game’s real title should be Band Name Generator, but the title of this post is the result of the game.  Just go to BandNameMaker.com.  This site allows you to enter a word which it then uses to generate random band names that include your word.

For instance, you enter the word simian, and the site spits out (among other names) Super Simian and the Muffin.  If you enter the phrase sweater-fondler, it may respond with Chronicle of the Sweater-Fondler God.

I don’t know if it was the site malfunctioning or just messing with me, but it occasionally replied with one-word band names that didn’t use any word I’d entered (like when it suggested I simply name my band Octopus).

The goal is to end up with a band name that you’d be proud to have show up on a marquee; the key is to choose great starting words.  See what you can come up with and post your band names in the comments section of this post.  Rock on.

Photo by Flicrk user Stig Nygaard