Not a prize one of the winners can claim…

The moment we’ve all been waiting for is finally here!  It’s time to announce the winners of the 2021 Contest of Whatever!  X is about to become the favorite letter of the alphabet for at least two people in this world…

Make that three…

It was a grind…. maybe even moreso than the infamous 2018 contest that involved the picture of the man and the pig in the bathtub.  But in the end, eight of you were able to find inspiration in the 24th letter of our alphabet and submit an entry in this year’s contest.  That makes this eight out of eight years that the number of official CoW entries has been either eight, nine or eleven.  The Contest is nothing if not consistent…

Just in case you needed to be reminded of this…

For the second straight year, there were no rookie entries in the Contest.  That makes the lack of new blood taking a stab at the contest a very real trend, unfortunately.  But that’s just the way it is apparently.  We shall carry on for as long as at least eight of you who’ve been around for a while are willing to go forth and create in the name of FUN!

And you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to have this much fun in the CoW!

And now for the spiel I give every year…. picking a winner was no easy task.  The entries were all wonderful and creative in their own ways.  There’s rarely a year where I come into this day being able to pick just one entry as the best with a clear conscience.  But I’m not Scrooge McDuck, I work at Mecca…. so I can only give two prizes.  And it’s time to announce the winner of that first prize!

Here it is!!!! The winner of The Eighth Annual Contest of Whatever is……………

Drum roll please, Hottie…

MERBY!!!!!!!!!

Time to break open the celebratory bubbly!

Since I’m just a year younger than Merby, her poetic ode to Generation X obviously spoke to me…. as I often pine for the simpler times of my 80’s youth.  It was a great time to grow up!  This was one of three entries I was giving serious consideration to going into this weekend (No, I won’t say what the other two were!)… and what put it over the top for me was that it was my favorite interpretation of this year’s X theme.  A number of you seemed to struggle with X, which I found odd since, while brainstorming themes earlier in the year, I chose X after I realized how many unique ways it could be spun off into a theme!  And Generation X wasn’t even one of the ideas I thought of myself, so props to Merby and her Brain Cooties for coming up with it and claiming her very first overall CoW prize after many years of playing!

And hopefully it’ll keep me from getting the shit slapped out of me in the future!

OK, the rest of you can stop throwing rotten food on stage for a moment.  There’s still the random prize to award to one of the remaining runners up!  As usual, we’re going to use the order I drew the entries in for Friday’s post as the basis for this drawing…

1. Merby
2. ghostmmnc
3. Draliman
4. Jenn
5. Pam
6. Phenny
7. Trisha
8. Melanie

And I’ll once again reach for the same deck of blind man’s cards I’ve used to pick the random winner in each of the previous seven CoW’s.  I’ll just remove the ace for Merby, leaving me with one card for each of the remaining players…

Mitzi will once again get the honors of choosing this year’s random winner…

MITZI: Like, peeeeewwwwwsies!  Something totally, like smells skunky!  Mitzi swears she totally douched this morning!

That’s probably coming from Fuzzywig, who was chosen as the overseer for this year’s drawing.  He’s going to make sure the drawing is completely honest and fair.

MITZI: Mitzi wouldn’t want it any other way!  Unless, like, someone wanted to bribe Mitzi with some smoochies!

Now that everyone knows you can’t be trusted, let’s get this drawing started before the FCC raids The Nest.  I shuffled the cards until I was absolutely sure I had no idea where any card could possibly be in the deck and placed them back on the table.  Alright Mitzi, do your stuff….. and no, not the kind of stuff you do at the gentleman’s club…

MITZI: You’re, like, totally no fun!

And the winner of the random drawing is……………….

MITZI: OMG!  It’s, like, 69!!!

Fuzzy, did you notice anything unusual about this drawing?

FUZZYWIG:……….. Huh?  Was I supposed to be watching something?

Oh for crying out loud……

Congratulations to PHENNY and NELLY!!!!

Pee mail for the win!

I believe the staff over at Easy Blog only entered on a lark due to my incessant reminders over the last week of the contest…. but look what it got them!  Their very first contest prize!  And now I get to see if Cafepress can send things to France or not.  Congratulations to the boys and their parents!

Merby and Phenny now both get to choose any item valued at $20 USD or less from my Cafepress Shop to have delivered to their door… however long that may take in today’s environment.  Please send your address info and your chosen prize to my email which can be found in the Contact page…

Sorry, live unicorns may not be shipped through the mail.

And of course, there’s that Contest of Whatever tradition….. the silly badges that nobody would be caught dead displaying on their blogs!  Whether you were a winner…

Or a loser….

If you played this year, you get an indelible souvenir of your effort!

Thanks to everyone who played this year’s Contest of Whatever!  I look forward to hosting this again next year with brand new theme that will leave you banging your heads against the wall.  See you next February for the Ninth Annual Contest of Whatever!