Journal

Thursday, March 26, 2009

The #100K Contest

THIS IS PHOTO A


I have a cold. In case you were wondering. I definitely have a cold. It's not just the sneezing.

But that's not what this blog is about. This is the Twitter Caption Competition blog.

Back in December I wound up signing up for Twitter. Enjoyed waving at friends. I remember being amazed in January when I realised 10,000 people were following me, and more amazed a few days later after swearing delightedly on Twitter when I won the Newbery to realise that newspapers were reporting twitterage as news.

I've been enjoying the speed and compression of Twitter, too. (It reminds me, as I said on Twitter once, of the R.A. lafferty story "Slow Tuesday Night".)

Sometime today I'll click on the Twitter screen and see that I've got 100,000 followers, and I thought it might be fun to do something for all involved to celebrate that rather unlikely fact.

So I've decided on a competition. I was going to do this over at Twitpic, but they're still having problems there, so I'm writing this blog entry and putting it all here.

It's open to anyone, but the entries have to be twittered.

It's a caption competition. I'm posting two photos. One of me and the dog being sinister in the rain (below), one of Coraline and the dog (above). You can caption either of them. If you want to put the caption on the photo, LOLcats style, or turn it into a 1970s LP cover, and link to it, you can. But you're in Twitter territory, so you still only get 140 characters (including the hashtag).

Post your caption (or the link to your captioned photo) on Twitter. Use the #100K hashtag.This is important. Don't send them to me or to Cat at twitter. Just post them with the hashtag in your tweet. We will find them. If they don't have the hashtag, we won't. Start it or finish it with #100K.

If you think there's likely to be any doubt as to which picture your caption goes to, put an A) for the Coraline one or a B) for the sinister umbrella one.

There's no entry limit, but don't go mad and send dozens. And you can do either picture or both. The overambitious could create a two-panel photo-comic. Your call.

You've got a few days -- let's say entries need to be in on Saturday at Midnight Pacific Time. And Cat will judge on Sunday. You can follow the entries as they're coming in at http://tweetgrid.com/search?q=%23100K.

I'm going to see all of them, but the judge is going to be Ms Cat Mihos, http://twitter.com/neverwear(that's @neverwear to you twitterfolk) and I get a vote in case of Cat needing a second opinion. Send all bribes to Cat, not to me. (That was a joke. You do not even need to buy anything from http://www.neverwear.net/store/ to enter.)

Prizes are: a signed-by-me copy of the new printing of A Walking Tour Of The Shambles by Gene Wolfe and me, a CORALINE movie Tee Shirt, a Coraline Movie Soundtrack CD, and Cat tells me she has several signed-by-me Graveyard Book posters she wants to give out.

I don't mind where in the world you are twittering from, but even the funniest caption in Estonian will not win because Cat does not speak Estonian, and neither do I, so I would stick to English if I were you.

The judge's decision is final. And this is for fun. If there's anything you're not sure of, look this over again, and if it really isn't answered here, feel free to twitter at me and ask.
Have fun.



THIS IS PHOTO B

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