Cleaning out the inbox

Some days it's just easier to cut and paste old crap than to come up with original blogging content.

For instance! I'm in a weekly email contest with a bunch of people I don't know. Every Monday we get a topic. We all submit three entries by Wednesday. We vote for our top five on Thursday. We get the winners on Friday. Then we start over. Whee!

I've been doing this contest for years and years, and I can safely say that the other people in it do NOT get my sense of humor. In fact—if I may be so blunt—the other people in the contest are kind of ... um ... not funny. At all. Though some of them submit some truly funny ideas, the stuff that routinely wins every week tends to be ... well ... too obvious to make a reasonably sober fourth grader laugh. Yet I return week after week in the hopes that I can train these legions of strangers to write (and vote for!) some truly funny submissions.

But enough of my thinly veiled condescension. I'll leave the judging to you. Here are some examples of recent contest winners. I've asterisked my submissions for those of you who don't get my sense of humor either:

Things NOT To Say During A Job Interview:
1st: "I'm sorry, I think I fell asleep...could you repeat that question?"
2nd: "Now that we're here, I'd like to talk to you about Jesus Christ."
* 3rd: "Does this look infected?"
4th: "As Director of Diversity, I assume I won't be working with any cripples, homos, or towel-heads, right?"
5th: "Define 'late'.”

Things We Might Expect In A Sarah Palin Administration:
1st: Senate does a shot every time she says "You betcha"
* 2nd: Automatic foreign-policy credentials for anyone living near a border
3rd: Senate required to vote "Nope" or "You Betcha" on all legislation
4th: More Emmys for Tina Fey
5th: Pelosi Bitch Slapping Palin at State of the Union Address

Science Fair Projects We Never Want To See:
* 1st: Kittens: America's Untapped Energy Source
2nd: Tastes like chicken..." - A Comparison of Animal Semen
3rd: The mating habits of a U.S. Congressman
4th: Corn: Our Undigestable Friend
5th: Guess the Smell

Hair Salons We Never Want To Visit:
* 1st: Hairy Queen
* 2nd: Mullet Over
3rd: Cook County Prisoner Rehab Salon - "We'll cut you like you've never been cut before"
4th: Lighthouse for the Blind's Barber Training Academy
5th: Britney Spears' House of Shears

Sometimes, though, truly funny stuff gets submitted and actually makes it to the top five. On these weeks I revel in newfound hope for all of humanity:

Parks and Monuments We Never Want To Visit:
* 1st: Iwo Jemima
* 2nd: Yellowstain National Park
3rd: Statue of Puberty
4th: Tomb of the Unheard Mime
5th: Mount Smegma

Cirque du Soleil Productions We Never Want To See:
1st: L'Obese
2nd: Le Petit Oui Oui
* 3rd: Douche!
4th: Bukáka
5th: La Vagine du la Palin