The Four Millionth Visitor's Prize
Precisely as Sarah McCulloch anticipated I would, I completely failed to notice that the page had reached its four million mark: I take her ability to predict this as a testament to my enviable reliability. Anyway, several tens of thousands late or not, it's become traditional to offer a prize at these 'million points' to celebrate appropriately their highly visible meaninglessness.
I thought about the matter conscientiously while waiting for the standing time of a microwave chow mein to elapse and decided that I'd go for something a little different at this million milestone. What I settled on doing was to give away one signed copy of Love and Other Near-Death Experiences, and - as a consolation prize to a runner up - one copy of Love and Other Near-Death Experiences signed by me.
That sorted, I was
left with the task of devising a competition that reflected the ideals of
the TMGAIHAA page. As the Mailing Listers know, the signature components of
our community are:
(1) Vigorous and relentless time
wasting.
(2) Sustained, casual mendacity.
(3) A systematic campaign of credit card fraud and tactical assassination.
For simplicity, I've confined this compo to points (1) and (2).
So, to enter, merely email declaring that you were visitor number 4,000,000. State it baldly, or tilt your monitor slowly away from the rest of the office and then squander a whole afternoon inventing a complex matrix of lies to support your claim. It makes no difference, as the emails won't be read either way - the winners will be chosen in an entirely arbitrary fashion.
There are some rules:
1) Submitting multiple entries is cheating, and is thus very much in keeping
with the spirit of the exercise.
2) I naturally don't want these emails anywhere near my already-rupturing
Inbox, and have therefore duped Ms Emma Finnigan at my UK publisher into receiving
them all. Her decision concerning the winner/s is final and no correspondence
will be entered into. Her boyfriend is a musician so, as you can imagine,
she has a enough on her plate already.
3) I have been assured, by blood oath, that the email addresses of entrants
will not be collected, used, or become involved in any kind of marketing exercise
at all, by anyone, ever. Unrelatedly, I would remind my publisher right here
and now that I'm perfectly aware of where their offices are, and I have been
online easily long enough to know how to make a bomb out of fertiliser.
4) The compo will run for one month only, after which the email address for
entries will be defused by a controlled explosion. The winner/s will be notified
by email on the 17th of April 2006. Or the 18th, if Emma's having her feet
done on the Monday.
That's it: fire away
THIS COMPO HAS NOW ENDED.
I touch my sympathetic hand to the teary cheeks of all those who grasped for the prize but caught only air. As stated above, the winners were chosen by Ms Emma Finnigan. One comes from Tahlequah, Oklamhoma, and the other is a computer games publisher. I trust this additional information will encourage you to put aside your disappointment and be happy for them.