While you can click over to the site to find your own favorite and to see the winner, I personally like “Gene fights cancer, but also causes cancer. What the hell is your problem, Gene?”

Link

We’ve had a lot of fun in the past few days as people have submitted bingo card squares for our latest NeatoShop contest.

Congratulations to the winners! kkirkpat offered “Mashup Art” and won the Brainier Than the Average Bear t-shirt. Jefferson submitted “International [Something That Doesn't Need a Day] Day and won the Bloody Heart t-shirt.

So let’s get playing!

The author of The Fluffpo loves to make fun of the variously loved or loathed Huffington Post, and so made this funny bingo card for readers to play as they read that blog. Presumably the winner gets one of those high-paying writing gigs at the Post.

But winners of this contest will get t-shirts. We’re going to create a bingo card with twenty-four squares (they’ll be one free space in the center) that people can play while reading Neatorama. What should we write in the squares? You tell us!

Place your submission in the comment section below. Write only one per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you’d like. In five days, we’ll choose twenty-four entries for our card and show you the results so that you can start playing right away.

Among those twenty-four entries, we’ll randomly select two winners who will get t-shirts from the NeatoShop. Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don’t include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay?

Now, off to the comments with you!

Link -via Boing Boing

Update: The contest is over, the card is ready, and you can see the results here. Congratulations to our two t-shirt winners!

I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do with a stranger is rub feet together. Apparently some people want to though or else there wouldn’t be any competitors in the World Toe Wrestling Championship.

Believe it or not though, that’s not even the highest rated in this list of weird world championships.

Link

It’s May, 2011 in sunny Santa Clarita, California. A gentle breeze is rolling in from the sea, adding a nice cool to the air on your face. It’d be a wonderful day to go down to the beach, or a hike in the mountains. You’d might consider doing either, but you’re surrounded by a horde of the undead while inside the NeatoShop warehouse.

The fall of civilization came surprisingly quickly, as most people simply refused to divert their attention from petty concerns while the infection spread. You, too, were distracted by silly things, like the newest Rebecca Black video and Charlie Sheen’s astonishing career comeback.

Now it’s too late to make serious preparations. You’ll just have to improvise from materials in your current location — the warehouse serving the NeatoShop retailing empire.

What will you do? You came without so much as a rock in your pocket and now must survive using only the contents of the warehouse.

This is a contest. Look through the contents of the ‘Shop and devise materials that you’ll need to survive — improvised weapons, water filters, medical equipment, cook stoves — anything that you’ll need to see through the end of this dark chapter in human history.

Leave the description your improvised survival tool in the comments. The most inventive/funniest/silliest will win your choice of any item under $25 from the NeatoShop, and several runners-up will win a t-shirt of their choice!

When you enter the description of your survival implement(s), be sure to also provide the name of the item that you want if you win. Please make sure that you provide a selection or your entry will not be considered.

(Original image credit: Flickr user theogeo)

DI: Songwriters are often asked, which comes first, the music or the lyrics. How about you? Do you first come up with the story and then draw it, or does a doodle sometimes give you the idea for a story?

LY: A little of both. The series began like this: I had just moved to San Francisco, and I knew almost no one there. If you move from the East coast to the West, it takes a little time to adjust to how people relate to each other differently. I usually say, it takes forever to make a friend in Boston, but you will have that friend for a long time. You can meet your soul mate every fifteen minutes in San Francisco, but you’ll never see them again. Anyway, I was keeping these journals with me at all times, drawing and writing, just to keep myself company, just to have something to do. After a while, I started keeping track of what I was doing by drawing very crude, very mundane cartoons. I woke up one day with a hangover, and did a video version of one of the entries in my journal. It was basically verbatim, exactly what I had written & drawn. That one was called “Party”, about the party I had been to the night before.

Now that I think of it, I should try doing it that way again.

(Read on for your chance to score the book + DVD!)

DI: Talk a little bit about the process of making these awesome videos. What do you do first? Second? etc.

LY: These days, almost invariably, I write first. I try to figure out whatever it is that has been on my mind the most in the last week or so, something that I’ve been thinking about semi-conciously. Then, I write down everything I can think of about the subject. I try to read a little about whatever it is too, if I am disciplined enough. I usually have about 3 pages of random thoughts. I print them out, and get on the bus or ride my bike somewhere, and see what parts could go together to make some sort of narrative, could possibly seem like I could be making a point, even if the piece never gets around to making one. Then I rearrange the order, and it usually starts making sense around there. From that, I cut out the flab, fill the holes, and the script is done. The shooting is the easier part usually.

DI: How do you achieve that neat effect where we can sort of see you reflected off the paper doing the drawings?

LY: It’s either negligence, accident or witchcraft.

DI: How many static cartoons does it take to make the average video?

LY: It depends on the length. My average has been 3.5 minutes lately, although I think I should be making them shorter. 3.5 minutes usually winds up being about 40-50 drawings.

DI: Do you wind up scrapping a lot of drawings or by now do you pretty much get it right the first time?

LY: I screw up maybe one drawing in ten, and oh man, I hate it- that may not sound like much, but I almost always set up for the shoot first thing in the morning, ready to go, and then procrastinate and fritter the day away and finally start shooting at about 9:30 PM. On average, I finish at about 5 AM, so when it’s 3:45 in the morning and you bone a drawing up, you don’t have a lot of sympathy for the error.

DI: Talk a little about The Mystery Of Picasso and how that influenced you.

LY: It was an influence… no, more like a dead blatant thievery of the technique. I’m not shy about saying I took the technique outright. I thought it was a beautiful movie. It was simply a technique I remembered when I wanted to start telling this sort of story, and I thought “Well, that may work, to put this together with this…” and there it was. Technique, by and large, does not interest me much. It’s only a means to the end, which is storytelling.

DI: What cartoonists or artists are you most into?

LY: My favorite cartoonist is not one that influenced me much, Reuben Bolling who does “Tom The Dancing Bug”. He’s from Neptune, this guy- I wouldn’t know how to be influenced by it, he hits you from angles you never knew existed. He has two major books that I would recommend to everyone, the more recent being “Amazing Tom The Dancing Bug Stories”.

Now that I have that out of my system, the most obvious influence of mine has been “Life In Hell”, of course. It’s funny, I had those books and was influenced heavy by those comics before I had ever bothered to watch an episode of The Simpsons. I did it sort of backwards. “Life In Hell”, for me was mostly the liberation of seeing something that was all about the writing, and even though the drawings were simple, the facial expressions on the characters could make or break the piece. That was all I needed to know, and I went from there. I would say though, that the largest influence on me was Vonnegut’s “Breakfast Of Champion’s”. I’m not shy about that either- Everytime I say “It looked like this” in one of the videos, I’m thinking Vonnegut.

DI: How about a Dr. Katz-style TV show? Any plans along those lines?

LY: I’m interested in Television now a lot more than I used to be, as It’s pretty clear that TV is going through something of a new creative Renaissance. My reluctance up to this point has been as follows- I’ve heard WAY too many stories of people starting work on shows, and then the market research people come in, and tweak the project until it’s unrecognizable. My friend Odd Todd, the fella who did the major viral piece “Laid Off- A Day In The Life” did a great animation about that, called “Hollywood Bound”.

I’ve gotten a few calls over the last couple of years. Let’s just say that if an executive is busy telling me about how many Reality T.V. shows he has produced, and that he only has a minute because he’s in his car on his way to meet (Insert name of flavor of the week B actor)________, It’s pretty clear to me that they’re not interested in what I’m doing, they’re only interested in it’s popularity. See what I’m getting at? I don’t think you would have to see too many of my videos to conclude that I would have no interest in Reality T.V. shows, so if they’re trying to make me go “Ooooh, Ahhh…” about that, I get very very leery. I have met some people that are exceptions to this, thankfully.

The hardest thing in thinking about a “Tales” show, would be how it could be done. Purely the technique I use now wouldn’t work over a half hour, and I don’t think the writing style would work in straight animation either. I am now figuring out a way it could be done though, if the opportunity arises.

That’s the thing, I’m just very cautious about this. If I do it, I want it to be something I’m proud of.

Here’s how to score the autographed Lev book, plus DVD. Answer the following two questions and send them to me: david ‘at’ neatorama.com. I’ll pick one winner at random and notify you via e-mail. Simple, right?

1) From where does Lev say he copped his technique?

2) How many drawings does Lev say go into the average vid?

At long last! The votes have been tallied and checked for shenanigans, and we’re happy to present you with the results:

Coming in at 5th place, with 6% of the vote, Sword Juggler Guy.

Taking 4th place, with 12% of the vote, Mr. Don’t-Try-This-At-Home, Lightbulb Chewing Guy!

Right ahead of him, with 12.5% of the vote, Amadeus himself, Backwards Piano Playing Guy! in 3rd place.

One of our personal favorites took 2nd place, Star Wars Theme/UniPiper Guy with 28.5% of the vote. And for all you who didn’t turn in a video after our kilt-wearing piper set the bar so high in the first week of the contest, it seems there’s a lesson to be learned from Ms. Arm Rotating Girl, who was one of the last to submit and wound up with more than 30% of the vote and FIRST PLACE! Congrats to all our winners!

Now, before you go jumping on our necks in the comments, don’t forget the ‘O’ in GTFO stood for “Otherwise.” That means it wasn’t JUST a talent contest. Keep that in mind for our next GTFO contest, coming next year! Meantime, winners, please drop me a line (david ‘at’ neatorama.com) and we’ll get those prizes out to you.

Last year I announced the Threadcakes competition after it had already rolled to a close, but now’s your chance to actually participate in the contest. Simply choose your favorite Threadless shirt, then turn it into a cake and submit the image to the Threadcakes gallery. The prizes aren’t listed yet, but I’m sure they will include some awesome shirts.

The inspiration from the cake above can be seen here.

Link

Because BoingBoing raised the most money, narrowly edging out Neatorama, they got to select one random player for their team who scored 5 items from the xkcd/Breadpig store. A big congrats to BoingBoing and to Sean Doyle, who picked up the spoils! And thanks to Alexis Ohanian for sponsoring!

The 10 randomly selected Wii game-set winners, courtesy of GSN.com, are: Linda Ocasio, Abbie Fox, Michael Poser, Travis, Sarah Hans, Parker Lindstrom, Patricia Hyde, Drew Starr, Alex, and James Mcilhargey! So check your e-mail kiddies, ‘cause we need your snail-mail addresses to be able to send those game-sets out!

And finally, our grand-prize winner, who scored an Apple iPad, courtesy of neatorama, and will go on GSN-Live (that’s the TV show for those who don’t know) in the coming weeks to talk about our contest and her charity of choice, please join us in congratulating Vanessa, who played for Team Neatorama (w00t!) and donated $100 to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society!

If you’d like to catch her on TV, check back often with our Facebook page and we’ll let you know once GSN schedules her appearance.

How Do I Play?

Starting today, Monday May 17th, we’ll be playing for charities. Much like golfers have an annual Playday, so now there’s one for the blogosphere. But unlike those golfers’ playdays, you can choose to support ANY 501c3 that you believe in.

So have some fun playing the Bazinga! game below, and then make any size donation to any charity you presently support, or would like to support. (Minimum gift suggestion $1). The basic idea here is simply to take a moment of an ordinary day, when it’s not Christmas or some expected holiday, and do your part to help repair the world.

What Do I Win?

When you’re done, send us an e-mail at Play@QuizPlayDay.org and tell us how much you donated and to what cause. Also send us your quiz score. By doing so, you’ll be automatically entered into a sweepstakes drawing where you could win one of 10 sets of Wii games and a chance to go on national TV and talk about why you picked the charity and what the whole quiz play day experience was like for you! Prizing courtesy of our sponsors over at the Game Show Network. The randomly selected grand-prize winner will also take home a brand new Apple iPad, courtesy of Neatorama.com!!

So what are you waiting for? Take the quiz, play for your charity by making a donation, and finally, don’t forget to e-mail us at Play@QuizPlayDay.org and tell us how you scored and who you donated to (and how much). It’s all on the honor system here, so don’t let us down! We’ll be keeping track of how much each blog raises each day of the week. You can follow the money over here. At the end of the week, the blog (or “team”) that raises the most will get serious bragging rights and a BIG shopping spree in the xkcd/breadpig store to give to one random winner who played for their “team.” So don’t forget to say you’re playing for Team Neatorama!

Most Neatoramanauts know all about Ken Denmead’s Geek Dad blog over on Wired.com. But did you know Ken has a book coming out? Yep, in just a couple days you’ll be able to curl up with a pantload of geeky projects perfect for you and your kids.  Some are ripped right from the posts you’ve come to love on the blog, but most are brand-spankin’ new. Ever think about flying a kite at night, rigged with lights? Or making a comic strip out of Lego pieces? Or constructing a fortress – out of cake?

Those are just some of the cool projects you’ll discover in the Geek Dad book, an easy to read,  adroitly written craft book. And because Ken is himself a Neatoramanaut, he’s been kind enough to give us three, no more, no less, four we did not get, neither two, five is right out. But three, being the third number, is the number of books we have to give away in our contest! (We’ll leave the contest open until the book is officially published on May 4th!)

Want to win a copy? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Read the interview below!

2. Click the link at the end of the interview and answer the question you find waiting for you.

3.  E-mail me the answer to the question (e-mail address found on the linked page).

4. That’s it! We’ll pick three random winners and send out your very own copies!

Enough rat-a-tat! On with the interview…

DI: Toward the front of the book, there’s a lot of discussion about the very word geek, how it has morphed over time, and the variations and various subsets. It got me thinking: When I was in high school, I was a band geek and a computer geek. Yet I also scored an extra part in Revenge of the Nerds 2, so some people called me a big ‘ol nerd. Yet I also infamously scored two points for the other team in a basketball game, so I fit right in with the dweebs who were picked last in gym. My question to you is this: Can a person be a geek, a nerd, and a dweeb? Is it like astrology where I’m really a geek dad (for those who don’t know, I have a toddler), but have a nerd rising? Shine some light, if you would…

KD: The point I make in the book is that the difference between geek and nerd if self-awareness about the anti-social nature of obsession over a hobby or pursuit. Obviously real people are far more complex that the labels that get broadly applied to them, and it’s perfectly realistic that you could be an overall geek (aware of your nerdish tendencies, but able to either embrace them with vim, or mitigate them through careful behavior), and yet be more nerdish or dweebish in certain circumstances or when pursuing specific hobbies.

DI: At what point in YOUR life did you come to the conclusion that you were a geek? Certainly before daddom, I’d imagine? Or…

KD: Oh, in high school certainly. I was a music geek, theater geek, I played D&D at lunch with my friends from AP Physics, and wrote science fiction stories during free periods.

DI: In the book you talk about how more and more females are categorizing themselves as geeks—that it’s obviously not just for a label for dudes anymore. Did you wind up finding a fem-geek to settle down with and, if so, would that make your kids über-geeks? Or do two geeks cancel each other out and produce jocks and politicians?

KD: My wife is a total geek, with a strong passion for science fiction movies and TV shows, and we love traveling to conventions now and buying each other show props. We’ve been very careful not to push our tendencies on the kids, though – and luckily they are absorbing them instead. Actually, our older son, who played baseball and basketball, but also loves D&D and video games, called himself a “gock” – half geek, half jock.

DI: The sub-head of the book is “Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share” – and some of the projects that stand out to me, the ones I can’t wait to try with my son, are: Build a Binary Calendar, Portable Electronic Flash Cards, Fly a Kite at Night, and Model Building with a Cake. Of course, some of these projects you already wrote up on the blog, but many were new for the book. Are there one or two in particular that you really enjoyed creating and writing about?

KD: Flying the video camera on a string of balloons was great to do because there was science and engineering required to sort it out; figuring out the volume of helium needed to provide sufficient lift for the camera package and then devising the best way to string them together.

DI: If you could have lunch with any geek dad from history, who would it be?

KD: That’s a tough question. My first instinct would be J.R.R. Tolkien, because he started the rich creations of Middle Earth as something for his kids. But he probably wouldn’t have considered himself a geek (indeed, at the time the word would have been an insult). So I’d settle on Gene Roddenberry. His influence on geek culture cannot be understated.

DI: Of some of the more famous fictional geek dad-figures, who was cooler? Or who would you rather spend time with? Dr. Emmett Brown or Dr. Newton Crosby?

KD: Naw, give me Doctor Quest, Reed Richards, or Mr. Incredible!

DI: Of all the geek-gadgets you own, which one would you take to the proverbial desert island if you only could take one?

KD: Assuming (as any good geek would have to), that there was free power and wi-fi available on this desert island, my iPad!

DI: What’s the worst thing about being a geek?

KD: Being socially outcast; really, having to live in an environment where no one “gets” you.

DI: Your day job is in civil engineering. What’s a typical day for you?

KD: In broad brush-strokes, just like anyone else. Up early, help get the kids ready for school, and head to work (stop and get coffee on the way). Work, work, work – sad to say, civil engineering isn’t as glamorous as everything thinks! Pick up the kids from school, get home, and do family stuff. And all in there, keep an eye on the blog.

DI: It’s 2120—is geek still in our vernacular? What’s the future hold for the geek as AI becomes more and more sophisticated in the future?

KD: By the evolved definition of the word I like to use, absolutely. Geeks aren’t just about technology. Of course, techie geeks will still be with us, because technology is driving our culture more these days than ever before, and the people who are obsessive about the creation and use of technology will always be needed. Just, by then, the geeks will be moving planets around.

DI: Let’s not even look down the road that far, what’s Ken Denmead doing 25 years from now?

KD: Semi-retired, overseeing the GeekDad media empire and working part-time at Disneyworld.

DI: Other than the blog, are you working on anything now you want to tell us about?

KD: There’s always the hope that the book will do well enough to spawn another. I’m involved in the development of a NPR radio show for dads that will hopefully get picked up. And we want to keep building GeekDad as a property. The great thing is that new opportunities pop up when you least expect them!

DI: Will there be any book signings or speaking engagements? Where can people find you after the book comes out?

KD: There certainly will, and I’m keeping track of all that kind of thing on the website we’ve built for the book: www.geekdadbook.com. I’m always lurking on Twitter, as well (@fitzwillie).

DI: Lastly, anything you wish I’d asked?

KD: “What’s the airspeed of an unladen swallow?”

N.B. – Please do NOT leave answers to our contest question in the comments below. We will delete your comment. Thanks for understanding! However, we DO want you to send us your answer, the details of which can be found, along with the contest question, right here! Good luck to one and all.

Special thanks to Ken, who jammed on turning around the Q&A within 24 hours so we could present the interview/give-a-way in a timely manner. As Crush, dad-turlte said so eloquently to his son Squirt in the Pixar film Finding Nemo: You SO totally rock dude!

Well, Bill made good on his end of the bargain by answering a lot of those questions! Check out the full interview below. Meantime, we’re going to make good on our end of the bargain too, by giving away FOUR copies of The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis, which goes on sale tomorrow. But we got advance copies and are ready to unload them on four lucky neatoramanauts. Here’s how to win: Read the interview! At the end you’ll find a couple questions. Send your answers to me: david ‘at’ neatorama.com. We’ll pick winners at random and shoot you an e-mail to find out where you want your book sent. Pretty easy, right?

—— Now, on with the interview!——

Alex: How did you get started drawing cartoons? Where do you get your inspirations from? And lastly, do you have any advice for budding cartoonists?

Bill Morrison: I have an older sister who taught me to draw when I was only three years old! But I think I really got into some serious doodling when I discovered Batman on TV. I started reading Batman comics, and then every other kind of comic book, and I was hooked. I decided I wanted to be a comic book artist.

My inspiration comes from everywhere; current events, history, old movies, you name it. I recently wrote a story that was inspired by an urban legend I’d heard as a child. My series from the 1990’s, Roswell, Little Green Man was inspired by the story of the Roswell UFO crash, but also by my desire to draw vintage cars, fashions, architecture, etc. from the 1940’s. I was also influenced heavily by Dave Stevens’ wonderful Rocketeer strip.

My advice to budding cartoonists is to get a good education. Soak up as much knowledge and culture as you possibly can. It may seem boring now, but everything you learn will enrich your writing and your art in the years to come. When I was a student, I thought I would only be a comic book artist, and that I didn’t need to study certain things like English or History. Big mistake! I eventually became a writer and an editor, and had to educate myself in the areas I’d avoided in school.

Bill Peschel: Have there been proposed Treehouses of Horror stories that made y’all blanch and say, “Absolutely no way, Jose”?

Bill Morrison: Yes, but not often. The writers we invite to craft Treehouse of Horror stories tend to be great fans of The Simpsons, and they seem to know instinctively what to stay away from when they pitch ideas.

Paul in Prep: How does hearing the word Chondroitin, out loud, make you feel?

Bill Morrison: I love that word! It sounds like a noise that Jerry Lewis or Professor Frink would make!

Patty The Fatty: Any chance we’re going to see a Roswell – Little Green Man TV series? If so, when? If not, why not?!?!

Bill Morrison: I would love to do a Roswell TV series or movie in the near future! I’m working on reviving the comic book at the moment, so after I reintroduce my little green pal to the world, I definitely intend to set my sights on the big or small screen (or both!)

burninglily: What’s your muse? What was the deciding factor, that it moment when you just “knew” you were going to do this for the rest of your life?

Bill Morrison: As I mentioned earlier, I’ve wanted to be a comic book artist since I was a kid, but I think the moment I knew I wanted to make this my life’s work was when we won the Eisner Award™ for Simpsons Comics #1. Will Eisner’s work inspired me and influenced me from the moment I was aware of it, so receiving the award named for him meant a great deal to me, and made me want to be a part of the art form he called “sequential art.” By the way, if you missed it way back in 1993, we’ve included a reprint edition of the historic Simpsons Comics #1 inside The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis book!

Hellboy: Did the Simpsons created a new kind of hero : the stupid hero ? It seems to be the new standard in animated series (futurama, family guy, spongebob…) Does it reflect any kind of change in american society ?

Bill Morrison: I think “stupid” heroes have existed in animation going back at least as far as Disney’s Goofy (known way back at his inception in 1932 as Dippy Dawg!) In comics, the Captain from The Katzenjammer Kids, created in 1897 comes to mind. So no, I don’t think “stupid” characters are anything new. I do happen to believe that The Simpsons and Futurama are two of the most smartly-written shows on television. If there’s any conclusion about change in American society to be drawn from shows like these, I think it’s that we enjoy viewing smarter TV shows (and comics!)

Zim999: Will the following Simpsons Comics stories ever be reprinted?:  Bongos that time forgot from 32, More Bongos that time forgot from 35, The Itchy and Scratchy comics, The last 3 Bartman comics, The 4 stories from Simpson Comics and Stories, The Super Spectacular comics, The Winter Wingding comics, The Summer Shindig comics.

Bill Morrison: I was wondering what stories we had yet to reprint! Thanks for the handy list! I’m sure we’ll get to them all, eventually!

Bizznatch: Will there be a Bongo Comics website anytime soon?

Bill Morrison: Yes!

Bizznatch: How about a third Simpsons/Futurama Crossover comic series?

Bill Morrison: Funny you should ask! While compiling the material for The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis book, we got very excited and started talking about doing a third series. But we won’t do it just to cash in on the huge success of our hardcover collection. First, we need to think up a third story worthy of the first two!

Bizznatch: Any more Itchy & Scratchy comics coing?

Bill Morrison: We like to follow the lead of The Simpsons TV show by working Itchy & Scratchy episodes into our Simpsons comic book stories. We’ve found that the ultra-violent cartoon humor is much funnier in small doses!

Bizznatch: Will Sergio Aragones draw a full-length Futurama issue or cover? What other Bongo comics will Sergio Aragones be drawing this year?  All glory to the Hypnotooooad!

Bill Morrison: With Sergio, anything is possible! In the meantime, check out the dynamite two-page pin-up that Senõr Aragonés drew especially for The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis book! It features characters from both the Simpsons and Futurama meeting face to face at a very crowded comic book convention! And of course, Sergio’s work will appear regularly in each and every issue of Bart Simpson comics!

—–Contest Questions—–

1. Which neatoramanaut got props from Bill for helping him out with a list?

2. What’s Bill’s advice to cartoonists looking to break into the field?

That’s it! Don’t leave these answers in the comments please. Send them to me via e-mail!

I know, you’re all jealous, right? Well guess what? You don’t have to be for much longer because the Facebook/Twitter contest was such a success, we’ve decided to run a similar shopping spree contest EVERY month! So be sure to Twitter follow or Facebook Fan us now and stay in the loop.
Here’s some more info on this month’s winners:

Bena: I’m an art student, percussionist, and I like cows.

Lisa: I am a 54 year old SAHM with 3 wonderful sons. My hubby and I have been married for 16 years. I have been a fan of Neatorama since I first stumbled on it, years ago. At first, I didn’t pay too much attention to the contest because I figured it was going to be a difficult one that I couldn’t think through. But I saw your post on the second hint and remembered that I had read once that the term “messed up” in a puzzle like this usually meant an anagram. So I figured why not give it a try. It was that second word that I got first. Once I got the word, par, the rest just fell into place!

We’re going to be running two great contests over on our Facebook and Twitter accounts this coming week! You won’t find them here on the blog, just on the Facebook page and by following us on Twitter. So if you haven’t yet, please become a Neatoramanaut Fan now: www.Facebook.com/neatoramanauts and/or follow us on Twitter: @neatorama.

The prizes this week are extra special, as we’ll be giving away shopping sprees in our store (with free shipping!). Get all the deets over on FB and Twitter…

We’re going to be running a FUN contest over on our Facebook page this coming Friday! You won’t find it here on the blog, just on the Facebook page. So if you haven’t yet, please become a Neatoramanaut Fan now: www.Facebook.com/neatoramanauts. The contest will have something to do with our pals, nerdfighters John and Hank Green. If you don’t know anything about the famous brotherhood who vlog back and forth daily, you can get to know them a little in the below video. And check out all their action here on their YouTube page.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard, we’ve disabled the auto-update on our Twitter account and are accepting new followers @neatorama.

Official Rules

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I’m going to be microblogging from the set of Big Bang Theory this coming Tuesday night. The taping starts around 6:00pm PT, so tune in to our Facebook and Twitter pages starting a little before then. So long as my iPhone isn’t confiscated and there’s reception in the soundstage, we’ll be holding at least one contest, perhaps two. Details as they unfold, but I already know what the prizes are going to be:

1. A 2-Disc Collector’s Edition of Disney’s Atlantis – The Lost Empire
2. Matt Groening’s The Simpson Futurama Crossover Crisis, a deluxe slip-cased hardcover
3. Any t-shirt from our the Science T-shirt section of our store.

If you want a chance to win, make sure you’ve Fanned us over on our Facebook page and are following us on Twitter.

you can WIN a Vado HD flip cam by showing off your smarts in a week-long trivia contest hosted over on mentalfloss.com. And there are other cool prizes too, like premium subscriptions on motionbox.com and mentalfloss tees! Just gather all the correct answers as the challenges are presented, day by day, and submit them next Monday at 8pm ET. For all the rules and to get started playing Day 1, today, take a stroll down yonder.

Knitters around the net rejoice, Threadless is holding a new contest until January 18, 2010. Whoever makes the coolest knitted version of one of their shirts wins, so get your needles clicking.

Link Via Craftzine

Do you have a special connection with bacon? Can you get it to pose for you in sexy positions? The Official Bacon Contest at Mr. Baconpants might be your chance to win all kinds of glorious bacon prizes. Categories include:

Most Creative: This is a photo that shows a creative way to use bacon. Think bacon AK-47 or Waken Bacon.

Funniest: This is a photo that incorporates bacon that will make us laugh. Think Lol Cats or Fail photos.

Sexiest: This is a photo of bacon that will make us drool for two reasons. Think bacon babes.

To enter, send your photo to jmosely@mrbaconpants.com and use “photo contest” as the subject line.

Link

If you wondered how people actually made some of the cakes in the Threadcakes contest, previously featured on Neatorama, then you’ll love this time-lapse video of a Threadless tee shirt being made into a cake. The process is so detailed and so fascinating.

Link Via Good

Ever wonder where the zoo critters get their names? Well, most of them are named by the keepers, but if you’ve ever wanted to name one yourself, particularly the baby tapir shown above, here’s your chance. The Belfast Zoo is holding a naming competition for the little babe born on June 22, 2009.

All you have to do is send us your chosen name and up to 100 words explaining why you think it would suit our new tapir to namingcomp@belfastzoo.co.uk

Link Via ZooBorns

Ever wonder what a cake based on a Threadless tee would look like? Threadcakes is a website featuring contest entries based on just that concept. Some of the pictures are just great, like the cake above that is based on this shirt.

Link Via BoingBoing

A yearly contest in my hometown of San Diego is the Ugly Dog Contest, we actually held one of the first ugly dog contests in the world. This years winner was little Chomper, a boxer mix who can’t put her toungue in her mouth. A video of the event can be found here. It’s very cute to see happy Chomper’s toungue wagging about throughout the event.

The event actually is great for our city’s animal shelters, as all proceds are donated to them. The San Diego Kiwanis put the whole thing together and other catagories include best St. Patrick’s Day costume, Best outfit, cutest dog and best mutt.

Link

As noted the other day, I’m going to be microblogging from the set of Big Bang Theory tonight, provided it’s not illegal. (If it is, the contest will still happen, just a little earlier or later depending on the situation.)

Before I get to the rules, here’s what we’ve got to give away:

1. A 2-Disc Collector’s Edition of Disney’s Atlantis – The Lost Empire
2. Two copies of Matt Groening’s The Simpson Futurama Crossover Crisis, a deluxe slip-cased hardcover
3. Two t-shirts from our the Science T-shirt section of our store.

If you want a chance to win, make sure you’ve Fanned us over on our Facebook page and and/or are following us on Twitter.

Official Rules

I’ll update this as I go, both on FB and on Twitter, but the way it will probably go is like this:

1) Watch for FB status updates and tweets coming from the Warner Brothers’ lot starting around 5:30 pm PT.

2) Eventually, there will be some trivia questions related to the show posted on our Facebook page.

3) You don’t have to be a ‘Fan’ (or even on Facebook) to read the status updates and questions I’ll be posing. All you have to do is follow this link and keep the page refreshed for the latest status updates.

4) When you see a question, answer it by sending me an e-mail at: david@neatorama.com

5) There are two ways to win:

First way: Whoever sends in the right answer first will get a prize of his or her choice**
Second way: As long as you send in the right answer within 12 hours, you’ll be entered into the random drawing category and we’ll pick a prize for you

**How will we determine who gets which prizes? Simple! If you’re following us on Twitter or FB, you get a pick of whatever you want, so long as we haven’t used up all the prizes in a previous question. But there’s a catch (isn’t there always???) To exercise this privileged of choice, you must have already copied, pasted & tweeted out/updated your status with the following:

Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries – the Big Bang is happening over at www.neatorama.com #TheBigBangTheory

Otherwise, we’ll decide which prize you get.

Once again, that e-mail address is: david@neatorama.com