There are plenty of contests whose purpose is to pick out the best looking
dog, or
flowers or various other things. But what about the ugliest? These sites and contests bring you the ugliest
cars,
dogs,
celebrities (YMMV),
buildings in Ann Arbor, MI, and those bastions of cuteness,
babies.
posted by darsh
on Apr 25, 2006 -
16 comments
Rube Goldberg, former mining engineer, Godfather to Mad Magazine’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,”
cartoonist for Boob McNutt and Mike & Ike (they look alike), is best known for the now
eponymous machines he started cartooning back in 1914 such as:
how to not forget to mail a letter. Or the reminder to
take out the garbage. Or the
local government efficiency machine. Or the
oversleeping cure. Or the
German webserver wakeup device (it’s got sound).
There are
amateurs making ‘Rube Goldberg machines,’ but there are also
serious contests, sponsored by
serious engineers. (There are even
do it yourself plans - y’know, for kids).
Goldberg’s influence can be seen in a
variety
of
media, but by the time he turned 80 he’d tired of cartooning and decided to begin sculpting. Needless to say he excelled and of course, influenced
humorous kinetic
sculpture.
posted by Smedleyman
on Mar 15, 2006 -
13 comments
Oooh, I want
one. Or
all of them. Vintage high-tech, from the good folks at Worth1000. (Great idea, but I feel like even more could be done with this meme. Pointers?) [Via
BoingBoing.]
posted by digaman
on Feb 22, 2006 -
21 comments
Exercise your music muscle Someone marked a
Day in
Green ink. Then I eyed a
Queen holding
Sex Pistols. There are 71 other bands hidden in this street scene: you can download a higher-res version at
Virgin's Web site. (Via
Bifurcated Rivets). By the way, this is a contest (you can win a new computer and a year's worth of free music), but the site's interface is obnoxious and ad-strewn, so I moved the contest linkage
down here.
posted by Lord Kinbote
on Nov 29, 2005 -
62 comments
CG Challenges - the largest online art contests of their kind, where artists are challenged to create outstanding artworks based upon set themes, while working under restrictions. For CG students, an additional bonus is the view of the creation process.
posted by Gyan
on May 23, 2005 -
8 comments
The worst opening lines to the worst novels never written. An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist
Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.
The original bad opening sentence and inspiration for the contest? From Bulwer-Lytton's novel
Paul Clifford, and made famous by
Snoopy: ""It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
posted by zardoz
on Dec 16, 2004 -
37 comments
So the
Blogathon is taking a year off to come back bigger and better than ever before, but for all of you just itching to stay awake for 24 hours raising money for charity, there is
Project-Blog, a Blogathon-style event happening July 24th. See previous Blogathon discussion
here.
posted by Orange Goblin
on May 31, 2004 -
2 comments
Lego Master Builder search
"After kicking off at The Art Institute of California – San Diego on Thursday, Oct. 30, the official LEGO Master Model Builder Search will head to Art Institutes in Washington D.C., Boston, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles before its final stop in Orange County, California. Winners from each city will be invited to travel to the LEGOLAND theme park in Carlsbad in 2004 to interview for the ultimate job – and the chance for the coveted spot as the seventh LEGO Master Model Builder." Ladies and gentlemen, start your brick building!
posted by Irontom
on Oct 15, 2003 -
6 comments
Tacheback? (via The Presurfer)
Another web widget I have to add to my blog to stay cool? No, it's another moustache-growing contest, organized to support "The Institute of Cancer Research's national campaign to raise awareness and funding for male cancers". What do moustaches have to do with "male cancers"? Don't ask. Why did I say "another"? Because the biennial
World Beard and Moustache Championships are coming to Carson City, Nevada, November 1st. Of course some media have already given
this man the title of "World's Longest Moustache" (at least those who paid him $5 to take his picture).
posted by wendell
on Sep 21, 2003 -
13 comments
The Quest announced by
LitKicks marries sudden fiction (and poetry, and nonfiction) workshop dynamics to a survivor-like competitive format, starting October 1, with six winners to be published in a book featuring the best work from the Quest. It's open to all, costs
$20 to enter, and requires a free membership in the LitKicks site, which is a thriving online literary community as it is. More info in the
FAQ. I think this may work better for me than NaNoWriMo would.
posted by xian
on Sep 16, 2003 -
4 comments
The BBC Is Looking For The Best Sandwich In The World: Can you help? Sandwiches are supposedly easy but, come to think of it,
perfect sandwiches are actually quite difficult to invent and produce. Bread gets wet; lettuce wilts; flavours and textures clash. Personally, I like English
tea sandwiches best; though the
Mediterranean versions are a meal in themselves. But if you had to stake your life and reputation on one fulfilling and tastebud-enticing sandwich, which one would it be? To go.
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Sep 6, 2003 -
63 comments
Ars Magna hosts The Anagrammy Awards, a monthly anagram competition. This got me thinking that we could "rearrange" the big acronym thread from a few weeks ago so that the first word or phrase of a comment would be an anagram of the last word or phrase of the previous comment.
Sort of like this.
posted by coudal
on Aug 22, 2003 -
25 comments
If you're the type who gets creative when you drink a lot, the folks at
Canstruction have a few ideas about what you can do with the discarded empties. Here's a
slide show of some good examples, and here are the winners of their contests in
2002 &
2003 respectively.
posted by jonson
on Jul 25, 2003 -
14 comments
Dangerous Road Signs. Okay, so, I'm posting a link to a photoshop contest: I'm lame, that's a long established fact. That said, some of these really did amuse me - take a gander if you're up for a laugh.
posted by jonson
on Jun 14, 2003 -
17 comments
Need a job? The winner of the
Google Puzzle Contest might recieve a prestigious spot in the Google engineering labs. So whip out all your old
Martin Gardner books and get practicing, because the competition is on May 1st (and registration closes today).
posted by kaibutsu
on May 29, 2003 -
6 comments
Yesterday I saw a wonderful movie -
Spellbound - a documentary about the annual
Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee - which won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at
SXSW.
It explores the dynamics surrounding kids and parents desire for success in the
competition, reconciliation with failure and differing models of education, competition and success.
When I was a kid I was on the TV show
It's Academic - along with lots of other famous faces. While you
may want to
make fun of the show - I still remember it fondly. My parents were happy to see me compete but generally
unconcerned about the outcome in any way. Now we've got
Math Olympics, the
Academic Decathlon and a host of other competitive ventures. Any other MeFites remember school days competitions and the drive to succeed?
posted by dhacker
on Oct 21, 2002 -
29 comments
Paper Towels Go Interactive! Well, the contest is moving on to its next stages, but soon, Georgia-Pacific will be holding online voting for it's new "logo" or "mascot" for Brawny (tm) paper towels brand. You can sign up at the link above for a heads-up to the voting, or just check back later. What is the world coming to. And to think, I found this via the Wall St. Journal this a.m.
posted by djspicerack
on Oct 4, 2002 -
9 comments
It starts with Delaware... Over at Google Answers, a Microsoft Games Studio employee has posted a most interesting puzzle to solve. Over the course of the last twenty
months a list of states has been gradually revealed by his boss, but under what criteria are they listed? He's giving $200.00 to the winner; just think of
what you could
buy. The fine folks at the
Straight Dope are already on the case. To the Googlemobile! [via
Cardhouse]
posted by thewittyname
on Aug 22, 2002 -
75 comments
Accusations hurled at hot dog contest! Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi scarfed down 50.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes at Nathan's Famous Fourth of July international hot dog eating contest... but did he keep them all down for long enough? And you thought the National Spelling Bee Championships were intense!
posted by krunk
on Jul 5, 2002 -
25 comments
Swear down the phone and win a prize. Not much else to say really, apart from it is puerile and the whole site is in questionable taste. It might amuse the more
FARK minded amongst us though, such as myself. Found at
b3ta.
posted by Fat Buddha
on May 4, 2002 -
2 comments
The Pulitzer Prizes 2002. The New York Times gets 7; Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" gets Best Fiction; and Best On-Screen Kiss goes to Britney Spears and the guy from "Crossroads" because it made jurists William Safire and Henry Louis Gates Jr. "all teary-eyed."
posted by adrober
on Apr 8, 2002 -
10 comments
Do you dream of living on a secluded island surrounded by all of the
ice cream you could eat? Here is your
chance! And have you ever heard of anyone actually winning one of these essay contests?
posted by Dinzie
on Dec 13, 2001 -
13 comments
Vote Wil Wheaton 'Entertainer of the Year' in Entertainment Weekly's poll. As one Farkster put it, "a vote for Wil Wheaton is a vote for messing with the normals." Won't Britney Spears be crushed? At the moment "Wil" is leading, but his evil twin "Will" is coming up fast.
posted by fleener
on Nov 22, 2001 -
64 comments
Don't register for contests at work? Man wins new BMW...for his employers. While this case actually makes sense, i could see situations where employees could win prizes on company time and have a problem. I would be So bummed out.
posted by th3ph17
on Aug 30, 2001 -
12 comments
Scientists Offer Cash, Possible Immortality The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is conducting a contest for the best "Plutonium Memorial" design. Are you ready to think out of the box? Make sure to incorporate classic design elements, as the contents will have a half-life of
24,000 years. It would be a shame to have our distant descendants mock our architecture. P.S. I encourage residents of the
Denver metropolitan area to enter the contest.
posted by JDC8
on Jul 6, 2001 -
5 comments
Name That Tune, Mr. Spock! Finding
two of the same unforeseeable thing online
entirely by accident raises an eyebrow. Can you name all the tunes in Glenn McDonald's
Audiotests or the equivalent faux-
Survivor task by
Ron Yeany et al.? (The latter links directly to an MP3 file. See
contest page.) ¶ Also, Glenn (
ibid.) has an hilarious
photo album. And who can explain the
reference in the title of this posting?
posted by joeclark
on Jun 17, 2001 -
4 comments
I'll be giving $50 to some Metafilter user (or group of users). The winner will be the person who links to the item that I consider to be "coolest." I set the bar here: in order to win, your item must be at least as cool as
this, otherwise, I will declare myself the winner.
Aside from the increased size of the prize (the result of a few users who chipped in to the collection I took up), all other rules are identical to those of last year's Metafilter $30 Giveaway.
I will make my decision at 5 pm Friday, Chicago time.
posted by jbushnell
on May 17, 2001 -
122 comments
At first I found
Junkyard Wars (imported) and thought it was the funniest show on TV. Then I found
Iron Chef (also imported) and it was even better. I got hooked. Now I've found
BattleBots (homegrown! Buy American!), and I have to wonder if TV has any more pleasant surprises for me. As long as I stay away from the big networks I seem to do fine.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Feb 25, 2001 -
21 comments
