Sometimes you guys can be trying. Consider, for instance, your pathological reluctance to click on hyperlinks that appear within a post.

Frequently, I spend hours carefully crafting clever posts intended to make you laugh your ass off. Everyone loves to laugh, right? So, I'm doing you a favor! Sometimes, as part of the subtle and nuanced comedic process, I require you, my readers, to click upon a link or two.

Unsurprisingly, these links are absolutely CRITICAL to "getting the joke."

And yet, no matter how many times I beg, berate and beseech ... "PLEASE, YOU MUST CLICK ON THIS LINK" ... a good many of you, don't.

Instead, you fill my comment sections with lament:

"Quill ... I don't get it. Did I miss something? Everyone else is laughing."

"Did you click on the links?

"No."

"Can you think of a strategy that might resolve your present predicament?"

"Hmmm ... not off the top of my head."

A not insignificant number of you suffer from a psychological disorder for which I've recently coined a term: LUNATICS (Link-Undermining Neuropsychosis And Traumatically Induced (non)Clicking Syndrome). For the sake of sounding scientific, I refrained from adding an expletive as an adjective.

As a result of some combination of traumatic brain injury and sundry psychological impairments, LUNATICS cannot bring themselves to click upon that which is self-evidently necessary to click upon ... as evidenced by my explicitly instructing you:

"This is a thing upon which you MUST click."

So, how ought one go about addressing this LUNATICS problem? I can promise you that public shaming doesn't work, does it @cryptogee, @old-guy-photos and @d-pend?

As a social experiment, I've decided to run a Contest. It has two objectives. To:

1. Force you to practice clicking on links; and

2. Satiate my desire for revenge.



Contest Instructions

1. Below is a "Paragraph to be Completed" that you complete by filling in the blanks.

2. Each blank is numbered and corresponds to a clue (below the paragraph) that is hyperlinked to a previous post that provides the information you'll need to fill in the blank. Some blanks may require minor Googling.

3. Each underscored line in the blank corresponds to a letter in the missing word(s).

4. Once you've completed the task, copy-paste the "Paragraph to be Completed," with all the blanks filled in, into the comments section of this post.

5. The Prizes for the Contest will be as follows (HBI = Hive Basic Income): 1st Place: 15 HBI / 2nd Place: 7 HBI / 3rd, 4th & 5th Places: 1 HBI. The Prizes will be awarded to the five contestants, in the time-order of their submissions, who submit a correctly completed paragraph.

6. WARNING: Don't assume that other entries are correct and either give up or copy their answers. I'm notoriously mean-spirited and deliberately included a couple of curveballs to ensnare contestants.



Paragraph to be Completed

QuillFire is an absolutely amazing author and should be getting paid a lot more on posts than he does. He possesses the strategic vision of ________ _________ [1], the satirical skills of ______ _______ [2] and the eclectic yet tasteful sensibilities of _____ _______ [3]. Given his charm and charisma, Quill (not surprisingly) attracts the most beautiful women, most notably ____ ____ [4], and it is such magnetic persona that prevents other beautiful women like @______ [5] from punishing his ass for his seeming inability to follow even the simplest of rules.

Poetry, prose or satire ... truly we live in the Age of QuillFire. And hence, I __________ {fill in your username}, do hereby nominate QuillFire for the _____ _____ ___ __________ [6].

[1] Clue: Artillery barrage ... and bayonet charge

[2] Clue: Satire ... A Quill's Fire

[3] Clue: owns a mansion in Hawaii and a red Ferrari

[4] Clue: "Quill, you gorgeous piece of man-flesh"

[5] Clue: Her lessons impart

[6] Clue: dynamite









So there it is. Heal thyself of thine affliction.

Quill









All images are linked to source, are QuillFire originals or are modifications of images in the public domain. Videos and images may also be parodies of original works, therefore relying upon applicable exemptions from copyright.