misachan | Entries tagged with gishwhes

Did you all miss my interminable word count posts? If so, you're in luck!

I actually don't think this is going to wind up as long as Outrun My Gun; my outline for this is both shorter and more detailed, which is good because, you know, deadlines. They're a comin'. Especially since I'm writing for

spn_in_space too, and my God, why am I doing this? River's voice is hard! I'd forgotten that! So hard!

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So the GISHWHES winner is...actually, no one yet. Here, have it straight from the overlord:

Greetings Gishwhesheans!

The winner is... As yet undetermined.

Allow me to explain my process in judging the literally 10s of thousands of items submitted. As you know, I like to be thorough and fair, so I look at each submission for 5 minutes without blinking. Then, I record my impressions in essay form. (If I blink, I start the clock again.) Then, to make sure there is not a circadian bias, I also recheck each submission at midnight, sunrise, high noon, and sunset, and again record my feelings, this time in the form of improvised song.

Also, to make sure I am really giving each masterpiece its due, I dream about the items during brief concussion-induced black-outs throughout the day and when I come to, I paint my dreams in oil on large canvases. As a final precaution, to eliminate human error, I share my essays, songs, and paintings with a particle physicist, a statistician, an ordained priest, and a psychotherapist, and make an audio recording of their feedback in an invented language only we speak. Then, and only then, do we assign points. While this is obviously an efficient process, it does take some time.

I anticipate announcing the winning team at least 18 hours before our trip to Rome in April. That should give you enough time to weave a monkey hat, throw on your leaf or cotton candy suit, and hitch a ride on one of our now infamous flying Christmas trees to join me in Rome.

Please stay tuned to the updates page for...well...updates and other things.

Also, by popular demand, we will be soon be opening our official GISHWHES 2011 Novelty shop. What else would we offer there but a GISHWHES coffee table book with images & quotes, a special calendar, t-shirts, and of course, aerosol cans of Official GISHWHES 2011 Fish Spray (while supplies last)?

I'd like to gab with you further, but unfortunately, I've got 1,032 items to look at today, starting with Item #64 (a live bull taken to a boxing match in Mexico) which is strange, because I'm looking at a picture of a child's stuffed cow propped in front of a magazine advertisement of a boxing match from 1972.

Thank you for following the Rules of the hunt.

And that's why I love you,

Misha.

If anyone's wondering what's he means about infamous Christmas trees, that would be how one of the teams attached so many balloons to a Christmas tree that it flew away.

The world is lucky the man uses his absurd power for good. Or at least for lolz.

***

Who else is signed up for

fandom_stocking? If you are, leave a link here so perhaps a Christmas elf will leave you a present! Assuming the elf still has anything left in the tank by then, of course.

The very first Dean/Cas fic I ever wrote was for

fandom_stocking, and fills I did last year were my first little baby steps into the fandom, so I'll always have a soft spot for it. (mine's here)

***

Also, I left so many prompts in this today:

You should too! (It could use more SPN prompts! Incredibly obvious hint!)

Okay, so it's not quite that dramatic. What happened was Monday night while I was on my way home I got a call from one of my friends who'd dropped by early to prep for game that went like this: "So...yeah, just wanted to give you a heads up, your upstairs neighbor's pipe burst right over your kitchen and there's a lot of water. I mean, it's a lake." Then I hear banging and shouting and my neighbor apologizing, and my friend telling him, "No, seriously, you need to go get a tetanus shot." Then he came back on the line and said, "So, yeah, you should pick up some paper towels." I also heard the words "starting to look like Atlantis in here."

I said, "It sounds like I should pick up a mop." (I only had a swiffer mop, not a omg-all-the-water mop.)

"Yeah, that sound like a good idea. Okay, we're gonna go shut off the water now."

So I ran back to CVS and picked up a mop and a flashlight (water was running right over the light so no one wanted to turn it on) and All The Paper Towels. And fortunately by the time I got home the water had mostly stopped and while the floor was wet, it wasn't Atlantis wet and it was isolated to just the one room.

Here's the thing: the only reason I got the call in the first place was because I'd stopped at CVS to buy glue to attempt a last minute GISHWHES item. Otherwise I would have been on the highway and I don't answer my phone when I'm driving. Only my desire to build the Washington Monument out of gummi bears kept me from walking unprepared into a flooded kitchen with no way to clean it up! Thank you, Misha!

(as a side note, the clean-up meant I did not actually have time to construct said tower. This leaves me with two packages of gummi bears to dispose of. I know, you're asking however will I cope?:)

So that was fun. I was just so happy when the water got turned back on. And today we had to do ALLLLL the dishes because disgusting yellow rust water got into that cabinet and all over everything.

Ugh. I am tired of this whole adulthood thing.

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I got my

deancas_xmas confirmation, so I know they have it and that's done and taken care of. \o/ I think it's pretty blindly obvious it's mine, but it would be to me, after all.:)

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There should be fic sometime tomorrow. Also, it is entirely

morganoconner's fault.

Okay, not entirely. But mostly.:)

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My brain has been plotting out a high school AU. I don't want it to. Please tell it to stop.

I had a sort of-productive weekend! I wrote two fics, one I just posted a little bit ago: The Beginning Is Always Before Us, one of my semi-annual attempts to be literary.:) The prompt was an absolutely gorgeous Pablo Neruda poem, and obviously I don't come anywhere near matching that I'm rather pleased with it. I've always liked playing with the idea that Cas remade Dean, that he knows him down to his bones. And I think it's the first time I've written Dean's POV without him swearing in the narration. \o/

The other fic I'll post in a couple days; it's a Uriel-POV-on-S4 fic and yes, I know that means maybe two people will care.:) (and one of those two beta read it!) I just really love that enormous SOB.

Needless to say, neither of those were what I was supposed to be writing this weekend. I have to make up for lost time now, especially since the time is rapidly approaching when I have to buckle down on my

jimmybigbang.

Oh, and I submitted my fic for

deancas_xmas! *confetti* And I actually managed to submit an item for Gishwhes, proving that I'm not a useless drain on my team! (I'm hoping to get one more in under the deadline. I just need better glue. Gummy bears are apparently a much more difficult art medium than I'd thought.:)

How went everyone else's weekend?

From last night:

@mishacollins: The tenuous grasp i had on sanity has now slipped completely away. Friday night & I'm on a Skype conference call about database repair.15 hours ago

@mishacollins: I have to say i'm kind of proud that your saboteur rate was not, 1 or 2 people, but about 20% of registrants. You're very antiestablishment! 15 hours ago

@mishacollins: Hey, wait a minute. This isn't right. You were supposed to be pulling all-nighters trying to pull shit together, not me. This is backwards.15 hours ago

@mishacollins: we just sent out emails. Anyone get them yet? 13 hours ago

@mishacollins: Tech support says 6k emails will gradually roll out in 3 hours. We'll post the list in 3 hrs. Break a leg. i'm going to sleep. 12 hours ago

There was more, but those were the highlights.:) Two hours ago, in my inbox:

Hey guys,

The good new is we got everyone sorted into teams at around 1 AM, my time. The not-so good news is when we sent out the 6000 team-assigning emails, the servers crashed. We are simply too big for the Internet thingy.

The reason you're receiving this email is that Constant Contact apparently sends emails through massive bandwidth channels whereas I have created pneumatic tubes.

We are now resending the messages very carefully, treating each message as if it were a tiny, wounded, fledgling bird. Before sending each batch, we are whispering words of encouragement to the messages and saying silent prayers. Hopefully this gentle, coaxing approach will help them reach you. As a backup, I have also been on the phone with a carrier pigeon supplier this morning.

You will get your team assignment. The items list will be posted. As malicious as i can be, i have not been changing the start time just to wear you down, though i wouldn't put that past me.

By way of consolation, we have added another trip to Rome. The winning team will be taken to Rome and, if your team submits at least 5 items, your name will be put in a lottery to join the winning team.

Also, we will be extending the deadline for the Hunt because of the delay in starting.

Remain vigilant! We will prevail!

Your not-so-humble servant,

Misha

*giggles helplessly*

I am full of hibachi. Mmmm, hibachi.

***

I guess I didn't mess things up too badly, because this was in my inbox after dinner:

GISHWHESHEANS,

Unfortunately, many of you thought it would be hilarious when you were registering to enter "imaginary" friends into the requested teammate field including "Misha Collins", "the Queen of England" and "Sherlock Holmes".

Congratulations on your little database implosion experiment. It worked. We had intended to use our automated team-formation program, but now we must manually sort the 6000 of you into teams of 10.

We are posting the Rules of The Hunt now. However, we aren't going to post the Items List until we have finished assigning you all to teams which should be very soon.

As soon as everyone has been assigned to a team, the items list will be posted and you can go hog-wild.

On other fronts:

1. Read the Rules and Regulations VERY CAREFULLY. This is your Bible for the next week and a half. You must follow all of the rules, so don't skim.
2. Be sure to check this page at least once every 24 hours during The Hunt, per the rules and regulations. It is your "update" page for all things important to the Hunt.
3. It is your responsibility to communicate with your teammates.
4. We suggest using phone, email, skype, and backpackit (they have a 30-day free trial) to manage your hunt.
5. If you have a problem with one or more of your teammates, that's life, work it out, don't complain to us.
6. Submit your items on our submit page per the Rules and Regulations.

Now i know some of you are chomping at the bit to get started, so without telling you exactly what the items are, i'm going to let you know a few of the ingredients that will be going into some of the items to give you a head start. You might want to start assembling some of the following: Socks, beer cozies, cotton candy, a comptometer, A Nobel Prize winner, sock monkey hats, an Eye of The Tiger LP, yoga students, mannequins, kale, mathematicians and most importantly, caffeinated beverages.

Drink the Kool-Aid, it's delicious.

Misha

I don't know what amuses me more, that enough people reverted back to being seventh graders passing around an attendance sheet to break the database or that no one seems to have seen that coming.:)

(6000 people!)

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Is this a bad time to admit that I'm not very good at scavenger hunts?