RumourQuest 2006 is now closed.

And the anouncement you've all been waiting for... Thank you to everyone that took part. I have been really impressed by the standard of entries to this 'ere quest of mine. You've all done me proud. I like to think that, in some small way, you're all winners. However, these people are better winners than the rest of you:

  • Tato takes first place... there are so many reasons why. Three entries, two reported escapes, and *THIS PORTION OF THE SENTENCE HAS BEEN CENSORED.* I'm easily amused, I know.
  • The Custodian takes second for messing with the heads of anyone who owns an iPod, and for having real references
  • Jet-Poop and Bitriot take joint third for inspired word usage: Jet-Poop for the phrase "presidential twins/eldritch cthulhoid octo-whores Jenna and Barbara Bush"; and Bitriot for the mental image supplied by "Typically, the male will follow a female over the course of several weeks and launch a sudden attack, sex organs already erect, hoping to inseminate her by surprise."

...oh, and Bol probably deserves a lifetime achievement award for the legendary Pete Doherty.

Everyone else will get a ching off me, but it's going to take a while because there's twenty of you and I only get one ching a day... Thank you once again for taking part, and I hope to see you all again next year.

paraclete, out.

P.S TenMinJoe gets special mention because no one realised that his writeup was all lies. The only reason this wasn't prizeworthy is because only Londoners would know what an Oyster Card is, and even then, half of them don't know either. However, his subtle lying skills have marked him out as being the next Alastair Campbell...


BREAKOUT!

As we all know (or at least I hope you have all remembered), part of the point of RumourQuest 2006 was to try to achieve writeup breakout from the Mothership E2. With this is mind (because it counts towards the eventual handing out of prizes), I implore all entrants to do a quick lookout over the web to see if their baby has escaped into the wide open world. If you find a trail, give me a link and I'll put it up here...

  • Tato came across the smoking topic of Brokebackage over here (It also made it onto digg, but some sharp-eyed editor identified it as rumour...)
  • The Custodian has managed to confuse this poor lad... His iPod's going to kept in a lead box from this moment forth, me-thinks. He's also managed to make it onto digg... man, those fools'll believe just about ANYTHING.

Psssssst. You. Yes, you. Over here. I’ve got something to tell you.

You know that rumour going around about there being a Quest for Rumour starting at 00:00 on 23rd March 2006? It’s all true. Every word of it. Especially the ones about jaypea being Hal’s troll account, created to sexually frustrate the love-starved men of E2. Oh, wait, the rumour might have been that actually it’s Hal that is the troll account, created by jaypea to sexually frustrate the love-starved men of E2. I can’t remember now. If someone could clear that one up, I’d be appreciative.

There’s no one alive who doesn’t enjoy hearing salacious rumours about their fellow man. Especially the famous ones. For instance, Richard Gere’s reputation for having an anal fondness for gerbils came about from the fact that he’d had a mole excised from a buttock; remember, in the world of rumour and intrigue, the art of the Chinese whisper is your friend. Jamie Lee Curtis is isn’t actually a hermaphrodite though; don’t believe the rumours about that one.

So, what exactly is it that I’m looking for with this quest? Well, those who haven’t read Bol’s Pete Doherty writeup should do so now. Read it? Good. It was lies, every word, especially the ones at the end about the man having an incredible musical talent. Bol’s writeup managed something that, here at E2, should be considered a major achievement. It escaped. Before we knew it, the rumour that Pete Doherty was a pet project perpetrated by the KLF was posted to music boards far and wide. People believed it. Some people even lied through their teeth and backed it up, saying that they’d known about the hoax for ages. The reason it did so well is because we all really wanted it to be true.

This just in! Apparently, Pete Doherty went even further than I realised. In the words of the man himself: bol says re RumourQuest 2006: Also, this doesn't mention that my writeup was read on air by Stuart Marconie on BBC radio, and Dave Fanning (the man who discovered U2) on RTE. Big me up, bitch! What can I say? Bol has set the bar by which you shall all be measured.

I want more of the same. Quality is key, and there must be a vague air of believability (or claims so outrageous that you want to believe them) of the gossip that you write.

There are rules though. The first is that you must, must, must make it perfectly clear at some point in the writeup that it’s a load of outright, bold-faced lies. Whilst being sued for slander would be a great piece of publicity for RumourQuest 2006, it’s in your own interest not to end up in court being sued by Roy Orbison’s estate because of your claim that he held a large number of shares in the company that makes Saran wrap.

The second is that it should strive to be humorous. I do not want to see any writeups that are malicious in nature. The subject of your writeup can be anyone or anything that you wish, but I advise that if you’re going to write about another noder, you first make sure that they have no objections to being outed as a teenage whore called Susan. Anything that causes hurt or offence will mostly likely be nuked, and, more than that, dogs will bark at you in the street, small children shall fear you even more than they do already, and wherever you go in life the rain shall follow; all this is punishment for being a bad person.

I think that should be all with regard to the hard and fast rules, but I’m kinda flying by the seat of my pants on this one, and so reserve the right to add as I see fit. This Quest has not been endorsed by the management, and I have in fact heard a rumour that they heartily disapprove of the venture because they think it won’t be adding quality to the E2 database. I want you to prove them wrong.

The lack of endorsement does mean that I’ve got no idea how I’m going to be rewarding the quality contributions, the best I’m going to be able to do on my lonesome is show my approval with a ching. I may send the top three writeups (as judged by myself) some kind of gift through the post though. I’ve heard that ascorbic’s been doing nude poses for SharQ (all in the name of art, no rumours of Brokebacking, thank-you), so maybe I’ll see if I can’t send you one of the photos that’s been signed by both the artist and the subject. It’ll be worth a fortune one day, assuming that either of them get their big break into the world of showbusiness thanks to that pomelo video.

Any write-ups that escape from E2 into the wider picture will garner special praise and attention. If it starts poping up in other areas of the internet, you shall be the toast of the catbox. Anything that actually makes it into the gossip columns in the real world will confer a god-like reputation upon the author for the rest of their noding career.

You need to send me a message telling me when you’ve completed an entry, and I shall list it here. Daylogs are acceptable, but I encourage you to give it its own nodeshell to make it stand out. If you get any heck from the $ and @ brigade, tell them to come talk to me about it.

So, you have 24 hours notice. Get those pens out and lie like you've never lied before. Rumour has it that RumourQuest will be running till the 1st April, 31st March*, 23:59 server time, giving us a whole ten nine days worth of sporadic pant fires across the World.

Don't look now, but apparently...

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