skepticlawyer

A while ago, we here at Catallaxy decided that the best way to respond to Australia’s very own thick sheik was to take the piss out of him. Jason started referring to him as Australian Islam’s Sir Les Patterson, while I went a step further and launched a funnies competition. Regular commenter JC kicked in some prizemoney, and hey, presto - we suddenly had $200 smackeroonies to give away. Entries started rolling in, and pretty soon we had plenty of examples of excellent Aussie humour to be going on with.

Well, we finally got off our collective butt this evening and picked out the winners. We decided to go for a first prize of $100 and two runners’ up prizes of $50, partly because we received so many good entries and partly to spread the love around. As far as we know, running a competition like this is a first for the Australian blogosphere. We’re hoping it isn’t the last, and that it represents yet another interesting direction for Aussie blogging.

Without further ado, the winner is the Sublimely Gothic Cowgirl - aka Tanja Stark - with her Chronicles of Hilalia, sure fire evidence that she is - as Ken Parish once pointed out - a black-belt photoshopper with a deliciously twisted sense of humour. From the outset, her pisstake stood out as a very fine example of just what artistic talent and humour can do when you’re dealing with bigotry and intolerance.

Choosing the two runners-up proved to be far more challenging, as a lot of people had (by then) decided to riff on the movie poster theme, often very amusingly. In the end, we figured that it would be a bit non-U to hand out prizes to anyone who was a Catallaxy staffwriter, which meant Kitty’s very funny James Bond ripoff and Heath G’s Sheiks on a Plane were rendered ineligible. Even then, we were still rather rogered as so many other good entries had come in.

By the narrowest of margins, the two $50 awards go to the folks at Quite Sensible for their traditional (but terrific) editorial cartoon, Out of Context, and to Legal Eagle for her simple but highly effective riff on Whiskas cat-foods. Highly commended - but no more moolah to dole out, alas - are Tim Train’s various wordplays over at his place. I’d also recommend a visit to TimT’s comments threads, where sundry arty types get witty on the punning, parody and pisstakes front.

Now - the all-important question - how do the winners claim their dosh? To make it easier for us, please set up a paypal account and leave a comment on this thread using the same email you use for your paypal account. That way we don’t have to worry about sending cheques out and you’ll get your moolah much more speedily. I have email addresses for everyone but the folks at Quite Sensible, and since I don’t want to be doling out dosh to the wrong people, I’d recommend they also contact Jason on catallaxy at yahoo dot com so that we both have the correct address.

All that aside, follow the various links to the entries, and rest assured that the best way to deal with a bloke like the sheik is to laugh at him. I’m damn sure he enjoys being taken so seriously. I’m also damn sure he doesn’t take too kindly to being laughed at.