WEEKLY WHINE

Administrative notes for JAN 2014

by Reginald J Goober

Hi. How do you feel about GoobNet? Are you enjoying your GoobNet experience? If not, it may be because you are not participating in enough of our special activities. So I would like to take this moment to notify you of some of our special activities.

If these activities fail to enhance your GoobNet experience, please be sure to notify me right away at <reg‍@‍goobnet.net>. You may also get in touch with some of our brilliant technicians who can help you renew or replace your GoobNet experience.

HALLOWEEN PARTY

I’d like to take this moment to apologise for our failure to post a summary of last year’s Halloween party. Rest assured that we did have one. However, the events that occurred on that balmy night in New Orleans were too alarming and shocking for us to contemplate at first. Now that we have had about three months to think about what happened there, I believe we have found a way to report it to you, so you’ll be able to look forward to that. Naturally, names, words, and faces will be changed to protect the guilty.

PENDING DELETION

Our Pending Deletion scheme has been a great success. Already we have deleted 66 people, places, or things, from the primary status of the Denver Broncos’ blue jerseys to that nasal tinge to Scarlett Johansson’s voice. And we owe it all to our rapidly growing Pending Deletion community, which has repeatedly been nominating, and voting on, candidates to be deleted. If this sounds like fun to you, why not join up? In GoobNet’s Pending Deletion scheme, your voice makes a difference. Unless, of course, it’s pending for deletion.

SUPER FACTUAL ERROR

As you know, one of the many factual errors here on GoobNet is periodically designated the Super Factual Error, and we award a bonus of 65,536 GoobNet Silly Bucks to the first person who correctly identifies it. The current Super Factual Error has not been spotted for more than a year, so if you have never before found a Super Factual Error, this is your chance!

Please note that the outdated counts in the Weekly Whine Top Keywords list are not the Super Factual Error. They are an ordinary factual error.

REHEARSED REVENUE

Our leading long play game, Rehearsed Revenue, has recently completed its fourth iteration, and we saw our first two time champion. The player with the user name wencheslas81, who won the second iteration in 2012, has won the fourth iteration as well. So congratulations, player with the user name wencheslas81. Can you beat him, her, or it? The fifth iteration begins in a few weeks, so sign up now!

FRIENDS OF ANGER

We are pleased to announce a new long play game, Friends of Anger. This game will see players attempt to register the best expressions of anger and fury. But each entry will be judged by fellow players, so every participant will need to be adept at responding to the community. We believe that Friends of Anger will present a unique challenge to both novices and experienced players of online games.

MEN’S WORLD CUP

Have you ever wanted to participate in a Men’s World Cup? Well, now you can! The 2014 Men’s World Cup is coming to Brazil starting THU 12 JUN 2014, and we want you to be a part of it. As you prepare yourself and your friends for this tournament, please send us your images, sounds, smells, and video. You’ll be able to follow along with all of your GoobNet friends and see what is happening up and down the country.

Warning: Tournament may contain protests.

SILLY BONUS

The GoobNet Silly Bonus has been won 618 times by 430 different individuals since its introduction. However, most of those individuals were Google bots. The consequences of this fact are that less than fifty actual humans have ever won the Silly Bonus, and that Google now owns a significant quantity of Silly Bucks. We look forward to seeing what Larry Page will purchase with those Silly Bucks. Our recommendation is the GoobNet Multiple Account Decoupling Device for Ensuring No Institutions Needlessly Group, a service that can be used to prevent Google from automatically generating accounts for useless services that you neither need nor want, like Picasa, Latitude, and Google Plus.

ESSAY CONTEST

We have not had a GoobNet Essay Contest in some time, so let’s go ahead and do that. This time, we would like essays of between 6,000 and 7,000 words, of which at least 90% must be English. Furthermore, at least thirty numbers must be included [if you number your sections, the section numbers do not count]. You may submit entries for any or all of the following topics.

• Which EU member nation or nations should host Pogopalooza? Why?
• In the United States, the Subway sandwich chain has repeatedly held monthlong promotions in which any footlong sandwich costs US$5. Originally, this was literally true: US$5 was charged for each footlong sandwich. Today, however, the promotion has a small but important alteration: any regular footlong sandwich is US$5, which rules out the good ones. Is this a sensible business move, or is it a cynical ploy to rip off their customers? Support your answer with a proof.
• Which celebrity, past or present, is the most unlike Philip II of Macedonia, and what would you say to this celebrity to convince him or her to star in a film titled The Complete Opposite of Philip II of Macedonia?

The winning essay in each category will receive 65,536 GoobNet Silly Bucks and will be our guest at the 2014 Question Mark Festival, to be held in the most questionable city on Earth: Oakland, CA, USA. Good luck, and happy writing.