Barttimesnow Topic-Contest Winner!

The official results are in! We, here at Barttimesnow, would like to thank the millions of participants from all over the world! We have spent countless hours opening fan mail and reading through your entries. Because of your tireless enthusiasm and innumerable entries, we have spent far too many hours deciding on a winner. (AKA I lost my job and have been banned from any and all Foot Locker retail stores. I guess that’s a different story… a story that may or may not be told.)

We put all the entries in a hat –but because there were millions and millions of entries. and only so many can fit in my Florida Marlins baseball cap, we put as many as could fit in the cap and picked one. We then repeated this process over and over and over again, until we picked enough ‘winners’ to fill the cap one last time. We then pulled the final winning entry from the cap…. And we then drew one more time because we didn’t like the idea of writing about how ‘Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize’. (Really people? I said ‘interesting’ and ‘fun’ ideas… not to mention ideas that can be legitimately argued...) But we are proud to announce that after many reshuffles and a few scratched entries, we have chosen a winner.

And the winner is…ahem, drumroll please. … The winner is… now, where did that piece of paper go… I know it’s around here somewhere. … hang on, I’ll be right back… Hey, Dan! Have you seen that paper… that paper I was writing on… yes, I know how to write… yes, that also means I know how to read… I don’t know, probably like two days ago… it looked like a piece of paper, with writing on it… what do you mean ‘was it well written’?!... I’d say my penmanship nearly matches my grammatical schematics… yeah, I don’t know where that drumming is coming from… do you know where that paper is or not?... no, I do NOT need a Kleenex, thank you very much!… …

Sorry about that. Found it. The winner is:... Oh that's terrible. I demand a recount.

Are you sure you want to...

Thursday. THA-hurs-day. Thirsty. Yes. It is that day. Not quite the weekend, but not really a weekday. And you're stuck at work/summer school/in-laws. And you need a beverage. So you decide to check out Bart's blog. It HAS been a while, hasn't it? You're expecting another mild romp through the coursing adventure of what was formerly known as 'A Bart's Life'. Hmmm... not so. You quickly scan the pictures of Hanley Ramirez to make sure he hasn't changed any of them... Nope. The All-Star is still there, in All his glory.

Then, you hear it. The pluck of a banjo and the twang of a southern accent. You're confused. You don't quite know what you're hearing... is it from YOUR I-tunes? ... No. You check to see if you left the radio on... that's a negative as well. All of a sudden the sweet melodic voice of Taylor Swift slides through your ear canal. 'AAAAArg,' you think. 'Where is that dag-blasted music coming from?' You can't take it any more. It's time to pull a move from 'The Bartlot' and lace up your Chuck Taylors and make a run for it. You scroll frantically for the player on Bart's blog. You scroll and scroll and scroll. ... And scroll.

You're almost in panic mode now. And do you know what panic leads to? Acceptance. There's no way you'll let this upbeat, pop-like rubbish get the best of you! Is there any way out of 'The Bartrix'?! You finally make it down to the player... but right as you're about to push the 'stop' button YOU stop. You can't believe it! You're tapping your foot to the likes of Kellie Pickler! 'Noooooooooooooo!'

Yes. I know what you thought. You thought you could just shut it off. You thought you could beat the system. But you couldn't. And you didn't. And guess what? Now you're hooked to country music. Living in Wyoming will do that to you. So will not having the strength to push the stupid 'stop' button. At least I can use the first one as an excuse... what about you?