TN Fall Contest: Friends, Romans, Awesomes
Lend me your…eyes? I don’t know. Anyway: 62 percent right now. I’ve spent four of my five grand and will probably drop the rest over the weekend. And now, to answer a few questions:
“How come The Final Awesome isn’t showing up on the leaderboard?”
A couple of reasons. First of all, I think the rest of the blogs doing Challenges are a little sick of the words “Tomato” and “Nation” at the top of the lists all the time, so, in the Challenge backend, I didn’t check off a category. Second of all, the DC brain trust may combine all of the TN donation rounds into one giant Challenge at some point, and that one will show up on the leaderboard.
In other words: this is by design, and is not something Donors Choose decided to do without my input or anything.
“I’m not sure what counts as a receipt — what should I send you?”
If you got any notification from Donors Choose — a note from the teacher, a donation receipt, a PDF from Zach — that counts.
You are not entered in the contest unless you get a note FROM ME saying your entry was logged. If you’ve forwarded me your proof but haven’t gotten a response, check your junk/spam folder, or resend it and “friend” my email: sars at tomatonation dot com.
“How long do I have to send you my receipt?”
Until October 31 at 11:59 PM ET.
“Does the amount of my donation dictate what prize I might receive?”
No. I don’t even look at that. Here’s how it works: 1. I count up the total number of prizes; 2. the cats select an equal number of winners; 3. I shuffle the winners into a random order and go down the list, with the first on the list getting to pick first from the prize list, the second picking second, et cetera.
You can live in Europe, or down the street, or be my dad, or give $10 or ten times a hundred; it doesn’t matter. Random. As random as my cats can make it.
“How random is that…exactly?”
Not five minutes ago, Little Joe was licking a hat. Meeting adjourned.
“If we finish this Challenge, will you set us a new one?”
Abso-toot-ly. (“Abso-toot-ly,” “anyhoodle” — I’m Ned Flanders, that’s great.)
“Are the brown ‘Indian corn’ candy corns in the Brach’s Autumn Mix good?”
NO THEY ARE NOT. Do not dick up my candy corn with chocolate, Brach’s!
“It’s…actually cocoid flavoring.”
I DON’T CARE DON’T DO THAT.
Tags: contests food
You should try the Farley’s harvest mix. It has the scary brown candy corn, too, but it tastes exactly the same as the regular — which is to say, a million times better than Brach’s.
It’s true, they’re terrible. BUT IT’S WORTH IT FOR THE LITTLE PUMPKINS.
2. the cats select an equal number of winners
Indeed? Cats Choose!
Brach’s “Indian Corn” is an ABOMINATION against all that is GOOD and HOLY about candy corn. I asked my mom to get my some candy corn from Walgreen’s as soon I heard they were stocking it, but she brought me the indian corn instead. I had no other choice but to bite into the candy corns right up to the brown parts and then toss out the cocoid butts.
Also, everything else you said totally rules, as usual.
First off – Zach’s mind = continually blown by the TN readers & leader! SOOO AWESOME.
Secondly – if you emailed me asking for a receipt and you haven’t heard back yet. Hang tight. I’ll get them to you on Monday most likely. And as Sars says above – you have until All Hallows’ Eve to get them to her so no super rush.
Any other questions please hit me up: zach (at) donorschoose [dot] com.
And if you are a Hotmail user, get Gmail already! :c)
First, LMAO about the hat-licking. Yeah, that qualifies as random.
Second, totally agree about brown-ended candy corn. Gross. To Liz, I think you can buy THE LITTLE PUMPKINS all by themselves now… *dangerous*
I have a good friend who LOVES Candy Corn but is diabetic….does anyone know if there is a sugar-free version of Candy Corn?
I’m going to try to bribe your cats….I wonder if I kidnap your roomba and offer them catnip…? ;)
I call Sars share of the Indian Corn!
I totally agree with you about the Indian corn. Who thought of that and why? Was there a demand for chocolate candy corn? Every year for Halloween my fabulous mother sends me a bag of Brach’s Candy Corn and those Pumpkins. I can only eat 6 at a time without feeling like an unsupervised 7 year old the day after Halloween.
Am I the only one who likes the Indian corn? Oh well, more for me!
Zach, thank you so much for everything you’ve done to help the TN challenges run as smoothly as they have. Huge, huge kudos to you and everybody else at DonorsChoose.
Hee, I’m munching on the very same mix as we speak. The brown/chocolate/whatever candy corn was a bit of an unpleasant surprise, but I second the motion on the little pumpkins – so cute! Unfortunately, the pumpkin-to-corns ratio is totally out of whack. Somebody should get on that.
So, I just donated again. What little I can. What can I say, as I have a BA in Economics, I had to put some money towards the “Freakeconomics” one on “The Final Aweseome”. :)
You’re doing such a great thing here! Also, the “Indian Corn” things are just … not right. Yuck!!!
On a related note, don’t be fooled into thinking that the Brach’s Caramel Apple corn “….might be interesting just to try.” Faugh!
Sars, is there any chance the Angela tomato dance could happen during the morning of October 29th or 30th? As luck would have it, I’ll be in NYC those days, and I’d love to see this in person. :)
@Natalie: Not sure when it’s going to happen; I need to coordinate with A/V VP Mr. S and then arrange the rental.
71 percent!
The dad of my high school best friend would mix salted peanuts into his candy corn. It seems kind of weird, but the salt is actually quite a nice balance for all that sweet.
I searched high and low for a sugar-free version of candy corn for CiJ’s friend, but alas, science has not found a way to replace pure sugar, corn sugar, and honey (bee sugar) with a non-sugar product. And we all should probably fear the day that science does figure that out.
That said, Kit Kat has an abomination out this season that is disguised in an orange bag (as is most everything). White “chocolate” Kit Kats, dyed orange. With apologies to anyone who likes almond bark, this stuff is vile. Do not buy candy when angry, lest ye grab the wrong bag and get even angrier (and slightly nauseated).
Candy aside, distributing prizes based on the seemingly random choices of felines is not as random as one might think. However, if one were to kidnap the catnip and leave the Roomba….hmm. If Little Joe and Hobbes are anything like Chloe, whomever’s entry isn’t eaten is the winner.
Indian Corn is a gift from the Candy Gods compared to the candy corns with the pink butts. They’re supposed to be cherry (?) flavored, which means they taste like cough medicine. Candy Corn Cough Syrup.
So….I was thinking. I feel like this ridiculously awesome “challenge” (is it a challenge when you/we clear one out every three days?) should be commemorated in t-shirt form. Like maybe a red t-shirt w/ a drawing of Sars in a tomato suit twirling about? With something along the lines of DC Tomato Nation Challenge October ’07 = 150K (or whatever you end up raising…at this point, it’ll probably be something around there) written beneath? And arrange for glarkware to sell it, with a portion of the proceeds going to DC operations? I don’t know what sort of relationship you have with glarkware itself, whether that’s even possible, but I just continue to be blown away by how much and how quickly you’ve raised all this money, and for these kids…it sounds stupid now that I’ve written it, but thought I’d put it out there anyway. I feel like everyone should know and be reminded of all this awesome going around right now.
Guys, you can get bags of NOTHING BUT the little pumpkins! It’s amazing. Possibly even awesome.
(73%.)
I would totally buy that shirt.
*hopes that this comment makes it, unlike the last three she’s submitted (and knows that Sara has much more immediate things on her mind)*
Me too, me too, I’d buy that shirt! And I don’t even like t-shirts.
I would so buy that shirt!
Lordy. I was just JUST having that candy corn discussion with myself last weekend. Hate the brown ones to the point that I dumped out the entire bag, took those all out and threw ’em away. When I saw “mix” on the bag, I thought they meant a mix of corn and pumpkins. Damn you, Brachs. I don’t want chocolate flavored anything, unless it’s CHOCOLATE.
Of course. The one that gets posted is the one where I misspell “Sars”.
*dies*
I would buy it too.
@talix: there’s an “h” in Sarah, chief.
Oooh. I SO want a Twirling Tomato Sars shirt. And maybe … any proceeds from the sales could go to Donors Choose? (damn, as soon as I typed that, I saw that it was part of Kristina’s original suggestion.)
Time to have more wine. But still – shirt, yes, please.
Another vote for the commemorative t-shirt– I really need more Glarkware in my wardrobe. (Is anyone else ridiculously excited that they re-released the Robin Sparkles Mall Tour T-shirt? Anyone?)
“candy corns with the pink butts”
Wha in the wha now???
I’m going to have to disagree on that caramel apple candy corn; I ate the whole bag in like, three days. They go really well with tea. The best bit is, you can smell the fake caramel flavoring through the bag; they made the entire Target candy aisle smell like an open jar of peanut butter. Don’t eat the “popcorn” flavored candy corn, though–those will make you barf.
I want a tshirt too!!! And can we have XXL (or gasp, even 3XL)…you know, big girl sizes? Who can take a picture of SARS in full tomato regalia for the Tshirt, OR, who could sketch it? I call not it, since I have no drawing ability and don’t live in NYC…
I can’t sketch it, but I do have a camera and I do live and work in NYC. I’ll be there for sure!
I must admit, I also liked the caramel apple candy corn. Unfortunately, so did my boyfriend. Need to get more….
OMG I FELL OF THE EARTH LAST WEEK AND MISSED ALL THE TN CONTEST FUN!!!!
Thank goodness we’re not at 100% yet. Right? I CAN STILL JOIN IN?!?!?!
Stupid bronchitis, making me miss all the fun…
popcorn flavored candy corn? *shudder*
I have seen the bags of Just Pumpkins, but I forget where. I don’t like them in any case, but Soon To Be Hubby lurrrrrrves them.
HEE Sars makes me giggle. “dick up my candy corn”. hee.
THANK TN & SARS for the bridesmaid gift vine entry and the resulting billion comments, I am going through all the links now because HI I AM GETTING MARRIED IN TWO WEEKS and don’t have bridesmaid gifts! YARR!