How to be a Winner.

If you've been following along recently, you've seen some "winners" listed on this blog. Since the beginning of this contest, nine locations have been selected:

• Seattle Public Library
• Washington, D. C.
• Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
• Exeter, New Hampshire
• Elon, North Carolina
• Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• Meadville, Pennsylvania
• Dublin, Ireland
• Manukau City, New Zealand

As you see from the list, all winners are cities or towns, etc., except for the first winner. After that first one I made a rule that I would name cities as winners and not schools or companies. Other than that, there are no rules for winning. It is entirely mostly random.

The winner is selected by letting a random number generator choose a number from 1-100, and than I compare that number against the most recent logged locations in my visitor stats. A winner is selected when the corresponding location looks like a place that deserves to win. If you are a place and you've won once already, you are most likely not going to win again. If you are a place that is the place where I live, you are probably also not going to win. So if I keep this contest going long enough so that enough places are winners, you should be able to guess where the.effing.librarian lives by spotting the single loser place on the map.

And so far, there has been no prize for winning other than shouting that you won and snapping the loser cities on their butts with the frayed end of a rolled up wet towel when you see them in the locker room at the United Nations. But today that changes. Winners now have a prize to show off. It is this cool badge:
So if you are a past or present winner and would like to brag to the world by posting this badge on your web page, this prize is now yours.

Cities of the world, I know you want this badge, but don't succumb to temptation and post it before you win. Because the whole world will know that you are a dirty cheater. Even if you already are a dirty cheater in other world affairs, this is much worse. So I don't want to see this badge on your pages until I pick you. And it's easy to check because I can just click on the "winner" tag at the bottom of the post to see the list and if you're not on it... well, you're just going to embarrass yourselves. And then America will have to send in troops.