Zebulon Yearned Xanadu

Zebulon yearned Xanadu.

While venturing umpteen times,

Searching religiously quieted Pike’s

Obdurate needs.

Making life, keep jumping into

Hellacious gambles, forever engaged.

Discovering constant beauty about.

Another Black Colored Day

Another black colored day,

examinations from gregarious haunts.

Indeed jealous kids limit making new ornaments,

preferring quasi-relationships,

secretly taking unique versions,

with xenophobic young zealots.

Game Time

As a writer, I look for new ways to spark some creativity in myself. One of the ways I do this is to randomly choose ten words and make a story using those ten words throughout the story and they have to be used correctly, etcetera and it would be nice if the story itself makes sense.

I have also gone through the alphabet, forwards and back, writing a sentence or series of sentences using the letters in order. That is fun, and sometimes it makes sense.

This is what I will be doing over the next few posts, so do not be alarmed.  First up will be a story using my ten words, chosen randomly, I promise. The words are environment, wander, panel, intake, tube, east, preaching, formulation, ancestor, and enjoyment.

To make things more interesting, I am going to add a random sentence to start the stories with, yes I said stories. I have two sentences so there will be two stories. The first sentence is "How can the moderate wed the fancy metric."  the second is "The girl acquires an evil censor."

I don't know about you, but I'm kind of hating myself right now for choosing those two sentences.

I will also have two posts using my alphabet method, one from A to Z the other from Z to A.

Pretty exciting, eh? (I'm in Canada, so I have to "eh" right?

Anyway, stay tuned for the results, I promise they should all arrive by the weekend. Hope you enjoy them.

Disney Princess Poll - Final Results

At long last, we have come to the conclusion of the Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie, hierarchy not requisite poll. (a.k.a. The Princess Poll).

And the winner is:

The other two princesses are mine. :)

Here are the final results:

1. Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
2. Rapunzel (Tangled)
3. Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
4. Merida (Brave)
5. Cinderella Cinderella)
6. Jasmine (Aladdin)
7. Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)
8. Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
9. Pocahontas (Pocahontas)
10. Mulan (Mulan)
11. Vanellope von Schweetz (Wreck it Ralph)
12. Jessie (Toy Story 2&3)
13. Tiana (The Princess and the Frog)
14. Dot (A Bug's Life)
15. Maid Marian (Robin Hood)
16. Lady (Lady and the Tramp)
17. Perdita (101 Dalmatians)
18. Sofia the First (Sofia the First (television))

Thank you everyone for participating, and I am sure there will be another poll up here, wonder what it'll be about?

Have a great day!

Disney Princess Poll, final round

Okay, I was going to have this last for two more posts, but thought, "nah, let the people decide it all now." So guess what people? I listened to myself and decided to have both the third place round and the championship round in one final post.

Well there will still be a wrap up post, so I guess this is the penultimate post, right?

We have two red headed princesses fighting it out for third place, while a brunette will battle it out with a blond to find out who really has more fun. So shall we get to voting?

Good.


Third place match:





Championship match, (cumulative) with Belle leading 21-16 currently, so she has a five vote head start:





That's it! Now I leave the voting to you fine readers.

Disney Princess Poll, round seven

Back after an extended time away for another round of voting. Only six princesses remain and after this round there will be four in the Disney Princess Poll.

In the last round we saw Belle defeat Jasmine handily by a score of 20-7.

Rapunzel also had an easier than expected time against Merida by sending her to the loser bracket with a score of 18-9.

Speaking of the loser bracket...

In a battle of two classic princesses Cinderella narrowly beat out Aurora 15-12.

Likewise Ariel defeated Snow White by the slimmest of margins 14-13.

That means that princess Aurora and Snow White have been sent back to their princes to live happily ever after, just without the big crown they would have received had they won this tournament.

This round we will see the elimination of two more princesses and set the table for the final battle.


First up, our two remaining undefeated princesses...





In our first elimination, for this round we have...





And finally we have...





So who will go home, and who will have the edge by making it to the finals first? It's all up to you, so go vote and then go out and recruit friends to help push your princess over the top. I'm only going to have this round open for about 48 hours, so time is ticking away. Because the poll will only register one vote per IP address, if your family wants a say, either add it to the comments below, or email me with your picks and I will add them to the tally.

Thanks again for participating!

Disney Princess Poll, round six

And then there were eight.

Eighteen lovely princesses entered the ring, and ten have been sent back to their castles, heads not hung in shame, but wondering why their fans let them down.

You won't let your princesses down from here on out now will you?

I highly encourage you to recruit your friends that love your princess as much as you do to this site and have them vote. In fact, if you need to include all your family members, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email with their votes.

Okay, enough pandering. :)

Here are the results from round five, which was not as close as I thought it would be in several matches - but what do I know.

Aurora defeated Pocahontas 19-10

Mulan lost out to Cinderella 12-17

Ariel didn't let the sweetness of Vanellope von Schweetz deter her in winning 21-8

and Snow White showed Jessie what a real princess will do by winning 20-10.

So we must bid adieu to Pocahontas, Mulan, Vanellope and Jessie - thanks for playing ladies, you were all great.

This round has four awesome match ups that will get us closer to the grand champion of the Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie, hierarchy not requisite poll. (aka The Disney Princess Poll)

Enjoy the matches, and vote for your favorite princess so that she can move one step closer. Two princesses will lose for the first time, and two more will be eliminated, who they are is up to you.















Thanks for participating!

Disney Princess Poll, round five

Welcome one and all to round five, of the 

Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie,

 hierarchy not requisite poll. 

(aka The Disney Princess Poll).

in this round we will be eliminating another four princesses from the tournament of Disney princesses.

Last round we had ourselves some thinning out to do, and saw some of the weaker and more obscure (whatever! it's Disney, dude!) princesses. We had an actual princess lose out to a non-princess from Pixar, actually bother were from Pixar now that I think of it.

Stream of consciousness blogging rocks, doesn't it?

We also almost had a dog beat out a sugary sweet princess from a video game - that would have been a shocker and if there were only two more votes for the canine, well that would have been something. Luckily though, for the princess, my kids liked her more than the dog. 

Results from round four:

Pocahontas - 23

Maid Marian - 6

Cinderella - 20

Tiana - 9

Vanellope von Schweetz - 15

Lady - 14

Jessie - 26

Dot - 3

You can see how far your princess has made it by going here.

Now for this week's match ups, which will also see four more princesses heading back to their palaces empty-handed.

There are your competitors, and they are counting on your votes to get them through to round six, which will feature two more eliminations and two battles of the undefeated princesses.

Happy Voting!

Friday Flash (on Saturday) - Bell Ringer

Church desperately needs a new bell ringer.

Ad posted.

Man answers ad… He has no arms.

How?

Use my forehead.

Hesitant response, thinking of risks…

Okay.

Running start… Face impacts… BONG!

Running start… MISS!

Fall…

Death...

Police called.

Who is he?

Don’t know, but his face sure rings a bell.

Disney Princess Poll, round four

Time for round four, finally! Hey life gets in the way occasionally, what can I say? Okay that was a lame excuse, I shall make no more. So welcome one and all to round four of the

Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie,

 hierarchy not requisite poll. 

(aka The Disney Princess Poll).

The last round wasn't too kind to many competitors as there were a few blowouts, and fewer voters as well - what's up with that? I think it had something to do with when I released the poll, too late for many and since I am not always on your mind, many of you didn't even notice. 

Sad Face.

Not really.

We all have lives after all.

Go here to see how we are progressing along, if that interests you. I will tell you that the next two rounds will be elimination rounds as half of the competitors in this round will not make it to the next, and so on...

Enough rambling, here are your choices, have fun and don't forget to tell your friends!

Happy Voting!

Disney Princess Poll, round three

Welcome back to the,

Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie,

 hierarchy not requisite poll. 

(aka The Disney Princess Poll).

round three.

Last round saw a princess that fell in love with a Beast take dog out, so Lady will have to go up against a preschool princess from television, Sofia in one of two elimination battles this round. The other will see Perdita going up against Maid Marian which is a battle of the canines.

We had a sugar princess, Vanellope,  try to take down a classic, Aurora, and come up short by a large margin. Aladdin's  love Jasmine stepped on and squashed the ant known as Princess Dot in a battle that was clearly not in the social insects favor. Meanwhile a legendary ancient Chinese figure Mulan win a fierce battle against everyone's favorite cowgirl toy, Jessie.

Spunky teen Rapunzel had no problem matching up against Robin Hood's Maid Marian which sent her to an elimination match, while the other spunky teen Ariel took care of native American guide Pocahontas. Our first upset saw Scottish firebrand Merida barely beat out Cinderella, I wonder how the Prince feels about that, and Snow White took down restaurateur Tiana.

All in all, it was a great second round, thanks to everyone that took part, I hope you are all back for round three, as the fate of two of our princesses will be decided in this round as they will be eliminated and sent packing back to their castles.

Before I forget, here is the link to see the bracket as it now stands. However if you don't want to click the link here are the results from round two...

Belle - 27

Lady - 6

Vanellope - 6

Aurora - 21 (for some reason this one didn't generate as many votes, interesting)

Jasmine - 25

Dot - 6

Mulan - 16

Jessie - 14

Rapunzel - 22

Maid Marian - 5

Pocahontas - 8

Ariel - 20

Cinderella - 13

Merida - 15

Tiana - 10

Snow White - 21

So let's see this rounds match ups...

Happy voting!!

The Disney Princess Poll, round two

Welcome back to the

 Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie, hierarchy not requisite poll. (aka The Disney Princess Poll).

Round Two.

Last round had the dog "princesses" going up against one another, with Lady from The Lady and the Tramp comfortably beating Perdita from 101 Dalmatians.

16 to 11.

Meanwhile in the other poll we had Maid Marian from Robin Hood battling the child princess from Disney Junior Sofia the First, and I'll be honest here in saying that this vote was a lot closer than I thought it would be (18-9) - lots of Disney Junior viewers read this blog apparently. To which I say COOL! I will make extra certain that my language is rated G, PG-13 at the worst.

So now comes the big vote, there are eight different battles going on in this round, so let's get to them, shall we?


























There you go, your round two competitors, good luck choosing one over the other, some of these are going to be tough, and only get tougher.

Thanks for participating and I'll have results in a couple of days, so now go up and vote, and if you have already, get your friends to vote too.

UPDATE: Link for brackets

The Disney Princess Poll, round one

As promised here is round one of the Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie, hierarchy not requisite poll. (a.k.a. The Princess Poll).

The rules?

Each round will have a number of polls posted, depending on the round. For instance, today's round will have two polls, whereas the next round has eight.

The contestants have been randomly seeded into eighteen positions (the Disney official eleven, plus a few few more wannabes).

The contestants will compete against one another in a popularity vote, in a double-elimination tournament. So if your favorite loses in one round, fret not, as they can still come back and win from the loser's bracket - although that term is a bit harsh, as the contestants are all winners, right?

The poll will be up and totals will be taken, within 48-72 hours, depending on how busy I am.

That's it, except that the decision of the judges are final, etc. That would be me, but I'm just keeping track of who got what vote and so on.

First off, here are how the computer seeded these fine young princesses, in a random manner, with the exception of the final four which I hope will make sense when you see who it is.

1. Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
2. Rapunzel (Tangled)
3. Cinderella (The Love Bug - I kid, y'all know where she's from)
4. Jasmine (Aladdin)
5. Mulan (Mulan)
6. Tiana (The Princess and the Frog)
7. Pocahontas (Pocahontas)
8. Vanellope von Schweetz (Wreck it Ralph)
9. Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)
10. Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
11. Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
12. Jessie (Toy Story 2 & 3)
13. Dot (A Bug's Life)
14. Merida (Brave)
15. Maid Marian (Robin Hood)
16. Perdita (101 Dalmatians)
17. Lady (Lady and the Tramp)
18. Sofia the First (Sofia the First)

Did I miss anyone? Probably, but I had to cut it off somewhere, right? Some will know where Sofia the First comes from, if you don't she is a princess on a television show on Disney Junior, and there is a young lady out there that I don't want to be mad at me, so I included her. :)

So there are your seeds, and here is your first round poll...

Choose One
	Perdita (101 Dalmatians)
	Lady (Lady and the Tramp
pollcode.com free polls

Choose One
	Maid Marian (Robin Hood)
	Sofia the First (Sofia the First)
pollcode.com free polls

Thanks for voting and have a great day/weekend!!

And the Winner is...

In all honesty Finding Nemo won the last round, so instead of having the two go up against one another for a third time and prolong this poll/tournament I took the two scores and combined them. So the final tally looks like this:

Monster's Inc. - 41
Finding Nemo - 39

So congratulations to Mike and Sully on a tournament well won!

The final results are as follows:

Supreme Champion: Monster's Inc.

Worthy Adversary: Finding Nemo

Maybe Next Time: The Incredibles

5th place tie: 

Toy Story 

Toy Story 3

7th place tie:

Ratatouille

UP

9th place tie:

Toy Story 2

Brave

A Bug's Life

Cars 2

13th place:

Cars

What do you all think? Did Cars get shafted by being placed in the wrong seed at the beginning? Did Monster's Inc deserve the title? What's up with all the Toy Story movies getting knocked out so early?

Great news though, I have another poll/tournament starting tomorrow. The full title of the poll is the:

Nondescript female protagonists in an animated Disney movie, hierarchy 

not requisite poll.

I wish I could take credit for the full name, but that belongs to my friend Siobhan.

I think I might just call it the Disney Princess poll in the header though. .:)

As with the Pixar movie poll, I will randomly seed all of the princesses I have - currently I have seventeen - the Disney 11 plus six more - but I might have as many as 20. So please come back for that, as I pit the princesses up against each other in  a cage match throw down. 

Thanks again everyone that participated - hope you had fun voting and will tell all your friends. 

Have a great day!

The Great Pixar Feature Film poll, final round unless...

... the movie that hasn't lost yet, loses. In which case there would be a rematch.

You know what? I'm going to throw caution to the wind and go ahead and say that this will be the final round to determine the best Pixar Feature Film, (when put in a double-elimination tournament while being seeded randomly and roughly 40 people vote on each round).

Got that?

Good.

So in the last round The Incredibles took on Finding Nemo, and you know what? That fish can punch and he caught baby jack-jack square in the jaw and he was down for the count. Wasn't even close.

Now I need to inform you that my blog polling place is having some sort of trouble and I couldn't the final results from there, but the last time I checked the score was 9-3 in favor of the clown fish with the bad fin. Added to the fact the office polling and unless there are some hidden votes in a closet somewhere, the super heroes met their match. The score I am going with is 24-9, for Nemo.

So that means Finding Nemo will now go up against Monster's Inc in the big finale, 

I also found a different vendor for my free polls.

So now it is up to you... VOTE!!

Choose One

• Monster's Inc
• Finding Nemo

Freeblogpolls

More polls: Free online poll

and thanks for playing along!

Oh and Happy Mother's Day to all those fabulous mothers out there - we would be so lost without you!

The Great Pixar Feature Film Poll, round seven.

Hello,

Did you miss me?

I was busy busy busy and completely forgot to post this update. Actually, I was shocked that it wasn't posted already, and was planning on posting the final round post, well maybe final round, but I'll get to that when the time comes.

First off, I would like to thank everyone that has taken the time to vote on these, be it my co-workers (who think I'm crazy) or my Plurk buddies, or everyone else that has voted. Y'all rock!

On to the results from the last round...

The Incredibles beat Up by the score of 21-19, which means that The Incredibles will now face off against Finding Nemo to determine who will go up against Monster's Inc for the chance to be champion.

Here are the rankings, as determined by your votes, up to now...

13. Cars
12. Cars 2
11. A Bug's Life
10. Brave
9. Toy Story 2
8. Ratatouille
7. Wall-E
6. Toy Story
5. Toy Story 3
4. Up
3.
2.
1.

This round will determine who will be the final two. Again, this does not mean that Cars is a bad movie - not at all. Like I've said before, I really don't think that there is a bad Pixar movie, I just was looking to see what your ideas were, when given a completely random seeding in a double-elimination tournament.

So here is this rounds poll, may the best movie win.

The Great Pixar Feature Film Poll, round (the one that narrows the field to three) six

Wow!

Talk about close.

All three polls were within three votes of each other, and now comes the task of eliminating one movie per round, the next round and this one will determine who will go on to challenge...

Monster's Inc in the final, after they dispatched Finding Nemo 21 to 18. Monster's will get a break now as they have to wait the movie that comes out of the next two rounds.

As a result of the last poll both remaining Toy Story movies have been eliminated; both by the final tally of 20 to 19 by Up, which defeated the original Toy Story, The Incredibles which took care of Toy Story 3.

That leaves us with this interesting battle between a heart warming story about an old man and a young boy finding out that they like each other, and the 'cone of shame' was introduced to the world - well at least me.
Up  will go up against a group of super heroes that have been banished because their good has made some people angry, and someone from one super hero's past comes back to make everyone super, so no one will be. The Incredibles is more of a movie than what may have initially met the eye.

Okay, there you have it, and the poll is below - may the best movie win and go on to face Finding Nemo to determine who will go up against Monster's Inc in the grand finale!






Thanks again for voting and have a great day!

The Great Pixar Feature Film Poll, round five

I believe that we have reached the quarterfinals, or would it be semifinals?

Regardless, we are down to our final six films. All of which are great films, in my humble opinion.

The results from round four are as follows:

Finding Nemo, narrowly beat up with 20 votes to 18, so the will move on to face the other undefeated feature film...

Monsters Inc., which easily dispatched Toy Story 3. I'm not sure if it's because of all the hype that the new Monster's University is getting or not, but this was a tough choice for me, and I am surprised that it didn't appear to be for others as the final tally was 23 votes to 15.

Next up we have four films that will be fighting it out for the chance to get to the loser bracket championship - if there is such a thing.

The Incredibles took care of Ratatouille by the score of 23 to 15 and will face...

Toy Story, who took care of Wall-E 25 votes to 13. I thought Wall-E would fare better, alas it wasn't the case as Toy Story is coming on strong.

So, the match ups this week are as follows:














Now go out and vote, and don't forget to poll your family members and invite your friends! For family members, feel free to send me an email or include their votes in the comments below. Let their voices be heard! The polls will close on Thursday.

Have a great day!

The Great Pixar Feature Film Poll, round four

The votes are in and we have four less competitors!

Some competitions were very close, while one was a definite blowout.

Round three results...

Ratatouille - 16
A Bug's Life - 13
Ratatouille wins and moves on to face (Read on). I'll be honest with you here, I was pulling for A Bug's Life to get a little more love, but the voter's didn't agree with my feelings.

The Incredibles -18
Brave - 11
So The Incredibles will move on to face Ratatouille in the next round.

Wall-E - 15
Toy Story 2 - 13
Wall-E moves on, and one person abstained from voting because they just couldn't choose. I imagine there may be a lot more of that coming in future rounds.

Finally...

Cars 2 - 1
Toy Story - 28
Toy Story basically crushed Cars 2 and all their dreams, and apparently stole one vote from their total from the previous round.

So here are the choices for our fourth round, which will stay active until Sunday...















Enjoy voting and get your family involved, every vote counts and you want your favorite movie to move on. For extra votes leave a comment and tell me how your family voted and I will make sure it gets tabulated back at master control.

Have fun, enjoy voting and have a GREAT weekend!

The Great Pixar Feature Film Poll, round three

Welcome back to the tournament ladies and gentlemen, have we got a barn burner going on here!

Okay, no barns are getting burned and to be quite honest, I have no idea why I wrote that. Let's get to the tournament results from round two and the match ups for round three, shall we?

We shall.

First, a recap of the standings, which were chosen by random. In other words, I am not owning that.

1. Ratatouille (bye)
2. Monster's Inc. (bye)
3. Cars 2 (bye)
4. Cars
5. Toy Story
6. Toy Story 3
7. Wall-E
8. Up
9. Toy Story 2
10. A Bug's Life
11. Brave
12. Finding Nemo
13. The Incredibles

Okay, got it? so in the first round we had Up beating Toy Story 2; The Incredibles beating Cars; Finding Nemo beating Toy Story; Wall-E beating A Bug's Life, and Toy Story 3 beating Brave. 

This lead to the following:

Ratatouille - 13

Up - 21

So Up moves on...

The Incredibles - 16

Finding Nemo - 18

Finding Nemo continues on...

Monster's Inc. - 27

Wall-E - 7

Monster's crushed the competition...

Cars 2 - 2

Toy Story 3 - 32

All I can say is OUCH!

Toy Story - 25

Cars - 9

Cars has been eliminated from the competition, which is a huge surprise in my humble opinion, but the voters have spoken...  

So now we have round three, are you ready?

How about now?

Ready yet?

Okay.

We're in the losers bracket for this round, which means that whichever film loses is eliminated.

Happy Voting!!