First things first, you are certainly all sitting on the edge of your chairs wanting to find out who will compete in the ‘Super Dede 2012’ competition.

Drum roll! Here are our finalists:

Pig and L’Artiste Dede scraped in with 12% of votes each, Cash Cow collected 15%, Mouse 17% and yes, Harvey gathered a whopping 23%. Who would have thought…. Certainly not me!

After the poll had closed, Devil, Detail and I discussed what had happened in the last week. Maybe due to the time of night – voting finished at midnight – we reached an agreement relatively quickly. We decided not to disqualify Harvey. The consensus was, if he is cunning enough to rope in a canvasser, good on him! Detail actually pinned the whole darn situation on me. She said, if I had kept my mouth shut and not talked to Mr XL about the election, the whole kerfuffle would have never happened. I basically gave Harvey a foothold. All he needed to do, was walk up to Mr XL right after I had left, play his heartstrings and ask him for help. I really should have known better….

“But, but…” I said.

Devil looked at me, shook his head and threw his arms in the air. “It doesn’t matter now… What happened, happened. And Harvey hasn’t won the competition yet. So far he has only managed to secure himself a place in the finals. Now he has to convince the audience with his performance and this will be far more difficult.

What’s next?

Detail explained how we will proceed. First, the finalists will give us a speech about themselves. Then they have to answer three questions and finally they will entertain us with their specific skills. After a lot of consultation Devil and Detail decided to allocate one post for each candidate and task.

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “This will take us up to Christmas!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, correct” Devil replied “but five candidates in one post would be far too much for anybody. No-one can take in that much information! The other Dedes want to have a chance to give their feedback too”

“It’s also easier for the ratings!” Detail explained the practicalities “each post has a star rating system attached, so that the readers can rate the individual performances.”

“We really would like the questions in the second week to come from our readers and in general it would be great if the audience participated” Devil said “but we need some sort of incentive…” All of a sudden they both turned to me.

“What?” I said. I had the feeling I was missing something.

“Couldn’t you be the sponsor of the competition?” Devil asked and Detail nodded eagerly.

“Meeee? Am I not supporting you enough? How can I sponsor you?”

“We’d thought you could offer a signed Hermit’s Web book. We could put all the names of the people who comment into a hat and at the finals we draw one name and that person wins the book.”

“I guess that would be better than a meat pack.” I replied.

“We even could rename the show to the ‘Zeitgeist Publishing Super Dede 2012’ competition” Detail suggested.

“Oh, no! c’mon!.. I will give you a signed ‘Hermit’s Web‘ book and I even will throw in two additional packets of Dede postcards (10 each). But don’t do any of the naming crap. That makes it sound so cheap.”

Prize draw

“Can I write it like this into the rule book?” Detail read out aloud what she was writing “The name of any commenter goes into the draw for a signed copy of the book: ‘Hermit’s Web or the few friends I need, I hand-craft myself“. The more comments you write the more you increase your chances. Second and third prize are one pack of ten Dede postcards each.”

“The wording might have to be fine-tuned, but yes, that is correct.” I said and packed up my things.