The CartoonStock Caption Contest #155 is the first from the company that is pay-to-play. Five dollars gets you three entries and a chance at a single $1,000 cash prize. CartoonStock's basic business problem with the caption contest is that it is a recurring expense that brings in little or no licensing revenue. Therefore the frequency has been halved and halved again, making the contest feel less and less relevant. The answer is to try to generate enough revenue from those playing the contest to cover expenses, and to generate more interest in the contest from the significant prize money. The new calculation for caption contestants is that it isn't worth entering the contest unless one is convinced one has a better than 1-in-200 chance of winning. Fortunately for CartoonStock, most of us caption writers are delusional about how funny our entries are. To wit, my three sidesplittingly hilarious entries are shown below. The drawing is by Shannon Wheeler.
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| "There's nothing to do. Next time we'll go to your place." "We're raising him without religion." "We're all so unflappable." |
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| "Where do you suppose they learned to be so complacent?" "There's just not much to do on a playdate in purgatory." "It took us many years to learn to do nothing." "I thought there would be more to do in hell." "Since when do we let them play with brimstone?" "See? Good and evil CAN coexist." |
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