I've received many fine entries for Doodleday's 2nd Caption Contest. This makes me feel awesome and powerful because it's by far the toughest caption contest Doodleday of all time. The fact that people didn't let the difficulty of the contest dissuade them from entering is a testament to how much people love and admire me.

But the success of this caption contest hasn't come without its share of trouble, for I have been left to choose one caption that is above all the others and it's been tough. Three entries in particular strike me as all equally entertaining and I've had a hard time deciding which one deserves to be deemed the best.

So I'm going to do something I rarely do here at Utter Wonder: I'm going to give the power to you the readers. You will select the winner of the caption contest. I don't normally like to cede power to you readers for fear that all hell will break loose, but I figure in this case, what the heck. I think a quality of a great leader/blogger is to know when to let the people decide and when to not let the people decide. So I think it's really great of me to do this.

Here are the three finalists' entries:

FINALIST #1

The entry is from tedmom. I like the telethon theme and its use of the Bush twins. Nipsey's line could use a comma instead of a period, but I'll let that go.

FINALIST #2

The second finalist is an entry from Dan Burt (UWHOF #29). More freeform than tedmom's, it features a final poem by the poet laureate of television, Nipsey Russell. It's funny, sad, and inspirational all at once.

FINALIST #3

Finally, there's this entry from Darby Larson (UWHOF #16). It's more subtle than the other two finalists' entries, but I think true fans of Utter Wonder will recognize from where Darby lifted the lines.

So there you go. The winning entry will receive an Utter Wonder T-shirt. Runner-ups will get something a whole hell of lot cheaper. You can only vote once. Place your vote in the fancy piece of polling software below. Don't not vote. I can't imagine holding an important poll on your blog and having only six people vote. That wouldn't make me look very awesome and powerful. So don't mess me over. Thanks.

The polls will close Friday night. I'll announce the winner on Monday. So don't delay and vote today!

POLLS ARE CLOSED. WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED MONDAY, OCTOBER 17.

This post is dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe.