[EDIT- Polls are closed]
Thanks to all who entered in our little contest give-away for the Paintbrush Bug. It's been an interesting couple of days of checking in on the new entries and comments.
--------------------------------- the winner will get this ^It was
ridiculously hard to narrow the finalists down. Many
clever entries were eventually eliminated. Please feel free to curse my name when you don't find your entry in the space that follows, there's a good chance that it deserved to be included, but what can I say? For all the enjoyment that I get from reading the entries as they come in, it's all balanced out by the part where I have to narrow them down. For quite a while, I was going to give up and put them all up for a vote, but that would have been the coward's way out.
[ Edit - My wife saw my choices a half hour after I posted and didn't agree with a couple and wanted me to change something! Too late!
]Please go to the sidebar to the right to vote.
The contestants-
#1. #3.#7.------------------------------------------
and now-
The following people have already one some mediocre prizes!First of all, I must award this used Starbucks card that at one time was worth fifty dollars. I believe it still has a little over $2, maybe even $2.50 on it. Not enough to get one of those expensive drinks with the whipped cream on top, but enough to get a large Iced Americano (my personal drink), or maybe some chocolate covered graham crackers.

This work, which has too many words (there were a few good ones like that) to be in the running to win the bug, tickled my fancy anyway (plus, she's followed this blog for a looong time). Congratulations!
Next we have johanna, who posted a poem. I had a couple of entries this time that were kind of downers to tell you the truth. I prefer Bent Objects to be a happy, twisted little place (other than my occasional political rant), but I keep the door open in these contests to most anyone who wants to enter. Anyway, I picked johanna's entry for a special prize because because we had something for her that amused me.
Here's her entry-
Here's what I have for you, Johanna. It came in the mail two days ago, and it entitles the person with the card to a pair of free panties the next time you visit Victoria's Secret. You get to choose from white, whisper pink, ivory, buff, or
black.
Others are bending words into strings of artful thought.
I cannot bend my mind easily along those twists and turns.
My thoughts are visual, following curves of bent and twisted wire where the bits are as interesting as the whole. A conduit of thought.
My three-year-old son is currently fascinated with bugs and spiders. When I showed him this photo and said you wanted to give it away, he said,
"Why?"
And then,
"How did he DO that?"
From the mouths of babes.