I’ve been trying to take it easy on myself for this Labour Day long weekend, because it represents the end of the summer and the return to the grind. Fortunately or unfortunately, as a freelance writer, I don’t catch much of a break. I’m known to put in a few hours over the weekend — I actually just received an email from John Chow to produce a ReviewMe review — so it’s hard to really catch a breather.

Well, in an attempt to catch a breath, I decided to take yesterday off and avoid my computer as best I could for at least a 24 hour period. Yes, I suffered from some withdrawal symptoms, but the world didn’t come to a crashing halt, surprisingly enough. The biggest hiccup was that I forgot to take a screenshot of the top commentators for August. As such, I had to go through the comments and count them off by hand. Thankfully, the differential between the 5th and 6th spot was pretty distinct, so it was pretty obvious who were the top commentators for August; I just had to figure out their ranking. After tallying it all up, here are the August superstars for Beyond the Rhetoric.

  1. Chrisblogging.com (Chris Bibey)
  2. Alex (Usman’s World)
  3. Super Affiliate (Zac Johnson)
  4. Etienne Teo
  5. Matt’s Blog (Matt Freedman)

Thanks for keeping the discussion alive here at Beyond the Rhetoric. Without the participation of readers, it would feel like I’m writing into a vacuum. On a side note, the battle for the top five spots was very close. Chris Bibey had 38 comments, whereas Alex had 34 and Zac had 32. That’s pretty darn close.

I got an email from Prija from Cash for Comments the other day, telling me about one of the most ambitious contests I have ever seen. His goal is to raise funds for a car contest at bloggingthemovie.com/car. In his own words:

Sell 500 x $100 sponsorships for the car on the page: BloggingTheMovie.com/car. This will generate $50,000. The sponsors get two 200 word min. reviews, a permanent link on the page, a domain name ad on each of the 2 cars (one for the contest and one for my little sister that needs one for college), and the sponsors will forever be part of the biggest blog contest ever.

So once I get the 50k, it will be poured into buying 2 cars, the initial filming, a “Blogging the Movie” booth at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, sticker ads for the car and my PR rep. The Blog World Expo is in November, and it will cost roughly $10,000. I will market out to advertisers and companies to sponsor the movie and generate hype. At the Expo I will my film crew filming the event and my PR rep will to get down to business. I want to try to actually have the car at the EXPO with everyone’s domain name ad on the car if I can get the money in on time.

Wow, that’s pretty ambitious. Good luck, Prija.

Last and certainly not least, you guys are probably all wondering about what’s going on with the iPod contest where Ed and I want your help to name our new hockey blog. Well, as Ed Lau said earlier today at his personal blog, the winner of the 4GB iPod nano was randomly selected after dot com pho on Saturday, complete with a video that features the root of all evil himself. But you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow before the winner is revealed, because John is being pretty evil about the video clip.

In terms of the grand prize winner — the person who will receive the 8GB iPod nano — well, we haven’t decided yet. Considering that Ed and I received over 300 domain suggestions, we’re going to take a little time to mull this over. We’re aiming for an October 1st launch, but we hope to choose a domain and get designing well before that. Stay tuned.