Correct me if this has changed, but I believe there's an essay option as well. Would any one care to volunteer a prompt?
For example:
"-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Dinosaur essayDate: 08 Mar 2010 15:06:33 -0500
From: [log in to unmask] (Andrew N. Mertens)To: DMC@Mac
Can I please be taken off this list now?
Dinosaurs are AwesomeBy Andrew Norris Mertens
Dinosaurs are awesome for many reasons. One reason is that their name means terrible, powerful, or wondrous lizards in Greek, according to my friend Wikipedia. That is bad-ass.
Also, though this is little known by "mainstream" science, all dinosaurs had cannons on their back. They were made of pure awesome, which, as you know, has a half-life of 100 years, so there is no trace left in the fossil record. Awesome people like myself, who are descendants of the dinosaurs, have vestigial cannons adapted for lifting, rather than blasting, purposes. They are called guns, or "biceps" by hoight-toity doctors like Noah Harwood, and mine are huge.
Another reason they are awesome is they were the largest tetrapods to ever roam the earth. One day, God decided that dinosaurs were getting so large they were starting to rival his own greatness. No matter how many protein shakes he knocked back or marathon Bowflex sessions he put in, God felt like he would never have the glut definition to rival the massive hindquarters of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. So, 6,000 years ago, he created a twin pair of unstoppable hunting machines, Adam and Eve. They were fast enough to run a sub 4:00 mile and smart enough to invent blankets with arm holes, and God was angry enough to unleash them upon Dinomanity. Guess what the Dinosaurs did? They ate them, (alongside a forbidden apple to make sure they had a balanced diet.)
God decided to exploit their one weakness, their lack of opposable thumbs, by sending a massive meteor towards earth. The president of the United States Of Awesomeness, President Tomflynnopterus assembled a crack team led by Brucewillisaur and Benassfleckipleridon to fly to the asteroid and implant a nuclear device in its core. Unfortunately, without opposable thumbs, they were unable to grasp the detonation device, and all the Dinosaurs died.
But their eventual extinction does not belie (belay?) their awesomeness as hard boulderers and fast and light alpine climbers. Recent phylogenetic evidence suggests that the most recent common ancestor of dinosaurs of the climbing order, dmcia, Warrenhardingosaurus, was a diminutive forager who subsisted on whiskey and copperheads scavenged from prehistoric feeding station, or "cafeterias" around Yosemite Valley. When large, lumbering Touristasaurs, invaded the valley during the warmer months the Warrenhardingosaurus would escape by "climbing" up the side of the valley walls. There is current debate among dinosaur experts about whether this is the first example of climbing, or just an ancestral proto-climbing. On one hand, the dinosaur could scale rocks of similar steepness of later species, albeit at a slower pace. But on the other hand the Warrenhardingosaurus's climbing style left scars on the rock, and, as anyone with a scientific mind knows, that is not Pure.
Purity would come to define later lineages of climbers, who eschewed the advanced technology created in Thayer during the golden age of dinosaur climbing, such as cams, oxygen tanks, and endothermy. Two lineages of climbersaurs existed at the time of dinosaur extinction, Boulderocerus and Fastandlightalpineopteryx. Current studies show that they devolved from their technologically advanced ancestors into simple, unintelligent creatures, but into two very different niches.
Boulderocerus, a troglodytic creature evolved to live in the small caves under fallen boulders, lost the use of metal tools, instead relying on the massive tendons in their phalanges. They live in a nesting habitat made of two types of grass, one woven into a mat they fall on and sleep in, and another type they light on fire and inhale. When threatened by their natural predators, Obligationosaurus and Dontfailoutofcollegejamesquadrinoptera, they quickly scamper up the side of the boulders using their overdevopled forearms, their religious belief in Purity, and their incredible weight saving adaptions (including vestigial calve, pectoral, and brain muscles).
Fastandlightalpineopteryx, moved out of Yosemite valley and into the high mountains to avoid its natural predator, Woman. Varieties of woman, including Alicebradleysaur, prey on Fastandlightalpineopteryxes because of their high fiber and Carhartt content, essential in a balanced diet. Fastandlightalpineopteryx survives on a diet of Gu, spindift, and angst, and is one of the few known organisms not to require sleep. Furthermore, to survive in the harsh climate of the mountains, Fastandlightalpineopteryx has evolved several quite amazing adaptions, including a fear of society, a religious belief in Purity, and a powerful, if misguided, belief that climbing the Cilley Barber Route on Katahdin car to car in TWO DAYS will increase their reproductive fitness. Also, in a weird phenomena, Fastandlightalpineopteryx easily sheds its appendages, with the help of frostbite. Scientists think this is to help with weight savings, but the weight saved is canceled out by the mass of their heavy, blackened, misunderstood hearts.
And that's why Dinosaurs are awesome. Can I be taken of the list now?
P.S. Further papers will investigate the bizarre, sexually dimorphic mating competitions between male and female Katieandcodyopterx, the strangely simian proportions of Fenjaminosaurus Rex (could he be the missing link?), and the absolute evolutionary perfection of the Mertenseratops.
"
(also, there's a probably a link at the bottom this blitz that says "click here to unsubscribe"?)