OK, we have had some discussion. It is time to decide whether or not to proceed. Since this is done using the poll mechanism, we must use the restrictions of the poll. Everyone gets a chance to vote either yes or no, and I have clearly described what each vote means.

Once you have voted, you will not be able to change your vote.

Assuming that we proceed with an affirmative vote, there will be other polls and votes. By having a vote now, we determine whether or not there is sufficient interest in doing this. In about a week or so, I will probably open up a secondary poll to see how many people are interesting in actually submitting designs. Note that you can decide to vote yes, but also decide not to enter a design--these are separate questions.

If there are questions about this, please submit a post to this and we'll attempt to come up with an answer.

Did we really get 214 votes so far?

Unless someone has a recommendation, this ends it.

Of course we didn't get that many votes. This smells more like a 214 dick pimp.

It was 5 to 1 in favor last night when I went to bed. The No votes went up by 208 votes overnight. I wasn't expecting too many votes until we got out of the holidays.

In the poll on MLV's avatar, the count got "adjusted" in a somewhat obvious manner.

We could have moved this over to GirlySound Forum (actually still can), but it seemed to me that it would be more fitting for Liz coming from her own message board.

The funny thing is that I'm really not that upset by this. Sure, I do kinda look like a fool right now, but I dared to dream.


I tried. Actually, several of us tried. The attempt was important.


I didn't think that we would succeed without the consent of the admins and moderators of this board.

The important thing is that we got noticed, but I'm not sure by whom.

Keeping my spirits up...trampoline

screw what the vote says. go for it. what's the worst that can happen? it's not like liz herself told you not to. if you've got enough encouragement from the posters on this board then do it.

Where the hell did those 209 votes come from?

I've spent most of the day pondering this. The vote was important for me and for those people who have reacted positively so far to find out how much support that this contest had.

I believe that the No votes have been jacked. There is just no way that there's that many people who would have reacted that quickly. At this point, the NO vote is probably at least 200 off.

Here is where it gets interesting. I believe that that Yes vote is unaltered at this time. I don't believe that the Yes vote is going to be jacked in the positive direction. I also believe that there are far more effective ways for a moderator or admin to simply make this go away. All of this looks unmistakeably like playful fun. Maybe I'm wrong.

So here is the deal: The vote is still on. We need to have a lot more Yes votes than we do now. If the votes have been jacked, we won't know the final tally, but "whoever" will. The vote will proceed on until January 7th and a group of us will decide what to do at that time. We do need to keep watch over the Yes votes, because there may be an attempt to zero them out.

It's funny, because for much of the last year, there has been a theme of belief in my participation here. I had belief in myself. I now have belief in my fellow members here. I believe in this effort.

I believe in Liz Phair.

Let's take a leap of faith and see what happens.

Feel free to post feedback here OR PM me OR use ICQ/AIM. This is all stranger than I ever imagined.

It was Jason.and.the.Argonauts for fuck's sake!!! We haven't had 200 unique visitors in the past 6 months. Only a mod or admin has that kind of power. Jason is the only mod who bothers to logon. And, yeah, it was just a joke. It was kind of funny, too, I suppose, in a "rubber crutch" sort of way.

What I don't get is the number, 200. See, it would have been much more mysterious if the vote were 20 to 7. It would have been much more hilarious if the vote were, say, 200,000,000 to 7. Of course, this dogshit software would probably choke on a number that size, overheat the laptop on which this forum runs, and delete the past 12 months of posts as a precautionary measure.

All of that said, there is no fighting it. Therefore, I humbly propose that we adopt a policy of complete anarchy. Seriously. You guys are taking this WAAAY too seriously. (Which is NOT to say that we shouldn't take Liz and her career seriously.) But we really can't ignore the impedence mismatch between users and caretakers of this forum. No care is taken. Be carefree. Do something that requires moderation. BEG for it. It could serve as an experiment for the "power" thread. So create an "evil twin" account and start posting.

I'm only joking of course.

acidmouse, I basically agree with you. The point of the vote was to reach a quorum. The last time I checked, we had six Yes votes. Should we at least see if we can get 10 or maybe 15 Yes votes or just blast away?

I had no illusions of getting more than 20-30 voters, tops. There just aren't that many active posters at any one given time. The point of all of this is that we're asking the members if they're in or out.

I believe the correct current tally is 6 Yes to 1 No (the same No from last night).

I believe that a number of people are tied up with the holidays.

That's it--I recognize that there's a big bogus inflation in the vote count and it's not stopping us.

I'd blast away. You might want to broaden the theme a bit, though... I've noticed that people get really excited about fanciful Liz albums -- greatest hits, EPs, and otherwise. Designing cool cover art for those would be more in line with some of the graphic artists around here. Believe it or not, there are quite a few of them. I can't name them, or point you to their (mostly deleted) posts, but they exist. Lots of them probably haven't logged on in months.

Even JOG, ironically, is a graphic artist. I would bet that he designed the "Living Corpse EP" cover. It was nice. Whoever did that did a good job. Maybe the thing could center around a fanciful bootleg to commemorate her career. You could just as easily repurpose the design for a t-shirt. I guess you could work the 40 in there somehow.

Just ideas.

What I would really like to find are some obnoxious Liz Phair bumper stickers. Those would be nice too. Something downloadable with "print me" instructions.

I'm going to open up a new thread with some sample designs. I'll probably really suck, but hey, I'd like to have everyone start somewhere.

I like the idea of something minimalistic for the words. Here's what I came up with so far:
-----------------------------------------------
lizphair@04-17-2006

Forty is not too old.

-----------------------------------------------

Now rotate to the right 90 degrees:
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from your fans

LP Forum
-----------------------------------------------

If you picture this correctly, the "from your fans" buts up at a 90 degree angle to lizphair and the "LP Forum" does the same with "Forty is not too old". Also, the dashes in the date should be replaced by bullets.

I'll try to create a graphic with this to give everybody a better look.

One of the problems that needs to be solved is how to get something inexpensive to implement. When we get done, I want something that just about anyone here can afford to slap on a T-shirt fairly cheaply.

Hoorah! We're up to 7 yes votes.

Jason.On.AssGuy

The question of who jacked the votes is not the interesting question.

The interesting question is: how do we conduct voting for the favorite design when we know that the voting (using the forum's poll mechanism) can be jacked. This is another problem that needs to be solved.

It's OK. I've got faith in my fellow members and I've got faith in my own ingenuity.

At some point, I might need to know who's in and who's out. It looks to me that most people that "really" responded are in. I think that there was perhaps one real no vote.

MLV, welcome back.

A mob of tshirt haters?

Ok, I admit it. I created 208 accounts to vote against this movement. It was a cry for attention. I'm sorry.

Actual current estimated votes is 9 in favor and 2 opposed.

I'd like to have at least ten (10) people interested in this project, but I believe that we have a good start.

I'm also interested in the significance of the number. It wasn't an even number, like 200.

It was either 208 No votes, or the specific number of No votes to get the tally to go to 214, which is the numerical representation of Valentine's Day.

Or maybe it's just a random thing.

Screw what those polls say ... Lets do it!

Has anyone created any viual mockups yet? And who will be responsible for spearheading and organizing everything.. you, Tramp?

Flower, I assume that you're our tenth Yes vote...

Current "real" vote is estimated 10 Yes and 3 No.

Of course, we don't know how many duplicates are in the 10-3 vote since it has been revealed that some of the real people have multiple logins.

I'm still proceeding on as if we have a quorum.

The voting has also ended. For designs, please go here: The LP 40th Birthday Contest Designs

It's time for a good laugh at my expense.

After all, what was I thinking? That someone wouldn't jack with this poll?

I must have been crazy. I must be crazy.