Best Original Website Section

 

::With a slight flicker, the AI bat (one of them) appears on stage::

AI: Ladies and gentlemen of all species…

 

::AI continues without the long digression of its presentation the previous year::

 

AI: I am here to present the award for the Most Original Website. As some of you may recall, I presented the same award two years ago, at which point I indicated a hope that studying the pages nominated might give me a means of quantifying and analysing originality.

Unfortunately, I have so far been unsuccessful. Since every one of the pages analysed was original, and since they covered such a broad range, I have found a large number of candidates for originality - including the html tags that are found in every webpage, which Chip tells me have nothing to do with originality - and I need to find out which of the candidates is original and which are not.

::AI refers to the main screen behind it::

 

AI: However, although I am therefore a poor judge of originality, I am told that all of these nominees are widely considered original.

::As it announces each nominated page, the page appears on the large plasma screen at the back of the stage::

AI: 'Pluto's Christmas Tree Stills' by pupspals, heads up the list. They are followed by 'What About Them?' at CDRRHQ.RU, and then 'How to Rangerize Your Mac' by pupspals, again, who is obviously a very original person. Fourth is 'The Golden Acorn Awards' at the Acorn Cafe, right here. I presume that refers to last years' awards. Fifth is 'Indy's Caption Contest' at the Ranger Museum, followed by 'Zipper Speaks Translation Page' on the 'Fansite of the Forgotten Ranger: A Zipper Fan Site' by Isabel. Seventh is 'The Acorn Cafe Guest Map' by pupspals, who has now been nominated for the same award three times, and finally 'Tanka's CDRR Pages: Mistakes and Trivia' by Tanka.

::AI pauses a moment to allow the audience to take in that information::

 

AI: Once again, I am hopeful that once I add the analysis of these pages to my previous work, that I may be able to quantify originality. It would also be useful if I could find a decidedly unoriginal page to compare them against. Given that Pupspals has received 37.5% of the nominations for this award, another way to continue my research might be to analyse every page she's ever made.

::As it spoke, the AI takes an envelope from the podium, opens it, and glances at the contents::

AI: It further appears that originality is not a binary on/off state, but a fuzzy continuum in which it is sensible to speak of one page being more original than another. In such a situation, it is also sensible to speak of the most original page or pages, which in this case would be the page by Isabel for her “Zipper Speaks Translation Page” and the page for Tanka, namely her “CDRR Pages: Mistakes and Trivia”.

::Isabel is coiled in the back of the room with her head raised up high to better see the Rangerphiles on stage. She was shocked--had [i]her[/i] name just been called?::


::Was it a mistake? No, they were calling her again! She'd better get up there and get her Golden Acorn::


::Isabel is all smiles as she slides forward slowly, ten feet of white and yellow snake make it up onto the stage::

 
Isabel (blushing): Uh, hello everybody. All the Rangerphiles and people out there.

 

Dale (from the audience): And animals!


Isabel: I'm very happy and shocked and amazed that I won something for my site, my Zipper site, with the translation page thing. It took a lot of hard work to make that, as you can probably imagine and it's nowhere near finished yet.

 

Thank you everyone that voted and bothered to look at my site.

::She pauses, not sure what else to say::


Isabel: So ... thank you everybody. Sorry if you can't hear me very well because I don't speak very loudly.


::She waves her tail in nervous self-consciousness, then Zipper comes up and gives her a hug, buzzing words to the effect that he knows how it is not to be heard well::

 

Isabel: Thank you. Now I'll take my pretty shiny thing and I go put it somewhere safe so I may stare at it. And I might watch the rest of you earn stuff too. Anyway, thank you!


::Isabel twists back around and glides down the stage over herself and back to her seat, beaming with joy, the other twenty or so feet of her following along until she is once again all curled up in the back of the room::

 

::Tanka comes up on stage now and stands with the lights shining off of her. She holds up her award::

 

[img]http://www.indyranger.com/2008GA/Awards/tanka-2009.jpg][/img]

 

Tanka: Hey, I’ve gotten the Best Original Website Section Award for the fifth time in a row. I have an idea—let’s exclude this nomination from voting next year and directly give the award to me. Agreed?

 

Isabel (from the back): Not so fast, kitty...

 

Tanka: Oh, just kidding! Thank you everyone for your support! You reminded me that it's too early to retire. Hope that this year will be more prolific for me!


::The AI quietly vanishes from the stage::