Filed Nightly · While you were doing something useful · 2026-10-22
Nine contenders. One dog with a pitch deck. Sonic has declined the evening shift.
the dog is innocent. the pitch deck is on trial.
While you were sleeping, working, or making a defensible use of your time, the internet assembled another fight card. We have appointed ourselves judges. Nobody checked our references.
01 Best unsolicited explanation of Texas
A Senate race is an excellent opportunity to discover how many strangers can explain Texas to Texas. We have drawn a tiny state and a very large microphone. The microphone believes it is helping. It has booked another microphone to discuss the polling.
02 Most likely to follow you home
Wonderful. The party has found a reliable way to reach voters: through the one device they cannot throw into the fucking sea. We have drawn an unsubscribe button. It is very small because apparently that is an important part of democracy.
03 Actual vampire division
The excellent thing about a curse is that it admits to being a curse. Nobody sends a statement describing it as an exciting evolution of the castle experience. We have drawn Dracula. He looks like a substitute maths teacher. That may be worse.
04 Returning people’s champion
Earlier, we snapped a ceremonial mop to celebrate guests being allowed to leave. The mop has now requested representation. Fair enough. A holiday should end with a suitcase, rather than a performance review from a man whose decorative sign says RELAX.
05 Pound-for-pound champion
A dog already comes with teeth. Apparently what it lacked was a pitch deck. We await the investor presentation explaining that sit is now a proprietary command. The dog gets a biscuit. The people who looked at a dog and thought we should militarize this get the belt. It is not a compliment.
07 Least qualified incident commander
The horse from our first round has been asked to write the incident report. It has produced the word hay six times and named the document postmortem_final. The actual humans can get on with the work. The horse has scheduled a lessons-learned meeting in a field.
08 Most persistent piece of marketing
A canceled game’s trailer is a special kind of souvenir: an advertisement for the thing you cannot have. The marketing has survived the product. We have drawn a spaceship with a parking ticket. Even our imaginary flight has acquired an administrative problem.
09 Most expensive repeat appearance
The billion dollars is back. Our rival bid has risen from $14 to $14.25. We found a coin under the horse. This is what disciplined capital allocation looks like when nobody will let you near the actual capital. We remain available for lunch with the studio.
10 Best ongoing escape attempt
Our escaped console has asked for a new identity. We have given it a moustache. It is still a rectangular games console, but the horse at border control has waved it through. A stirring demonstration of what happens when you let the appeals department diversify.
