Then limit it to online free periodicals. There’s scads of them. I think responding to a brief phrase like “stinky cheese” is too limiting. As funny as many responses will be, I don’t want to read 10,000 words about it. Responding to a larger journalistic text allows so much more fun. We could analyse the social content, question the motives of the the characters, assault the intelligence of the writer, etc. Or just react to the headline! It allows for many more completely different approaches by writers.
I’m already in a snit just for not being mentioned in the following sentence of the OP:
“Now, I would love to see Fenris, Scylla, and Rue DeDay participate (if they have the cojones), but I’d also want anybody else to feel like they can participate too.”
What the hell does a Frog have to do in this place?
Crunchy
It must be the new colors available. If you look really closely, it said:
"Now, I would love to see Fenris, Scylla, and Rue DeDay and Crunchy Frog participate . . . "
Gosh! I’ve been norminated! In color, no less! I’m blushing like nobody’s business, here.
I like the idea of picking a topic from a periodical. It gives a lot more material to play with than a short phrase. If the topic is only two words long, you increase the chance of terminal writer’s block. A whole article, you can play off of the general topic, the headline, the particular opinions, or even just a few random lines that catch the contestant’s fancy. Also, the idea sounds more “Straight Dope” that way. In other words, what yojimboguy said.
Incidentally, if this turns out to be an ongoing thing, winners ought to be exempt from later contests, at least for a little while. Otherwise, it’s going to be the same group of people doing in every time, which will get stale and feel cliqueish. Maybe winners have to serve as judges for the next few rounds or something.
Or maybe this: Hamlet judges the first batch, and picks the top three. For the next batch, the top three judge and pick the best three who are judges for the next round, and so forth.
Oops, my mistake: My name was only in color because my name turned up in a search. (It wasn’t a vanity search, I swear! I was looking for an old thread I started. Honest!)
Count me in. Used to write jokes for Nixon so this ought to be a breeze.
Say, did you hear the one about the jew, the homosexual, and the communist…?
I think I want to play too!
i would like to nominate CRorex.
truly, he has great powers of alcohol-fuled comedic genius that I would love to see applied to such a noble cause. truly, glory shall result.
'cuz he’s FUNNY. a’hyuk.
Nostradamus is definitely a must in this.
I would argue that the opposite is true. Once you have a full article to base what you write on, your possible subject matter narrows.
With just two words a writer can go anywhere - an original piece of fiction, a poem, a joke, commentary, parody, or anywhere else as long as he includes the subject matter in some way.
Once you introduce a specific article, you have changed the range of likely responses. The material would tend to become slanted torwards commentary on the article (and thoughts contained therein), and less on truly original material. It would be like a ton of other posts where somone points out an article and umpteen people make observations or cracks about the article. While I do this, and it is fun, I think this contest allows a much greater range.
Hmmmm. . . “stinky cheese”:
One could write a story called “The stinkiest cheese”. Or create and present a theory about the true origin of the moon. Or perhaps a haiku about the french. . . Scratch that last one. You could connect The Kennedy Assasination to cheesemakers trying to enslave the public. Or a commentary on situation comedies and their approach to comedy.
I think the less you give the better. What will make it so funny is seeing how totally different everyone responds to a small amount of info. Anything that would tend to make the writing of multiple people similar to each other (content wise) should be avoided.
Give the writers a seed, not a tree. That way we can have a happy and healthy forest with lots of biodiversity.
Or something.
DaLovin’ Dj
would I be an egotist to enter myself? Do I need a second? I’m sure I left a sock puppet lying around here somewhere…
(opening himself WAAAAAAYY up)… 
I second all who nominate themselves. I’ll read 20,000 words if I have to.
DaLovin’ Dj
Pardon my gaping ignorance, but have any women entered?
I’d like to nominate **Collunsbury ** because of his work back in GQ a while ago about how he was in a limited partnership with the Devil or soemthing like that. Very clever. Also, he wears nice suits. Most comics seem to gravitate towards the Jimmy Buffett Hawaiian Shirt Collection or dress like Flood Victims.
I’d nominate myself, but my chronic steroid abuse and coffee habit would leave the rest of you in my wake and I fear your poor wittle egos couldn’t handle such a bruising.
Then again, if nominated, I won’t run. I’ll skip. 
Hell, your therapists need the cash, if we, the hack writer can pick the periodical of which above is proscribed to scribble our attempt to tickle the funny bone, then, count me in. But if assigned to a *Gun & Ammo *piece, I will raise a snit like you’ve never seen before, and frankly, I’m way to out of shape for any kind of weight lifting.
[channeling the cowardly lion] Please don’t let me be a thread killer, oh please oh please…[/ccl]
Seconded!
Then I’ll nominate you! Ha! Skip baby!
[sub]and your not a thread killa… and I hope I’m not…[/sub]
What is this humor that you speak of?
I used to travel the world competing in humor contests. Always I was the best, the funniest. My name was feared from the Dardanelles to Marakesh.
One day in Turkey as the crowd roared at their approval at my offering, and the Turkish champion’s eyes bugged out in panic and disbelief that I had bested him on his home turf, something changed inside me.
I became so full of myself that my humor was no longer for humors sake, but for my own selfish self-aggrandizement. As I competed, it wasn’t enough merely to win, I had to destroy my enemies utterly, reduce them to nothing.
Though my with was as sharp as ever, I had become vile and wretched.
Pretty soon competition itself wasn’t enough for me anymore. It got to the point where I was telling jokes in bars, and looking for trouble in the dirty “knock knock” district of Bangkok.
Then one day in Argentina during the South American championships, I refined the Peruvian champions crude offering and through it back into his face.
I moved in for the kill, “So do you know how many Peruvian mice does it take to screw in a light bulb?” I asked slyly into his stunned face.
“No. No. Please!” he begged
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” a small girl broke loose from the crowd and ran for her father
"Answer me!’ I demanded of the bewildered man.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“So I guess you’d have to turn on the light to check on them, wouldn’t you?”
The little girl was hugging her father. They both stared at me fearfully, but there was no stopping.
“Please. I don’t understand. Please don’t.”
“Which I guess why you Peruvian’s favorite food is Peruvian Screw Fried Mice!” I shouted out the coup de grace.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” He screamed.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” Screamed his little girl.
I fell to my knees. My God, what had I done?
To this day that little girl sits in a dirty Peruvian sanitariam rocking back and forth and repeating “I don’t get. I just don’t get it.”
I swore I’d never compete again.
That hurts.
What are you people? Warped of all sense of humour? I’m the funniest mofo I know! My mom agrees, too!
Damn. I confused myself with jarbabyj again. Somebody get that girl in here.
Nothin’ like comedy . . .