Okay, I'm dying over here. Just for fun a month ago, I saw a posting on a contest for the "Sexiest Geek Alive." Giggling, I went to their page and filled out an application. I laughed and didn't think about it again.

Then on February 20th, I got this letter, which began with:

Congratulations! Out of 16,709 entrants to the "Sexiest Geek Alive Contest," you have been selected to be one of the Top 500 Sexiest Geeks. We had a difficult time choosing among the 8,742 men and 7,967 women who filled out our questionnaire...

I laughed and sent the message to some of my friends and mentioned it on my mailing list. Two days later I was notified:

A reporter from Industry Standard may be contacting you about the Geek contest. We're narrowing the Top 500 down to a hundred and she wanted to interview my favorites. I added you to that list because I had read your Playboy Online feature and told her you were an "MP3 warrior."

I started to wonder...sure enough, the next day (today; the 23rd), I received the following letter, beginning with:

Congratulations again! You have made it on to the Top 100 of the Sexiest Geeks Alive.

I'm not sure what to do at this point; I think it's hysterically funny, but am not quite sure what to make of the whole ordeal. I'll post more information here as it comes in...

UPDATE -- Uh oh. I just got the following letter, whose first paragraph reads:

Guess what? You've made it to the Sexiest Geek Alive Top 24!

I'm a little nervous now. It was pure hysterics at being part of an anonymous top 500, but now it's starting to get personal; if I am selected for the next round, it looks like they want me to go down to the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) festival in Texas mid-March. The main problem with that is that I have finals at about that time! Aie! Something in me hopes I don't make it any further...

UPDATE (@4:37pm 2/25/00) I've dropped out of the contest for personal reasons and while I was told that I had made it to the next round (top 12), I would have had to have gone to Texas in the middle of finals week.