Next week is November. Baseball will be over and somewhere it is snowing already. Somewhere like Albany, NY judging from Craig's Facebook post just now. Photo contest time. This will be the sixth annual photo contest. The winner in 2006 received this response in the comments:

Sorry, perhaps the story tells a photo (though not one that would be known with a description), but aesthetically it is a terrible photo. Directly centered, lack of points of interest, and nothing worth viewing outside the middle 10%. Honestly, I'd pick almost any other photo in the contest over this one. Ask yourself: if you were blindly viewing this photo, and asked to decide what kind of contest it was an entry to, would you ever in your right mind pick beer? No way.

See, every season and every topic has its own special dork that it attracts to take his shot to kick you in the nuts. Why do I mention this? Because I don't care. We are under eight weeks to Yule and GODDAMMIT I am going to be HAPPY. See that photo up there? One of three UK prize winners from 2008. It was from James Sakal of Colchester in Essex. Entitled "The Last Drag" it was taken at the Hand in Hand, Brighton, days before the UK smoking ban came into force. Gorgeous. That made me happy. Look at the foreground. Never really noticed that before.

Nothing makes me happier than the annual Yuletide, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, Kwanzaa and whatever else you got photo contest. Search through the entries over the years here. We must be almost at 1,000 entries. Rules will be posted later but remember this. I don't care if you don't agree with the photos I pick. I just care that the maximum little beer bloggers get the most presents in their stockings each and every year. Tell me what prizes you want and I will see if someone will pick it out for you.

Suck on that, Mr. Directly Centered. Dork.