I know I've lied to you before, but this time it'll be different, I swear.

We're sure many of you have lost faith that you'd ever see this project come to fruition: To be honest, so did we. It's only been, what, a month or so since we announced it? But shockingly, we finally got off our asses and mailed out the entries to the judges. Even more shockingly, some of them have already written back. Starting today, we'll be posting judgments as we receive them, moving the tournament along to its inevitable denouement when the worst ex of all time (of the people who bothered to write in) is chosen, live on the Internet. A couple of things: We'll try to update daily, but we're at the mercy of our judges and their busy schedules. Check Lindsayism and TMFTML for information on when new posts have gone up. Or get yourself an RSS reader, that's probably easier than having to wade through the crap on our sites.

Also. You know the part in contests where they say that all entries were uniformly excellent and we wish everyone could be a winner? That ain't gonna happen here. Most of what we got was shit, and subliterate shit at that. We're lucky that we were able to pick out sixteen entries without having to make some up. On the other hand, there were a few entries that, while strong, we were unable to use because of the limit. If we didn't pick yours, just tell yourself it was one of those. Okay, a quick rundown of the rules: Two entries will be paired against each other and evaluated by one of our judges. Whichever entry he or she deems superior moves on to the next round, where it will be once again judged, this time against another survivor, until finally two entries stand alone, and the entire panel votes on the winner. All clear? All right. Let's start this thing.