Frankie was quick to point out (as usual) that the (disastrous) results of the latest Humpday Challenge are up at Bungie.net.

The Cayote Cavegirls took two games out of three against Bungie, with the second game being a draw due to a power outage. In the words of Frankie:

Man, we are about due for a win. We will continue to try to pick opponents we can beat, but then fail.

Note to Frankie: pick an HBO clan, any HBO clan!

Voting has now begun in HBO's Haloween pumpkin-carving contest. Go get started, and be sure to click on the thumbnails and look at all the large images.

Baby Chief tries to cope with the removal of the Bungie.net leaderboards in today's Halo Babies strip. Thanks mrsmiley.

Another pre-release award segment, this one for Best Male Performance, is up at the Rockets On Prisoner 2005 website, hosted by That Weasel TV. Thanks to Spartan 777 who pointed it out in the HBO forum.

Rapture at CookedGamers reports he's seen playable Xbox 360 kiosks at a Wal-Mart in Huntsville, Alabama. Pictures to come later.

UPDATE: Joystiq beat Rapture to the punch, posting Xbox 360 kiosk pics from a reader in New Mexico.

At Rampancy we've been quite remiss in reporting on the Rockets on Prisoner 2005 awards for fan-made films. The RoP site still says that the awards ceremony has been delayed, but instead, they've been releasing videos with the nominees and winners in individual categories over the past few weeks.

So far, videos for the following awards have been posted on the RoP site:

• Best Villain
• Best Editing, Sound, and FX
• Best Halo 2 Movie
• Best Female Performance
• Best Action Sequence
• Best Musical Score
• Best Montage
• Best Music Video
• Best Trailer

There's also an Awards Ceremony Preview, and some screenshots of the awards ceremony stage.

Visions of Peter Jackson's obsession with rings of power taking over the Halo film in the latest Halo Babies. Thanks mrsmiley.

Bungie's Humpday Challenge is back after a long hiatus. The boys from Kirkland took on some random misfortunates in the new Team Snipers playlist and took two games out of three. The story is accompanied by the best animated GIF ever.

Halo 2 tricking now has its very own O'Reilly book. Halo 2 beta tester Stephen Cawood has written Halo 2 Hacks, with a forward by Ducain, Louis Wu and Grenadiac. Thanks HIH.

The top 117 entries in the 117 Words contest have been announced by Jillybean and Stuntmutt. Your editor was tickled pink to have managed a third-place tie with Tum-Tut Mantis' entry The Arbiter's Sentence. And it's mine! All mine! It's my birthday pressssent! Stan won second place for Perhaps They Should Have Used Pimsleur. And the fix is in first place went to Bungie's own Frankie for his entry, the appropriately titled Can of Worms.

The announcement of the winners also has some special shout-outs to deserving entries, including one by Eric Trautmann that wasn't judged. Perhaps being the editor of the Halo novelizations made him too professional for the rest of us, and therefore, unfair competition.

Blayne writes on the Marathon Scenario News page that a new (admittedly small) desktop picture from the Where Monsters Are In Dreams scenario is up. The project, a prequel to the popular Rubicon scenrio, is still looking for people to help clean it up for release.

Kelli "Pinkuh" Davis has put up issue #1 of her gaming comic, Lost The Lead. It's not up on the site just yet, but there is a tidbit from it in the HBO forum.

(So far the only Halo-specific content is in the splash screen on the front page, but we're confident it will creep in there before too long--Ed.)

Ducain at High Impact Halo is throwing a virtual pizza party to celebrate the site's 1000th news post. Congratulations HIH!

Halo Babies today wonders if similarly shaped devices will suffer similar fates.