Rage, rage against the announcement of the Peep Diorama semifinalists

The Washington Post has announced the semifinalists of the Peep Diorama contest, and our Peeple Tunnel of Doom is nowhere to be found.

Did they not get the reference? Apparently they did, because a Purple Tunnel of Peeps is semifinalist # 34. Which, no offense to Sarah Cochran of College Park and Peter Rothschild of Washington, but ours has dozens of individual peeps with googly eyeballs, tiny purple tickets, and hand-crotched peep scarves and hats. And tunnel lighting. And a peep on a ladder posting a "PEEP" poster with Obama's Face on a Peep Body. And an entirely separate inauguration scene above the tunnel, featuring a peep-bodied Roberts flubbing the oath for a peep-bodied Obama on a Peepbotron. And the image of the Capitol which they sent to actual purple ticket holders in their consolation package.

Both my belief in journalistic integrity and my dream of abandoning the law for a career in peep art are shattered. At least we still have the diorama.

Peeple Tunnel of Doom (aka the best frakking peep diorama ever)

My friends and I created a masterpiece for the Washington Post's Peep Diorama contest. It's called the Peeple Tunnel of Doom, after the peeps (ha!) who never got to the inauguration because they were stuck in line in the I-395 tunnel under the Capitol. We made the tunnel with the crazy-eyed peeps wearing hand-crotched scarves and hats, and holding peeple tickets; the trampled peep on the left side; the ceiling lights that actually light up; the exit signs (I made those!); and the peep on a ladder putting up a PEEP poster. Then we went crazy and also made an inauguration scene on the top of the shoebox, complete with a packed Silver Ticket area, a nearly-empty Peeple Ticket area, a Peepbotron with images of Obama and Roberts (and closed-captioning of the flubbed oath), and a picture of the Capitol which is one of the ones they sent to the (human) purple ticketholders to apologize for the whole tunnel of doom thing. The above-ground scene is not meant to be an accurate rendering, but rather the inauguration as the peeps in the tunnel imagined it, in their desperate fever-dream state.

Do you think there's an untapped market for disgruntled lawyers who make DRASTICALLY AWESOME peep dioramas?