Good morning, Hank, it's August 25th, the day after my thirty-second birthday.

Thank you so much for making my birthday so awesome! Hank, I don't want to blow it out of proportion, but that video made me happier than anything has ever made me. I mean, the birthday wishes from all over the world, the burning of unicorns, the blenderizing, the songs, the placing of items onto the heads, and the Willy cakes!

Oh man, the Willy cakes! Although, you know Hank, Willy for all the love he gets from Nerdfighteria, doesn't seem to love us back enough. I mean, Hank, look what Willy did to the Great White Wall of Cow!

It's now a Great White Two Legged Tailless Wall of Cow. And it is with a heavy heart that I report that Willy also seems to have blinded the sock puppet. Hank, your birthday present really reminded me of why I love Nerdfighteria, and also of why I love the internet.

Here's the amazing thing, people didn't make those songs and artwork and pictures and video clips in order to become famous or rich. They did it, to quote William Faulkner, "not for glory, and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before." And what I love most about the Nerdfighter community is when we come together to make stuff with and for each other, not to make money, not to get attention, not to gain subscribers, but to make gifts. Hank, let me give you an example of what I'm talking about that has nothing to do with Nerdfighteria.

Sometimes I feel like the internet is just like flashy flashy lights, but then once in a while, the internet, like a team of a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years will make us something magical. I think you know what I'm talking about, Hank. I'm talking about Gary Busey Family Portrait.

I mean look at it, Hank. Just look at it. Do you think the creator of Gary Busey Family Portrait was thinking about getting rich or getting famous as he laboriously photoshopped pictures of Gary Busey into a family portrait?

No! He was thinking, "geez, I have a great idea! And I'm going to do this well so it will make people happy!" And who knows, maybe it will also make Gary Busey realize that, ya know, he needs to make some different choices.

Hank, every single day I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer, and here is the only advice I can give. Don't make stuff because you wanna make money. It will never make you enough money.

And don't make stuff because you wanna get famous because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people. And work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.

Maybe they will notice how hard you've worked and maybe they won't, and if they don't notice, I know it's frustrating. But ultimately that doesn't change anything because your responsibility is not to the people you're making the gift for but to the gift itself. And I just wanna say, I got your gift.

I liked it. Thank you. Three more things.

One, my book Paper Towns is nominated for a Teens Top Ten award! If you are a teen you can vote for it or other books if you like them better link in the side bar! Two, in the very near future, I am going to break the Question Tuesday world record by answering 100 questions in 4 minutes.

To do that I will need to you leave many succinct questions in the comments. And three, I have the distinct honor of announcing the winner of Global Geek Week. The winner is Gus23 who made a great video about Geek Art which you can view in the sidebar, and who wins two tickets to fly anywhere in the continental United States via Virgin America.

The runner up was a new Nerdfighter who goes by the username Safferoon* who made a great video that you can also view in the sidebar but who sadly doesn't win anything other than my respect and admiration. Thanks to everyone who make Global Geek Week such a success and thanks again for my awesome birthday present! Hank, I'll see you singing tomorrow.