Thank you.

Thank you v’ruh much.

The awards thing is upon us.

I'm deeply ambivalent about such things, but I’m also I’m tired, and the hour is late, and the sun beat it out of town ahead of the sheriff three days ago and I have (Prepare for awful writer’s joke) similes to go before I sleep (Awful writer’s joke completed. Resume level flying.) so let me cheat a little and pull my own words back up from a hundred posts ago to say this about laurels:

"...So there it is, dumped out in no particular order. All of those things, all true and all chock-a-block with one another -- an inevitability, a distraction, a kind of accidental fencing match with people I only want to admire, a kind and much-appreciated compliment and a tingly tongue in the ear of my vanity. A clutter of sharply conflicting feelings, which doesn’t surprise me since the inside of my head is a cluttered place.

If you go out into the world and say nice things about what I write here, that’s terrific and I appreciate it. But if not, that perfectly OK too. I’m not going to crusade or ballyhoo, but I’m not going to cop to any bullshit false modesty either. I write well and I know it. Many, many others write well and I’m grateful every day for it.

But in the end, isn't that what's cool? That Left Bloggerton is so...profligate? So overflowing with talented and passionate people?

Let me keep this short and sweet: I compete with no one who travels beside me, lets me lean on their dazzling words when I need strength or a laugh, and covers my back.

Period.

This isn’t a race, it’s a movement. This isn’t a contest, it’s a cause.

However it’s nice to know what I do is appreciated, and that I can keep honorable company with so many men and women I deeply admire without wondering if someone is going to discover my borrowed coat and fake ID and come frog-march me back to the kids table :-)

So here’s the deal.

First, thank you all, most sincerely. Readers of this blog have nominated it for eight Koufaxes (Koufices?) in seven categories.

For me awards themselves fall wispily into the “All glory is fleeting” hamper: I am quite sure, for example, I still have a bit of rotting, blue rayon tucked away somewhere that absolutely I lived and died over in fourth grade, obediently following the same impulse that Napoleon described when he said that, “A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”

Well I don’t want to fight for scraps of silk: life is too short and my friends and champions in Left Bloggylvania too numerous and talented and variegated for a “Best” moniker to be anything but a curiosity.

Because in the end, how can any sane person develop any kind of metric that would allow us to compare the kind of 15-round, lead-weighted-and-barbed-wire-laced bone-crackin' that Steve Gilliard hands out gratis three times a day with James Wolcott‘s brand of effortless whipwork so marksmanlike and castrate-o-riffic that Vincent Price’s “Baka” from “The Ten Commandments” would happily stand in line to take lessons?

Who doles out more laughs-per-syllable: The General, or The Rude One?

It’s a strange game, but some of you thought enough to take the trouble to go over and take the trouble, and that is worth stopping the Merry-Go-Round for a minute and saying thanks.

So...Thanks ;-)

Here are the categories…

Best Blog (non-professional)

Best Writing

Best New Blog

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition

Best Post

Best Series

Most Humorous Blog

But, c'mon, doesn’t this come with just an itty-bitty side of nudge-nudge-wink-wink?

Oh fuck no: My karma buises like a hemophiliac summer peach as it is.

No, pursue your bliss. Follow your weird with purity of heart. Do as you please, do unto others, don’t covet thy neighbor’s wife’s ass (Babelfish has a little trouble with the translation, but I think that covers the gist), don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things, and gradually the planet will return to a harmonious state of dynamic balance.

That’s the first part: the giving of proper thanks.

The second part is, you’d be nuts not to go over and check out the compilation of purely excellent blogs and bloggers that the folks at Wampum have worked so hard to pull together. It may or may not represent the closest thing to an anthology of the “Best of 2006” we are likely to get, but it is a seriously great start place.

Whether you vote for anyone, don’t vote, or vote for Pat Buchanan and then swear you didn’t is entirely secondary.

Instead I would strongly urge you to blow past the writers you know, plunge right in, and hog out kid-in-a-candy-store style at the bounty of brilliant, funny, passionate and occasionally-heartbreaking words that have been strewn at your feet.

An embarassment of riches, absolutely free of charge.

And that, in the end, is the one redemptive quality of laurels.