Voting Stuff

Weblog Voting began a few hours ago. If you’re voting and looking for a palm card, here are my suggestions. However, before you rush off and exercise your franchise, health and safety regulations require that the following disclaimer be posted in a prominent, public area:

According to some of the cardinal rules of successful blogging (as helpfully vouchsafed to me by none other than Slate Magazine) --

"Quantity is more important than quality."

"Assume your reader won't get past the first paragraph."

"Don't be too wordy."

"Blogs aren't literature."

"Write everything as if your mom is reading your work, a good way to maintain civility and keep your work comprehensible."

-- it is painfully obvious that I don’t know shit-all about this business we call show zee bloggy stuff, and therefor my recommendations may well be seditious or insane or something and I’m just too logorrheic to notice.

End OSHA-mandated PSA.

Best New Blog: Swimming freestyle (Note to Jay: More you, less them.)

Best Individual Blogger: Knowing me, I’ll pick some mouthy, liberal degenerate or another.

Best Humor Blog: Jon Swift (And regarding a question previously posed by Mr. Swift, actually Jon, we already took over your little world. In 1981, using a powerful combination of disco, arbitrage, Edwin Meese and Reaganomics, we conquered Earth for its dramaturgical value ... thespic properties... because you people are friggin' hi-larious. And now, 27 years later, if you want to avoid “cancellation”, we have the same three words of advice that Stanley Kubrick had for Shelley Duvall in "The Shining": Be More Funny.)

Best Liberal Blog: So many bloggers I respect and admire, but I have to give it to Blue Gal. As Left Blogistan’s ass-kickingest den mother, Blue Gal is the little blog/blogger that could. Talented in several media, Salon-hostess and an inexhaustible meta-networker, I believe she currently posts at over 1,800 different sites.

Best Conservative Blog: Pammy. Based on the “Go, lemmings, go!” theory that whatever you find at the bottom of a beaker that has been filled with grib-grabs of crazy from the wingnut liquor cabinet and run through a centrifuge is arguably the "best" they have to offer...

Best Political Coverage: FiveThirtyEight was the go-to blog for the most important election in modern history.

Best Celebrity Blogger: Margaret Cho.

Best Technology Blog: When I go hunting for tech truffles, I usually end up at Gizmodo.

Best Education Blog: Blogush. I like reading this guy, and would probably like sharing a classroom wall with him. Simple as that.

Best LGBT Blog: Susie Bright. Confusing that Susie would be here and not, well, seven other places, but give me a chance to vote for her anywhere and I'll take it.

Best Parenting Blog: I haven’t seen any of their kids so what do I know?

Best Science Blog: These secular science devils quite possibly know the unlock code to my electrons, so why get either Pharyngula or Bad Astronomy pissed at me?

Best Literature Blog: Diary of a Heretic.

Best Diarist: Blue Girl in a Red State.

Best Pet Blog: "I Can Has Cheezburger". Also known as lolcat's Bastet and Pangaea as well as the graphics-accompaniment-headwaters for half the blog posts in the Universe.

Best Major Blog: After Bill Richardson withdrew I had to go to my fallback, Tbogg. He tells me that my logrolling doesn't matter and that I still owe him five dollars.

Best Very Large Blog: The General. Out of fear, frankly.

Best Large Blog: I have always found Miss Cellania charming.

Best Midsize Blog: Avedon Carol/Sideshow has always been a good read and good to me.

Best Hidden Gem: The Pajama Pundit

Best CIA Director-designate Blog: The Panetta Pantograph.

Best Corrupt Illinois Governor Blog: Dead-heat, so I'm casting 70% of my vote for George Ryan's "Preznit Giv Me Klemencee", and the other 70% for Rod Blagojevich's "Daily Douche"