My "One Lovely Blog Award" Acceptance Speech

A photo of my home work environment taken while I was slapping together this very post. The two printers at the sides of this image had very little to do with it but the monitor, the mouse, the keyboard, and especially the coffee were central to getting this post up and to the people.

First of all, I would like to break from the tradition began by similarly illustrious awards, such  as The Academy Awards, The Golden Globes, and The Darwin Awards, by starting my seemingly endless babble by thanking those I wish to thank for making me thankful for this distinction that thanks me for the thousands of thankless blogging hours I’ve put in, sometimes just typing up a single post.

I would first like to thank Badlands Badley for nominating me. Nathan was the very first person to comment on my blog, encouraging me only 33 days after hitting the publish button on my groundbreaking “Hello World” post with his kind words reassuring me that using that default title was “undoofuslike”.

Since that fateful first post, I’ve grown as a blogger. That first post showed me that the WordPress crowd that comments on others’ thoughts is not the adversarial bunch I came across in the dog-eat-dog world of tagging my opinions to the ends of news stories.

My posts have grown, too. All the tedium and banality I managed to pack into that maiden post of just 771 words I can now craft into lengthy sleep-inducing posts of up to 8,500 words. That’s an eleven-fold growth in less than a year of blogging! Similarly, my entire blog gets around eleven times the daily hits per day compared to my early days here (but I’ve posted about 60 posts, so it looks like interest per post per day has actually fallen like a sailor on leave off a bar stool), sometimes getting numbers of visits in the double digits. Coincidentally, an 11:1 ratio figures prominently in the post I was going to put the finishing touches on and post today, but I’m writing this instead.

But just who is Badlands Badley? Nobody knows for sure. The best we can do is visit his blog, read his words, sniff out whatever he says is true facts about himself, and construct an image that will satisfy our brains’ desires to put a face to the words.

• FACT: We don’t need to construct an image for his face because he saved us the work by including it in his avatar.
• FACT: His square-framed glasses were given to him by Michael Caine (the optician, not the actor).
• FACT: He lives in, or passes through every once in a while, Kansas City.
• FACT: I’m not sure if it’s the Kansas City in Kansas or Missouri.
• FACT: Even he is not sure which pronunciation for Missouri, miz-ZOO-ri or miz-ZUH-ra, is more undoofuslike, so he alternates.

But the thing is, I just realized that I am supposed to tell you seven true facts about myself, not the person who nominated me. My problem is, I’ve already been nominated for these type of awards a few times. While they’re fun, I’ve already told you about all the interesting things (real or made up) about me, so please excuse the poor quality of the following list, which is part true and part baloney.

• FACT: I like Kansas City BBQ sauce, and I am not just saying that to suck up to Mr. Badley. We are presently on the second bottle that came in our gigantic Costco two-pack.
• FACT: I have only nine toes — I have only one pinky toe which is shared by both feet.
• FACT: I love smoked meat and will argue to the death that the only real smoked meat comes from Montreal. For those of you who don’t know, smoked meat is to pastrami as pastrami is to corned beef. Smoked meat must, by definition, be cured for 28 days and Quebec (the province where Montreal is found) is the only jurisdiction that allows meat to stick around that long before being condemned.
• FACT: Mrs. HoaiPhai bought me five winter coats this week (and one in January). Frankly, I like wearing clothes until they demolecularize according to the Laws of Thermodynamics but she likes  shopping even more. I’ve compromised and she’s convinced me that I need three of them (so she’ll return two, which is her other hobby) with my having given her pre-authorization to buy me a black pea jacket when Old Navy restocks next fall in exchange.
• FACT: I personally like shopping at American Eagle Outfitters for outfits for my pet American Eagle, Cornelius. So far his wardrobe includes an Uncle Sam suit (for the 4th of July), a penguin suit (for Hallowe’en), A Montreal Canadiens’ hockey uniform (for the Stanley Cup playoffs), a Korean hanbok (for Lunar New Year), a Stealth Bomber suit (for when I let him fly around the neighbourhood), and a butler suit (for day-today use so he looks good when fetching snacks from the fridge for me and my guests).
• FACT: I feed peanuts to the skunks that patrol my backyard. The way I see it, I want them to think of my house as being a friendly place where they will feel so at ease that they’ll keep their squirters holstered. Not only that but any break-and-enter guy in his right mind is bound to think twice about wading through a sea of skunks to get to my back window, right?
• FACT: We have no less than seven different varieties of raw rice in my house right now plus pre-flavoured packaged “cheater” rice.

Proof positive that I actually have Kansas City BBQ Sauce (upper left corner) in my fridge.

Now on to the matter of passing the One Lovely Blog Award torch on to others. According to Nathan, he was supposed to nominate ten people, but got himself off the hook by nominating only six, and auto-bestowing to the first four people who commented on the post. Following his lead, I think I’ll try something new and nominate the latest ten Freshly Pressed blogs. The reasoning behind this is that…

• Each of the previous three awards I’ve won have required me to nominate X number of bloggers and, frankly, I’ve run out of people because I’ve already nominated everyone for some other honour (or have simply lost track), and…
• If the Freshly Pressed crowd is good enough for the professional Freshly Pressed judges, they’ve got to be good enough for the ”One Lovely Blog Award”, and…
• Lately my hit numbers have been lower than a mole’s belt buckle (because I haven’t had much time for posting or commenting) so let’s just see what happens when you give your own award to the top ten heavy hitters of the day!

So, without further Mountain Dew, I present this coveted award to:

• Susie Lindau for her Whats in your Future? post about astrology. Linda, it’s your God-given (or Dragon-given, or Zeus-given) right to cherry pick which system of prognostication suits your needs on a day-to-day basis.
• Professor Rollmops for Waiting for Kangchenjunga, an amazing travelogue and series of photos of Darjeeling.
• Dampsquid for the post Kindred Spirits. I’ve had this very same conversation with strangers, but the part about the raccoon hats never entered my mind.
• Imnotfamousandneitherareyou for their ground-breaking expose, Web MD Is a Fear-monger. I’m glad someone else don’t always get the answers they search for on the web!
• Kendall Goodwin for her Finally Snow post about a snowstorm in Holland. Beautiful pictures!
• The M0vie Blog for its Non-review Review — Man on a Ledge. I will be seeing this flick because of this non-review!
• Nevercontrary for her Lets Be Friends! Wait… Never Mind post. It’s so short and fun to read, I had to take notes!
• ATMX Photography Blog for Chinese New Year Celebration in Austin. Beautiful pictures… I wish I had been there.
• Alberto Vargas’s Blog for 54th & 6th, a single photo that will have you looking at it for a while.
• Assia’s Kaleidoscope for Chase the Winter Blues with Chicken Mushroom Fricassee, a recipe that sounds too simple and delicious to be true.

I’m not going to contact them directly… they’re probably too busy answering the scads of comments that tend to accumulate when you’re Freshly Pressed, so I’ve heard. Hopefully they’ll notice the ping-backs and get right on dishing out awards of their own!

That’s all for now, folks. Please do visit my winners above!

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