Blogger Wins Weblog Award, Tells Rest of Internet to Suck It
January 14th, 2009.
My phone rang. I answered it. (I'm weird like that.)
It was early, much earlier than I usually stumble out of bed so I was understandably upset.
DOB: This had better be either an emergency or an extremely fat hooker.
Kevin: I… excuse me, is this Dan O'Brien?
DOB: That depends, who wants to know? And how fat are you? And, yes, it is.
Kevin: This is Kevin Aylward. Remember me?
DOB: (I squinted my eyes with anger, a gesture that went largely unnoticed due to the fact that this took place over the phone.) Well hello, Kevin.
Kevin Aylward, the founder of the filthy Weblog awards. I remembered him from our conversation last week, wherein he explained that I didn't deserve any of his blogger awards because I wasn’t "newsworthy" or "relevant" or "a blogger." Not that I even wanted one of his stupid, nerd awards, anyway.
Kevin: I'm calling to let you know, we'd like to give you an award.
DOB:What? YES! Holy Shit that's awesome. Yes! Shit, I completely deserve this. Yes, yes, fuck yes. Kevin: Alright, settle down-
DOB: Oh, I have so many people to thank. First and foremost, I'd like to thank myself. Without my support and unyielding dedication to excellence, none of this would've ever happened, and I'd be a
sucker just like all of you chumps. (At this point, I'd be pointing at everyone in the audience, and maybe flipping off the presenter or dropping my pants or something.) I suppose that's actually the end of my 'Thank you' list, but, hey, let's hear it for Darfur, am I right? They're really making it happen over there.
I don't think I actually know anything about Darfur.
Kevin: Huh.
DOB: Pretty sexy speech, right? You can say it was, that's fine.
Kevin: No, I was just thinking that somewhere down the line someone profoundly failed you in some way, and I wasn't sure if it was your parents or the public school system.
DOB: I'd say it's a pretty mixed bag.
Kevin: Figured. Anyway, we're giving you an award. It's nothing special.
DOB: Are you gonna announce it anywhere, or do a press release, or call all of my enemies and ex-girlfriends? This whole thing sounds pretty special.
Kevin: No, no, and no. We're just going to email it to you and tell absolutely no one else. I can't stress enough how unexciting this is. Really, it just took a couple of seconds in photoshop. Truth be told, it's pretty meaningless. It was Sean Gleeson's idea, he's one of the other Weblog guys.
DOB: I knew you believed in me, Kevin.
Kevin: I actually still sort of hate you.
DOB: Ah, DOB and Kevin… Kevver. Guns n Roses' Stairway to Kevin. Happily Kever After. Ben Folds Fives' Whatkever & Kever Amen. Kevin: Please stop doing this.
DOB: Research and Kevelopment.
He hung up, so I'm not sure if he even heard that last one, but I like to think he felt it.
For the next few hours, I waited patiently by my computer for the email to come. What kind of award would it be? A trophy? Money? A handgun? How would they email any of those things? Right when I was about to call up
Tomorrow Kever Dies, the email came, and my excitement and unbridled joy erupted all over my apartment.
I was the proud recipient of the 2008 weblogawards webLAME award webSTUPID award for jerks.1 I was finally being recognized for all the hard work that I assume I must've done over the past year and a half. Granted, the Weblog site has a page with all of actual winners, and, granted, I'm not technically on that page, but, hey, I've seen the logos that those winners get. The word "award" appears on their certificate just once, while mine features it a total of three times. Mathematicians will tell you; this makes me three times the winner of all those other websites. Did you hear that, Stirrup Queens,
winner in the category of "Best Medical/Health Issues Blog?" You ain't shit compared to Cracked.
Now, the haters and doubters out there probably have something to say about this, ("I hate you" and "I find you hard-to-believe," respectively), and maybe even you normal folks think that this award isn't something to brag about. Perhaps you think that it isn't even an award in the traditional sense. Perhaps you'll point out that, while it does contain the word "award," (three times!), it also contains the words "lame" and "stupid," and it explicitly says that the award is "for jerks," the implication being that
I'm a jerk.
But here's my take on the situation. This is an award that has never been given out before and, most likely, will never be given out again. This is an award that no one else on the entire internet was even nominated for. Nobody else even had a chance. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude, then, that I am the only person on planet Earth who deserves this award. I'm in a league all my own.
I see it like this: Let's say they were giving an annual award out for Excellence in Boning, (an award I'd also like to be considered for, whoever does that, please). Let's say a bunch of people are nominated, guys in one group, chicks in another. The guys are all objectively rated on their boning skills in a number of categories, (duration, focus, effectiveness, sweat, the amount of mid-coital cursing, the creativity of mid-coital cursing, the loudness of mid-coital cursing, etc). Then, at the last minute, at the
last, sexy minute, some dude shows up and he's got two dicks. Two! Well, obviously his options and methods are different. He can please more women in half the time, for example, or he can just super-please one woman in a variety of ways. Also, you know. Sword fights.
His completely unique skill set and unequaled abilities puts him at a considerable advantage, so it would be unreasonable to put him in the same category of those boring,
average, John Q. Singledicks. Still, it would be unfair to ignore this man's skills simply because he was born with a gift. So, at the boning awards, they'd compromise by taking him out of the male category and creating a separate, specific category, "Best Guy at Boning Chicks (But With Two Wieners)," or something, which he would win, hands down.
I'm that guy. I'm for the internet what Guy-With-Two-Wieners is to the world of boning. So suck it, Internet, you bumbling, mono-dicked failure. From here on out, I am officially "the award winning Dan O'Brien," and you can officially suck it till your face falls off. And even though I'd already been describing myself as an award-winner to everyone I meet, now it's finally true. If I ever get pulled over, I can flash my award and the cop has to give me his gun. If I'm ever interviewed, (like, for example, next week on Killing Time Radio ), I can demand to be introduced as The Weblog Award Winning High Chancellor of Funk, and if they don’t, I'm pretty sure I can sue them. When I walk into restaurants, I get to eat for free or I can legally murder the owner.
This is probably how Gandhi felt when he won
his Weblog award. Fuck yes.
1To be slightly serious, here's something that will always make me laugh: Even though photoshop isn't the most complex tool in the world, what kills me is that, at the end of the day, somebody had to actually sit down and make this fucking award. It's not like they had one of these lying around and just forwarded it along. And it might not have taken a whole lot of time or effort, but somebody who, presumably has a job and a life, had to dedicate a certain amount of time in their day to actually design and create this award, all because of my retarded blogging. It is the small victories to which I will forever cling.
I don't think I actually know anything about Darfur.
