Polishing Up Our Concession Speech

Well, dear reader, today is the last day on which you can vote for us in the finals of the much-esteemed Best Humor/Comics Blog category in the 2005 Weblog Awards. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” would beg you to plump for us, but, quite frankly, a quick glance at the ole’ vote totals reveals that it’s all pretty hopeless. As of this “post’s” writing, our humble “weblog” is in absolute last place.

That’s right, dear reader: You can count all the “weblogs” we are beating on no fingers. Despite the best efforts of our seemingly paltry fan base, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are soon to be remembered as the Jamaican bobsled team of the 2005 Weblog Awards. If our “website” were a movie, it’d clearly be Howard the Duck. We’re like the Polish team in the Mental Olympics.

Once we slipped into the caboose, so to say, we began thinking long and hard about our torrentially bad placement in the finals. Frankly, we handled this thing all wrong: Instead of groveling for votes like a two-bit Marion Barry, we should have played down the whole nomination. You know, the whole This-Idea-of-Complimenting-“Weblogs”-for-Supposedly-Being-the-Best-Is-a-Bunch-of-Garbage routine. That way, when we ineluctably came in dead last, we wouldn’t look like Nick Nolte in those DUI arrest photos.

Or maybe, like Phil Collins’ father, we should have pulled out. We could have earned all kinds of e-kudos for magnanimously stepping aside and backing, say, Six Meat Buffet.

But, no, we collectively weren’t bright enough to think things through, and thus we find ourselves in the un-lovely predicament of the It’s-Simply-an-Honor-To-Be-Here position. Ah, the agony, the agony.

So what, you may be asking yourself, exactly happened? How did we become the Internet equivalent of leprosy? Why did our “weblog” have a similar shelf-life of popularity as that of the whilom pop band Living in a Box? Is it because we refer to such things as “the whilom pop band Living in a Box”? That certainly must be part of it.

Perhaps we have far more fans than we think, but these diehard devotees are too darned lazy to vote for us. It’s certainly possible that, like the Grateful Dead, we have oodles of supporters who are essentially shifty ne’er-do-wells. And dirty hippies, now that we think of it.

It also occurred to us that the topics of our resplendent musings aren’t exactly standing-room-only material. Whilst our competition was busy drawing yuks from the Tookie Williams execution, we were busy excoriating Cornel West. We don’t think that’s going to play well in Dubuque.

But let’s face it, dear reader: Our Official Luddite Technical Department has yet to master the frightening world of putting “pictures” up on our “website,” and maybe our complete lack of visual aids has rendered us about as attractive as Drew Carey naked smothered in egg yolks.

Okay, okay—enough of this miserable self-flagellating. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” must stop beating ourselves up. Sure, our performance in the 2005 Weblog Awards was about as impressive as a Dolph Lundgren film festival. But so what? We were in a tough category. Perhaps next year we’ll find ourselves with an easier field to beat—maybe in the Best Hat Design category.

For now, dear reader, we’re busy polishing up our concession speech. We’re not entirely sure what we’re going to say, but we’re certain of one thing: It won’t be funny.