Vanity, Thy Name is... Me

I've known that the 2005 Philippine Blog Awards were accepting nominations for a while now, but the prospect of visiting their site only came about after a quick peek at Anton's blog. (He's been nominated already, folks. Applause, please.)

I came upon a very sparse web site, heavy on the gray-whites and gray-blacks. Their About Us area didn't give me any information other than what was already obvious, which left me wondering who these people were and what they wanted with all these blogs. A strange image of short, big-eyed, gray-skinned aliens popped into my head, and in the corners of my mind they were reading our online works, analyzing the logic of human thought and prose that was present within.

At least that scenario gave me a better impression than the Philippine Webby Awards, which really needs a bit of an overhaul when it comes to stylistic and cognitive judgement. But I run the risk of lapsing into worthless commentary if I talk about that, so we'll just move on, shall we?

I found their submission form quite easily, although I grimaced at some of the more glaring grammatical errors. Didn't these people check the text, at least? But before I could begin my mental tirade, that was when it hit me -- I could nominate my own blog! I figured I could stand a good chance against some of the other nominees, so why couldn't I just put up my site for consideration?

Vanity, that's why. Pride happens to be one of the seven deadly sins, after all.

For a moment, I considered the moral dilemma of placing my own nomination. On the one hand, I don't like the prospect of tooting my own horn; I would rather find ways to improve until I hit a point where people can't help but take notice. On the other hand, there was the possibility of fame, fortune and perhaps a boatload of loose women if I only had the guts to take the first step.

To heck with it. I punched in my entry, and gleefully hit the "Submit" button.

The screen went blank. What in Hitchcock's name...?

I reloaded the page and went exploring a bit. Nothing seemed wrong; The connection was still there. The browser seemed to be working fine... except that it looked like my entry hadn't been submitted.

I figured that the best thing to do was to dump an experimental subject into the entry form first. So I grabbed the address to Dominique Cimafranca's blog, wrote up a short description, and jammed it into the submission form. If the stupid thing was going to lose another of my submissions, then it wasn't going to lose the one pertaining to my blog. My personal writing was too valuable to waste.

This one submitted just fine. I scratched my head.

It was just as well, though. At least I knew it was working. I filled in the entry for my site again and hit "Submit".

The screen cleared. I cursed.

Maybe the site decided to blacklist me for some reason. Maybe there was something wrong with the browser. Maybe the computer just didn't like me.

I grabbed the next nearest guinea pig on hand and started typing it in. Clair Ching's blog. Yeah. That was a winner. And a good test subject.

It submitted fine, just as Dominique's had before it. Aaarrgh! What did Clair Ching have that I didn't? Well, sure, she had a bigger fanbase and a dog named Panda, but still...

Oh, wait... maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was trying to enter my subliminal codes warning others of the impending alien invasion? Maybe the grays were looking at my blog right then, shaking their collective heads at the tenacity of the insignificant human who was crawling before them. If that was the case, then perhaps it was best that I look like an innocent subject to them first.

I handed in the entry. It submitted just fine.

I considered trying another test subject, but I finally decided that Jonas Diego gets too many visitors as it is. Somebody's probably going to nominate him, sooner or later.

And so I just sat there, inspecting every nook and cranny of the Awards site, wondering why they didn't just give the award to The Sassy Lawyer and write everything else off. Who was going to do the judging? Was there really a package of fame, fortune and boatload of loose women that awaited the winner? What were the gray aliens' real plans for our doomed little planet?

Then I noticed that somebody had left a bottle of pickles in the fridge. Pickles! I love pickles!

Fortunately (munch), I hadn't (munch) shut off the computer (munch munch) yet. And that (munch) is why I'm writing (munch munch) this entry (munch) right now. (Munch munch munch)

Darn stupid aliens.