BLOGS THAT EXCELL

I have observed a range of responses to memes and awards go from giddy outbursts of the closet exhibitionist in every blogger through total indifference to ivory tower animosity towards cretins daring to touch the hem of genius.

Awards seem to generate from the feeling anyone gets upon observing something extraordinary making one turn to see if anyone shared it or might. In my relatively small blogroll, I have such wishes to share tid bytes and whole stories with which my reading is littered and am often tempted to start one of those many blogs that are a sort of ongoing award show with a daily collection of links to such awardable posts. About one out of ten of my posts give shout outs to individuals or posts whose thinking or action inspires my own. The family of folks I tune into daily have extensive enough blogrolls that I need not have one of my own except as my own speed dial but I continue to add them to aid their exposure if not my daily visits.

Two of this daily family have hit me with the Excellent Blog Award which, while being the kind of flattery that will get them anywhere, seems to dilute itself by coming with the stipulation that each awardee then award ten more. Burbanmom listed her 18link speed dial, “All of the blogs I have listed under 'Family, Friends and Blogs I Like'”. Minx included me in her decade as, “so here are my list of 10 victims who are less lazy than me -,” and went on to list nine other boggers far beyond my skills or talent. As blogosphere inbreeding would have it, both Minx and Burbanmom got awarded by another on my blogroll, Leslie. And so it goes.

And me, what about my ten? I am still holding off on awarding the the last of five Thinking Blogger Awards which befell my duty way back in ‘06 sometime. With one tenth of the concentration the word excellent requires to be used for any one of these folks I give you my list of excellent blogs not already awarded such as far as I know.

The Far Queue — Pisces Iscatiot’s words have no meaning until he puts them together. Consistently, though too rarely of late, the most thought provoking writer in my sphere of discovery.

The Time Being — Steve Kilby’s daily stream of creative thinking is the kind of honest self examination and meditation on love and life that allows his originality to shine through all the derivative artifacts with which we all must express our thoughts.

Karoline in the Morning — Read her gentle words, feel her sense of life invade your defenseless places and soon there is nowhere to defend, and you are filled with Karoline.

Unremitting Failure — Mike’s drollery is the most constant joy in my blogging experience. He’s got some poignant zingers in amongst his dry humor, so wait ‘til it’s over before you guffaw too loudly, it may be about you.

Empress of Dirt — Melissa has a garden blog like I will have if I ever learn to grow enough food to sustain myself year round. Her love of growing things and creating garden art and showing photos of what she loves to see in Ontario is inspiring to say the least.

Driftglass — The only one writer blog amongst my political animals category, Driftglass seems to find the same horrors being perpetrated by our government that I do and expresses them with far more vitriolic insight born of closer experience in the arena I only catch putrid whiffs of.

Well that’s six out of ten, as far as I got with my first attempt with the thinking blogger award.

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Memes, a tag game within the blindman’s bluff of the internet, seem to be generated by a genuine wish to know more about perceived secrets held by intriguing bloggers. It’s a whole new world, this making fast friends based on no more than our perception of the mind and intent authoring pixelated words expressing observations, interests, ideas and preferences without a voice to measure passion or a face to pigeonhole with physical prejudices. One would think it would be a purely mental activity. Without natural direct experience of one another we are only information along with the lying agendas and the possibly photoshopped pictures that create our world view on the news. We have, in this modern age of instant worldwide communication brought mankind full circle to where the level of individual success within society no longer depends on the believability of authority or reported facts at hand but the on the ability of the perceiver of the chaos of information to find the theme relevant to specific concerns. No more laws, walls or weapons for an established truth to work from — we are face to face with creations too vast to be believed, much less understood, in which only our grounding in the natural curve can find meaning. The government is no longer a guarantee of nourishment in the shopping aisle, we must revert to hunting and gathering the berries of truth growing in the jungle of information. Memes serve as taste samples of particularly interesting berries.

Whoa, sorry about that little side track into the liberating effect of the internet. Burbanmom also tagged me with the six unimportant things meme??? which comes with the following rules:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you.
(2) Post the rules on your blog.
(3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
(4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
(5) Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Here goes a delve into the unimportant habits and quarks here in the vapors —

1) I cannot put my palms down flat due to a symmetrical gradual shriveling of my pinkies over the past twenty years.

2) Because of one, above, I am often mistaken for a mason when shaking hands.

3) Because of one, above, I have a callous on my right pinky from pressure on the mouse that is as large as the callous I developed on my bird finger from using pencils, pens and paint brushes all my life.

4) Before either pinkie began to draw up like a chicken foot there appeared an minute indentation in each palm as if a stitch had been taken from within my hand.

5) The indentations in my palms are the anchor points for the rigid, shrinking tendon that is pulling my pinkies into fists of their own.

6) I am very careful about not falling on my face or slapping anyone or thing because it really hurts to try and straighten out my pinkies even slowly.

C’mon, you guys. The meme called for unimportant. There exists no limit to the unimportance of the infinitude of my quirks, I feel like the savant that can reel off the first few thousand decimal places of pi.

Realizing that everyone is not so gifted, I will embarrass no one by passing this meme on. Because the six are to be chosen at random, choose yourself if you so choose. Happy meming.