Gasp.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on the above graphic to vote for Blue Gal in the category "Best of the Top 3501 - 5000 Blogs."

Then, to completely screw up the exit polls, email one, JUST ONE, personal friend of yours, asking them to vote for Blue Gal, too.

UPDATE: Turns out you can come back every day and vote for Blue Gal once a day. No kidding. The idea behind this is that Markos is too self-important to pimp daily for votes, and Kossacks are too lazy to go ahead and do it, which levels the playing field for us smaller, more diligent, desperate, well, you get the idea. I am not making this up:

I'll admit that I stumbled onto the formula in 2003 while trying to devise a system that would give blogs with lower daily readership a chance against blogs with much higher daily traffic. Call it the InstaPundit influence... I surmised that someone like InstaPundit's Glenn Reynolds would probably link to the inaugural edition of the awards only once. If the voting period was one day and he linked to the poll how, I figured, would a site with 1/10th of his daily traffic be able to compete?

The answer, of course, was to extend the voting period and allow for multiple votes, thus giving determined challengers a chance to send members of their smaller audience back to the polls repeatedly in contrast readers from other blogs who might only visit once or twice. The idea behind The Weblog Awards has always been to level the playing field in as many of the categories as possible. That idea is what lead to the creation of the Ecosystem categories. I figured that blogs in proximity to each other in the TTLB Ecosystem would be aligned closely in readership as well - making them natural competition for each other.

Glenn Greenwald, honey, if your large mammal ever wants to do it with a flappy bird...

Please also give these FOBG's your consideration. And thank you.

Best New Blog - Konagod
Best Liberal Blog - Shakespeare's Sister, Jesus' General, or Bring It On! [my vote in this category is so secret, I don't even know who I'm voting for.]
Best Video Blog - Crooks and Liars
Best Humor Blog - Sadly, No!
Best of the Top 1751 - 2500 Blogs - Last Left Turn Before Hooterville

And of course
Best LBGT Blog - Captain Dyke (What do you MEAN they don't have write-in voting!?! Oh crap.)

With all this new found blogebrity comes certain annoyances. The red carpet is buzzing about the fact that Blue Gal is a finalist in her TTLB range, but Asslass Slugs was shut out of every category, including Best Conservative Blog. My attorneys have warned me not to make too much of this. They say it can probably be handled with a letter. They always say that. For the record, my position of several months ago stands: Pam's persistent, annoying demands for a gmail invite will go unanswered. As to the rumors that she was screaming my url when she was recently "asked to leave" the kosher wine superstore in Howell, New Jersey, I have no comment. She looks tired. I hope she gets some help. That is all I have to say.

My imaginary publicist picked out this "look" for me for when I present the "Best New Blog" award to Konagod. I don't give a rat's butt that Konagod is gay: the kiss he gets at the podium will be a cross between this:



and Tom Cruise's wedding smooch. Just saying.