Voting in the Canadian Blog Awards for Best Humour Blog ends… well, I’m not sure, but sometime either late today or tomorrow at the absolute latest. If you have not voted, vote! If you have voted, vote again from a different computer or something! Hold rallies! Petition your local mayoral office to hold an official MGK Jamboree Day!1 Floss with official MGK Brand Dental Floss!2

Same deal as always applies: you may request a post on something or whatever in exchange and I will definitely consider thinking about writing something vaguely in connection to your request. (Actually, a good deal of next week’s postery resulted from previous requests, mostly because I’m hitting crunch time at school and am too busy to come up with anything original or interesting on my own. WE ALL BENEFIT!)

If you are looking for a truly ringing site review, consider James Bow’s roundup, wherein he explains that I “post funny videos,” says that Skippy of Enjoy Every Sandwich is a “young and energetic young woman” (not only making sure to emphasize that Skippy is young, but also a different gender than I thought Skippy was), mischaracterizes the Useless Men as “essayists” rather than advice columnists, and claims that Mitchieville is a “good read.” In fairness, Bow did correctly point out that Noise to Signal is a web comic, presumably by using the power of sight. So, you know, one out of five, that’s better than George Bush is doing these days, amirite?

Also, I encourage all readers to heartily ignore Skippy’s hate-filled diatribes, wherein he grossly and falsely accuses me of being seventy thousand people or something because I am polite and give my past guest contributors who are welcome to add more content to my site whenever they wish (which is not often) a nice tribute by associating them with me as pointedly as I can do. Honestly, it is my life’s goal to become the number one Christopher Bird on the web, and surpass the guy who wrote The Secret Life Of Plants.

(True story: back when I first got onto Usenet in 1993, I used to get one or two emails a month from people asking if I was that Christopher Bird. This persisted until about 1998. Those of you who read the Wikipedia article will note that the other Christopher Bird died in 1996. You may draw your own conclusions as to whether this means that people are innately stupid or innately optimistic or both.)

In conclusion: as P. Diddy once said, “vote or die.”3

1. Do not emulate the example of those people in Schnectady. I still get angry letters about the fatalities. Like it’s my fault they gave the kids broken-glass pinatas. I didn’t even endorse that company! [↩]
2. “Sometimes you must fight the crocodile that is gingivitis!” [↩]
3. Hey, does anybody else remember 720? The skateboarding videogame? “Skate… OR DIE!” God, that was a great game. They should remake it with P. Diddy, if only to see him get attacked by killer bees. [↩]

So my earlier round of begging has paid off handsomely and I am a FINALIST in the Canadian Blog Awards for Best Humour Blog. Clearly, you must go vote for me. Same deal as previously applies! Vote for me and you can totally ask me to write about something! And I may even do it.

However, I am entirely balanced and fair, so let us first examine the other four finalists in this category.

Noise to Signal is a comic strip (well, single-panel strip, much like The Far Side, but with no cows) masquerading as a blog. It is not unamusing, but come on! A comic strip is not a blog! Rob Cunningham is very clearly cheating, and as such, any potential humour value that his strip provides must obviously be meaningless in comparison to the sheer outrage I am sure you are feeling right now over his attempts to pull wool over your eyes. Also, I post a lot more than Rob “Once A Week If You’re Lucky” Cunningham, so be aware that his “quality not quantity” arguments are completely meritless. That he has made none of these arguments so far is utterly besides the point, because we all know cartoonists are shifty, and that they will lie and cozen their way into your heart with pretty, false words, then stab you with a butcher knife and draw unholy symbols with your blood. Or is that Satanists? I can never tell the difference. And you know why? Oh, I think you do.

Useless Advice From Useless Men is an advice column wherein I am unsure if the letters are for real or not. It doesn’t really matter. (Unless they are fake, in which case their site is filled with lying liars and clearly they are unworthy of your vote.) It’s competent, clever stuff and the guy(s) writing it could probably get a real job writing something somewhere if they tried. That having been said: one post a week. I feel like a slacker when I only put in one post per day. Admittedly some of them are hyperlinks, but you love hyperlinks, don’t you? What’s that? You want more original material? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU I AM ONLY HUMAN YOU ARE SQUEEZING BLOOD FROM A STONE HERE! Or, more accurately, “I will get right on that.”

Mitchieville is the token “here is a right-wing blog that online righties think is funny.” This is another way of saying “they are not actually funny.” Yes, I know they think that “hurr hurr hurr liberals are dumb” is the height of wit and that just saying “politically correct” is a punchline (much like “Cucamunga” or “Walla Walla” are innately funny place names), but just like Larry the Cable Guy, the Half Hour News Hour and anything Dennis Miller did after 9/11, it turns out that bitterness and spite do not actually substitute well for comic insight or a sense of timing. However, you just know that Small Dead Animals and Free Dominion and the rest of the right-wing freakosphere are going to take this string of insults what I have just written as proof that left-wingers are full of hatred or something, and organize a massive get-out-the-vote campaign for Mitchieville. Which is kind of depressing. Also, they have a guy writing for them named “Fenris Badwulf,” which is quite possibly the best bad pseudonym of all time. I mean, “Fenris Badwulf” is the sort of name World of Warcraft players look at and say, “man… that’s a bit much.”

Enjoy Every Sandwich is a left-wing blog, and the writer has quite a sense of flair and is quite entertaining as medium-length essayists go. I would certainly vote for him for Best Progressive Blog! However, he is my competition in this category, so forget everything I just said because clearly he is a douchebag with no social skills or originality who steals traffic from starving orphan websites who have whooping cough and/or the dropsies. How low can he sink? He gave his readers titties in exchange for voting. (Did any of you people want titties in exchange for voting? Well, forget it, because I have principles, and will only give you money and possibly drugs.)

But really, the reason to vote for me isn’t that these other sites are obviously low-key hackwork operations run on slave labour and sodomy. The reason to vote for me is because I bring you what nobody else does. Do these other sites go back into the mists of time to inform you how J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis talked when they hung out? Do they introduce you to the cast of American Gladiators? Do they explain Hollywood for you or warn you about the Count or Photoshop old comic book advertisements or talk about action figures or link back to that Atari boxes post you already saw six times at other sites while trying to pimp themselves or expose you to the glory that is Flapjacks?

And most importantly, are they officially sponsored by Rex the motherfucking Wonder Dog?

I think not. So, in addition to voting for me, tell all of your friends! Then make them tell all of their friends! Use force if necessary.

Does anybody have a good site for information about potential oceanic methane sequestration technologies? Google-fu is failing me, and I’m looking at it as a potential topic for a law school research paper (specifically implementation of same on a global level and interactions with the law-of-the-sea treaties).

Well, I’m coming to the one-year mark of providing what can theoretically be dubbed “entertainment” here on mightygodking.com, and really I’m horribly gratified to see the readership steadily climb upwards; it’s worth noting, to me at least, that this site has finally broken into Technorati’s Top 10K Of The Web (“except for real sites like CNN.com and ESPN and, you know, shit people actually check every day – but definitely top 10K of the blogs!”). It totally makes me feel like a bigshot on the Internet.

Of course, the one-year mark means that it is also time to pay my ISP the moneys so I can continue doing what it is what I do.

Now, traditionally among semi-successful blogs, this is the point where the hat is held out expectantly and the site maintainer says something about how “your contributions can keep this site going because it’s a big timesink and a little compensation goes a long way and really, it’s less than a magazine subscription,” and all of that is true, I suppose, but in all honesty I would be doing this if my audience was fifty people or fifty thousand or fifty million [1], so I can’t really claim the “your money keeps me going” argument with any validity.

And besides, I can’t claim your money in any case, because, as longtime readers know, I prefer to keep my site’s use and alteration of copyrighted images as firmly as fair-dealing as possible, both out of principle and because I don’t want to get sued if I can avoid it [2], and under Canadian copyright law [3] monetary gain weakens a fair dealing argument.

All of that having been said, for folks who feel appreciative, there is always my Amazon Wishlist, with items ranging in price from “made me kind of chuckle one time when I was having a bad day” to “I slept with you that one time and accidentally gave you the clap, and wish to express my regret over that.” [4] But, and I would like to stress this, it is totally not obligatory in any way.

[1] By 2013.
[2] Although I’m pretty sure Archie Comics is coming after me at some point.
[3] Until the Tories gut it, anyway.
[4] YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

(Wishlist, for those few inclined to buy prezzies.)

I didn’t even know Fantagraphics was doing complete-reprint editions of Popeye, but now I know I must own them!

Seriously, when I was a kid and we went on vacation to Old Orchard in Maine, one of the things I loved best was that the tiny town library had this enormous anniversary collection of Popeye strips. I took that thing out every time we went and just read it through the entire vacation. I have loved Popeye my entire life, for serious. Finding out about complete-reprint editions is better than when you go into Loblaws to get something mundane and discover that the candy cane ice cream is back for the holidays.

They are on the wish list, people. If you feel so inclined to buy me nice things, buy me this! (I’ve got another comics parody in the works that should be done probably before the new year! Call it consideration!)