Quid pro plugs

Two blogular compatriots have been nominated and are currently slogging for votes in the Blogger’s Choice Awards: The Other Mother for “Best Parenting Blog” and “Best Political Blog,” and Looky, Daddy!, for “Hottest Daddy Blog” and “Best Parenting Blog.” Thank heavens each one is up for one award that the other isn’t up for, since otherwise I would have had to re-register under a pseudonym using a dummy email account, and new birthdates and zip codes, and then fake-vote for each of them in the same category.

Myself, I have sworn off campaigning for, or enrolling in, or otherwise attracting the attention of blog competitions for my own aggrandizement after the wild n’ wooly Weblog Awards beeswax of this past December.* Which of course sounds odd since, in the end, that competition seems to have ultimately turned out in this blog’s favor. Though I will maintain that it wasn’t this particular blog, but rather what it represented — lesbian family life, lovingly (and sentimentally) chronicled — that snagged the votes of a great many fabulously feverish supporters. The best part about that competition experience was discovering that lots of folks, regardless of what their family looked like, were willing to go vote and then needle a friend to do so as well. The worst part about it was that it took time away from the more important campaign we had been waging around the household to get our daughter to eat anything besides air. (Okay, that, plus we got slimed w/ some skanky virtual homophobia.)

In my lengthy post-mortem of the Weblog Awards process, I researched the whole weblog award phenomenon a bit and discovered (saints preserve us!) there are several, and others are conducted in such a way as to reduce the multi-voting frenzy that typified and overcharged the Weblog Awards. Blogger’s Choice seems to be organized along fairly civilized lines, without the one voter/as-many-votes-as-possible thing built in.

My only complaint, of course, is that they don’t have a Best Lesbian Dad blog category. Or, oh, I don’t know, an LGBT blog category, any LGBT blog category. I know, they’re tilting toward parsing blogs by “interest,” rather than “interest group.” But other blog awards have recognized LGBT bloggers as a distinct group, worth lumping together and setting against one another in a mudfight.

Be that as it may, in the spirit of great gratitude for the support I received from the authors of The Other Mother and Looky, Daddy! back when I was campaigning in one, I encourage you to support ’em. Looky, Daddy!’s get out the vote for LesbianDad post also has my all-time favorite argument against gay marriage in it. I am honored to be associated with it, and if you haven’t read it, you should hie yourself over there and read it STAT. Then mosey over to the Blogger’s Choice site, sign up (that’s how to keep it clean! so use your neutral, publicity & spam-wary info, folks), and give these fine folks some love.

*Hey! It’s not like I’m not going to stick one of those fun badges on the sidebar, though, if one comes my way. I never was in the boy or girl scouts (there wasn’t an in-between scouts, which would have worked perfect for me). So I have a lot of badge collecting to catch up on.