One of the points of Blarch Badness is to get small good local bloggers more exposure in an increasingly noisy Seattle blogging world. Kirida, which is on a surprising run into the Final Eight, fits right into that model. Mona is a 25 year old native of Saipan who blogs about life as a sailor-mouthed mother in West Seattle. The folks over at West Seattle Blog nominated her for the tourney, saying that she’s the funniest blogger on the Westside. I would have to disagree — she’s one of the funniest this city has to offer, and it’s time she stopped being a West Seattle secret. Of course, now West Seattle Blog has to face the very blog they nominated. How ironic.

I pried an interview out of her while she was changing her husband’s adult diaper.
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Defective Yeti was one of the four sites picked to receive an automatic bid during our Blarch Badness author caucus and for good reason: Matthew Baldwin, the man behind the Yeti, is quite possibly the best humorist writing in Seattle. (So much so that I can even forgive him for getting that damn Thank you for being a friend song stuck in my head for a week.) After threatening to debase myself further with pathetic begging, he kindly agreed to answer a couple of questions about his site and the Badness.

With the fact that we didn’t formally inform people last year that they had been entered into our little tournament, did you even know you were in it?

Oh my goodness, of course. I’m as obsessive about my referral logs as the next self-absorbed blogger, so as soon as the first person clicked over from your joint I was all over it like hollandaise sauce on Eggs Benedict. Disgusting, disgusting hollandaise sauce.

But, you know, I was nominated for a few Bloggies there back in Ye Olde Olden Dayes of blogging and was soundly beaten by a newcomer with name recognition in his corner, a pivotal moment in my life that engendered in me both a healthy wariness of Internet-related awards and a lifelong vendetta against Wil Wheaton.

You put up a pretty good showing considering your competition, West Seattle Blog, is - in my opinion - the Mafia. How do you deal with your popularity?

Ignore it, when possible.

In the wake of losing the aforementioned Bloggie, I resolved to make my site as popular as possible, and spent the following year trying to write memetic posts rather than writing about the things I cared about. Twelve months of that was quite enough, thank you.

Since then I’ve done pretty well at not giving a rat’s ass about readership (as is probably evident in my rather desultory posting schedule of late)(where “of late” = “since 2003″). At this point I’m not even sure if I still have one, though dozens of people still comment on each and every one of my posts to point out my copious grammatical errors.
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West Seattle Blog launches their Blarch Badness campaign tomorrow, facing the winner of a Friends/Enemies group contest that’s down to the wire. So I pinged them on The Facebook and they obliged an interview in the midst of their plans for global domination.
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photo by arion potts [flickr] via our group pool [#]. we’re always looking for new contributors, so send you pretty pictures our way!

• Sean Nelson vies for title of today’s smartest Slogger, writing on the topic of electability and how being undecided doesn’t mean being braindead. [slog]
• Starbucks to reboot barista training on 26 February [sbuxgossip], rebooting wifi in a switch from pricey t-mobile to a little closer to free at&t [sbuxgossip]
• KEXP to “liberate” NYC radio. [kexp]
• Green tacos to go with green beer (biggest surprise: chipotle broke its ties with mcdonalds). [bravenewleaf]
• Scanning craigslist, finding lots of people all hotted up by caucusing. [seattlest]
• A preview of next week’s talks, including “A pseudoscience guide to geek dating”. [igniteseattle]

tournament of blogs reminders:

• Round One — closes tonight: music & P-I groups (three imaginary girls have a few more votes than sound on the sound; huskies fan ahead of ear candy)
• Round One — closes tomorrow: people & friends & “enemies” groups (kirida with a huge lead ; citizen rain fending off the big blog)
• Round One — closes Thursday: art & ‘hoods (pike/pine trails glitter pissing ; mid-beacon hill a few votes up on blogging georgetown after a polling reset)
• Round Two (started today): Seattle Bubble with an early lead over U.S.S. Mariner and Vintage Seattle ahead of Accidental Hedonist.

And now, we close out Round 1 with the artists and the neighborhood bloggers.

Come up with your own humorous remark here.

Art/Fashion/Photography
Glitter Pissing
I Make Things
I See Seattle
Not Martha
Pike/Pine

‘Hood (Neighborhood Blogs)
Ballard Avenue
Blogging Georgetown
Capitol Hill Triangle
Mid Beacon Hill
Miller Park Neighborhood Association

Five neighborhood blogs, but only one north of the Ship Canal. Is Blue Ridge that unbloggable, people?

UPDATE: Yes, the Hood Blog poll crapped out on me. I’m working to resolve it. Unfortunately, I might have lost the numbers on that poll. In the meantime, here’s a replacement poll with the numbers reset. I’ll come up with some sort of solution shortly.

Polls close Wednesday at 9pm. Vote early and vote often.

And that concludes Round 1. But that’s not the end of things. You can still vote in Monday’s round or Tuesday’s or even Wednesday’s.

Oh, and it looks like some very nice and generous sponsors are stepping up with some most excellent prizes. More on that later.

Day 3 brings us People. It also brings us this year’s Group Of Death.

People
Chris Pirillo
Electrolicious
Izzle Pfaff
Kirida
Nerd’s Eye View

Friends/Enemies of Metblogs
Big Blog
Citizen Rain
Enjoy the Enjoyment
Field Gulls
Seattlest
Slog

People features three return nominees and two West Seattleites. Friends and Enemies features two big media companies, our closest rivals in the market, two appearances by Seth Kolloen, and the Slog, the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in Seattle blogdom. You must be cautious.

Remember, at 9pm next Tuesday, these polls are GONE FOREVER! ACT NOW!

While you’re at it, vote in Monday’s round And Tuesday’s. And and Thursday’s.

And really, again, if you want to sponsor any of this, it’s just an e-mail and a large check made out to “CASH” away.

Day 1 went off with minimal hitches. Let’s hope Day 2 does the same.

Today, it’s the thing that brings the bourgeois people together (according to Madonna) and the paper that brought the Seattle proletariat together. Sounds like we should be launching this in front of the Lenin statue.

Music
KEXP Blog
Line Out
Seattle Powerpop
Sound on the Sound
Three Imaginary Girls

P-I
Art to Go
Bus Chick
Digital Joystick
Ear Candy
Huskies Fan

The struggle of blog against blog is a political struggle.

A blog post is impossible without a blogging situation; furthermore, not every blogging situation leads to blogging! OK, enough Communism for the day, lest I get nasty e-mails and crates of Solzhenitsyn books.

Both these polls end at 9pm Monday night. And while you’re at it, why not check out the groups from Monday? Also, Wednesday? And and Thursday’s?

Oh, and we weren’t kidding about prizes and sponsorship. Really. We want to actually buy a trophy this year.

As you already know, the Second Annual Tournament of Blogs kicked off today with group play in the “god, pols, pumpkin” and “food” categories. What you might be wondering is what—besides bragging rights and a really awesome, homemade, gold spray-painted trophy—awards await the weblog that makes it through this gauntlet of webvoting victorious. The answer is: we’re working on it.

SO, if you’re affiliated with a local business and want to contribute a little piece of swag to the prize packages, please drop us a note at seattle.metblogs (at) gmail.com . There are a whole lot of matches to be played, and naming rights are wide open.

So, the selection committee has met for the last few days trying to decide who is in and who is out of the tournament. There was the usual yelling, fighting, chair-throwing, and occasional moments of harmony. But finally, late last night, the committee emerged from their pizza-and-beer-induced stupor to put in my hands the lineup for this year’s Blarch Badness.
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Ring the bells, throw the biodegradable confetti, ping your blogroll, for we finally have a winner in Blarch Badness 2007: USS Mariner, which eased past Lookout Landing to be crowned king of all Seattle blogs.

Here’s the final tally:

For All The Marbles...
USS Mariner  56% (3005 votes)
Lookout Landing  44% (2389 votes)
Total voters for this poll: 5393

The third place finisher was Seattle Daily Photo.

So, Derek, Dave, Jason, and Jeff (via live feed from Okinawa) will be able to hoist the Blarch Badness Trophy… just as soon as I get them one. Anyone want to make me one?

Will we do it again next year? Probably, but with some changes. But in the meantime, it was fun, right?