I think I speak for most of us here at Seattle Metblogs when I say that Hillku is one of our favorites. Shrouded in mystery, they appeared out of the blue and charmed us with their haiku poetry about Capitol Hill. Below is a Q&A I did via email with City and Final, the two gracious purveyors of Hillku.

(Note: Hillku is facing a tough Round 2 charm-off with Kirida; voting is still open [m-b].)

Q:
who are you really?
the mystery confounds me.
at least: girl or guy?

A:
Straight Obama girl,
Homo Hills boy. Politics
Won’t divide us, though.

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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.

Have you all come down from the madness that was the caucuses? Good. Because it’s back to Blarch Badness.

Outside of the sudden and complete failure of the Hood Group poll (that’s the last time I hire the Washington State GOP to run the balloting system), things have moved along pretty smoothly with the first week of Blarch Badness.

Now the second week dawns, and with it the start of the actual brackets. The Squirrel Bracket goes first.

In the People group, Seattle Bubble popped everyone else out of the tournament. Now, they get last year’s champion USS Mariner. In the Food group, Accidental Hedonist held off some feisty challengers to advance. Now, they have to tackle the upstarts Vintage Seattle.

So… here we go.

Still time to vote in the remaining three sections of Round One: Tuesday’s groups and Wednesday’s and Thursday’s.

Tomorrow, it’s the bottom half of the Squirrel Bracket, featuring last year’s runner-up and a certain neighborhood blog we’re fond of.

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.

And we’re off with Day 1. Sorry, no opening ceremonies this year. We were going to get Up With People to do their tribute to Artis The Spoonman, but the budget wasn’t there, and Artis still has that restraining order out on us.

So, let’s just get it going and hope for the best. Cross your fingers the new voting system holds up under the strain. (Sorry, iPhone users, but it’s Flash only.)

Today, you vote on the Religion/Politics/Great Pumpkin Group, which is blogs talking about “contentious issues,” and the Food Group, which is blogs talking about “contentious issues.” Edible contentious issues.

Religion/Politics/Great Pumpkin
Brave New Leaf
Eugene Cho
Horse’s Ass
Orcinius
Seattle Bubble
Seattle Transit Blog

Food
Accidental Hedonist
Cocktail Chronicles
Gluten-Free Girl
Orangette
Seattle Bon Vivant

Remember, the voting booth is open until 9pm Sunday night. Good luck to everyone, and happy voting!

And check out Tuesday’s groups and Wednesday’s and Thursday’s.

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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So what’s up with the LJ Drama bout in the play-in round of Blarch Badness? [mb] Facing off are two friends and undoubtedly the two most famous LiveJournalers from Seattle. How’d they get so famous? Unsurprisingly, both are dramacrats [ED] associated with ljdrama.org and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Jameth [LJ, currently SFW]
Who writes it: James, a Seattle tech support worker who lives with his partner in Wallingford.
What it’s about: James’ public blog is mostly pretty innocent, dominated by photos taken on his Sidekick of life around Seattle (with the occasional gross-out image thrown in). However, he is behind some of the most famous drama on LJ, in particular the Mediacrat phenomenon of 2004 [ED, NSFW].
Did you know?: James has two black cats.

Rfjason [LJ]
Who writes: Jason Fortuny, the self-proclaimed “Saddam Hussein of the Internet”
What it’s about: Jason’s blog is a pretty typical LJ, with photos of his adventures, commentary on his daily life, analysis of recent news. However, he rocketed to internet fame last year with the Cragislist Experiment. [mb]
Did you know?: Jason lives with Jameth’s sister.