And the other semifinal is a rematch of last year’s consolation matchup. Will Seattle Daily Photo prevail again over West Seattle Blog?

UPDATE: The new system is stripping all sorts of code, including the code that links to the polls. So, if you want to vote in this, GO HERE.

Wednesday night at 9 PST, we’re done.

Meanwhile, the other semifinals — and the mudslinging fun that has broken out around it — continues.

Home stretch, folks. It’s almost over.

Citizen Rain fought off Big Blog early and a surging Field Gulls late. Kirida just ran off and hid.

But regardless, it’s time to start the Coyote Bracket, with the debut of newcomer Hillku and the return of last year’s semifinalist West Seattle Blog.

UPDATE: First poll misconfigured. Should be fixed now. Sorry about that.

Two West Seattle blogs in this part of the bracket. Also, Citizen Rain becomes the first Big Media blog (part of Belo, which owns KING-TV) to ever win a round in Blarch Badness.

Round 2 finishes off tomorrow, but you can still affect its outcome by voting in Round 1. Or, run back and vote for Round 2’s Monday and Tuesday matchups one more time.

Today, we finish off this round of the Squirrel Bracket. Three Imaginary Girls and Huskies Fan both won handily in the Music and P-I groups. Capitol Hill Seattle and Lookout Landing are waiting for them. Whose blog will reign supreme?

And starting today, yet another polling system. Hopefully, it won’t fall down.

As usual, the streets roll up on these polls 9pm on Monday.

Two sections of Round One close up shortly: both Wednesday’s and Thursday’s are down to the wire. And meanwhile, the other half of the Squirrel Bracket is also underway.

Vote early and vote often!

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.

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.

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.
Read more

An exciting opening to the Badness so far, no?

No?

Well, I’m happy. Only minor hiccups so far. I was afraid that I was going to misconfigure a poll and the Montlake Bridge would have been stuck up all day long. Because I tend to break things.

But hey, let’s move into what you came for — the opening round of the West Seattle Regional. Remember, these are just names. We didn’t call the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce and ask them to build us a $300M arena with free WiMax. That’s the Sonics’ job.

Remember, look at their blogs, and vote with your gut. Or your random number generator. Same thing.

Voting closes Monday night. Yes, that means this is a one week poll, not a one day poll. Plenty of time for everyone to round up their posses.

WEST SEATTLE REGIONAL
Opening Round
February 6
#1 Chris Pirillo vs #8 Glenn Fleishman
Here we have a battle between techies — Chris Pirillo, onetime star of TechTV and creator of the mighty ubertechie convention Gnomedex, and Glenn Fleishman, tech writer for the Times, KUOW, and Wi-Fi Network News. And this is the only matchup so far between people with their own Wikipedia entries. Can you feel the geek tonight?

#2 Seattlest vs #7 Anita Rowland
Seattlest is just like us; it’s just that they’re paid and have Dan Savage fawning over them, while we do this for free and get labelled Enemies of the Slog. (Are we bitter?) Against them is one of the longest-running, most respected bloggers in Seattle (I call her the Den Mother Of Seattle Webloggers, personally) that just happens to be battling cancer. We all love Anita and hope she gets better soon.

#4 Postman on Politics vs #5 KEXP Blog
And here we have the only Seattle Times blog in the competition. That’s P-I 3 blogs, Times 1. And while Dave Postman has put himself at the fore of political bloggers in this state (in my opinion, ahead of the two political blogs seeded ahead of him), he’s up against the KEXP Blog, loaded with all your favorite KEXP DJs. KEXP’s main demographic is 18-35. Our demographic is 18-35. Hmm.

#3 Seattle Daily Photo vs #6 Michael Hanscom
And finally, a battle of photographers — Kim’s daily shots of Seattle vs. the most famous camera store employee to ever be fired by Microsoft.

Tomorrow, Gays! Moms! Politics! Foodies! Sports! Buzz! Let’s head for Capitol Hill!