Well, well, well. What a mess we have here. A bunch of folks who just have to muck things up for everyone. Vote spamming. Ballot box stuffing. Ballots that slip in after the buzzer.

So, I’ll tell you what. Lookout Landing, Huskies Fan, Seattle Bubble, you’re all in the semi-finals.

But here’s my first and final warning. If I even get a whiff that anything funny is going on, you’re all out of the tournament. Capiche? If one cheats, then I’ll assume that everyone is cheating.

With that said, vote early and vote often.

UPDATE: OK, what part of the above did you all not understand? I’m pulling the plug. You don’t know how disappointed I am with all of you.

And as a reminder, the other two quarterfinals are still running — West Seattle Blog vs. Kirida closes up tomorrow night, Seattle Daily Photo vs. Glitter Pissing on Wednesday night.

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.

photo by marksobba [flickr]

While war is still waging in the Blarch Badness Final it might be unethical of me to pimp one of the competing blogs — but I’m going to regardless. If you have a problem with that, watch out for a trident to the heart.

Lookout Landing’s Jeff Sullivan is the [way less nerdy] John Clayton of Mariners baseball. With spring training in full swing and Opening Day just a few weeks away, it’s definitely time for even the most casual of baseball fans to prepare for a long, dark, horribly depressing M’s season (thank you, Bill Bavasi!). In that spirit, I highly recommend listening to a very informative and insightful interview Jeff recently gave to Big League Baseball Report [blbr]. In it he recaps the wretched Mariners off-season (where art thee, Doyle!?) and their prospects for success in 2007. I’ll offer this hint: A certain member of Venezuela’s royal family needs to have a great year for the M’s to stand a chance.

Confidential to Jeff: Contrary to what you think, you absolutely did not sound like a douchebag [LL].

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!