Reciprocation

Is this better than a baby photo?
A blog award is a funny bird.

On the one hand, it's wonderful to be recognized. It's a ego boost and proof that at least one person out there actually reads the words you put down and doesn't just skip to the cute photos of your baby, or worse, a dead British phone booth. (If you click on that link right there, you have to promise you'll read the post, not just look at the pictures.)

On the other hand, most blog awards are merely chain letters that beg to be broken. At least the blog awards don't come with a dire warming of doom that if you don't follow the directions and do exactly as they say within 48 hours the Rapture will ensue and you won't be invited. Still, I can't bring myself to ignore them entirely. Chanel at Fabulously Neurotic, has repeatedly made mention of my blog and she has recently urged the bloggerverse to pay it forward.

So I will. But I will only follow some of the rules. And FYI, I now have a whole page where I will post any awards (like I'll ever get another after this) under the Awards Mantle tab up above. I'll also include my EGOT awards there when they arrive.

So Chanel--did I mention her blog Fabulously Neurotic?--has wacky adventures every week that she shares through her wonderful way with words. You should go there.

Sometime during the past several weeks, she has proferred the following:

This one has rules that I will follow in part. I'm not sure what it takes to get this award except to be so interesting that the giver just can't wait to hear more about you. Thus, I will tell you 7 facts, as the award itself states. Perhaps it should be called 7 Secret Admissions instead.

Fact 1: I take pleasure in mowing the lawn. I think it's the smell. Not the mower exhaust. The fresh cut grass.

Straight-shootin sci-fi.
Fact 2: I own nearly 3600 albums, over 3000 on CD.

Fact 3: I only hop on the treadmill to run so that I can watch a television series from the beginning without interruption. Right now it's Battlestar Galactica.

Fact 4: I prefer breakfast food. My favorite is cooking my own tortillas (not from scratch; they come in a package, but uncooked) for breakfast burritos. With bacon or sausage. Or both.

Straight-edge punk rock.
Fact 5: I enjoy folding laundry. Kind of a zen thing.

Fact 6: I just received in the mail the old Dag Nasty album Can I Say for, like, 22 cents, plus shipping and handling.

Fact 7: I was the hopscotch champion in second grade. Except that I wasn't. I came in second, but told my parents I won. They bought me a new rubber throwing disc that was all the rage at the time. The Pogs of the mid-seventies.

Chanel also awarded me  this darling decoration:

I'll just let you sit back and ponder why my blog is particularly lovely. There are no rules here, so this award will probably just sit and fester.

Then a couple of weeks ago Bryan at Notes from the Night Owl  invented a blog award that celebrates individual posts within someone's blog. I like this idea because it's much more than a chain letter that you pass on just for the sake of passing on. It recognizes distinct, specific efforts, which gives me a real reason for passing it on.

Bryan called this The Classic Post Award and offered it up for my post "Turn and Face the Strange."

And Chanel, in her eternal benevolence, has paid her Classic Post forward by granting me The Classic Post Award for my post "Baby's Day Out." You may go read those now if you haven't before.

So this is me paying it forward. I hereby bequeath The Classic Post Award to the following posts from blogs you all should be reading and following.

From  Notes from the Night Owl, the post "School's Out" is a nostaligic trip through the old neighborhood in all of us. This is the first post from his new-ish blog (he has two others), where he discusses memories or experiences from his childhood, mostly. His prowess with a descriptive passage is to be envied.

From Cynicism 101, the post "Optimism 101. What the what ?!?!" is the rare opportunity where Dr. Cynicism lets go of the pessimism for a day and his evil twin Dr. Optimism takes over. It's funny if you get what cynicism is all about.

From Fabulously Neurotic, the post "Apparently they've changed the definition of 'Comedy'" is Chanel's innocent, genuine surprise at the ending of the movie Marley and Me. This displays her personality and writing in the best way.

From Moody Writing, the post "Don't Overstuff Your Verbs--Unpack" is another one of Mooderino's writing tutorials. He's got so much great writing advice over there that is was hard to pick just one post, so go read his blog. Plus, he does a great close analysis of texts like Hunger Games and Fight Club.

From Notice Your World, the post "Hot Dog" shows off another of Charlie's stories of growing up in his family. He also includes homemade cartoons to illustrate his epic tales and the pictures in this post are pretty hilarious. It's all in the details.

Five is a good number for now. There are certainly many other bloggers that deserve this recognition, but these are the five that came to mind today. I don't think there were any explicit rules about passing on this award, so I will probably come back to it and give five more away when I feel like it.

Thanks for playing along.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the award (one without cats or unicorns on it!). Much appreciated.

    cheers,
    mood
    Moody Writing
    @mooderino

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a lot of CDs.

    Do you fold shirts using the ninja method?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNr1oLhZ0zs&feature=related

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank You, sir.

    I also like to mow the lawn, but I absolutely HATE folding laundry.

    Now to check out these other posts.

    (P.S. You're right. There are no rules. I also hate award rules. Well, maybe not "hate", but they are a nuisance.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh Lawsy. Now I may have to add more blogs to my morning list...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Do you enjoy mowing the lawn because you have a riding lawn mower and you can pretend you're driving a race car and you're winning the race because you've got it set to the bunny rabbit speed and not the turtle? Or is that just me? I really don't think you can enjoy mowing the lawn with one of those push mowers.

    Folding laundry is OK. Mating socks is torture. I don't mate my socks. I just dump them in a drawer and wear two socks that never match, unless they're my striped pink and blue woolly socks, or my pink cotton socks.

    Thank you for the award.

    PS. You need some fish under your bookshelf, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love laundry time, my husband does it!

    Battlestar eh? You and my husband...

    Love your blog.

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  7. I find this blog to be quite charming.

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  8. I didn't used to like mowing the lawn. Now I strap my mp3 player to my hip and spend a happy hour by myself lost in my music. And I don't mind folding laundry, though I never fold the wife's stuff just right and she has to do it again. Now I do my stuff and she does hers just to avoid any arguments.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ Moody: That's really why I gave it to you. Because it didn't have unicorns and cats.

    @ Daniel: Yeah, things kind of took off once I was out of college and had a job, and it only got worse when I started downloading music. If "worse" is the right word here...

    @ Bryan: And thanks for creating such a swell button to go with it, too.

    @ darev: I find that once the mower gets going, it drowns out the sound of any music I try to play in my ears. So I've learned to relish to hum of the mower.

    @ Chanel: It's just a push mower. I don't think it would be the same experience if I were riding it. Wouldn't feel like work or something.

    And I only wear white socks, mostly (yes, it's very Michael Jackson, or Cliff Clavin), so finding mates is not a problem.

    @ Nubian: Thanks for coming by. Love the Galactica. I was actually a fan of the original version when I was a kid.

    @ McKenzie McCann: Thanks. You must have a fun name to say aloud. So I even typed it all out for you. You're welcome.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Posts like this one take a long time to write because of all the links and stuff. I personally don't mind getting the awards and now that I know that you also don't mind them, I'll start passing some onto you. You are correct, they are chain letters. However, they do have a purpose. First off, they reconnect you with your fellow bloggers so that there is more of a sense of community. Two, they take up a blog post. I post five days a week and sometimes, I wonder what I'm going to post about. Since I've been reading George R.R. Martin he's given me endless ideas but I'll soon be all caught up with his books (started A Feast For Crows) last night and I won't have anything to talk about again. Good thing another one of his books comes out next month. I think I hopped in right when the fishing got really good.

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  11. I like the community aspect of it. I didn't think I would when I started all this, but now it's important.

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