So far Gabriel has studiedly refused to blog about; or even talk about the Best Singaporean blog thing, which appears to be causing a stir among the digital hoi polloi (those who got nominated, anyway)

While I appreciate his utter reticence in the matter - (not entirely a surprise given the issues he's had with this blog and public exposure to date), I for my part feel that he deserves all the recognition he can get; after all there's always the slight probability that some hot, intelligent, morally compromised, geek-fetishistic and yet curiously tolerant babe/hunk who will come into his life, which is something he needs right now. (Alright, I admit it, if he/she comes into his life, he might introduce me to him/her too)

In the meantime, I've noticed that reactions among the nominees seem to be split into these broad categories:

a) Elitist bitching about the quality of language on some of the fellow nominees, be it scansion, grammar, punctuation, or overuse of vernacular. Okay, I have to admit I'm pretty damn sympathetic to this particular beef, because most people on the net trample the language into the mud harder than a Dance Dance Revolution pad in a Sumo wrestlers' frat house. However, this feeling has been leavened somewhat of late by the realization that a lot more bloggers have far better English than they appear to; it's just that when diarizing a rant, the last thing on your mind is whether it passes TOEFL muster - and sometimes it's easier to communicate colloquially leh. (see? note the empathic quality evoked by the "leh"?:) It's kind of like seeing a horde of CHS-HCJC guys in a social function; they'll all be Orc-grunting and conversing about soccer in broken English, then one of them will suddenly ask, "oy you got read Jorge Luis Borges b4? wa see beh cheem leh!", and then a surprisingly erudite conversation on Latin American literature will break out. I've seen it happen. So, with that in mind, I find myself very wary of casting my usual anal aspersions on people's use of language on the net. You never know if its just comfort zone writing or an immensely subtle parody. Conversely, didactically insisting on not just the Queen's English but speaking like the (a) Queen can be a mere testament to one's lack of anything resembling a life, or the quality of the dictionary by one's side. (I recommend the full Collins English; way cheaper than the OED and has etymologies)

b) Multiple auto-fellative high fives, links, encomiums, and kudoses to friends who got nominated, friends who should be nominated, and various calls for incestuous cross-voting between acquainted nominees. Jesus, as if we didn't fucking need Friendster to tell us that the digerati rapidly folds into an inbred mesh of personal relationships.

c) Sniping about layout, colour scheme, frames, scripts, etc. Erm. Given that I originally wanted to blog in .txt files, but was dragged kicking and screaming into CSS perdition by Gabriel's experiments with Dreamweaver (one of the myriad reasons why I don't blog here regularly anymore), I don't think I'm in a position to comment on the aesthetics of other sites. I do feel that content outweighs design; the number of frighteningly well-designed blogs with frighteningly asinine entries/people behind them is staggering - and not a few made it as nominees to the Asianblog thing. (But hey those of you reading this can have fun guessing if I'm referring to you and getting all huffy about my attitude in your own blogs). Frankly I don't mind reading a blog in yellow 36 point Times New Roman on a blue background, with cheesy MIDIs playing if the content is compelling.

d) Embarrassed people playing down how they don't care and speculating about who nominated them and a general "what the hell" clamour but putting up the "Asianblog nominee" bumper sticker on their sites anyway. A variant of this is the pseudo-modest "the other nominees are so much better than me but....".

e) Usual, unabashed, "vote for me!" pleas for attention and love. Yes, guilty as charged, but I swear, it's not Gabriel's fault. He was just misguided enough to let me rant here when whimsy takes me.

f) Studiedly ignoring it and refusing to make any reference or acknowledgement, or simply being unaware of it (I find the latter kind of unlikely given the intrusive ubiquity of instant messaging but it's possible). I obviously can't judge the motivation behind remaining silent either way, so I'll let it slip without some try-hard, smart-alecky barb.

A strange observation about blogging etiquette; people seem to be very free about making links willy-nilly to one another's blogs, referring to each other by first name even they don't *seem* to know each other in meatspce, and giving out critiques of surprising candour and brutality. Guess it's so much easier to bitch about someone or their motivations when you don't know them personally beyond a few cryptic, well-turned paragraphs and can't see them face to face.

Hell, it works for me, I'm just glad none of my few friends who blog actually got nominated because I'd be either be obliged to trash them or encourage all and sundry to vote for them. Or both. Either alternative isn't too pleasant - after all, "making bitchy statements about people and things we hardly know about is the basis for all conversation."

Also spotted a few more archetypes :-

i) Camwhore
ii) "Expatriates seduced by strange alien/Asian culture who can never quite go home" - think James Clavell at the most optimistic, Apocalypse Now (urban version) at the least.
iii) Earnest Christian using the Net as pulpit, prayer wheel and confessional.
iv) The classic "intelligent-and-emotionally-balanced-but-slightly-quirky-and-just-this-side-of-obliquely- literate-somewhere-in-tertiary-education" who's self-conscious enough to think "archetype" refers to her/himself.

In all fairness though, there *are* good blogs in the field; and a few which I think have way better writing than on Balderdash, regardless of whether their tone/content is that of critical assholes, genuinely insightful observations, or adolescent angst. Am tempted to write snap reviews of the entrants so far, but this blog entry has eaten up far too much of my masturbation-to-nurse-pornography, and Knights-of-the-Old Republic-playing time. Out of some obscure, hypocritically self-righteous courtesy, I shall not link to any of the other nominees, whether like or hate, but please do read through some of them, because there *are* good ones out there. (Chances are if you're a nominee reading this that feels offended by what I've written, I actually liked your blog)

Final observation; I seem to be crafting a longer blog entry than the nominees writing about this damn thing, which I suppose would be less pathetic if this was even my blog, if "pathetic" was a value judgement that hurts only if you pay attention to irrelevancies like the opinions of other people, and if my life wasn't such a dysfunctional, loserish quagmire right now that I spend half a night ranting about a fucking blog popularity contest.