It's November 1. It's the day before the fucking election. So what better time is there than now to take a step back from all the bullshit and run a space-filling, administrative, State Of The Column column for today? None better time indeed. There's even a bit of irate comedy content at the end, just as a payoff.
Ten months of DUMB, which seems to me like a lot. Coming up on an entire YEAR of Dumb. 200+ regular readers. A thousand-plus unique visitors a month. Which puts me roughly on par with hundreds of thousands of other tiny, tiny websites. But well above where I was nine months ago, so I ain't gonna complain.
The forum is four months old, and I've only had to nuke one person from orbit, which is roughly one thousandth of the number I feared. Hooray for the Internet!
Anyway, the big thing that'll be happening for the next couple of months, on the forum, which as always can be gotten to from the upper left of the page, is the You Are Dumb Blank Of The Year Awards.
I've covered a lot of ground over the course of 2004, from politics to entertainment to politics to culture to politics to religion to politics to pigfucking to politics to political pigfuckery. And it's time to cull them down to a mighty four, the creme de la cretin, the peak of my pique, the dumbest of the dumb. It's like the Razzies, only, you know. Both smaller in scale and wider in scope.
Open nominations begin today in the Forum, and will continue through December 15, at which point I'll pick the five final nominees and put it up for a vote, again, in the Forum. Then, once 2005 hits, the winners will get announced, revisited, and mocked anew for all to see. There are four awards to be given out, each following the somewhat obvious format of "BLANK of the Year".
THE YOU ARE DUMB MAN OF THE YEAR: I expect this to be a pretty hotly contested category, because of the incredible number of high-profile choices available. To be eligible for this award, the individual in question must have (a) a penis, no matter how tiny, shriveled, or non-functional; (b) appeared in the column this year, and (c) been either the main subject of a full column, or the main subject of part of a multi-subject column.
THE YOU ARE DUMB WOMAN OF THE YEAR: Some may think it sexist to not have a simple Person Of The Year, and, in fact, it is. But it's sexist toward men, who, at least this year, are in a fucking league of their own when it comes to retarded behavior. I want to make sure a stupid woman gets her due as well, so we have a separate category. Other than gender, the same rules apply.
THE YOU ARE DUMB PLACE OF THE YEAR: The YAD Place of the Year must be an actual, physical, geographical location. It must have appeared in the column at some point this year. And something dumb must have happened there. "The Earth" is ineligible for obvious reasons, but beyond that, any place, large or small, you think deserves to be the Dumbest Place of the Year for 2004.
THE YOU ARE DUMB EVENT OF THE YEAR: Again, this event must have been referenced in some way in the column this year. I'm not sure how to define this more precisely, so just suggest stuff and if it's the completely wrong idea, I'll let you know.
That's it. If you've ever felt the desire to get involved in the course of the column in a tiny, infinitesimal way that is still larger than the chance pretty much anybody has gotten ever, head over to the Forum and get cracking. You'll need to create a Forum account to do it, but that's not a big deal.
The dumbest man, woman, place, and event of the year. You won't find that particular combination anywhere except You Are Dumb Dot Net. And if you do, the bastards ripped me off. Or I ripped them off. It's a great, great mystery.
The fucking election is tomorrow. No matter how it goes down, it'll suck. But if we must spend the two and a half months between the election and the inauguration in a crap-maelstrom of epic proportions, we might as well fling a little poop around ourselves. And now, as promised, it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!
"FOX 9 is going to have unbelievable coverage." - Monring DJ, perennial idiot, and potential WOTY nominee Lisa Wright, describing local TV's impending election coverage in terms she thought were flattering, but may turn out to be strangely prescient.
"For his part, the ever-smiling Edwards has turned up the rhetorical heat, focusing on the 377 tons of high-grade explosives that Democrats say went missing in Iraq on President Bush's watch." (emphasis mine) - Reporters from the incredibly liberal LA Times, reporting from Duluth, MN, as carried in the incredibly liberal Minneapolis Star-Tribune, making it sound like the fact that the explosives are gone is just part of the charge and countercharge of this messy political season. GO TEAM LIBERAL MEDIA!