Silflay Hraka

Good morning and welcome to the 212th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities. The last two editions I’ve hosted have been massively long and I’m not sure I have the energy for all that today so please forgive me if some of the shine is off this particular edition.

In the last two editions, I’ve focused on what makes a good CoTV entry. In my mind, CoTV should be a collection of the best writings from those seeking recognition for their work. Entries should be interesting, entertaining, insightful, humorous and thought-provoking. Motivation for submitting to the Carnival should be seeking recognition for personal talent or insight rather than for driving traffic to a particular cause or commercial enterprise. These are the criteria I am going to be using to edit the Carnival in the future and, unfortunately, all I have to go on is my own editorial sense. (A sense that’s been keenly developed over the years by my daily interactions with journalistic types. “If it bleeds, it leads.”) (For those of you who can’t see the humor in that, it’s there. Go back and look for it.)

Anyway, in order to spotlight some of the posts I thought were representative of the “new and improved” (!) Carnival of the Vanities, I thought I might hand out some imaginary hardware to those authors and entries that best rrepresented the spirit of CoTV. The categories are amorphous and came to me as I read through them last night. (I was so good. “World of Warcraft” was calling me. But I was strong. I went to the gym and read all the CoTV posts before I turned on the game. Heck, I even had dinner first. My will is iron.)

Anyway, since I have a lot of work to do today, let’s get this Carny started.

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The award for Most Uplifting post goes to Kim at Emergiblog. Kim explores the oft repeated platitude Where There Is Life, There Is Hope. It reminded me a lot of 1st Corinthians 13. “Now these three remain: faith, hope and love…”

Runners Up in the “Most Uplifting” category include Ian for his ER video which was also nominated in the “Post that Most Resembled an Episode of ER” and “Best Use of Emotional Song” categories.

Kailani relates A Sad Day. I am not sure this fits in the “uplifting” category, but she tells a story that is touching and poignant. The moral of the story? If you dream of going to Hawaii, do it now.

Avant News gives us the Best Use of Satire in a CoTV entry. Also nominated in the “Post Most Likely to Be Found in The Onion” category, AN pokes fun at Diebold in the article 19 Year Old Diebold Technician Wins U.S. Presidency. AN also gets in some good shots at possible Presidential candidates from the Republicrat and Demoblican parties.

J.D.gives us the Best Advice and tells a good story in The Worst Job I Ever Had over at Get Rich Slowly. His story is particularly relevant to me because I’m in the post-grad school job search and because my brother Bigwig, that bastard, conned me into selling vacuum cleaners for a living back in the day. It’s a job that ruined my political viability.

Runners Up in this category include Wayne Hurlbert who suggests we should all link to other bloggers and Jody DeVere who doesn’t really give advice per se but does explore making Barbie a model for women’s automobiles. She does give advice in other posts over at Ask Patty.

The Best History Lesson comes from Josh Rosenau. Josh also gives us the Best Find in Friday Find: Robert Frost and Fred Melcher posted at Thoughts from Kansas.

Jack Cluth at The People’s Republic of Seabrook also has a Best Find entry. I think this post is just wrong in so many ways but see if you can spot Jesus in this photo.

The Most Ironic post of the week comes from Wordlab. The good news is that law firm Foley Hoag won its trademark infringement against another similarly named firm. Here’s the bad news.

Madeleine Begun Kane gives us the Best Poem in her Ode To Genetically Altered Cats.

In the Best of Religion and Morality category, we have two nominees. Francois Tremblay carries away the award for Under the Shadow of Morality posted at Check Your Premises. Francois points out a lot of problems but offers few solutions. I’ll offer that up as the only criticism I have from this space.

The Runner Up is Vynette Holliday. Vynette questions whether Every Sperm is Sacred or not. Sorry, Vynette. I know I changed your title. It’s just that we were discussing the same topic and singing that song at the beer festival this past weekend. I couldn’t help it.

I had a more difficult time in deciding the winner of the “Best of Politics” award. In the end, Steve Faber takes home the prize with an red and blue analysis of our congressional make up.

Runners Up are Mark A. Rayner for his screed against government censorship in The Irrepressible Lightness of Being and Adam Graham who cries “bad form!” on the other side in Reforming the Culture of Washington One Stolen E-mail List At a Time.

Simonne gives us the Best Question in asking How many phone calls are you worth? She uses scientific methodology to arrive at the answer.

Miriam asks Who else is Jewish? in the Best Question Runner Up

Finally, David St Lawrence wins the Best Post That Came in After This Carnivals Deadline But Made It Into the Carny Anyway Because Kehaar is Such a Great Guy award for his insight into smalltown life. In it, he examines theconnectedness he found in the small town of Floyd. Good insights, David and thanks for sharing.

I personally would like to relate the sentiment of all the award winners in thanking all the people that made this possible. Thanks for keeping the Carnival of the Vanities alive. If you’d like to submit your best stuff to this Carnival in the future, please visit Blog Carnival. CoTV appears in this space every Wednesday.

Oh, yeah. I’m away fishing on October 25th. Drop me a line at kehaar at this blog’s domain if you are interested and willing to host. Thanks again!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 10:45 am and is filed under Carnival of The Vanities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.