The Blood is the Life!

[miss_s_b]

Fresh Squeezings from the veins of the internet!

• Today is the anniversary of the 7/7 attacks. What, you'd forgotten? That's the best tribute of all, according to nosemonkey.


• Babes of the BNP Spoof or not spoof? Only time will tell.


• One for your reading lists: Judge a book by it's cover (judge_a_book_feed) is an hilarious blog by a librarian taking the piss out of unintentionally funny book covers. Features include Mammary Monday and Phallic Phriday. Via the awesome Geeka Chicas (geeka_chicas_feed).


• Who's excited about the new HP film? I'm not, and neither is Penny Red. Here she outlines some of my discomfort with the HP series in typical style.


• Crotchw00t, otoh is shaping up beautifully. Read the fluffy one's review of last night's ep before you watch tonight.


• Special bonus extra link! Mitch Benn has announced new tour dates. Go and see him live, it's totally worth it.

And today's Meme is more of a poll. Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads is organising a boycott of the Total Bollocks guide to blogging. I don't know what to make of it. I appeared in it last year, and got a free copy of the overpriced and ill-informed pamphlet thereby generated for my trouble, and found it a singularly uninspiring experience.

My usual reaction to La Dale is to just ignore him. The more we read him, the more we link to him, the more entrenched he gets in his self-appointed role of BlogDaddy. He's the Iqbal Sacranie of bloggers, and I don't want to encourage that. The thing is, Tim Ireland's reaction to him is just as bad, to my mind. Ranting and raving and going on about him all the time is just giving him clicks. Clicks don't register as approving or outraged, they are just eyeballs on his site. Anyway, my question for you, dear f-list, is this: Should I participate in the Total Bollocks web guide this year or not? Do we want to infiltrate and subvert, or just ignore, and hope it goes away?

Poll #683 The lesser of two evils
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 9

Who is worse?

Iain Dale
2 (22.2%)

Tim Ireland
0 (0.0%)

They're both as venal and depressing as each other
4 (44.4%)

They're both amazing and cool and I have cognitive dissonance
0 (0.0%)

I've never heard of either of them
3 (33.3%)

Should I participate in the Total Bollocks circle jerk?

Yes. All publicity is good publicity, and so what if Iain Dale gets some as well?
1 (11.1%)

No! Join the boycott and publicise the anti-Dale fanaticists!
1 (11.1%)

Just ignore the whole sorry shitfest, whether you get featured or not.
7 (77.8%)

Oh yes, and Tuesday is shoes day. Expect a big slew of shoes and boots and other assorted footwear to kick off my ebaying later.

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Comments

[From: refusion]

Oh god, I am going to content myself with imagining that that "Babes of the BNP" thing is a joke.

When people say the BNP is a fascist party, what do you think?
Fascist – I don’t understand that word.

...

[From: djm4]

'Never heard of either of them' comes closest to my opinion; I'm aware of who the Iain Dale in question is, but I've never read him, so I don't feel right having an opinion on whether he's worse than someone else I'm not aware of knowing about.

[From: matgb]

When I started taking blogging 'seriously' (before I realised that it's just another communications tool not world-changingly cool), Tim was one of the top must-read blogs. He's grown a lot since then, but there are a lot more top blogs now, and Tim's meta-blogging style means he's of less general interest.

Combine that with the overly obsessive coverage of Dale in the last few years and his relative obscurity is perhaps understandable.

Shame, because when he's not going on about Dale/Guido and highlighting their many deceptions, he's bloody good, and definitely knows his stuff when it comes to the wider web and search related stuff.

Dale, OTOH, is a pretty good blogger that's got an undeserved media reputation as 'the' top blogger--given that I can remember when he was restarting and was one of those he emailed looking for a lin I do find that a bit galling; he lead the 4th wave of mainstream blogging but he ain't all that. Without the funding from various wealthy investors who also happen to donate wodges of cash to the Tories, he'd be just another part time blogger.

If I had to pick a blogger to do the media-whoring metablogging stuff that Dale tends to get picked for, I'd actually pick Nosemonkey (above) or bloody Sunny, at least neither of them disingenuously claims their side is definitely winning online (partially because NM doesn't have a side, although I suspect he voted for us in June).

[From: matgb]

I'm torn, again. Between us, we could definitely get in enough votes to hijack some of the process, but at the same time it's a biased poll with a biased sample.

If the mag he prints alongside it is going to have an article about Lib Dem blogging again, he definitely needs to pick someone that actually knows about Lib Dem blogging to write it this time--we never did write that rebuttal to Nich's ill-informed little thing did we?

[From: miss_s_b]

What's the betting he won't?

[From: burkesworks]

What's the betting he nominates Irfan to do it? ;)

[From: miss_s_b]

* lets the icon do the talking *