It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
Explanation for new readers: every Friday, more or less, I choose my favourite comments from this blog (and my favourite posts I’ve read on other blogs), and list them in the sidebar under the title Bragging Rights Central. In mid-December I go through the archives, tally the wins (Chall had the most “best comment” wins of 2010, and Occam’s Typewriter’s own Cromercrox had the most “best post” wins), pick my 12 favourite comments of the year, and let my readers vote for the winner.
This is no easy task – I’m lucky enough to have some amazingly funny and insightful commenters, and it’s sometimes hard enough to choose the best comments of the week, let alone the whole year! (In fact this year I cheated a bit and have 13 comments on the final list, because two people independently left very similar comments on the same post. I couldn’t pick one but not the other, and they’re so similar that putting both up to compete against each other in the final vote made no sense).
This year’s 12 choices are below, and you can click through to the original posts to read the comments in context. You may notice a strong sport theme, for which again, any new readers may require an explanation: I live in Vancouver, and had basically the most fun month of my life this year when the Winter Olympics came to town, and I also ran an Olympics pool, a world cup pool, and two NHL hockey pools. Plus sport tends to bring out some of the best comments in general.
But first:
VOTING RULES
- Please vote using the poll ONLY (link at the end of this post). Any votes cast in the comments on this post, on Twitter, Facebook, other people’s blogs, or by carrier pigeon WILL NOT COUNT.
- Please vote only once each
- Please do not vote for your own comment!
- Voting closes at midnight (Vancouver time) on December 31st
- In the event of a tie, I will choose my favourite of the tied comments (I won’t vote otherwise)
- The winner will be formally announced as soon as the NYE hangover clears
- Prize: ultimate 2010 bragging rights AND a CAD40 Amazon gift certificate (if the two-almost-identical comments win, the prize will be split equally between the two commenters)
(It should perhaps be noted that Massimo, last year’s winner, decided to forgo his monetary prize if I agreed to buy him some beer when we eventually manage to meet up. So, you know, the winner can negotiate what they deem to be a better prize, if they so wish)
And, without any further ado, listed in alphabetical order by commenter’s name, the candidates are:
- Alyssa for “Dream DH is a much bigger jerk than in real life – with the cheating and leaving and what-have-you. Real DH wants to kick Dream DH’s ass.”
AND Antipodean for “MrsAntipodeans dream me is a right bastard. Some days I wanna give him an uppercut” - Antipodean for “The whole of Canada is now drunk.”
- Beth for “I once caused a Canuck playoff loss because of a cursed chocolate bar. I got it during one game and we lost. Then we were losing the next game and it hit me that clearly it was the unfinished chocolate bar’s fault and so I forced myself to devour the remainder of the bar and the Canucks then won the game. Which is scientific proof of my theory of the cursed chocolate bar.”
- Bob O’Hara for “I heard that the pro-prorogue counter-rally was canceled because of the Olympics. Some people were unhappy at this, and are arranging an anti-prorogue pro-prorogue rally.”
- EcoGeoFemme for “My friend’s husband went along with her to a meeting once. He went to the poster session and pretended he was an ecologist. I guess he had picked up enough from my friend that he was pretty convincing, even though he said he was in a somewhat different subfield from her. For some reason, this irritated me more than it made me laugh.”
- Eva for “My dad’s never funny. This past week he sent me five pictures of two cat litter boxes from different angles, and still managed to not make that funny at all.”
- Nina for “If Google tells you differently, I do not agree. I could argue the whole night if you wish”.
- Professor in Training for “I only recently saw a picture of poutine – it looks like it could very well be my favourite food of all time as it contains all of my favourite ingredients that aren’t Doritos.”
- Ricardipus for “Woo. Your Canucks beat the Leafs. I wouldn’t crow too much about that – you, me, and those monkeys I keep seeing in your sidebar could probably beat the Leafs.” (NB the monkey thing refers to my old blog, which has a sidebar widget that rotates between all the photos I’ve ever posted. I used to write a lot of posts about primates).
- RPS77 for “A term like “Famous Scottish tree hybridiser” is a good reminder that fame can be relative to a particular field.”
- RPS77 for “Just think – until the development of the internet, bathroom graffiti was almost the only way for strangers who never saw each other to exchange random insults.”
- ScientistMother for “WHAT!!!!! You have readers that don’t care about winter sports? AND you want them BACK????? Why?”
13 great comments – I’m so glad I don’t have to choose! (Please let there not be a tie…. Please let there not be a tie…)
Vote by the rules, please! Off you go!
Click here to vote (sorry, I couldn’t get it to embed)
not to toot my own horn, but damn that was funny :)) And seriously, you never did answer why you would want them back:))
I voted for Ricardipus, because he is right. Monkeys could beat the Leafs..
…and I thank you , ScientistMother. 🙂
I myself voted for RPS77’s bathroom graffiti comment, for no particularly good reason other than that it made me laugh. 😀
Thanks for the nomination! I think it’s damn funny…why can’t I vote for myself?
I found Eva’s comment particularly funny, so she gets my vote!
Tell you what, vote for me, and I’ll try to vote for you in return.
Hooray for funny comments! I can’t believe I made the finals!
I voted for Eva too, although it was a tough decision. I almost went with Alyssa/Antipodean because it’s so funny that they would leave almost identical comments that are so weird!
I’m with Professor in Training — any and all winter sports (even curling!) are tolerable with sufficient poutine.
*notes that we have a polls widget installed*
I want to follow up my comment by noting that I tried to go, but ended up at the anti-pierogi pro-pirogi demo. That was fun until the Grammar Nazis turned up and started a riot.
i protest! this can’t possibly be a REAL intert00bz poll if i can’t vote 2,000 times!
oh, wait, i’m having a flashback. this isn’t the antarctica contest, where only the losers played the game by the rules. never mind.
Two of my comments are worthy of nomination? I am flattered!
Now, to figure out which non RPS comment to vote for …
I see Bob’s trying to get an early lead in next year’s comment contest… 😉
First of all, I see that people (well, Beth) are starting their “vote for me!” campaigns! This happened last year too, and added greatly to the fun of it all. BUT if you want to do this, please make sure you send people to this post, not straight to the actual survey, so that all your readers can read all the comments in full before voting (Beth did do this, but I just want to preempt any subsequent shenanigans!)
ScientistMother, I did so! I seem to remember saying something about the winter games being very much a minority thing in the UK, or something like that…
Nice to see people voting along NHL loyalty lines!
Ricardipus, that is very fitting, because “it made me laugh” is my usual criterion for picking comments of the week (and year).
Alyssa and Bob, vote trading, eh? Sneaky! (Alyssa, I wouldn’t trust Bob, though. He’ll “try” to vote for you? Sounds suspicious).
Eco, I know – the similarity between the two comments is awesome. I had another thread (this one) that also attracted two very similar comments, from Alyssa (again!!!) and HGG. Those comments were in my shortlist of 33, but didn’t quite make the final cut!
Chezjake, hi and welcome! Yay for new commenters!
Poutine is awesome, but it’s one of those foods I feel the need to earn through prior vigorous exercise, preferably outside in the snow.
Richard, I tried the polls widget, but couldn’t figure out how to customise my own poll. It seemed like you could just display standard WP polls, but I may well have been doing something wrong!
Bob, it’s perogy, damnit!
Sheesh.
Grrl, well, if I see 2,000 votes for Bob, I’ll know who to blame… 🙂
RPS77, yeah, you had a good year! Nice work!
Ricardipus, I always get excellent comments on posts about comments, as you know, having won Bragging Rights one week for a comment about how your previous comment had won the week before.
I am so confused now.
WHUMP!!!
Yeah! I made it again! And thanks for not mentioning that I was wrong in the end and Google was right … Or rather some university.
Anyway, I remembered Eva’s comment made me laugh a good half-day back then, and it did again now, so I voted for her.
I like that many of your favorite comments involve Canadianism.
This was a tough call between Eva, because that made me laugh, and PiT, because I so, so love poutine, and sometimes I wonder if secretly I should have been Canadian because of all that is right with poutine (and Canadian politics).
This is a fun thing to do for your readers.
I especially like #4, #5, and #6. And I *won’t* tell you which one I’m picking, unless you twist my arm or promise me a prize for… best comment that didn’t make the final 13. 😉
There is one person who is guaranteed to NOT be amused by my comment, and that’s my dad. I can’t promote this anywhere without him finding it, so I’m running without a campaign. Go, my comment, goooo.
Nina, well, you were close! (But no cigar)
Candid, well, I may have my own dual citizen identity crises, but my blog seems fairly certain that it’s almost entirely Canadian.
I’m glad you agree that this is fun. I started the whole comment of the week thing on a whim one morning, and now it’s one of my favourite parts of the week!
p.s. there are many, many things wrong with Canadian party politics right now!
SilverFox, fair enough! I was slightly surprised that so many people DID announce who they voted for!
Eva, oh, I hope he doesn’t read my comment on your blog then!
He might, but he won’t understand how to get to here from there, with the crap formatting that I refused to fix. Hahaha!
Oh! Oh! If I win, I’ll send you the litter box photos in question. (They are of clean litterboxes, I should add.)
Deal!
(I kinda want to see them anyway!)
haha! These are great fun 🙂 I personally love SM’s – winter sports for the win! Although, the dream ones are too funny too…. and Eva’s and PiT’s 😉 hmm… need to ponder and then vote!!
(then again, if your blog is Canadian Cath – I’m the [typical average] Swede with being quantity but not winning quality *sniff sniff* I’ll try and be funnier next year then I guesss… /bitter loser 😉 )
Oh, and here come the guilt trips… just like last year….
(Just teasing! Sorry I couldn’t include any of yours, Chall – it took me literally hours to decide on the final 12. I hate having to leave people out).
People are running “vote for me” campaigns? Perhaps I’ll go the American route and instead run smear campaigns on the other nominees 😉
Cath> I know ^^ One could say that I am so very happy being a winner with the most funny comments though 🙂 No guilt needed at all.
And now I have voted!! 😀
Who won?
The poll doesn’t close until December 31st – but thanks for reminding me to remind people to vote!