The 2008 Blogging Awards - The I Wish I Hadn't Written That Award

This is the first of the new awards to this year's proceedings and it's proved quite a hard one to decide upon. Not because there aren't any candidates, oh no, there are plenty of good quality nominations out there. The problem is that, in order to truly qualify, in order to really prove that you wish you hadn't written a specific post or blog, then you really have to delete the thing.

And, if it's been deleted, then I can't refer to it, unless I'm one of these parasitological wizards who uses Google Dreamcatcher and all sorts of other mean and marvellous software to keep track of my regular reads. So my memory comes into its own here, which is like losing a cricket match by a few runs, knowing that one batsman could do it and then realising that Murali is the next batsman.

I'd also like to welcome another genuine true life guest judge at this point, young Darwin herself. She is of course no stranger to these awards, being the first ever winner of blog of the year, but this is the first year she's worn such a skimpy dress. I'm unsure about the Bata Haiwaianas as the choice of footwear though.

The candidates are mostly memories, with one notable exception. I'll try to describe them and you, at this juncture, may be wise to try and remember them.


1. Viceunversa's fantastically timed post only last week. The one in which he said that the attack on Sirasa / MTV was justified because people who voice their opposition to the GoSL are traitors. Old DD took some serious stick for this and it was only made worse after the murder of Lasantha Wickramatunga. But, if you read Indi.ca perhaps you'll have seen that the murder seems to have changed DD's opinion. His previous "traitor" post was deleted and DD is almost one of the good guys. Or is he?

2. Soixante Neuf - in her, or her blog's, entirety. She came, she came again. He came, all over the place and then she told us all about it in the most intimate details. Most of us wish that we could write as well as 6 and also get as much action as her. There were rumours all over the Lankan blogosphere about whether Soixante Neuf was / is real, there were as many rumours about who the mystery man was. In a way they are all irrelevant as the blog became as big as a huge big thing in a tiny little world and we hung on 6's every word. Finally, when things changed the blog got deleted. I suspect 6 doesn't wish it hadn't been written, but then surely she'd leave it hanging around for all to see.

3. Darwin's post on Muslims, cartoons, Dutch and Danish people caused some reaction and outcry, from me as well as others. Sadly our heroine didn't even get into the nominations "proper" as, though I and many disagree with her, she stands by her sentiments, albeit with an edit added onto the end of the post. You've got to respect a person who can do that. Though funnily enough I respect Darwin for sticking to her guns as well as DD for swapping his guns for a sarong.

4. The final nomination is Dinidu de Alwis for this post, also about that God fellow. Amongst other things Dinidu said:

"I’m pretty outspoken about my views on religion, I’m an atheist, and I simply think those who practice a religion are, for the lack of a more diplomatic work, stupid."

Now I have bucketloads of time and admiration for Dinidu, a sneaky bit of me even admires him for coming out with tosh like that. He's young, he writes quite brilliantly and he wears his keyboard on his sleeve near where his heart is. When you get older you usually get more cynical and accepting of things and acceptance can be an empowering thing.

Dinidu's little assertion that those who practice a religion are stupid was to diplomacy and tact what Sittingnut is to objectivity and cool headed writing with sharp and incisive content, and good spelling too while we're at it. Not only was there a fatwa out on the fellow but there were nuns, monks and priests of all denominations hunting him down with evil on there minds. I heard that there was a very short little monk from a very working class family, about 3 feet tall, who had big grudge against Dinidu for quite some time. He was the lowest common denominator though. (Did you see what I did there?)


The time has come to announce the winner. I'd ask for a drum roll but we don't have any drummers around here.

The winner is...............

Dinidu and the religion post.

Darwin has these kind and sympathetic words to say to our Dinidu:


"It is with great pleasure that I congratulate Mr De Alwis on being the winner of the 'I wish I hadn't written that post' award. Speaking from personal experience, I know that the subject of religion is a difficult one to discuss on a blog (a topic only slightly less volatile than SL politics!) and many a time even I've had a few trolls obligingly prove my point by simply showing how dumb their defence of religion is. But while I agree with Mr De Alwis' position on the topic of religion, even I couldn't quite manage to trigger the shit-storm that followed on the comment section and other follow-up blog posts. In this post that made even the venerable Christopher Hitchens look like a de-clawed kitten, Dinidu managed to take careful aim and shoot himself (and atheism) on both feet. Well done!"

Many congratulations to Mr de Alwis. I assume he's won other awards for his writing but this must be the biggest.