Long Live The Maharajah!

Like everyone in the Sri Lankan blogosphere I am aware of and have been reading the latest trolling type blog that appears before our eyes as the Maharajah of Bad.

Now, calling Mr Maharajah a troll is something I do with a large dose of hesitation. Why? Well because to me a troll is someone who goes around slagging people off, generally causing trouble and angering innocent folks while doing little else. It's as obvious as a baggage porter at BIA that the Maharajah has caused some trouble and pissed off a few bloggers, but I think there's much more to the fellow than just that.

I'm a bit Oscar Wilde in this too. While I'm of course deeply insulted by the Maharajah's frankly vitriolic and downright evil analysis of my sense of humour I'm secretly chuffed that I'm one of his lucky victims. Not so secretly now but you get my drift here.

The thing about Mr M, if he/she is indeed a Mr, is that it's someone with a genuine sense of humour, a real talent for writing and a large dose of incisive wit. On one hand it's pretty easy to pick on a few bloggers and criticise them negatively, take the piss out of my sense of humour or whoever's liking for cheap porno mags. But, on the other hand Mr M does it with a bit of panache and style.

I chuckle to myself each time I read his profile and get to the bit about buses having six wheels and this line brought a genuine laugh out aloud moment to my office, the one with only me in it:

"Back in the days of the kingdom, when our elephants were still alive, taming them and going to war and crushing innocent people and other creatures like women and alcoholics under the terrible weight of the elephant foot was one of our favorite pastimes"

The only other times I laugh out aloud are usually at one of my own jokes. Mr M really does write some funny stuff and, even though you may well think I'm mocking him here but I assure you I'm not, I would love to have the ability to come up with lines like that.

My admiration grows when I look at the readership stats on Kottu too. His blog is so bad that it's at the top of everything, only really competing with the blogging giants that are Indi, Dinidu and a post by Jade in which she writes about Mr M himself.

Hands up if one of the things that drives you in your blogging, perhaps just a bit, is readership figures. They certainly drive me, not entirely but they do matter, and it's taken me almost three years to write, post and build up a semblance of a readership, then Mr M turns up and shoots straight to the top of the charts. I take my hat off to the fellow on this.

And he manages to strike a chord with all of us doesn't he? Okay I don't know about you but in my case he did. I mean that thing about naming me the Grinch who stole humour did actually affect me a bit. In total I've probably spent about ten minutes of my life thinking about it, that's quite something.

The blog is a different approach to the Sri Lankan blogosphere. We had the Pada show, we had Soixante Neuf, rather someone else did and she told us about it in every detail possible, then Kalusudda came up with his great way of writing and now we have Mr Bad.

I welcome him.

RD has spoken. That was a bit too predictable wasn't it?