The following is based on actual events but has been slightly moderately monumentally altered for your reading pleasure.
If I remember correctly, last week was a good week – my 2-yr old daughter repeated the word asshole after me [watch what you say around Poppy, daddy], I haven’t been called a slut by Rush Limbaugh and I received two blogging awards. Saturday night, when we went to bed, there was my wife, myself and my over-inflated ego between us. Something had to be done. I was not going to let my wife my ego stand in the way of our marital bliss.
Insomnia joined the three of us in bed, while I was pondering on the awards and being pushed over the edge of the bed by my ego. Three’s a crowd, four’s a f*cking mess. Around midnight, my daughter, feeling left out, thought it’d be a good idea to whine as loud as the nearby passing trains. I was not going to get some somnus anytime soon [I was going to write "sleep" but my ego - taking over my keyboard for a brief interlude - thought latin was more pretentious eloquent]. I got up, put pjs on my heavenly one-ab stomach, and abandoned the (un)sleeping party.
Sitting at my desk, in my office, which is also the living room and the kids room and the home theater, I could hear murmurs [I'm half deaf] of the [very loud] dispute between my ego and insomnia… When it happened. My wife grabbed my ego with one hand, insomnia with the other, burst into my daughter’s room, instilling the fear of death in her with just one stare, headed to the front door, kicked everyone out in the freezing night, walked towards me and said: “You get your act together, I don’t want to see your ego here again. Do you understand me?”, and went back to bed. I sat again at my desk after changing my wet diaper underwear and it could finally be heard, all throughout the house: silence.
My ego, now homeless.
Taking my wife very seriously, I decided something had to be done with these blog awards, and their negative effects on one’s ego. As a philanthropist, I had to come up with a way to save others from a similar misfortune. My ego was out on the street, and bloggers, little could prevent it from knocking at your door. A voice whispered in my head, it was Hippie Cahier‘s – which I never physically heard, and because of her blogger’s name, thought she sounded a great deal like Bruce Willis: “Eric… …ooooOOOOOOOoooooo… Eric… You should create an Alan Smithee Blog award… …ooooOOOOOOOoooooo…”.
So here it is friends… Introducing the Alan Smithee Blog award! And it’s all yours… You’ve been nominated for a Liebster award? a Versatile award? an Awesome Blog Content award? a f*cking Oscar?, and you want to pull a Marlon Brando on the prize? Fret not! The Alan Smithee Blog award is for you. You don’t need to nominate a single other blogger for it, nor will you have to give anyone your social security number for it. Simply save it to your desktop, and add it to your blog – OR don’t! It’s yours to do whatever you want with it. Stop the chain-letter awards, I say! Stop caressing your ego with these meaningless awards and risk the wrath of your spouse! Save the wales, and claim the Alan Smithee Blog award now, before I change my mind.
This elegant eye-chart layout award is available in both large and small formats.
the more I get to know you, the more I understnad you. You’re pretty cool!
Posted by carlarenee45 | March 5, 2012, 08:19I’ll tell you a secret, but please don’t tell anyone:
I’m even worse in person. Shhhh…
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 08:22Thanks for sharing your wet diaper. Will posting The Alan Smithee Award prevent award nominations? Is TASA sort of like a… like a… like a nomination condom… you think?
Posted by Ink. [Anette] | March 5, 2012, 08:31A nomination condom – 99% safe, from what I read on the box.
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 08:36Just don’t keep it in your wallet.
Posted by saradraws | March 5, 2012, 11:25Nice! I’ll go for the large one then. Really wouldn’t want anyone to miss it.
Posted by Ink. [Anette] | March 5, 2012, 20:32Reblogged this on Laments and Lullabies and commented:
The award for those who hate awards.
Posted by saradraws | March 5, 2012, 11:32Spread it like a disease.
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 11:54Can I have one? I could hang it on the bathroom wall over my pile of ‘spy vs spy” magazine…:)
Posted by gen1313 | March 5, 2012, 11:32A nomination condom?
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 11:54no, but it would complement my decor, the Alan thingy
Posted by gen1313 | March 5, 2012, 12:16Ha-ha! I like this! I’ve just nominated you for two awards at the link below but before your ego pounds my ego into a frothy pulp, please read to the end!
Salut!
http://hoaiphai.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/back-to-back-honours/
Posted by HoaiPhai | March 5, 2012, 13:44Your awards are worth sharing.
And you called me “The Fountain of Youth”.
How can I not like you…
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 14:50I like this. I’m yet to fall prey to any blogging award nonsense – except yours, of course – so this is a new area of cynicism I’m willing to look in to.
Posted by addzi | March 5, 2012, 14:27It’s ironic isn’t it, the desire to be cynic about receiving praise from others?
I like to think it’s because I’m an ungrateful bastard.
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 14:49Much better than the NoMo. No surprise!
Posted by Hippie Cahier | March 5, 2012, 17:18The NoMo will become a standard among bloggers. Just you wait.
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 17:42I tip my hat to you, sir. Brilliant. Useful. Aesthetically pleasing.
Posted by transparentguy | March 5, 2012, 19:32Let’s do coffee soon.
Posted by clownonfire | March 5, 2012, 19:53Yes, we’ll have to meet in Kentucky or some other midpoint. They might have crappy coffee in Kentucky and Mint Juleps are disgusting. Let’s rethink this. It has to be some place that doesn’t snow. I’ve never driven in snow.
Posted by transparentguy | March 5, 2012, 20:01Is this like the “participation award” at the Special Olympics? I have six of those.
Posted by Acadia Einstein | March 5, 2012, 20:04My mom says I’m special. Does that count?
Posted by Eva Halloween | March 6, 2012, 11:58Mrs. Bates thought Norman was special, too.
Posted by clownonfire | March 6, 2012, 12:23So funny, as always…but not really, because that would go to your head, thus encouraging the ego issue and crowding the bed that much more.
Posted by Kelly | March 7, 2012, 10:11Exactly. It’s actually pretty lame. Poor, poor, humour.
Posted by clownonfire | March 7, 2012, 11:01Egos need laughing at. Very funny – write a book anyway, you’d be great!
Posted by Not quite quintessential | March 7, 2012, 19:49We can still see my ego from our window, looking up.
At least it’s getting warmer outside.
Posted by clownonfire | March 7, 2012, 21:13Take a chance, have the showdown – you can both share the same bed as long as you can find a spot to agree. Better invite the wife in on the discussion and maybe, just maybe, it will be a better place to sleep tonight. LOL. Come out of the cold clownonfire, you can’t let the ego win!
Posted by Not quite quintessential | March 7, 2012, 22:15but – it’s my first award! I must uphold the rule of passing it on to 5 other bloggers or I will surely stay an unknown egg! I will never crack the ceiling of the bloggiest of the bloggers!
Posted by Eggkins | March 24, 2012, 16:32Spread the Gospel of the Egg, my friend!
Spam tastes better with a bit of yolk, I say.
The Clown
Posted by clownonfire | March 24, 2012, 16:59roflmao!
Posted by Eggkins | March 24, 2012, 17:29