The true story of the Stylish Blogger Award

The Stylish Blogger Award Logo (uncredited image)

Finally, someone has decided I’m stylish. Although, anybody who has ever seen me on a daily basis would disagree. I have been known to leave the house with unmatched socks, unmatched earrings, and unmatched socks and earrings at the same time, then blunder haplessly through the day totally unaware of these fashion faux pas, until I remove said socks and or earrings at the end of the day.  But my blogger buddy Margaret of Conjuring my Muse http://margaretreyesdempsey.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/did-you-hear-im-stylish/ apparently has not seen me make these style faux pas, as she recently nominated me (along with several others) for the prestigious “Stylish Blogger Award.” Thanks Margaret.

“So Huffygirl, what is the Stylish Blogger Award?” you might ask. Good question, as I asked this myself. At first glance, the Stylish Blogger Award  (SBA) appears to be a new version of the chain letter, sans the caveat of bad luck befalling those who “break the chain,” and a covert way for bloggers to shamelessly promote their blogs. But that would be silly, as it turns out the SBA is  so much more.  Here’s how it goes. Someone nominates you to receive the SBA. The nominee in turn must:

1. Present seven things about yourself that others might not know.
2. Name about a half-dozen bloggers you think deserve the award.
3. Contact those people to inform them of the honor.
4. Create a link back to the person who gave you the honor.

So before diving into the requirements of the SBA, thanking the academy, etc I wanted answers. Naturally, I turned to the foremost research tool of the 21st century – Google. I put in the search terms “What is the stylish blogger award” and up pops no fewer than 2,880,000 hits, which are in fact, 2,880,000 blogs from people like me thanking their constituents for the SBA. So, the one thing the SBA is NOT is exclusive. Still, not the answer I needed.

Next, I searched on “Who started the stylish blogger award?” and came up with –  exactly the same hits as the previous search. After clicking on a few of these links, I discovered a few more things about the SBA. There are different variations on the stipulated requirements, such as nominating  6, 7 or 15 other bloggers, and sharing 5, 7 or 8 things about yourself. But all ring true in that this is indeed a prestigious and coveted blogging award. 

So, not finding the answers I wanted, I did what most good writers would do. After extensive research, I share with you today the true and formerly undisclosed story of the SBA.

The Stylish Blogger Award originates with  Stash Glieb, an early blogging pioneer. Stash was a true pioneer, blogging back before there even was an internet, as Al Gore had not yet been born. Stash saved his daily musings in a diary that was found after his death by Garry Dowl, a member of the team that developed ENIAC and an early adopter of the Usenet and Telnet systems. Garry, sensing that Stash’s writings might someday be important, imbedded them into early computer code,  so that his words might be immortalized for all time. Later, as the internet became more sophisticated and less understandable, Google searches began pulling up Garry’s code as  repeated letter patterns. This alarmed the federal government, who contacted  internet historians at the University of Michigan to form a task force to make sense of this recurring code. Information regarding the task forces’ work began to leak to the public, causing general alarm to ensue. As the internet teetered on the brink of social anarchy, one dedicated task force member, who for security purposes, will only be  identified as TK,  finally made sense of the recurring letter patterns. After developing a complex algorithm to analyze the repeated patterns,  and accounting for regression, tax code revisions and amortization, TK  concluded that the repeating letter patterns arranged themselves into: 

Just before being taken to his undisclosed federal location, TK sent out the first missive nominating a fellow researcher for the Stylish Blogger Award, and the rest is history. 

So, maybe I’ll one day come up with my own set of SBA nominees, or maybe I’ll let this award die a slow internet death, with no doubt a resurrection sometime in the future. I’ll leave it to the readers to help me decide. 

PS: If I did decide to nominate anyone, I’d draw from the blogs on my Blogroll, all stylish and dedicated bloggers who toil away tirelessly at their written words.

© The author and Huffygirl’s Blog, 2010 to 3010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author and Huffygirl’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.