Well, that little display of spleen has certainly made me feel like the world's biggest chump. I still think I had to say it, but I realize how utterly ungrateful it makes me sound. Those people who gave me awards could well interpret what I said as meaning I thought their awards were either sympathy votes or pointless pieces of crap. No, that's not what I meant, but I didn't quite bother to explain. I was too busy being an ass.
See, you know I got that dopey WebMistress Award for being a Woman In Science Fiction Who Maintains A Web Page? And there was that hideous little masquerade of an award that I wrote about recently, the one which was purely and simply advertisement for a cybermall? Those are the types of awards I was spewing about. The ones I put on my Awards Page really mean something special to me. Those are there because I'm proud of them. It's this damn Mining Company thing that grinds my butt. They are just a collection of interested parties, handing out an occasional award, and you can't ask for it and you can't suck up for it. Therefore, they've automatically become sought after. Therefore, it's all too easy to decide if you don't get one, and all the people whose writing you like do get one, then your precious work must be hyena dung.
That is not the case. I must keep reminding myself this is not a competition, there is no Best but only Excellence and Originality. And I hang out with the Web's best and brightest as far as I'm concerned. So accept my apologies if I hurt anyone's feelings, and I'll just get on with the usual stuff I write about.
This clarity of view was brought home to me by Linda of Linda's Thing, Doug Franklin of Nilknarf, Kymm Zuchert of The Mighty Kymm, Ab Nomen of The JEL Scroll, Gage Steel of Backstory & Bullshit, and correspondents Kim Huett, Janet Burrola, and a goodly portion of the 75 faithful. Thank you for being charitable about my rant and for your boundless good sense.
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