The Honest Scrap Award

So much for the Ugandan Best of Blogs Awards. The blogren have jumped ship to the Honest Scrap Award, an informal, apparently international bloggers’ honor-slash-meme that’s been making the rounds in East Africa.

As far as I can tell, the award entered the Ugandan blogosphere through Ugandan Girl, who got it from Afronuts in Nigeria. Ugandan Girl passed it to Eizzy, Nevender, Mjay, SilverBow, among others.

Since then it’s hit up Emi, Normzo, Jny, Samali, Carsozy, Yz and Wilde Yearnings, plus a bunch more, including Biche at Chick About Town.

Earlier this month, she passed it along to me.

I’m flattered, but I’ll resist the immense urge to make a gratuitous, Sally Field-esque acceptance speech. Instead I’ll just show you hers:

You like me! Right now…you like me!

The award stipulates that I:

1. Brag about the award.
2. Include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on me and link back to the blogger.
3. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that I find brilliant in content or design.
4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
5. List at least ten (10) honest things about myself.

To be honest, several of my top choices have been awarded already. I don’t know if it’s legal or not to re-award them, but I’m going to do it anyway. In no particular order, the seven East African bloggers whose blogs’ content or design I find brilliant:

1. Rev/Comrade at The Dying Communist, for constantly provoking me. Samali already named him, but I’m hoping the additional mention will put even more pressure on him to start blogging again.
2. Angela Kintu, for constant thoughtful analysis.
3. Rosebell, for bringing important things to my attention.
   Rosebell’s acceptance post
4. SebaSpace at AfroGay, for persistence in the face of disheartening adversity.
5. Tamaku at Diary of a gay Kenyan (he’s already accepted the award once), for courage and wit.
6. Tumwi at Ugandan Insomniac, for unique insight and wry humor.
7. Naughty Feeling at Queeattitude, for a recent post that broke my heart.

And for my ten honest things:

1. I despise eggplant.
2. I can’t whistle.
3. I like cupcakes in theory, but not in practice.
4. A two-week trip to Uganda in January 2006 saved me from a year in Vladivostok and five to seven years’ worth of studying 19th century Russian literature.
5. Most of the things I “overhear” on Twitter are pulled from conversations I’ve had.
6. I desperately need to move my blog to WordPress.
7. But I’m resisting because I don’t want to give up the ability to obsessively tweak my design through Blogger.
8. I’m three degrees from Joseph Kony, two degrees from Wernher von Braun and one degree from Mikhail Gorbachev.
9. I have a thing for giant storks.
10. I claim to hate memes, but this is the third time I’ve participated in one on Jackfruity (here are the first and second).