Some day I’ll have to write a post explaining the art and science of “Bedeproofing,” an especially rigorous variant of childproofing. That day is not today, because I spent today’s allotment of blogging time Bedeproofing instead.

For now, I’ll just introduce you to the Three General Principles:

1. Anything that can be climbed upon must be bolted to the walls, or to the floor. Both is best.

2. Doors and gates should be installed to contain potentially dangerous areas, like the kitchen, the stairs, the halls… pretty much everywhere, like hatches in a submarine.

3. Latches and bolts must be placed at a height where admissible family members can reach them, but inadmissible members cannot. Of course, the latches have to be raised periodically as certain family members gain height.

Well, yes, I am from Chicago. That’s where I was born, and learned to speak. It seems that I still remember.

Curiously, Don Danz, another transplanted Chicago-born Oklahoman, scored the “Midland” accent instead. He also can’t figure out how to center his table properly. Try this, Don:

<div align="center"><table>
[all the tabular code]
</table></div>

UPDATE: Ah, now I see your problem. It’s a Windows MSIE bug. Not worth fixing then.

The results won’t be certified until Monday, but it seems that I came in fourth.

I’m not heartbroken. It’s a respectable showing, and it was of course an honor just to be a finalist. I did win the Weblog Awards two years ago, and they can’t take that away from me. It’s only right that others should have their turn.

The three blogs that finished ahead of mine are quite good, and I don’t mind conceding to any of them. (Unlike last year, when I finished way behind a stinking porn blog featuring photographs of sex acts. Not that I’m bitter.) My congratulations go especially to File It Under, and kudos once again to Kevin Aylward for running the whole thing.

But I am mainly writing this post to thank all of you who voted for my blog. I got 173 votes, and only cast 8 of them myself. When I see how good other blogs are, I am frankly amazed and humbled to get any votes at all. I’ll never know who all of you are (except I’m pretty sure Phoebe voted for me), but I do appreciate it. Very much. Thank you, and merry Christmas.

I’ll update this post later, with the details. In the meantime, I hope you’ve been practicing the Dead Castro Dance.

UPDATE, DEC. 13: I will post details as they become available. For now, this is more of an “ahead of the news cycle” kind of post. “Ahead of the news cycle” is a euphemism (synonymous with “jumping the gun”) for relaying facts or events which have not yet been reported by any authoritative source. Like when Patterico reported that Dennis Hastert was a moron in 2004, but it wasn’t reported elsewhere until two years later. Being ahead of the news cycle entails certain risks, such as reporting baseless rumors, but also certain advantages, such as being on top of Google searches. Every journalist must weigh these factors when deciding where, exactly, his reportage will be in relation to the news cycle.

My Web hosting company, DreamHost, has this “Rewards” program, whereby I can earn a 97-dollar commission for every new customer I refer to them. That’s pretty cool.

But what’s even cooler is, I can set up a “Promo Code,” through which I can discount the price of DreamHost hosting by up to $97, and whatever discount I give is subtracted from my own kickback. For instance, if I reduce the price by $97, I get nothing.

And that’s precisely what I’ve done.
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Okay, here’s the deal. I happen to be a finalist in this here category of the 2006 Weblog Awards. These awards, chosen by the Web-browsing public rather than a panel of judges, are (at least theoretically) bestowed based on the blog’s output over the entire year.

But of course, if you’re hopping around the links from the Weblog Awards site trying to form an opinion, you have neither the time nor the desire to delve into the entire year’s archives for every candidate, so you pretty much vote based on the first page of posts. Right?

This gallery is for you, the voter. It’s a small sample of links to posts from the year 2006 on this blog. Click on some of them. Then vote. (For me, if you like.)

Oh, and Basil: thanks for nominating me!