Radioactive Arsenal? Ah, skip it...

Well, the mystery behind the poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has taken yet another insidious turn. Small traces of the highly dangerous radioactive istope that killed Litvinenko have been found at the Emirates Stadium, home to a certain football club which I follow and love and which, thanks to the posts at FC Porto's stadium, are through to the final 16 of the Champions' League.

According to a variety of news sources, traces of polonium 210 were found at the stadium, in Ashburton Grove, Islington, as well as a variety of other places that Mr. Litvinenko visted whilst in London.

If Russian KGB is behind this insidious attack, it can only mean one thing: Putin is a Spurs fan. The fiend.

In an update, several hotel workers have also been found to have been poisoned with the isotope. There's no joke there, only prayers and well-wishes for their recovery. Even Spurs would never stoop so low.

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Sorry, there's not much humour there. I'm still recovering from the blatant snub of the 2006 Weblog Awards. After reviewing some of the actual nominees for the "Best Humor Blog," I was surprised to find that a number of barely humourous political blogs were included. (No offense meant to the organizers or the bloggers...You have no idea how many times this site has been referred to as "barely humourous.")

Actually, I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed. You'd figure that actual jokes per post quotient would count for something in such a category... I mean, in some of the nominees, beyond the occasional gag photo with a link and a snarky comment, there's very little consistent attempts at humour. I mean, nothing personal, but we do that sort of thing in our sleep, here. (Yes, we often sleep while we post...can't you tell?)

Other than Scrappleface and IMAO, which are quite well-written on occasion (regardless of your political viewpoint) I really struggled to find a consistent thread of humour besides something along the lines of, "look at this picture of James Baker's and Lee Hamilton's heads on monkeys...isn't that goofy?. "

(Sorry, that was the front page for the NY Post today...and on reflection it was rather spiffy...my mistake!)

How about this as a compromise: Rename the category to "Best Political Blog which is on occasion somewhat humourous." Then the selections might hold up. Otherwise, I mean, where was Dave Barry's Blog for Pete's sake? What about Lileks? (Oh, never mind...he's in the Best Individual Blog Category. I guess that outranks us humour peons.)

Oh, and they could bring back Best Religious Blog too, instead of pretending the umpteenth number of submissions they received last year amounted to a "lack of participation." If this is lack of participation, then I suppose the Boston Marathon should close up shop for the pittance they get every year.

Yes, I'm grumpy about it all. Bloody hell, I wrote a novel in this blog! I was even hoping that my incredibly violent interview with Billy Jack would save the day. I suppose I'll need to interview Chuck Norris for us to have a chance next year, should I survive the encounter. Did you know he drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls? I never imagined...

Update: The organizer of the awards has graciously indicated to me that participation was not the reason that the "Best Religious Blog" was discontinued. Rather, the difficultly in differentiating the religious blogs from the political and other blogs was the reason given. I'd say a lot of other categories have that problem too, but careful readers of this post will have already figured that out. Anyway, thanks for the clarification, Kevin!