You love me, you really love me

[complete list of winners]

Well, well, what do you know?

Day Falstaff is thrilled about this. Night Falstaff is wondering if he's the only one who sees the irony in spending a lifetime trashing popular taste and then winning what is essentially a popularity contest [1].

The key with winning things like this, of course, is not to let it go to your head. Five minutes a day of telling yourself "I'm the greatest! I'm the greatest!" and before you know it you're invading Iran or turning into Wordsworth or marrying someone whose name sounds like an underwear brand and then shaving of all your hair as a way of coping. As my namesake would say: "If I do grow great, I'll grow less, for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do."

Still, it feels like some sort of speech is in order (Shoefiend actually asked me for one). Something stirring and poetic. 'The blog was mine before I was the blog's'. That sort of thing. The trouble is, there's so little great poetry about winning. What can one say, after all? "Now all the truth is out / Be secret and take victory"? "Success is counted sweetest / By those who e'er succeed"? "Say nought the struggle plenty availeth"? "What though the field be won? / All is not won"? "The rest is cheerful music"? See what I mean?

At any rate: a big thank you to everyone who voted for me [2]. It's a great feeling to know that so many of you enjoy what I write. It's like my ego's been let out of the dark mines it usually slaves in to attend the company picnic. Tomorrow I'll probably go back to being insecure and depressed, but today is a good day.

I'd also like to thank (in no particular order) my parents, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Starbucks, the agent I may some day get, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, all forms of dark chocolate, my advisor, Absolut Mandarin, the three and a half women who have ever smiled at me when I wasn't taking their photograph, Blogger (you are the wind beneath my widgets), Constantine Cavafy, the Indibloggies jury, heh heh and Zen for convincing me that this blogging thing may actually be worth doing, Humphrey Bogart, the folks behind the Yahoo News service who have provided me with so many things to make fun of, Salvador Dali, the sponsors of the contest (Black Panther, I love you, even though I have no idea what a gym kit is or what I could conceivably do with one), my fifth grade English teacher, Pablo Picasso, the geeks in school whose obsession with IIT-JEE convinced me I didn't want to be an engineer, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jacqueline du Pre, Mozilla, Lucky Gents Heir Cutting Saloon (my hair stylist), Netflix, the Van Pelt Library, Google, Anna Karina and the guy who gave me change for a 20 yesterday because really who carries around 4 fivers and is willing to part with them to a complete stranger?

Right, now to go see about those troop deployments.

Notes:

[1] Last heard, Night Falstaff was consoling himself with a half-empty bottle of scotch and the knowledge that 78.5% of the people who voted in the contest didn't think 2x3x7 was the best Humanities Indiblog.

[2] This includes those of you who voted for Momus. I'll be thinking of you when I finally kill myself while listening to Sinfonia Concertante.