Our Time is Nigh

Comrades,

The deadline approaches. Our enemies have fought bravely, have rallied on the hills, have shed their blood upon the field. We must admire their effort, particularly as they have garnered absurd amounts of votes, but still we know the truth: Stupid Ugly Foreigner must vanquish all foes.

And thus we have come to the final push. Raise the banners. Sound the bugles of war. Scream from the rooftops. Set loose your fleet of carrier pigeons. Write things in sidewalk chalk. Talk loudly on subway cars. Send annoying emails to your friends and acquaintances. Eat a banana, for energy. Throw hard-boiled eggs from the top of a ferris wheel, each detailed in a fine, delicate script. Etch the words onto the face of the new pope with fuchsia crayons. Let the world hear your mewling, plaintive cry:

“Stupid Ugly Foreigner must win the Big Blog Exchange!” Feel the beating of your heart as you shout to the heavens. Your life has led up to this moment. “Or I will throw myself off a bridge!”

No? Okay, I will not ask ritualistic suicide pacts from you, dear readers. But I will ask you (for the last time, the contest ends soonishly) to spread the word one last time. Share this link. Vote like mad. Make a facebook post, or a tweet, or a reddit thread, or a strange birdsong meme that subconsciously compels people to read my blog. Have all of your moms tell all of their mom friends and get their mom network into an internet frenzy. Reconnect with old high school chums and convert them to the cult of SUF. Join the military and convince everyone in your squadron of the glory of this blog, and why it should be rewarded with free trips and things. Find your long-lost brother on a completely different continent, reconnect over your shared love of chess and mayonnaise, cry deeply over the time you’ve lost, and then vote together in an internet contest. Become a magician, climb through a portal to a new world, defeat a great evil, become the king/queen of this strange, dangerous land, establish quality wifi (maybe Narnia or Hogwarts will get Google Fiber), have all of your centaur and fairy subjects sign up for an email, and then have them vote for me. Do whatever you can.

I will continue to be your faithful chronicler of my own big dumb awesome life. Whether here, or somewhere else. And if I win, I will be stupider, uglier, and foreignier than ever in a whole new land.

March bravely, my friends, into the great wilderness of this internet.

In Which Our Hero Requires Aid

Dearest compatriots,

I do not often write to you directly in this manner, for I feel it lowly of me to beseech you in such a fashion, but we have arrived at a time of need.

I know many of you hunger to assist me in any manner possible. Through many long nights you have sat awake at your windowsill, looking out onto the dark landscape with longing. Your thoughts were troubled, your heart heavy. You glanced back at your commemorative Stupid Ugly Foreigner shrine that you built in my honour. You clutched your handmade SUF t-shirt close to your heart. There was still a sting on your lower back from where you had your freshest SUF tattoo recently inked. But still you yearned. You wanted to do more for Stupid Ugly Foreigner, the man. Sending him disturbing nude portraits and locks of your hair just didn’t seem enough anymore.

Fear not, gentle reader. I bring you the opportunity you have waited for. For now is the time I sound the clarion, when I too sit at the sill and hope that somewhere, out there, my champions await.

The Big Blog Exchange. Hostelling International has opened a contest on the internet. Writers from around the world enter, call upon their devoted and ravenous fans to vote for them, and move up in the rankings. Those chosen few who vanquish others in their region have a chance of being selected to exchange blogs and lives with one of the other winners from Anywhere in the World. They fly these writers around the globe, put them up, feed them, and furnish them with all sort of zany hi jinx in which to engage. The only catch is: they must write about this experience.

Writing, you say? I have some experience with that.

And so, I throw myself before you, dear chums. Click on that glittering wonderbutton at the top of this post, or the one permanently and garishly lodged into my sidebar. Vote for Stupid Ugly Foreigner (and confirm via your email), then come back here and receive words of praise and adulation from the cult of SUF and perhaps even the thanks of the suave, Svengali-like master of this group.

Vote Stupid Ugly Foreigner in the Big Blog Exchange. It’s like democracy, except better.