Heck Of A Guy Wins Liebster Award

Da Bear from the outstanding Bearly Rambling site has indeed bestowed upon Heck Of A Guy the prestigious Liebster Blog Award, graciously describing this site as follows:

Heck of a Guy: my daily fix of Leonard Cohen. This guy is everything Cohen. If you love Leonard then you must love this Guy. I take my daily dose of 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer, 1Heckofaguy.com.

The Liebster Blog Award is – well, it’s a bit of a mystery. No one seems to know when or where it originated. Several winners speculated that “liebster” points to Germany. The online English-German dictionary offers these English equivalents of “liebster:”

• darling
• beloved
• boyfriend
• sweetheart

My own searches for a source were unrequited. Most posts mentioning the award seem to be dated in the past year or so.

While the origins of the Liebster Blog Award are obscure, the rules associated with it are well codified:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who awarded you.
3. Copy & paste the blog award on your blog.
4. Reveal your 5 blog picks.¹
5. Let them know you chose them by posting on their blog.

Now, the math suggests that

1. The Award is of recent origin. If each winner required a month to re-reward the Liebster, after one year more than 89762301673555230720 blogs would be flashing the Liebster prize.
2. This is a virtuous variation on the chain letter/Ponzi scheme paradigm with links and good feelings rather than cash being shared.

In any case, I’m genuinely proud that Da Bear thought Heck Of A Guy a site worthy of his endorsement.

And, readers can count themselves blessed that I have decided against emulating Leonard Cohen’s Prince Of Asturias Awards acceptance speech.²

Finally, I am looking forward to the opportunity to Liebsterize five other blogs. Those winners will be announced tomorrow so stay tuned.

1. The policy indicates that blogs selected should have fewer than 200 followers, but this appears to be uniformly ignored. [↩]
2. Somehow “How I Got My Blog” just doesn’t hold up against “How I Got My Song.” [↩]