Garfield Minus Garfield beating xkcd and Dilbert to best comic strip title

At the time of writing, I'm delighted to see Garfield Minus Garfield, the web comic created by Dubliner Dan Walsh, aka Travors, is beating other great web comics including Randall Munroe's xkcd, Scott Adams' Dilbert, Chris Muir's Day by Day and the bizarre Jesus and Mo by Mohammed Jones to the title of Best Comic Strip in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

You can cast a vote for your favourite here until 10pm on Tuesday January 13.



Garfield Minus Garfield is a frequent stop for me and it's great to see Dan getting even more recognition for his work. The New Yorker have a great interview with him here.

Update: Just as I hit publish, figures are: 2,216 votes cast with Garfield Minus Garfield at 1,008 votes, xkcd at 698 and Dilbert at 94.

How will it benefit us?

This isn't as much a political post as it is a thank you to Darren for all his work on breaking down the Lisbon Treaty to an easy to understand "this is what we're voting on".

Despite all their talking crap about their great work, their campaigns and their passion for the future, I've yet to see one person from the seemingly/apparently farcical organisations that are Labour Youth, Young Fianna Fáil or Young Fine Gael - the future leaders of this country - come up with a good explanation, a simple breakdown or a cohesive argument to explain and support the campaign that the parties they're supposed to be in are supporting.

This campaign won't do it. Rock the Vote won't do it. Their so called easy-to-use guide is copied and pasted from the same sources as most of the parties, and is as equally difficult (for me) to understand. I can't see the benefits, I can't see the problems if we don't, but I do grin at the irony of starting the guide with

Rock The Vote is a non-profit organisation that seeks to promote political engagement among young people. We are completely non-partisan, and our goal is to inform you, the voter, about the issues at hand. We provide impartial materials that you can get registered, get informed, and rock the vote.

Yeah, good for you, campaigning for yourselves. But what will Lisbon do for me? Or the hospital waiting lists and closures, on the education system, on the funding of much needed services and all the other stuff I've asked here.

It takes Darren, one of the least politically associated but communications minded people I know to be able to connect with the issue and to show the issues there are with it.

As I said before, and Darren says now, the country needs a change. It needs a voice. This voice is saying no. No to the waste of time, money and campaigning that should have gone towards improving the country for its people rather than for a community we have a right to benefit from.

Unless I see the actual benefits to the people in this country, I'm with him on this one.

Well done sir.