Another Fine Award

Bella, over at That Damn Expat, gave me an award! Thank you, Bella!

The award is called the "Premio Dardos," which is Italian for "Darts Award" or "Darts Prize." Here it is (isn't it a beauty?):


Here is the official text that accompanies it:

"This award acknowledges the values that every Blogger displays in their effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values with each message they write. Awards like this have been created with the intention of promoting community among Bloggers. It's a way to show appreciation and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

I'm honored that Bella, one of my favorite bloggers, has given me a prize for "adding value to the Web." I certainly would like to think that I occasionally provide a laugh or a new insight that makes someone's day a little better or more interesting, and it's wonderful knowing that Bella thinks I do! So, thank you again, dear Bella!

I am also supposed to pass the award along to 15 other bloggers (and contact them to let them know they've been selected). There are so many awesome bloggers out there, it is hard to pick just 15, but here they are, 15 bloggers and their blogs, who embody the values the award is designed to recognize:
1. Ms. Florida Transplant, at "Just a Girl... and Her Dogs"
2. Beck, over at "Frog and Toad are Still Friends"
3. Lisa, at "The Butterfly Farmer"
4. Angie, at "Stumble Thru Life Gracefully"
5. Tova Darling, at "Secret Life of Tova Darling"
6. Green, at "Ramblings of a Green Yogurt"
7. Skyler's Dad, at "Some Days It's Not Worth Chewing Through the Leather Straps"
8. Whiskeymarie
9. Jenners, at "Life With a Little One and More"
10. Legal Diva, at "The Reasonable Person"
11. Dave, at "Five String Guitar"
12. Alice, at "Mindless Rambling of a 26 Year Old"
13. Laura, at "My Thoughts - Uninterrupted"
14. Peggy, at "Musings of Meggie"
15. Vodka Mom, at "I Need a Martini Mom"

If some of you have already received this award, sorry for the duplication -- just know that lots of us think you are fantastic.

I have to say, though, I am curious about the name of the award.

The picture appears to be an old mechanical typewriter with golden words erupting from it. Pretty cool image, actually. But I can't quite make out the words at the bottom of the award - Best Blog.... something. So what, exactly, is the relevance of the name "Darts Prize"? How do "Darts" relate to blogging?

Being the neurotic attorney that I am, I couldn't just accept the award at face value; I had to try to do some research. This is part of the reason it has taken me so long to acknowledge Bella's kindness in giving me this award.

First, I traced this award back as far as I could, from one awardee to the next, all the way to last year when it seems to have first been awarded from an Italian blogger to a bilingual blogger here in the States. Even though I took Italian 23 years ago, I couldn't read all of the Italian blogger's explanation of the award, but it seemed to pretty much track what is stated above -- with no explanation of the "Darts" issue.

Since my Italian is pretty rusty, I had reached the end of the line as far as my ability to learn anything useful about the award that way.

So I ran a Google search for "Premio Dardos." There were 611,000 results. That's a lot of bloggers! My review of the first few pages of results did not turn up any new information and I didn't have time to read all 611,000 entries.

So I gave up on finding the "official" explanation of the meaning of the name, and turned to my analytical skills to divine a meaning.

I came up with three theories: (1) The name "Darts Prize" refers to the fact that I have been "targeted" to receive this award; (2) The name "Darts Prize" refers to the precision with which the words are crafted on this blog (analogous to the precision with which the darts player must aim his dart at the target); (3) The original award-giver made a list of all the bloggers she liked and threw darts at the list to decide who would win the prize. (You can see how my superior analytical skills have made me a successful attorney).

Does anyone else have any theories?
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