Woo bot! I was going to post something but then saw in the MD comments that you were already all over it. Meanwhile, I've been botting away this night and last, having attained the status of Black Cat Bartender.

I have 20 votes cast so far and Thank God, I am only "as uncaring as Brian's Attackers!"

justice demands that Lizza's outrageous lead be crushed, and Lizza himself humbled and forced to crawl in chains before Beutler during the latter's triumphal march.

Interesting sexual fantasies you have, W-lfs-n.

I'm taking tomorrow off and will put my home computer to work on this. This I pledge.

Is this "Black Cat" an establishment especially noted for the hotness (or bot-voting skills) of its bartenders?

5 - It's Brian's favorite watering hole (and the place he was departing when he was shot).

What can I say, Michael. I am a slave to justice's sexy demands.

More people, folks! It appears that Lizza's tally is going up about 8 per second and ours at about 7 per. At that point, we can't keep pace, let alone catch up!

and Lizza himself humbled and forced to crawl in chains before Beutler during the latter's triumphal march

Can you make this happen, ben? Well, can you? Can you? Please.

I hope the uchicago linux cluster admins don't get pissed at me.

Is there some trick to it? I installed the add-on; does it just do its trick automatically or do I have to go to the site or something?

Ari, I can only make that happen if you help, by botting.

BOT 4 BEUTLER '08!

Tim: you have to restart firefox (if you haven't already) and then go to this page. It's a compiled Greasemonkey script, so you have to be on that page for it to work, though once you do get to that page, you don't have to do anything more.

You'll know that it's working when it shows your vote total and rank in big type on the page.

11: take firefox to The voting site and firefox will ask you something.

damn you, other more prominent blogger Ben! You beat me towards giving advice, and you had a link and everything.

Do I need the most recent version of Firefox for this to work?

You do not! I am using 2.0 and it's working.

It was nice to get beyond "as uncaring as Brian's attackers" status. It's almost as though I un-shot him.

For the record, I was just about to comment that I was confused, before the anonymous jerkface forced you to clarify things for the rest of us. I'm be-botten!

My bot stalled at 18. What's up with that?

We have liftoff. The chicken is in the freezer. bottles and cans, clap your hands. Thanks to w-lfs-n's heroic assistance.

||
This is amazing.

I think the most likely scenario for a whole lot of distance events is that the vast majority of participants will just give up partway through and walk off the course struggling for breath. Is that quote serious, about it not being possible to wear a mask while competing?
{>

Huh. Stalled at 135. Lizza's people will pay for this, whether they're responsible or not.

I'm a go.

7. Careful, justice has been getting increasingly kinky lately. Make sure you have a safe word before you begin stress positions.

FISA compromiser? Gah!! Vote, little bot! Vote quickly!

27. I'm at Obama-level, too.

Do we not have a favorite among the laydeez? I propose we support the first female candidate who calls this contest fucking stupid. It can be off-record, with a dog whistle from someone in the know.

Thanks to the refresh button, I'm up to "casual acquaintance." I feel like I've been sprinkled with celebrity dust!

OMG! Watching the incrementation, with the glowering text when you're at low numbers, is emotionally painful. Lo siento, Beuter.

"Casual acquaintance"? I sent that bastard money.

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Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition)

|>

That's one of the better McSweeney's things like that.

23: It's gonna turn out to be nothing. Or a bunch of athletes are going to die. Either way, NBC wins.

35: Yeah, but seeing someone die in 1080p, with a 120Hz refresh rate, oh my. It makes it all worthwhile. The more you know, indeed.

Wow, this bot thing is totally cool. I feel like I'm changing the world, one totally unfair technological shortcut at a time.

36: You got a 120 Hz model? Suddenly I feel so...inadequate. I think I need another bot. Or another new tv.

You got a 120 Hz model?

Nah. Would that I were botting at 120 cyles per second.

How was the air in LA in 1984? LA has gotten better since, hasn't it?

How many votes do we have to cast before we can start cashing them in for sexual favors? Because I think I'm stuck at "black cat bartender" level and I need some motivation.

It was bad in '84. But nothing at all like this. Or so I'm told by a friend who studies airborne particulates.

I'm kind of nonplussed at this "past or future sex partner" thing. I mean, the man doesn't have a spleen.

the man doesn't have a spleen

Kinky.

We've overtaken Lizza—but that doesn't mean you can stop! The man is a desparate fiend.

Also, he is desperate. It's late and Louis Andriessen has been at me.

I'll be up for another hour. And when do the polls close, Ben? Should I plan on having a few computers open and working tomorrow throughout the day?

Polls close on Tuesday.

I'll pause a minute to let that sink in.

"past or future sex partner"

It would be helpful if this could be more specific. There are large parts of the 80s I don't remember.

I think I'm stuck at "black cat bartender" level

What level could conceivably be higher?

Done. On my laptop at least - there are also 5 desktops in this house ...

I had an odd situation. The script would not install automatically. I had to download it and then drag and drop it onto Firefox 2.x. From there, it all went fine. Also, I snagged the URL and pasted it into the browser so it didn't look like I came from Unfogged. I'll leave it running while I'm at work.

I think we should support Rachel Levin. Reasoning:

(1) Salma Hayek is the pinnacle of female hotness.
(2) Rachel Levin looks more like Salma Hayek than anyone else running.
(3) Rachel Levin is the hottest contestant.

If (male) people here have a problem with my logic, remember that arguing against Salma Hayek in any way puts a black mark on your Guy Record. I don't make the rules.

Plus Rachel Levin works for Al Jazeera, an act of extreme courage / badassery.

53: My subjective favorite in that category is Jane Black from WaPo, but I am so overwhelmed by the crushing logic of Minivet's argument that I have lost the courage of my convictions. Besides: WaPo??

Rachel Levin it is!

Also, I know this is a tall order, but could someone please hack the ballot counter to eliminate all the votes for the contestants in the "Male--PR" category? There's a whole Sears catalog worth of tools in that group. (Except for the Center for American Progress guy, 'cuz he's on the side of the angels, even if he is obviously sucking in his gut in the photo.)

"Keith Urbahn, Office of Donald Rumsfeld" in particular needs to suffer a life of torment, humiliation and despair, if I am to retain my small flicker of belief in cosmic justice.

re: 53

Dude, hotness isn't transitive in that way.

54: She seems like your type. Mary Bruce looks nice, but I'm not sure if working for George Stephanopoulos means she's evil.

||

The Olympic opening ceremony is surreally awesome. I should be stoned for best effect.

|>

||

Children's entertainers need to smile big, open their eyes wide and show a lot of enthusiasm. Many of the same gestures they use are also used between adults when they are flirting. This means that children's entertainers are sometimes unsettlingly hott.

|>

56: When I was in college and in a fraught sexual relationship with a friend, she remarked that since we started hooking up, she's been finding another boy on campus attractive, which she never did before. Her only explanation was that we looked kinda similar. (In particular, we had the same hair.)

60: That anecdote reminds me of when I first became sexually active. After that, I started wanting to have sex with other people based purely on the similarity of their external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics to the first girl's.

56: BZZZ! That's 5 points on your record, another 10 and you have to go turn in your balls.

re: 63

I'm not disputing the Hayek-hotness.

But resemblance to someone hot != hot.

64: Tell it t' the judge.

There really is not need to chmod the script, you're only running it once. Just type "sh ./jeffanator.sh" or whatever.

[R]esemblance to someone hot != hot.

Proof.

I don't know, Goodling is kinda hot, if you go in for that subdued but evil kinda thing.

This year's crop's a disappointment.

We seem to be ridiculously far ahead, so I've suspended my bot for now. Someone give a shout if it gets close again.

71 was me. Firefox hates me.

67: I suppose that's true, innit.

Lara Logan is in the female on-air category, and if she doesn't win, the world is fundamentally disordered.

Brian Beutler, Washington Correspondent, Media Consortium 40% (102954 votes)
Jeff Dufour, Washington Examiner 14% (36475 votes)
Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker 22% (57424 votes)

Ha!

61: I was in graduate school before I stopped developing unrequited crushes on women who resembled the girl I had an unrequited crush on in middle school.

75: I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad,

Um, whoops. I'm afraid this is the wrong Jeff -- we want Jeff Young. Sorry about that; I'm kind of an idiot and didn't communicate this clearly enough to Ben. Glad to have another person beating Lizza, though!

If anyone feels like updating their script, here's a revised on (Jeff's proper ID is 4384881, not 4384883). But since this is my fault I'll take responsibility for getting Mr. Young a respectable showing.

-----------

#! /bin/sh

while true
do
# brian beutler
curl "http://polls.polldaddy.com/pollVote_V3.aspx?s=1&b=0&p=839466&a=4384880,&o=&l=0&sl=1&pr=1&pt=0&va=0&cookie=0&rdm=6&url=http%3A//www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/hottest_media_types/hottest_media_types_get_voting_male_off_air_90977.asp" -o /dev/null
sleep 4
# jeff young
curl "http://polls.polldaddy.com/pollVote_V3.aspx?s=1&b=0&p=839466&a=4384881,&o=&l=0&sl=1&pr=1&pt=0&va=0&cookie=0&rdm=6&url=http%3A//www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/hottest_media_types/hottest_media_types_get_voting_male_off_air_90977.asp" -o /dev/null
sleep 4
done

Okay, I've put in my 2,000 tallies. And I never got beyond "black cat bartender." Flawed. Anyway, ben, you'll post an update if Lizza seems like he might close the gap, right?

I've edited the voting scripts on the server. Anyone running them is advised to delete their local copies, download them again, and restart.

Sorry about the confusion!

Yeah -- my apologies ari, I didn't include any ranks about 700 votes. Clearly I underestimated folks' dedication to the project.

OTOH, that md5 hash is there so that claimed vote totals are verifiable.

59: It has nothing to do with any of that stuff. What it has to do with is the fact that people who are really great with your kids are already about 80% of the way towards your falling in love with them. If they're also young and attractive, you can't help it.

I probably should have said somewhat verifiable. I have no doubt that there are a number of commenters capable of extracting the salt and generating a correct hash for a tally of a trillion votes.

Has it been explained somewhere why Armsmasher and Catherine are not on the ballot this year?

Granted, I haven't seen either of them in a while, so maybe they have both somehow gotten much less hotttt, but I'd like an official explanation.

Do try to keep up, M/tch. (That doesn't answer your questions vis-à-vis Armsmasher, but perhaps no one nominated him, or he has no interest, or something.)

84: I am trying to keep up, ben. That's why I asked the question.