Saturday, June 21, 2003

Happy Blogiversary!!!

What's that again?

That's right folks. It's been one big, fat year since I first encountered the sentence in Adam Felber's bio on the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me site that proclaimed, "In addition to his many talents, he is also an accomplished blogger." From there I was able to travel to Adam's website in search of the definition of the word "blogger," which in turn led me to blogger.com. There I was able to learn about web logging, learn that it was the latest internet phenomena, and that all kinds of people were doing it. "Hey," I thought, "Everyone who's anyone, and most people who aren't, have a web log, so I want one too." And that's the rest of the story.

A year in review

So what better way to celebrate than to rehash the last year? No, I don't want you list them. Just read on:
It's been some year. There's been laughter and crying, triumph and loss, yin and yan. None of that has anything to with the web log, or even me for that matter. I'm just saying...

So I compiled some interesting statistics in honor of this day. To date I've created 33 posts (this is 34). That may not seem like much when compared to some other people, like two of my favourite reads,A Girl Named Bob and the Roaming Redhead, who both post several times a week, but you gotta figure I need to pace myself. I'm in this for the long haul. I've been doing this a year now, while they've only been at it for, let's see...okay, Bob's archives go back to January '02, six months older than mine, and Sarah's starts just a few days after Bob's. Damn. Well that's not the point, I mean, Bob is not even a girl's name, and Sarah's been stationary for six months, not roaming at all, although when I started reading her site, she was in Italy, so maybe she meant the Roman Readhead? Okay, enough picking on my more successful/entertaining contemporaries.

At the board meeting Hmm... Not a good trend. After a strong, six post start, we ended the calendar year averaging three posts per month, and this year we're down to one post per month. We've got to get these numbers up, people! Don't wait for something interesting to happen, make stuff up. Look at the competition, for pete's sake: Posts about "Saf T Man," posts about late videos, posts about Gatorade and soy drinks. If I don't see us back to at least two posts a month by next quarter, the shareholders are going to want to know why. Now get out there and provoke your neighbors into doing something worth writing about!

On to more fun facts:
Like Happy Days and Star Trek, It's A Blog Eat Blog World has spawned a couple of spin-offs. Unlike Happy Days and Star Trek, none of those spin-offs involve aliens. ("And that," says Master Yoda, "Is why you fail.") To keep track of my wanderings during the holiday season, and divert attention from the fact the my Christmas site otherwise has no content, I created the Yule Log. And in hopes weaning myself off the oversized, overlong blogs (like this one), I created the Quickies blog. Both blogs have, of course, become incredibly popular and widely loved, much like Joanie Loves Chachi.
And all this half-assed effort has not been wasted. When I started this site, I had no audience at all, but in the past year I been visited literally dozen(s) of times by as many as eight separate people!!! I have dedicated return readers: not 4, not 5, but possibly as many as 2. One of them (hi Sis) spurs me on to new levels of productivity by e-mailing me weekly to say, "I'm at work and I'm bored. Why don't you update your stupid site already?" My other faithful reader is, of course, my editor.
"But," says some imaginary reader of my site, "Don't you edit this stuff yourself?"
"Shut up," I retort to my imaginary reader, "Let me have my moment."
Great. I even alienate my pretend audience. But I still have the occasional passerby who has dilation issues. And friends and family who occasionally drop by to make sure I haven't passed on, eloped, or inadvertently written something entertaining. Keep checking back, it could happen.

So what does the future hold?

Seriously, if I could see the future, would I be wasting my time on this site? No, I'd be playing the stock market and cleaning up. But don't worry, when I become a precognitive multimillionaire, I won't forget about you. I'll hire a ghost writer to keep the site current. Think Dave Barry. And if I could see into the future, I could tell you with absolute certainty that Fox will soon be unleashing new and even more degrading reality shows on the unsuspecting public. Hey, maybe I am psychic. But I haven't made my millions yet, so for now it's business as usual, and that means another year of sporadic posts of questionable taste, so take heart. And for today we should all celebrate, sing Happy Birthday, blow our noisemakers, and throw some spaghetti, I mean confetti. Can you take us out, Mr. Silverstein? I knew that you could. G'day, all, thanks for reading.

Spaghetti Spaghetti, spaghetti, all over the place, Up to my elbows--up to my face, Over the carpet and under the chairs, Into the hammock and wound round the stairs, Filling the bathtub and covering the desk, Making the sofa a mad mushy mess. The party is ruined, I'm terribly worried, The guests have all left (unless they're all buried). I told them, "Bring presents." I said, "Throw confettii." I guess they heard wrong 'Cause they all threw spaghetti! - Shel Silverstein

posted 4:48 PM