Saturday, July 24, 2010
Look Behind You! Blogiversary 8, or, The Sick-Ass Lion Sleeps Tonight
No new post for you today. Why? You have two choices. Choice 1:
History, as the blowhards tell us, is the accumulation of coincidental ambiguities. It is the profundity that is born of consecutive inconsequentialities. It is a trial without a verdict, a verdict without a sentence, and a sentence without a period. It is an orange without sections; it is an elevator that stops on every floor. It is a large and smelly cheese. You cannot spell “history” without “rot,” “sit,” or “hoy.” And to the limited extent to which any of this makes any sense at all, I agree with the blowhards. History is many things, and we make quite a spectacle of ourselves saying what they are. But in one respect, the blowhards and I part company. Is history truly written by the victors? I say nay. Rather, I aver, history is written by the writers.
- Which brings the conversation, as all conversations are eventually brought, to me. Look upon me, ye mighty, and extrude! Lo, my shadow eclipses the very feet upon which I stand. I am blogger, hear me post with drivel more inane than most. Tweet, and the world tweets with you; blog, and you blog alone. I submit, something less than humbly, that writers are those whose creative engines engender a world in which they both rule and are enslaved. I am that slave-king, here at the Chucklehut - and history is the witness against me whose testimony I myself have scripted.
In this case, history began July 24, 2002, with my first tentative, yearning, expletive-laden blog post. A hut of chuckles had been erected, and I - yes, I! - was its erector. Never before had so much been said about so little; here, greater blogsylvania was subjected to unprecedented surplussage and excesses of articulation far exceeding federal recommendations. All too often neither hutular nor chuckleicious, this blog has endured presidencies, surgeries, adoptions and obfuscations. And now it is eight years old.
Eight years is a long time in internet terms, where a blog mitzvah is celebrated at 30 months and registry for the cyberdraft is obligtaory upon attaining 150 posts. (For the record, all blogs are born of age both to drink and vote. Typically, simultaneously.) Well, I’ve got nearly 2000 posts and have been drafted into, and survived, any number of web-based contretemps. And what have I got to show for it? This lousy t-shirt. And when I bathe, not even that.
In a recent exchange of correspondence with a new luminary of the internet, whose punctuation marks are funnier than most of my whole posts and whose daily hit count exceeds my annual ones, I mentioned the longevity of this site. In response, she referred to me as the “Dick Clark of Blogging.” I took it as a compliment, with only a passing reference to my annual ball-descent. Still, it got me to thinking - and we all know how tricky that terrain can be for me.
It has been my practice in years past, and you are invited to check the archives if you don’t believe me, to observe the anniversary of my blogception with a look twenty-four to twelve months backward. I re-read my posts for the year concluding one year prior, and squander an entry by listing off my favorites. It’s not an objective process, even though it has an objective - I just pick the ones that I most enjoy reading again. Sometimes I surprise myself, on the plus side or the minus. Typically there is a scattering of gold in the dross, all too easily overlooked if I don’t refine it out. Today, I reveal the results of that process - but this time, with one exciting (only to me) twist:
When I first undertook this exercise in 2003, I selected less than 7% of my total of over 600 posts - a “Top 40.” (More Casey Kasem than Dick Clark, perhaps, but those were simpler times.) I’ve stuck with this format ever since, even as my output shrank to barely 200 posts per year. Well, now when I look back I’m reading stuff I wrote as the father of two children, and there are barely 100 posts in a whole year with which for me to reacquaint myself. There’s no point in selecting a top 40 when the total pool of essays is so slim. Forty is too big a chunk; it’s insufficiently selective. It’s time for me to ratchet back.
So this year, in the immortal words of Captain Chaos and Jungle Judy, it’s Top Ten Time. I selected ten out of 103 posts for an exactly about-ten-percent slice of steaming hot blog pie. You don’t have to read them if you don’t want to, but you’ll really only be depriving yourself. These bare ten posts represent the absolute finest in contemporary American blogfodder available for your internet dollars today. And if that’s not good enough for you, I guess I’ll have to do better. Your vote of confidence is appreciatively recognized. Meantime, read these anyway. I’m not blogging for my health, you know.
Choice 2:
why I didn’t write you anything - click and learn, grasshopper
(found on the bus a few months ago and jealously protected till the perfect moment arose, which obviously is now)
In either chase, whether you prefer choice 1 or choice 2, here are my latest faves ("sick-ass lions"):
Phat Farm Fresh
The Jewish Goodbye
In Commemoration with Two Sugars
The Grubby Groper of Outer Geary
Hardly Unwanted
the night of swirling stars
Saving Passover - One Stoat at a Time
Social Obligations and the Redistributed Sloth
Unspeakable Wonder
Bag Man
Thanks for your support, I’ll be here all week. Of course, I’ll be eating or sleeping for most of it. Recapitulation takes it out of a fellow, you know?