Ten Years and One Week of Bastardy

If a guy forgot his tenth anniversary, you'd probably mutter. "What a bastard..." Well, that's exactly what I did- my tenth anniversary was last Sunday. The blog started on 12/1/2009, when I posted a silly riff on the introduction to Robert E. Howard's original 'Conan' story, The Phoenix on the Sword, which inspired the opening of the Conan the Barbarian movie (perhaps the greatest barbarian movie of all time). It was a silly post, but the important thing was that it got the ball rolling... an old co-worker of mine, one Johnny Alvarado, had a motto: "There's nothing to it, but to do it." That post was the initial 'doing it'. The two big inspirations behind the blog were the exhortations of my great and good friend Francesco Rulli, and the example set by the storied snark blog Sadly, No! The bulk of my early blogroll was composed of Sadly, No! regulars. Over the years of blogging, I wrote for Rumproast as well, and some of my co-bloggers there are also on the blogroll.

As of this writing, I've had 1,761,105 hits in my ten years, with my by-far most popular post (with a whopping 302,942 hits, most of them spambots) being my 2013 post about eating a kousa dogwood fruit before I knew for sure that it was edible. My top five countries are the United States, France, Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

I've long thought that my most important posts are the Secret Science Club post-lecture recaps. ee, When I started them, they were very rudimentary descriptions of the lectures, but I quickly came to the realization that I owed Margaret and Dorian and the lecturers more, and got serious about the recaps, taking extensive, barely legible (hey, you juggle a beer, pen, and notepad in a dark nightclub) notes and spending hours on each post, verifying information and hunting down links. These posts are the ones which most challenge me, each one is like a mini term paper, with you good people being my graders. They are a lot more difficult than just posting some political snark or a cute cat pic. My one most outré blogging experience was my 2011 24 Posts in 24 Hours stunt, which led to the spinoff Objectivist Morrissey project, which would be more funny if Morrissey hadn't turned into a real right-wing nutter.

Throughout my ten years of blogging, life has been pretty stable- I have had the same job all along, though when I started, it was a part-time position to ensure a steady trickle of money while I was working as a contractor (n.b.: clients never want to pay on time), but I was hired full-time and promoted to head the department within two years, all because I was the one office software proficient guy. I'm coy about posting too much information about my job, but I work in beautiful surroundings and enjoy myself perhaps too much (work shouldn't feel like a kick in the balls). In the course of my job, I have blogged about three of my feline co-workers- the dear, departed Moses and Fred, and the lively, lovely Ginger. Right now, while there's talk about getting a second (and maybe a third) mouser for the site, we're in the midst of a major construction project involving one of the buildings requiring mousing, and Ginger is such a dominant force that we're reluctant to force a younger cat to share quarters with her until they become acclimated. Of course, there are also the wild critters that I share my stomping grounds with... both enemies and friends. In the decade, I have inhabited two apartments, six blocks from each other, in the same neighborhood, the 'tavern district' of Yonkers. While I do enjoy a spot of novelty, life has been pretty stable for me throughout my blogging career. I realize that I am extremely lucky in this regard.

I want to thank you all for your support over the years. M. Bouffant and Tengrain in particular have been most generous in linking to my blog at Crooks and Liars. Driftglass and Blue Gal have also been very generous with their links and their support. Without you readers, though, the whole endeavor would be for naught. You're the reason I keep doing this thing. It's been a hell of a decade, and you have been a hell of an audience. Much love, much gratitude!