A Year of This
I launched this thing at the original blogspot site a year ago today, after a couple of days of tinkering. It was all an accident, this blogging thing. No jokes, please.
On Nov. 12, 2006, I tried to post a comment at Gateway, and suddenly discovered I had a blogger account. What the heck, spoke to the boss, messed around a little, sought some advice, and launched two days later. That’s when I discovered, like all bloggers, when they finally find a way to project the voice they’ve always loved the sound of, that I had been waiting for something like this for most of my life.
I also discovered it’s a colossal pain in the ass, like owning a restaurant.
I arrived a little late to the game, three or four or five years after some of those who are today’s premier bloggers started. Not so late as professional scribblers go. The rest of them will show up sooner or later. I got in early enough in any case that when I’m an old geezer drooling on myself in the nursing home, I can impress the octogenarian chicks with frontier tales of prospecting for clicks and shootouts at the Loudmouth Corral.
Thanks Midwest Jim, Instapundit, Surber, Blair, Mudville and others for advice. Thanks to them and many others for the many links and support. Powerline, Captains Quarters, Malkin, RCP, Hotair, Ace, Jawa, Blackfive, Goldfarb, Frum, Argghhh, Riehl, Theo, Protein Wisdom, Newsbusters, Vanderleun, Small Dead Animals, Maggie’s Farm, Cassandra, The Dissident Frogman, Iraq the Model, Toldjah, Tigerhawk, Driscoll, Neoneocon, Blonde Sagacity, Thunder Run, War Dogs and many, many others. Blogroll at right.
Thanks to Pajamas, advertising broker and venue for extra-site rants. And very special thanks to Freedom’s Zone for site design, server and tech support.
Thanks also to my disparagers, the somewhat annoying TBogg, the great communicator Cole, the windsock Sullivan and the sockpuppet Greenwald among them. I’ve never taken it as personally as it’s intended, but rather as a compliment, considering the sources. Anyway, a click is a click.
A lot of this has been political, media, military related. Whatever its merits might have been, like yesterday’s newspaper, that’s all fishwrap now. Among the following links are some of those, but mainly stories, some historical material and yuks, some more randomly chosen than others. Oh yeah, and Neanderthals:
Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?
Kofi Annan’s Farewell Speech (Translated from the Original Bullshit)
10 Things You Can Do To Keep Guantanamo Open
You Say Ug, I Say Ugh, Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off
Praise Allah and Pass the AmmuNikes
About That Pajamas Thing (aka In Praise of the Burkha, aka Slutty Shoes)
That’s Ghillie Suit, Not Girly Suit!
March 11, 2003, March 31, 2003, April 2, 2003, April 3, 2003, April 6, 2003, April 7, 2003, April 8, 2003
That’s plenty. Anything else you particularly liked or hated, links and remarks in comments, please.
In the first year, 2153 posts, 12,855 comments, nearly 1.4 million visits and 2.5 million page views, so it’s working well enough and I guess I’ll keep doing it for now. Some people actually seem to like it and just as good, other people hate it. Thanks to Pajamas, Blogads and the occasional donation, I’m making quite respectable wages, or would be, if I lived in Bangladesh.
Speaking of which, please allow me to direct your attention to the paypal logo at left and its pathetic entreaty:
“Laugh? Cry? Learn Something? The wife wants to know why I’m spending so much time with you. Support the site.”
Topics: blogs
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 5:57 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2007
11 Responses to “A Year of This”
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November 14th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Bah!
Stupid Infidel! I told you you would be a miserable failure at this…
Heh. May the Fleas of a Thousand Diseased Camels continue to infest your jockey shorts.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Now on to your Terrible Twos. :-)
November 14th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Well Happy Blogday, Jules.
Moqtada, is this not your bath day, this month?
November 14th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Happy anniversary or something.
It has been a pleasure reading your wit and humor.
(and Mokie is a Monkey Puppet)
November 14th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Happy Birthday, Jules! Where’s the cake?
November 15th, 2007 at 3:39 am
A year? Already? I’d repeat some boring cliche about the increasingly rapid passage of time, but … well that’s boring. And cliche.
Happy Anniversary, Critter. And may we enjoy many more!
November 15th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I’m late, but:
Happy blogday to you!
Happy blogday to you!
Happy blooogggdaaay to yooooo, julescrittenden.commm!
Happy blogday to you!
November 15th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Critter: Born to Blog!!
You have one of the clearest, funniest, and most enjoyable voices on the Web, Jules, and a marvellous sense of what matters.
Also a delightful comment community (if I do say so myself). To salty, Rebecca, Jeff, El Cid, Grimmy, Vanguard, tanstaaffl (what, you like unpronounceable?), and the rest of you wonderful scoudrels, thanks for your insights and your fellowship.
It would take all day to desribe all the meaningful posts I have admired and appreciated. One image that will never leave me is the simple statement made about your friend who was dying, when he learned you were there; you were told that “his eyes lit up.” So beautiful, so brief… like life itself. And your writing from the front will always stay with me; simple phrases like “we good?” bring back entire stories and moods (in that case, how easy it is to get angry at someone and how easy it can be to make up when one knows that integrity is shared). And of course, who can forget the baseball post “Crittenden Gets It Done.” (Ian Crittenden, age 11, and his game-winning RBIs. ) You have a tremendous ability to capture the important emotional aspects of daily life, those things that inhabit our hearts to create meaning.
Thanks for being a shining light, and Happy Blogiversary!
November 15th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Around the ’sphere (Thursday open thread)
Keepin’ you up to date:
—- Le big news: As counterpart to having added Markos “Daily Kos” Moulitsas as a contributor to their 2008 election coverage, Newsweek announced today that Karl Rove will be joining them as a contributor as well….
November 15th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Congratulations! “Bags of smoke, and straight up the middle!”
Cheers
November 19th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
[...] since 2002.Numbers, numbers: in what might well be a sign of the close coming of the end of times, Jules Crittenden’s first blog anniversary is just a couple of days away from my fifth, which is today. Seeing that we’re physically several [...]