Rock Back and Fire

In 101 minutes, 2009 will be here. The year 2009 will bring upon the 5th Anniversary of You're a Blog. Who feels old now? (Jamie Moyer, put your hand down.)

In the early days of YAB, my writing was constrained by many parameters. For one, I was leading a life that endured more repetition that your average episode of Scrubs. (Only with less life lessons set to the music of Jack Johnson or The Fray.) I had a regular office job, lived in a regular apartment, and drove a regular car in regular traffic. I rooted for above-average sports teams, shopped for a regular list of groceries on a regular basis, and had a regular sleep schedule where I slept regularly in the same place in my regular apartment every night.

Okay, scratch the last one.

In this blog's infancy, I aimed to be different despite all above the above regularities. And in most cases in this world, "difference" can be defined by an adherence to a bare minimum of rules and standards. And yet, it was the Rules and Standards that I set for YAB that forced my template for bringing the funny. Some of these rules included:

• Blogging on a daily basis, meaning every single weekday including the occasional "observed Monday" holiday.
• Missing one of these clearly defined blogging days results in working harder on a subsequent day, blogging multiple times.
• A complete refusal to report or blog about something that the news media has already done the work on. If you want to know what's going on in the world, read CNN.
  
• A complete refusal to achieve reader traffic by artificial means, such as e-mail blasting, linking to places for a free pingback, and skywriting. Oh, how I loathe the skywriting.
• Posts must be at least 500 words. You know, because verbosity is the soul of wit.
  
• Always strive to be funny.
• Always strive to not be not funny.

You see how complex I made being "different?" With these many rules, I could probably put together an excellent romantic comedy script for the likes of Greg Kinnear and Sandra Bullock by now.

So now, a mere 92 minutes before 2009 is upon us, I've decided to return. What caused this? Bad Chinese?

(I'm no racist.)

You can attribute this second coming to two people, whether they know it or not. Let's review their casefiles. (Fictitious middle names have been added to protect the innocent.)

1. Robert Eugene Rockhound Harford - Of all the people who I led out of the darkness and into the blogging world, Rob has been the closest mirror image I've had. I'm sure somewhere in my archives I can pull that national anthem I wrote for his blog as proof. The nice thing about Rob is he never forgets. Whether it's a subtle jab at my inactivity or an incessant thirst for some Hi-8 videotape I have buried in a box from a 2003 camping trip, he remembers. He could be an almanac, you know, if almanacs had calves the size of whole chickens.
   
2. Frances Santana Moss Reynolds - (heck, just using her real first name has rendered her anonymous) It may have been a simple compliment at a Christmas party, but it meant more than you know. Thanks for reading.

So here we are. 83 minutes from an epic match between a giant crystal ball and gravity and I'm giving it another run. Gone are many of the rules that led to this blog's crushing demise. Here to stay are some new...guidelines.

• Any time your color scheme matched that of an 0-16 football team, it's time to tweak.
• I'll leave the Daily gig to Jon Stewart. Be prepared for exciting bouts of sporadic regularity!
• I can't believe what I'm about to type: PROPER TIME AND DATE STAMPING.
• Crossposting to Facebook, so random classmates from middle school can be in the know.
• Did I mention the PROPER TIME and DATE STAMPING?

You know why Phillies' pitcher Brett Myers was so effective in the playoffs after a tumultuous season that saw him eating on a Triple-A per diem in July? He stopped thinking about how to pitch and what he had to do with each and every pitch. He stopped adhering to rules. He rocked back and fired.

Not a bad mantra for 2009. This is going to be fun.

The Honduran Post Paradox

I call this current lack of blogging the Honduran Post Paradox.

Shortly after college, when my classmates and I were scattered by the winds of future employment (if CareerBuilder.com wants to trademark that, I demand a cut), we entered into it confidently that we’d all keep in touch. After all, thanks to the Internets, we had it EASY. There wouldn’t be letter writing, there wouldn’t be outrageous long distance phone charges, and for the love of all things postal, there wouldn’t be hand cramps from the writing of lengthy tomes. Our parents may have had to struggle with such hardships, but not us. No, sir. We are living in the age of the Computer, and the Computer remembers where everyone is FOR you. Good computer.

Everyone went their own directions and acquired new e-mail addresses. Some included domain names for impressive-sounding companies. Others had migrated to a new .edu address. And yes, some chose to rock this fledgling new startup called “gmail.” Regardless, if you got two people stuck in front of a computer during the day, with not a whole lot to do, you could exchanged upwards of 30 “letters.” Postage-free.

And then Jasen moves to Honduras.

As you may recall, one Jasen Andersen decided to spend his first two years of post-graduate life helping the people of Honduras via the Peace Corps. He probably spent 24 long months making Survivor references that nobody would get. The people of Honduras were eternally grateful for Yaz’s contributions, considering he had to leave all his family and friends back in the States.

As friends of Jasen, all we could do to support his cause was the keep him abreast of the goings-on in our lives as well as the news here in the States. Many of our friends rose to the challenge, including some who even went and visited him in his tiny jungle hamlet. I’d like to say that I was one of these friends – a trip where Grimm and I were to invade the ‘duras in the summer of ’03 nearly happened, if it weren’t for some last minute work obligations. (Or Grimm had to drop a couple grand on the Grimm Prix – can’t remember.) Alas, it did not happen.

Of course, I could always write the lad. After all, I had free time on my hands looking for a job and making sure the walls of my apartment didn’t fall down. But here’s where the rub lies. The longer I took to write him, the more monumental (in my head) the correspondence had to be. What started as a simple note to say hey steamrolled into a full letter, and then a chapter, and then a book, and then a parody, and then a play, and then a full journal. That’s the Honduran Post Paradox. The more you want to write, the more you get crushed by heightened inner expectations. Ultimately, I never wrote him, and as they say in Slapshot –

“You go to the box, and you feel shame.”

Some would say that we’ve gotten to the point on YAB with the backdating that it’s time to write a full journal in order to get back on track. It’s not that nothing has happened in the last couple of months. It’s just that energy to kick things off once again that has prevented me from writing. Yeah, I’ve been busy, but no busier than July 04-now, during which the blog has flourished. Well, instead of trying to write something epic to get back on track, let’s just start with a post. A simple post, like this one. ell, consider this a return.

It’s not grand yet, but it will be.

Welcome back, YAB. Welcome back.

Back After These Messages

70 days. Damn.

If I recall, I had cut the backlog to 20 (20!) a mere month after the birth of Clara. At the time, the backlog had slipped considerably – apparently hospitals frown on “wireless internet connectivity” around “million-dollar medical machinery.” I can understand that. Besides, in-hospital blogs probably would have read in a “you have to be here” vein – I suppose describing the couture fashion of hospital gowns can’t really hold any attention if you aren’t there to witness it. But despite the sleepless nights and the new addition to the family, I somehow managed to cut the back log from 42 to 22 in around a month.

70? Can I have a recount?

2007 will go down as one of the busiest years in my life. Aside from, you know, PROCREATING, Katie and I went through the excruciatingly long process of becoming homeowners. For every ten minute window during the day that one would previously wax poetic on which types of bagels could survive a nuclear holocaust (or something like that), one has to re-direct their efforts to browsing new home listings, making lists of wants and needs in a new property, and trying to guess the dimensions of your existing furniture from memory. And as you can see from recent posts, we have finally secured our goal by purchasing a townhouse out in Centreville. This allows me two liberties as a writer. First, I have yet another chapter of comedic material from which to draw. Secondly, I am now allowed to reverse e’s and r’s at the end of words, because that’s how you roll in Centreville.

Oh, how I love witty homeownre bantre.

And as of late, my goal is to not leave a single wall in said townhome white. We’ve adopted an ambitious painting schedule, and despite my insistence that the basement should be “midnight green,” more stylish heads have prevailed and I spend my nights high atop a ladder with a bucket full of latex floor ruiner.

But, good YABbers, hope shall soon return.

Tomorrow my wireless network will once again re-establish itself in our new place, meaning that I can post to YAB once again. (This very post you are reading was published from the vacant confines of my old pad in Fairfax Corner.) Other things will occur – like updated DtK standings, and the finest meats and cheeses for all my subjects.So I implore you, good readers. Hang in there. It’s the Christmas season.

Both Jesus and YAB are coming soon.

Who Hired the Detroit Lions to Paint?

Hey! Who changed the drapes?

As you probably have noticed by now, last Friday we closed down the office so that an interior decorator could come in and wreak a little havoc. When we told Blogger that we’d be cool with making the jump to its new “Beta” version, we were hesitant that it could destroy everything we’ve written up to now. But, since our “Ooh, shiny!!!” impulse got the best of us, we hit the OKAY TO PROCEED button before reading the fine print.

And for the next five hours, we prayed against the Blogpocolypse.

When the conversion screen first came up, it relayed a friendly message. “Your blog’s conversion to Blogger in Beta will only take a minute or two. Please stand by while we assist you in the conversion.” However, after “a minute or two,” the message changed to “The conversion is taking longer than we had thought. This is likely because your blog is older or has a large post history. Please try again later.” Considering I’ve written approximately 350,000 words at this point, this is a safe assumption.

And then there was silence. Long, spine-tingling silence.

4 hours later, the YAB hamsters came roaring back to life and the site was up again. Other than a more complex sign-in process, everything looked the same. As I reviewed the site, I proceeded ever-so-cautiously. With the patience and precision of the Ghostbusters in the stacks of the NY Public Library, I realized that nothing had actually changed; merely ability for things to be changed had been granted to Condon.

Like talking in the third person, apparently.

So as you can see, things are a lot more…blue. This re-formatting is the first of its kind since the blog’s inception. When YAB opened its doors for business in July 2004, we had a choice of around 8 color schemes to go with. (In addition, we had to pound on the keyboard with rocks while relying on burning coal to power our little laptop, but hey, that’s just how things got done back then.) We chose a healthy blend of blue, tan, and greenish-tealish-kinda-bluish-but-really-just-green. It’s served us well for over 2 years and 4 months. People could identify with the site by its colors. Of course, with 50,000 other blogs sharing said colors, we feared not being able to be picked out of a lineup.

They don’t let you tell jokes in police lineup.

So here we are in blue. There’s still more to come – I may actually figure out how to put a decent picture over there to the right, and I may have some more material for the sidebar – but we’re pretty proud of the new color scheme. And my God, how big did we let that title get? We’re not just telling you you’re a blog, we’re yelling it at you. That must come from the Sam Kinison School of Bringing the Funny.

And it looks like the future of blogging also is written in numbers. To the right you now have much easier access to 1) find past posts that you seek and 2) keep track of how many days I am actually behind without invoking your calendar. (Note, this makes it 33.)

The links have also been shuffled and updated a bit. There’s a few more places to go, as we bid adieu to former timewasters like Homestar Runner and Hollywood Stock Exchange. And if Matt Weng decides to trample out something other than the Vintage, we’ll welcome him back.

Tomorrow we return with what major purchase we’ve made in our honor. Stay tuned.