In the beginning…

Often times, nobody on the street stops me and asks how I got started in this crazy blog business. I often feel obliged to reply though. It is a tale far less harrowing than you might think, but I feel at this point in my career, I owe it to my readers to explain how this utterly pathetic blog raised itself to almost complete mediocrity in a mostly unreasonable amount of time.

Hard as it is to believe, there was a time in the Shuck N Jive history when nobody commented. No, not even myself. While I make no great claims to be above that kind of behavior, the fact is, the thought just never occurred to me that I could create pseudonyms and carry on largely uninteresting comment conversations with myself. These are the types of things we learn in hindsight. The truth of my life is often far less interesting than the fiction of it. The truth is, I started the blog with no intention of telling anyone about it, and I was to wait and see what fate would make of it. I find it’s best in these types of situations to just let fate take a crack at it, then if fate sucks, I can always step in and show fate a thing or two about how to suck at stuff.

Well, as fate would have it, I received my first comment from Jack Safety. I had only been blogging for a couple of weeks, but it sure felt like it had been several weeks. Up until that point, I had not truly grasped the power of comments. I had seen them elsewhere, mocked them in my head but had yet to do any commenting of my own. Shortly after replying to my first comment, I had an epiphany: What if I went out and actually commented on other blogs? I was pretty sure no one in the history of western civilization had ever even considered thinking about such a thing, but why would they, blogging has only been around for like a couple months, right? I knew I was on to something big. Probably the biggest and most profoundly important thing in the world, so I didn’t want to screw it up. I knew that I had to comment, but where, and how?

Legend has it that there was once a great blog about an intern in New York. So great was his blog that it was linked on the blogger home page and I can only imagine it garnered as many as 2 or 3 hits a day. (well above my meager totals of –21,365,468,161. That’s right, I was actually negatively page loading the internet and consequently making the internet shrink unnecessarily.) People would visit this great blog and glow in it’s majesty. Of the few lucky ones to be linked on this great and wondrous blog was the lovely Jasmine. (however, at this time she was not yet known far and wide for her glorious rack.) Through the intern, many came to play with Jasmine. I was not one of them. Though it was naturally assumed, in fact, my path to Jasmine was much more fateful. As is my want to do, I kept clicking “next blog” up in the top right corner, passing through the insurance ads and the foreign languages I had no chance of understanding (hard to do, I know. Much as I’d like to say I understand Sanskrit, truth is, I just don’t. What can I say? I had a below average kindergarten teacher.). I clicked away until I landed upon a long list. My first “100 things” list I had come across on a blog. The magnitude of it sucked me in. I read, I laughed, I cried, I drank some Gatorade, I read some more, I took a nap, I read some more, I resurfaced the driveway, I read some more, I planted some tomato plants, cared for them, nurtured them to full adult hood, enjoyed their bountiful fruits, and eventually I finished reading the list. It was a long list. (The true irony of it all is that Jasmine is notorious for complaining about the length of my posts. Can you say, “hypocrite?” I can, only I pronounce it, “Jasmine.” (at this point I’m hoping Jasmine knows I love her and that I’m only kidding, but should I die in my sleep tonight, we’ll all know that I had it coming.))

Um…. Where the heck was I? Oh yeah, so after finishing that enormous list, I notice that 5 separate and distinct people had taken the time out of their day to say things to Jasmine. Mostly regarding her post. I couldn’t help myself. (I often can’t.) So I read the comments. Having read them, I felt like I had nothing valid to say, so I decided to instead just make fun of the comments themselves. (it was really just the first comment that made me want to do it, but then I didn’t want to leave anyone out.) What transpired is now Shuck N Jive lore. I’ll let it speak for itself. Click here to be bored by yet another instance of my under-whelming maturity. For this reason, and also because Jasmine’s hellfire was not thrust upon me, she has now officially been elected into the Shuck N Jive Hall of Fame and also her ninja call sign has been changed for reasons I cannot explain at this time. It has also been retired and bronzed and some other cool stuff too. (this time though, it’s not that I don’t have any totally sweet pictures of everything, I do, I got loads of them, big, giant, truck loads of them. It’s just that we decided that no media be allowed inside those hallowed halls, so no one gets to see. Except those that have been elected. So, you know, get elected or something… good luck with that.)

That was the first, but certainly not the last, time I made an ass out of myself in the blog world. In spite of that, I somehow managed to make a few friends. Now I have links of my own on the right and I can honestly say that each and every one of those blogs are worth reading, plus their authors comment a plenty on my blog. That’s part of the deal too. I don’t link otherwise. I’m too lazy. Don’t think you can comment once and then get linked. Not going to happen.