Another Tepid Anniversary

Today, dear reader, is a big day: Our official second anniversary on Al Gore’s World-Wide Web. Two full years. Wow, that’s a long time—especially these days, when the average attention span is shorter than that of a gnat on speed. Frankly, dear reader, we never thought we’d last this long.

And it’s been quite a run: Think of all the hate mail. When we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” started up this humble “weblog,” only our relatives troubled themselves to read it. Now, two full years later, some of our relatives no longer read it.

No wonder David Bowie sings paeans to “Changes” in between his bouts of plastic surgery that aim to make it seem as if he hasn’t gone through any changes. When we first started this “weblog,” we’d wear the latest fashions of the day: Bell-bottom trousers, wide ties, acid-wash jeans. Then again, we’ve always enjoyed perusing decades-old copies of GQ.

So, on this ersatz historic day, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” figured that we should take stock—ruminate on the ups and downs of our hectic lives on the Internet. It’ll be kind of like a “Silver Spoons” reunion show, only not as funny or insightful.

In the past, we’ve sponsored plenty of contests: Two Official Horrible College-Student Poetry competitions, for example (the third of which is coming soon). To be honest, we’ve slowed down the number of such things in the recent months, ever since our sub-par judges failed to come up with a winner for our Official Worst Bumper Sticker contest.

(Oh, by the way: We’ve finally picked Greg Globus as the winner for the moronic sticker “Bush Is Poopy,” which we found even more pathetic than the others. Congrats on your victory, Mr. Globus, if you’re still alive.)

We’ve also run an Official Academic of the Month feature for a number of months, though that too has recently been dormant. Gee, maybe we shouldn’t laud our plucky perseverance; we’ve dropped our share of e-balls in the past. (And, no, we didn’t mean that as a gag.)

Well, what else has happened? All this time, we have had only one fill-in for us: The delightful Maximum Leader, who is an official honorary member of the crack young staff. We’ve been guest “webloggers” for only a couple of outfits: Once for sassy, sexy Sadie the Fist, and weekly for the great unwashed who read Wizbang.

And then there are all the fancy “links”: Andrew Sullivan, James Taranto, Steve at Vodkapundit, the folks at Hit & Run, Stefan Beck at The New Criterion, et al. Sure, there’s one prominent “linker” conspicuously absent from this list: Good old Glenn Reynolds, who appears to prefer gouging his fingernails with an ice pick more than reading our humble musings. But, hey, can you blame him?

Nor should we forget the fact that our hurried e-scribblings have led us to take in the weighty animadversions of numerous other “webloggers”: Although Sadie may be correct in assuming that “webloggers” like to write a heck of a lot more than they like to read, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” consider ourselves lucky to enjoy the “posts” of sundry e-eminences: The llamas, Mr. and Mrs. P, Phinny-Phin-Phin, an unclothed villain, a fledgling grad student, a lady with an odd crush on us, the One Who Eats Cake, Daniel Riehl-Holloway, the hardest working rabbi on the Internet, et al.

So what can you expect from the crack young staff in the months to come? Well, how about more vaguely unsatisfying humor? Or how about more senseless vituperations? Or how about more rhetorical questions? Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Finally, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” must thank our reader(s). Without your love and/or support, we never would have made it this far.

See, it’s all your fault.