Happy New Year, Greetings and Salutations from the far side of Planet Sanitary, and Welcome to the 2005 edition of Fringe, a no-holds-barred, unhinged, ill-wind, offend-your-kin, screedy rant room, with all the finest accoutrements my visual nod to our national air carriers can offer to you, the General Public.
First, some notes about the new design. No, it’s not quite finished. Yes, I realize some things are broken. However, in order to get the new design up by the first, I had to make some compromises. Which weren’t really compromises at all, just acknowledgements that I’ve never gotten a design in on deadline without there being something broken, something blue, etc., etc.
The next few days will be fueled by the weird smelling wind from 2004. I have a dozen or more various topics which I will essay on, one of which will be a Best of 2004 Extravaganza. The counterpoint will be the delicious Worst of 2004, a listing so defiled by the likes of Dan Rather, Saddam Hussein, and Ocean’s Twelve that I will have to resort to all my powers of sarcasm (*sigh*) to make it through.
Also look for a recounting of all my movie watching adventures, including my exciting and heartrending December quest to match the number of movies watched in January (see 52 Movies in a Month). It’s a tale of bloody revenge, pirates, and starting the challenge ten days late.
As for 2005, I’m not quite sure I’m ready for it. The first few days of every new year seem to be weird, quasi new-year days, where my mind is still in Old Year Mode but I date all my checks in New Year Mode. Then there’s the disturbing lack of any actual change. It’s a change made in my head, and frankly, I am sometimes just not up for the challenge of creating a numerical step up in how I refer to year of my Lord in which I’m currently striving. Ah me. Thankfully, blog software keeps track of dates automagically. Hopefully I can keep up.
Changes I hope to enact here: Longer, screedy pieces, and fewer piecemeal screeds. Look for one or two good, substantial entries per day, including possibly weekends (this would be a major revolution in my circle; I may lose/gain friends over it), as well as continued blogging of theatrical releases. Now that I have a nice digital camera, I’ve been taking more photographs, some of which I don’t mind showing to the entire world. Hopefully that will become a regular feature. And of course, my ongoing quest to finish my fargin’–to use a Lileks term, if I may–novel(s).
On the dim horizon is a blogging coalition / partnership / non-sexual union of the particular blogging talents of Mr. Greg Piper, of The Smoking Room, Nick Cicero, formerly of Ranting Rationalist, and myself. This will be a news, media, culture, and entertainment blog with an as-yet-undetermined structure, focus, and theme. More to come as it develops.
Finally, I hope you will forgive the weird posting schedule that the last two months presented. I was, at best, irregular, and at worst, a diarrhetic mess. Life changes exacerbated this, including me quitting my full-time job to go to work with my friend (and frequent visitor) Abe doing cool online GIS design stuff. Now that I have a bit of a handle on my now self-imposed schedule, I hope to be able to commit myself to a regular blogging schedule as well.
So, from the bowels of whatever stinkhole 2004 left us in, we rise and salute the new year, hoping for good things for all people, and failing that, at least some decent salsa and tortilla chips every once in a while. I trust you will start the year off right by chipping in for the Tsunami Relief fund. Amazon makes it criminally easy to donate, and it’ll help provide someone with the means to rise from the water with at least a little hope.
Blessings to you and yours.