May 20, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: The Final Post

Well this is the final post of Annika's Journal. Thank you to all you faithful readers, from those who were here in the days I used to not capitalize the "I" to those of you who recently discovered this blog. Thank you to every single one of you, the commenters, lurkers, stalkers, trolls and even you Lindsay Logan fans. You all made it fun, and you were the reason I checked my e-mail ten million times a day for the last four years.

Now it's time to close up shop. Will asked whether I think I have grown from the experience of blogging. It's a difficult question to answer, and not only because I haven't given it much thought. You see my blog persona is so different from the real Annika, it's almost like Jekyll and Hyde (confession: Annika isn't even my real name!). The Annika you know is so much funnier, sexier, friendlier, smarter and cooler than I could ever hope to be in real life. If anything, what I take away from this experience is a desire to be more like her.

Before I go, I want to especially thank everybody who purchased things off my wishlist. I used to send thank you cards, until I realized that a cryptic perfume scented note from a strange Scandinavian girl might not be the easiest thing to explain to someone's wife or girlfriend. "I swear, she's just a blogger." And to those of you who never got a thank you, it might also be because somebody stole the gift off of my front porch, as often happens. I still appreciate your thoughtfulness. I'm truly amazed at people's generosity to someone they don't know, whose only public virtues seem to be a wide array of interests and a fair ability to string words together.

For those of you who will suffer withdrawal for the various rubrics I've written under, here are some suggestions for future reading:

American Skankwomen and Celebrity Watch: Your best source for celebrity gossip and snark will always be Agent Bedhead, my Cotillion sister.

annik-dotes: I stopped writing personal anecdotes the way I used to in the beginning. Mainly because they were never as interesting or brilliantly written as the stuff Dawn Summers writes. Someday she's going to write a book that will outsell David Sedaris, because she's funnier.

annikapunditry: You're on your own for political stuff. So much of the conservative blogosphere fails in the "keeping it real" department, I don't know what to tell you. But you can always rely on Michael Yon to be honest with you regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, and he knows what he's talking about. Another guy who knows his shit is Wretchard, but I suspect you've already heard of him. And the geniuses at Gates of Vienna never disappoint when it comes to the Global War on Terror. And Sarah has a great eye for what's important, whether in the world of politics, policy or purling. In addition, I may do more stuff for A Western Heart in the future.

Arts, Let's Go To Hollywood and Poetry: The amazing and prolific Sheila O'Malley is the first place you need to go. When she writes about poetry it makes my old Poetry Day posts seem like they were written by a third grader. Sheila has so much God-honest love for the movies, theater, and all the arts it's infectuous. Plus, in addition to his great blogging on feminism, life, chinchillas and a host of other subjects, Thursday poetry continues as always at Hugo Schwyzer's blog. Thank you, Hugo for all your support and love. Ccwbass is the blogger I once called "the Mark Russell of the blogosphere" for his poetry. And for food and wine, I dubbed Pursuit the unofficial sommelier of Annika's Journal.

C.T.O.T.I.O.T.D.: I always count on Beth to find the strangest, funniest, and coolest shit on the internets before anyone else does. And she's absolutely fearless, too.

Dumb-Ass Quizzes: The funnest things I ever did on this blog were the Jeopardy tournaments and the haiku contests. I don't know of anyone who wants to put in the work to organize those things, as they were time intensive. But if anyone does, I'd love to try participating as a contestant someday.

Faith: I could suggest The American Princess for half a dozen of these rubrics. But everytime the Pope speaks, I want to know what E.M. has to say about it. And from the non-Catholic perspective, the Midwest Conservative Journal is your best source. MCJ is also the very first blog to put Annika's Journal on its blogroll!

Fash-ism: When Candied Ginger went away, so did the best fashion blogging. I'm a big fan of Shoewawa instead of the other more annoying pajama-wearing shoe blogger. And although it's not a blog, Diva Village has everything you need to know in one fun place. I can't tell you how many fashion ideas I've gotten from them.

History: Obviously, Llama Butchers. Okay, not so obvious. But despite the name, Robert does a lot of excellent history related posts, and his interests are very similar to mine. Good sci-fi blogging too.

Hot Tub Friends and Peter Pumpkin Comics: Peter Pumpkin will return, after my hiatus, at Six Meat Buffet. I recently reviewed some of my HTF posts and decided that their comedy to amount of time it takes to make them ratio was not very high. Thus HTF may or may not return when I do.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo: E.M. being an expert in constitutional law among many other things, The American Princess wins again.

New Gun Nut Stuff: Publicola, who else? He's also one of the oldest and dearest supporters of Annika's Journal. Plus, he's smarter than a boatload of appellate judges, which ain't much of a compliment but trust me. The guy has forgotten more history and conlaw than most lawyers and journalists will ever know.

photoshopaholic: Rodger of Curmudgeonly & Skeptical puts out more photoshopped comedy than anyone in the blogosphere, and he's always spot-on. And "ROTFL" is normally just a figure of speech, but Jim Treacher has done some photoshopped shit that had me literally crying with laughter. Jim just might be the very first person ever to comment at my blog so he'll always have a special place in my heart, no matter where he's blogging.

Pithy and/or Lame Thoughts and The Huh? Files: For these Rubrics, it's Dawn Summers again. Mistress of the one-liner. Dawn, I bequeath to you my flashing Drudge style gif. Use it in good health.

Science & Technology: I like TechEBlog for product reviews, robot blogging and/or weird inventions. You never know what you'll find there.

Sex Please: No one did it better than Wegglywoo, and now that she's gone, nobody else is worth reading.

Sports: Humbug is my baseball muse, and the only blogger ever to give Annika's Journal a square on the periodic table. Besides having his picture in the dictionary under the entry for "blogger," Tony Pierce deserves to be hired by the L.A. Times sports desk, and sit in Jim Murray's chair. Ontario Emperor is the coach I wished I'd had when I was a kid. And Greg Cotharn won the A's J Fantasy Baseball league a few years ago. I owe Greg an apology for never giving him the trophy I promised. I think he's got one of my coffee mugs though!

I'd also like to thank my wonderful co-bloggers throughout the years: my oldest friend Franci; the lovely Ginger working hard at some fancy law firm I'm sure; James Finch and Coyote, wherever you guys are; the late Lynn Carrier; my smoking buddy Matt Scofield, a real man of genius; and especially Victor who is a dear friend, a fellow Seventies movie and Eighties music junkie, and who carried the tradition of Poetry Day so long and faithfully.

And to those who hooked me up to Munuviana: the aforementioned Victor; Susie who's still blogging strong; Ted, the Elder Statesman of Munuviana; and especially to Pixy Misa, the wizard behind our Oz, to whom I am indebted forever for this great platform to spout off and make nonsense, a very very sincere thank you.

I actually didn't plan to mention anybody by name in this final post because I didn't want to leave anyone out. I said it before, so forgive me if it's starting to sound trite. But I do have the best commenters in the blogosphere. My fellow Sacramentan Blu and Reagan80 and ElMondoHummus who each had my back always; the incredible Col. Steve who is way too smart to have been reading this thing; Strawman, who taught me the virtue of civility; and Will who's also got too much brains to come here; Radical Redneck, who kept me laughing and on my toes with all his NSFW shit; not to mention Kevin Kim; and Kyle and Amy and Mark Nicodemo and Joules and Spanky and Roach and Robbie and Calvin and Physics Geek and Otto and Matt Rustler and Law Fairy, and D-Rod and Mike C and Spork and Dave J and Zomby whose great comments were never often enough for my tastes.

Well now I've named lots of names, and no doubt I've left somebody out. But I can't not acknowledge the friendship and love of my two greatest blog benefactors, Casca and Shelly. Your friendship and encouragement has meant the world to me, even though we've never met. I may someday meet Shelly in a courtroom, and truth be told, I may meet Casca there too either as a client or a defendant — who knows? What else can I say about the two of you, except God bless you both — because He has blessed me with your friendship.

Well, if this were the Oscars, the music would be playing by now, so I better go because I'm getting all ferklempt.

Posted by: annika at 11:22 PM | Comments (73) | Add Comment
Post contains 1663 words, total size 13 kb.

Not The Final Post

The final post is coming later. No "blaze of glory" or anything like that. I won't have time to do it until later today though.

Meanwhile, watch Phil Stacey show how it's done:



Posted by: annika at 05:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

May 18, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part XII, American Skankwomen Rubric Bequest

Many of you enjoyed the rubric "American Skankwomen," which was originally designed to poke fun at Brittany, then morphed into an anti-Lindsay Logan category.

When Annika's Journal is gone, do not despair. Let me recommend that you subscribe to Michael Buckley's videoblog, What The Buck? He is brilliant!

Watch Michael crack on Brittany, Paris and Lindsay.

"The gays can rejoice in their new Liza." LOL, that is too funny.

Posted by: annika at 07:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

May 16, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part XI, FAQ About The End Of Annika's Journal

1. c.a. Marks of Alabama Improper asks: "Farewell tour? Wha?" Yes, Farewell Tour is what I'm calling this series of posts, which are intended to tie up the loose ends of blogging before I quit. Also blogging about blogging is as easy as pie.

2. Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy asks: "So why are you quitting, dammit?!!!" The short answer is that I need to take two months off to study for the bar exam. The long answer is that I've been thinking about quitting for some time now and this two month break seems like the best time to do it. I suspect that living life without constantly judging every waking thought as blogworthy/unblogworthy might be incredibly refreshing for me. Also I haven't been really proud of anything I've written here since the Pepys post, and even that was derivative. Finally, I might quote Woody Allen, who said "A relationship, I think, is like a shark. . . . It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." Blogs are not dissimilar.

3. Maximum Leader of Naked Villainy asks: "So after six months of inactivity I should de-link Annika's Journal? Is that what you are saying?" No one must ever de-link Annika's Journal lest bad karma erupt. See my related post here. Regarding the supernatural power of this blog, see also here and here.

4. Why don't you just take a temporary leave of absence. You won't be able to stay away permanently. On the contrary, I have committed to quitting Annika's Journal, which I think has achieved all I set out for it, and more.

5. So does that mean you will blog again someday, just not at this place? The plan is that after the California Bar Exam (on July 24, 25 and 26) I might occasionally post at the two other blogs where I have privileges, which are Six Meat Buffet, and A Western Heart.

6. What will happen to Peter Pumpkin The Spectacular Pumpkin? Preston has agreed, quite recklessly, to give Peter Pumpkin a new home at 6MB.

7. Why won't you blog about the Bar Exam experience? I know of some excellent bar exam bloggers, who have passed. I also know my own limitations. The California Bar is the hardest one in the country, so I plan to follow a strict study schedule. Most people take one review course, but I've signed up for three. I don't want to have any excuses for not passing. The cost of failing is enormous. I already spend countless hours each week blogging, and so I know the only way to avoid the distraction is to quit cold-turkey.

8. Ed asks: "Can you dedicate your last days by writing a LOT about the democrats running for POTUS?" I would, but the Republicans running are so much more interesting right now.

9. Radical Redneck wonders why I didn't call one of his e-mails my favorite. The answer is that most of the time I was too afraid to open his e-mails.

10. ElMondoHummus asks "Where are the Lindsay fans gonna post when you're gone?" I would suggest they go here!

11. SkippyStalin is too polite to ask, but I know he's thinking: "Hey what the hell happened to that interview you said you were going to post?" I interviewed SkippyStalin back in August and never posted it. I suck, I know. It was a really fun interview, but long. Maybe I'll at least post the highlights before I go.

12. Publicola asks: "Which Stacy Adams would go best with a retro 1911?" This is not technically an end of the blog question, but I'm happy to answer. I'm not too familiar with Stacy Adams, so I perused the website. If you're talking retro, I'd line the contemporary shoes right out. Now when I think retro guns, I think film noir, and that means snubnosed .38. But Publicola wants to know about which shoe to match with a 1911, so that's a totally different look. After much thought, the answer is obvious. The Madison, in black or cognac, would be perfect for Publicola's needs.

I would be happy to answer any other questions anyone might have in the few days left, just ask.

Posted by: annika at 08:00 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 744 words, total size 5 kb.

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part X, Not That It Really Matters

Not that it really matters now, but I wondered: what would cause someone to de-link Annika's Journal? I mean, if someone blogrolled me at one time, then decided to remove me years later, it must have been something I said right? Because it costs you nothing to keep me on there for old time's sake.

What have I ever done that might possibly be considered de-link-worthy?

Answer: nothink.

My policy regarding de-linking on my own blogroll has always been six months of inactivity. Although for Ginger, I stretched it out longer and a part of me still thinks/hopes she'll return someday.

Posted by: annika at 11:25 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

May 10, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part IX, My Lasting Legacy

When this blog is long gone, its lasting legacy to the world will be enshrined at the Urban Dictionary.

Posted by: annika at 09:08 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.

May 08, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part VIII, Poll Results That I Never Got Around To Revealing

For those who followed the various sidebar polls, and others who are merely curious, here are some results that I never got around to mentioning, due to a lack of interest on my part.

  1. The current poll asks, "Annika trivia: If you busted into Annika's house, what would she most likely shoot you with?" The correct answer is Heckler & Koch USP in .45 ACP, not the Sig Sauer 9 mil that 50% of you guessed.

  2. Do you think the Travelocity Gnome is funny? I do not, and thus I agree with 67% of you. Strangely, ten respondents did not know whether the Travelocity Gnome is funny, which is a "no" vote as far as I'm concerned.

  3. Eighty-seven percent of you think Ohio State should officially change their name from the Buckeyes to Florida's Bitches.

  4. On the burning question, "Egg salad sandwich, tuna salad sandwich, or chicken salad sandwich?" the response was evenly divided: 31%, 33% and 33%. So basically, they're all good.

  5. Which Jessica is best? Thirty-four percent picked Jessica Alba, but I was happy to see that there were at least 23 Frank Herbert fans out there who voted for Lady Jessica Atreides.

  6. Now that Sam Jaya has been kicked off American Idol, if he takes your advice he should go on one of those Bravo reality shows where everyone's gay. I think he'd be perfect for Shear Genius... as a client!

  7. Eighty-five percent of you have health insurance. Fifteen percent of you don't. Amazingly, this result is almost exactly congruent with the latest national census figures. So anyone who thinks my blog visitors are not a representative cross-section of America is nuts.

  8. Regarding the question: "What was the top story of 2006? The one everyone's talking about?" you were given a number of choices, and the majority of you picked, "Jackie Passey." That's crazy. What's even crazier is that "Evil donuts from the future invade Wall Street, reprogram the stock market" got only 14%, and that's only because I kept voting for it about two dozen times. The mere discovery that sentient donuts exist is enough to make it the top story in all of history, let alone the top story of last year. Add to that the fact that they're evil, they traveled through time, they invaded Wall Street, and they somehow managed to reprogram the stock market?!?! I just don't see how you people didn't think that was a major story! I suspect it's because many of you are doing well in the stock market and don't want to rock the boat.

  9. ¿Qual es la favorita pictura del hombre de sombrero? Esta Alfonso Bedoya.

  10. And finally, the winner of the Battle Of The Movie Assassins was Nikita from the original La Femme Nikita, starring Anne Parillaud. She got 58% of the vote, compared to Jason Bourne's 42%. I totally disagree with that result but what are you gonna do? View the tournament bracket here.
So now that's over with, I feel a lot better.

Posted by: annika at 06:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 527 words, total size 4 kb.

May 05, 2007

Milblog Conference Live Video Feed

You can watch the Milblog Conference video feed here. I think they're on lunch now, but the schedule says they start up again at 1:00 eastern time.

The President spoke earlier today, but I missed it.

Update: Here's the video.

Posted by: annika at 09:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 50 words, total size 1 kb.

May 04, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part VII, The Curse Of Annika's Journal

December 9, 2004: I post a poem I wrote about Jerry Orbach.

December 28, 2004: Jerry Orbach dies.

Coincidence? You tell me.

March 4, 2006: I post a review of Butterflies Are Free, starring Edward Albert.

September 22, 2006: Edward Albert dies.

Coincidence? Who knows?

November 18, 2005: I call Steve Irwin a goofball in a post about turtles.

September 4, 2006: Steve Irwin is killed by a stingray, which is a distant relative of the turtle.

Coincidence? Is this starting to freak you out?

September 27, 2006: I write a post about Screech from Saved By The Bell.

November 15, 2006: Slater from Saved By The Bell is eliminated from Dancing With The Stars.

Coincidence? Maybe. But maybe it's not. Did you ever think about that?

Posted by: annika at 08:21 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 149 words, total size 1 kb.

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour: Part VI, The Agitprop

sheets.gif pelosipop.gif ejforsg.gif kikiagitprop.gif

These are the sidebar agitprops I created during the course of this blog's run.

Number one was my first attempt, using a picture of Kerry doing the "raise the roof" gesture. Pretty self-explanatory.

Number two was a little more sophisticated, and the first time I did the whole top and bottom bar thingie. I like the long face distortion, which is useful anytime one wants to depict the french-looking candidate.

Number three was created soon after Byrd gave his freakish meandering oration against the Authorization for the Use of Force. I'm particularly fond of the vampirish pallor of his skin, which was created by manipulating the hue and brightness settings in photoshop. Great pose too. The caption is a subtle hint at his Klan history. Grand Wizard becomes Grand Poobah.

Number four is Nancy Pelosi at her most strident. For effect I manipulated the size of her eyes and mouth. Not enough to look photoshopped, but just enough to be weird.

Number five is connected to my infamous EJ for Sec Gen post, which got such wide exposure thanks to a mention by Jeff Jarvis on the Ron Reagan show. I totally lucked out when I found that picture of EJ with the blue hair wig. It was perfect.

And number six utilizes the gif animation function, which has given me hours of fun since I discovered how to do it back in January of '05. For those who don't know the references, this was based on the promotional photograph of Kiki Couric, which had been photoshopped by CBS to make her look younger and thinner. Tiffany is a reference to CBS's old nickname, "the tiffany network." I can't deny that I was also inspired by Violet from the old Willie Wonka movie.

So much for the agitprop. Someday, when the time is right, I'm planning to make a "Hillary: the female Nixon" sticker and plaster it all over California. Watch for it.

Posted by: annika at 05:06 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 339 words, total size 3 kb.

May 01, 2007

May Day Message

From an unexpected source. Check it out here.

Posted by: annika at 07:17 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

April 27, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour, Part IV: Searches, We Got Searches

I've seen lots of bloggers post their search terms for a laugh, but I've never done it. Until now.

Here are some of the most recent Google searches that brought people here, according to my Sitemeter.

  • hot tub girl

  • jessica alba feet (from Italian Google)

  • imus & andy joke

  • nancy sun, naked

  • cher 2007

  • crazy subaru

  • strappy shoes (from British Google)

  • fortune cookie

  • favorite flowers of marie antoinette

  • brittany goes

  • hot nude blondes videos (which took them here, to a post I called "Hardball Hardon")

  • sexy naked (which took them, coincidentally, to the same post)

  • hot naked stuff (you guessed it, same post)

  • brad p (which yielded this bit of comedy)

  • rosie o'donald coors beer (ha! they misspelled it like I do!)

  • ugly bird (which led hilariously, to this picture)

  • lindsay lohan's email- address (lol, I'll never be rid of 'em)

  • ugly fucking bird (haha! love the emphasis)

  • how to make a dna model

  • pregnant babes (an image search, which led to who else? Brittany)

  • kirsten dunst being beheaded in marie antoinette

  • sarah james is a fashion designer even though shes a poet and she dont know cuz her toes show it cuz theyre longfellows:-
That last one is inexplicably strange, but true.

Posted by: annika at 06:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 221 words, total size 2 kb.

April 26, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour, Part III: My Favorite E-Mail

I treasure all the correspondence I've had with y'all over the last four years, and I really mean it. I know not all readers participate in the comments section and it's nice to get e-mails from those whom we bloggers affectionately call "lurkers." You're like Nixon's "silent majority." I know you're there, and I'm glad.

I often suspect there are some famous lurkers who occasionally cruise my blog. At the beginning, before his Townhall re-design, Hugh Hewitt had me on his blogroll. That was an honor which I knew I did not deserve, but which gave me a lot of pride while it lasted. Anyways, even if Professor Hewitt didn't read me regularly, I'm pretty sure Duane did, which still qualifies as a "brush-with-fame" in my book.

Another big name who came here once, after reading my most infamous blog entry, was New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. He wrote me a very short e-mail that said simply "You crack me up." That was way cool.

Casca once told me he thinks Laura Ingraham reads me, but I'm not yet convinced. Michelle Malkin routinely ignores me, and has never deigned to put me on her blogroll (which for the life of me I can't understand, since that freak Schlussel is on there), but that's okay. I love Malkin anyway.

And to this day, I suspect that Wonkette stole one of my rubrics.

But of all the lurkers and quasi-lurkers that have come here to read my nonsense, there is one whose email makes me most proud.

To set the scene. It's the afternoon of November 2nd, 2004. Faulty (and I believe fraudulent) exit polls have just been leaked and posted by Drudge, which show John Kerry leading George W. Bush in several must-win states. For weeks, the MSM has been predicting a Kerry victory. Now it seems true and conservatives are panicked. It looks like that jackass is going to be president.

In that atmosphere, I wrote this post.

A week later I got the following e-mail:

you and hugh hewitt are the only two who helped keep my anxiety in check during pre election days. i'm embarrassed at my lack of confidence. the urge to find drudge and bitch slap him still burns in me. thenks for the encouraging words. . . . there's enough smart pretty cynical woman pundits, your writing is honest and funny w/out trying to sound clever or too sarcastic. keep it nice and real
best,
Mike
That's the best e-mail I've ever gotten. I'm so gratified that I could have contributed in some small way on that fateful day, when we all needed to keep our wits about us. Despite the post election disappointments, and there have been many, I'm still proud of that post and happy that we all showed up and won.

So as I prepare to join the ranks of lurkers in about 24 days, may I say to all the lurkers at this blog, thank you for visiting!

Posted by: annika at 07:51 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 514 words, total size 3 kb.

April 21, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour, Part II: I Pass On My Wisdom To New Bloggers

I'm doing some email account housecleaning, and here's something I wrote a long time ago in response to a question from someone who was just starting a blog. It may have been Ted's daughter Mookie, actually. Although she's so smart she never really needed my advice.

This may not be terribly interesting for most of you, but rather than just delete it forever, here it is: more...

Posted by: annika at 11:17 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 1149 words, total size 7 kb.

April 20, 2007

Annika's Journal Farewell Tour, Part I: The Day I Killed A Blog

One of the things I've learned about blogging is that there are many different kinds of bloggers. Some bloggers are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them. Other bloggers find their niche and end up workin' it like a supermodel. Still others suck eggs and always will. And some are just freakin' scary. But the one thing all bloggers have in common is that they start small and hope to get big someday. Or so I thought.

"The day I killed a blog" happened early in my career, when I was young and altruistic. Thanks to the generosity of a few big bloggers, I'd achieved some moderate success moving up the Ecosystem, (which has since diminished) and I thought it would be nice to spread the love. Pay it forward, like the movie says.

So when I came across a brand new blog, down at the unicellular microbe level of the Ecosystem, I thought I'd give the blogger a boost by linking to one of her more interesting posts. She was new, seemed like a nice lady, and though not the best writer around, I thought she could improve with some exposure. I, in my benevolence, decided to give her that exposure. I chose to link to a post in which her thesis was, "I'm a liberal but I support the Iraq War." (This was back in the day when one could say that type of thing with a straight face.)

I sent the chick some traffic, that was true. But unfortunately she couldn't handle the attention. Being a liberal who supports the war is not a prescription for attracting friendly commenters. Apparently there was enough variety in her viewpoints to piss off everybody who went there. I didn't actually get a chance to read any of the constructive criticism that I funnelled to her comments section, because her site was taken down after about a day of abuse. In the words of Carl the gardener, she quit the game.

So that was how I killed a blog. I love my commenters. You're the only reason I kept this thing going for so long, and I look upon this blog experience as a four year conversation with some really neat people. But when I linked to that little blog, I felt a bit like Hernán Cortés meeting the Indians. You're all a pretty exuberant bunch and some folks just don't have the natural immunities necessary for blogging. Some folks get a readership and then realize they didn't really want to be read in the first place.

Do I feel bad about what happened? Probably not, because although lots of people can say they started a blog, I can say that I killed a blog too.

Posted by: annika at 10:29 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 480 words, total size 3 kb.

April 19, 2007

6MB Is Three!

Go wish a happy blogiversary to Preston, Smantix and Cranky at Six Meat Buffet, who are three and even occasionally act like it.

And keep in mind that though annika's journal may will come to an end in 31 days, when the bar* is over you'll be able to find me again at the Buffet! (Thanks to the generosity and/or foolishness of Preston Taylor Holmes!)
_______________

* July 24th through 26th.

Posted by: annika at 06:53 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 77 words, total size 1 kb.

April 09, 2007

Right Wing Bloggers Poll

John Hawkins' latest poll.

Posted by: annika at 09:52 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

March 22, 2007

Paraphrased Quote Of The Day

Is by Frank J, paraphrased by me:

[Al Gore] got Cs in Yale in political science -- a type of science -- [yet he's] angry at the world [for] not submitting unquestioningly to his wisdom.
True and funny.

Posted by: annika at 09:56 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

March 21, 2007

Breaking News

siren.gif

SHOCKING PROOF THAT GLOBAL WARMING WILL KILL US ALL

I have discovered amazing evidence that Global Warming is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that we are quickly approaching the end of the world.

I looked at my TTLB stats tonight, and the graph for average daily visits to my blog looked frighteningly familiar. By consulting my scientific sources (i.e. I googled it) I was able to find a graph showing the recent increase in average global temperatures.

Sure enough, when I superimposed the two graphs, an inconvenient truth emerged!

proof.gif

The debate is over, the science is in: My blog is at fault for global warming.

Well, as soon as I realized this, my first thought was, "how embarrassing." My second thought was, "If I am to blame, what can I do to save the planet?"

So now you know why, in sixty days time, I will retire this blog. Sorry about that.

Posted by: annika at 08:30 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 160 words, total size 1 kb.

February 11, 2007

For 24 & ATHF Fans Only

If you are a member of the set (24 fans) ∩ (ATHF fans), this hilarious spoof is for you.

Posted by: annika at 11:20 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 1 of 14 >>
191kb generated in CPU 0.0432, elapsed 0.1101 seconds.
77 queries taking 0.0799 seconds, 436 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.