It dawns on me that as of today, I've been making a sorry spectacle of myself on this blog for five goddamn years, for fuck's sake. That makes Bouphonia at least 80, in human years.
Where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday that I was indulging myself in impotent complaint before a small but compassionate audience of rubberneckers.
Today...well, let's just say that things are very different. I have a desk now, for one thing.
I suppose I shouldn't make light of what I've accomplished here. In its crooked old age, and mine, Buffoonia has become a Wunderkammer that preserves the stillborn montrosities of my thought in neatly labeled specimen jars. This is interesting, like all disasters, but it's also useful: If I ever fall prey to self-satisfaction, I know exactly where to find the antidote.
Thanks to everyone who reads my ill-tempered gibberish; special thanks to those who risk their good names by commenting on and linking to it. And particular thanks to Echidne, who has talked me off the ledge so many times that she's in danger of having to take sole responsibility for this superannuated blog's wheedling demands on your patience.
I don't need presents, unless you've got an extra bottle of Cadenhead's Caol Ila 1995 lying around. But please do drop in and say hello, especially if you’re a lurker, so I may rest assured that we live like doves together, without gall.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Old and In the Way
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
40 comments:
Hi!
:wave:
I don't usually comment but really appreciate your blog, Phila. Thanks so much.
So your blog is ready for kindergarten now, huh?
Congratulations
happy birfday mr (or ms) phila
happy blogday to you
to make your blogday turn out good
I bring this present to you.
Happy blogiversary. You've got the best, suckiest blog out there.
Your blog is most excellent and I've recommended it to others. Congrats!
Hi Phila, I don't think I would have know about the beautiful nudibranches without your blog. Plus, I always read Friday Hope blogging. You're one special person in my estimation. And, thank you, mer
Happy blog-day! Your Friday Hope feature is greatly appreciated from this lurker.
Happy Blogiversary! You started blogging just a bit before I did. That was a fateful fall.
A Libra Blog!
Many happy returns!
You are a true wordsmith and scholar and it's been a privilege to read your sucky blog.
CONGRATULATIONS! Have a pumpkin latte from Dunkin Donuts!
.
Thank you for making my Fridays more beautiful and hopeful. This blog is a treasure.
Congratulations and many happy returns. Five years is an impressive accomplishment.
I could only keep it up for 6-7 months.
Friday Hope is one of the finest weeklies on the internets and Nudibranches are simply precious.
Thanks for being here, I have read most of your stuff but am often too lazy to log in and comment.
There is this system you may have heard of called Haloscan......
.
That's five years of service to humanity, dear Phila.
Some weeks, due to the sturm and drang of life, I forget to tune in to see the lovely snails, or to see what you've extracted in the way of Hope - - and then I get this nagging feeling that something, something *important*, is missing.
Don't think I've ever commented before, except maybe to goggle verbally at a gorgeous nudibranch, but I appreciate what you do VERY much. Your writing is fine, and I'm pleasurably intrigued by the poetic strand that runs thru your commentary.
Li'l Innocent
Happy blog-birthday!
I've been following your blog since I found it via Echidne a couple a years ago.
Keep up the good work.
Phila -
I've only been hanging around here for a few months. Don't remember how I found you - followed a link from somedamnedwhere.
As you can see from all these comments you are touching peoples lives in very helpful and positive ways.
Happy Anniversary, and Keep it up.
Cheers!
JzB
Happy Fifth - may you parse for many more.
I'm not quite a lurker but I'm certainly one who never misses vintage Phila, after just about five years, too.
Friday Hope shows us the true spirit behind the delightfully ill-tempered cascade of language that is like drinking a coke with salty peanuts in it.
Thank you for introducing me to the BFI National Archive, the lesser known works of George Melies, and Len Lye.
Happy blog-day. I got you some presents:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYBqghN45F0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4VdcMXVO_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJbha6XxH6c
You're all very, very kind. Thank you!
Now if you'll excuse me...I seem to have something in my eye....
Congratulations, Phila - and thank you - for doing this for five years. Even a non-blogging (mostly) lurker like me realizes how much work this can be, especially for the kind of well researched posts you typically do. Here's hoping you hang in for at least another five years!
Best Regards,
Liri/Sharl
¡Felicitatíones!
EGN
I don't mind things of consistently high quality that are 'old and in the way' when I'm traversing the web. Now if you were to take your act to my local supermarket queue I might have a different opinion.
Thanks for all.
This is a great blog. Love the Friday hope blogging, and of course the nudibranchs! Please keep going!
I came for the nudibranch pictures but stayed for the content.
Thank you so much for the hundreds of photos you've shown and that grace my screen savers.
Well done, and keep up the good work -- the nudibranches are counting on you. More than once the Friday Hope blast has served to remind me that it's still out there to be found, and that's no small thing.
Happy birthday to your blog! And even for an old geezer it is still impressively spry and surprising.
Bon anniversaire, dear Phila!
I've been reading your blog for at least three years (as evidenced there), probably four.
I enjoy your amazing knack at unearthing beautiful tidbits of the Internet, tend to agree with you on politics (but then again I'm French, so what's to expect ?), but above all I really admire your ability to write in a faultless and harmonious style, even about the most infuriating things.
This blog really is a delight to read, please keep it up !
Happy Birthday Phila!
I recall that it was a pleasant afternoon's work to read your archives when I found this place. So I've been reading for a while now and I am looking forward to the next post. Always.
Phila, your presence on the internets is evidence that there are indeed sane people in this crazy world, or at least people who say sane things! Thanks for that. And the links to art and the nudibranchs are worth a visit in themselves.
hi phila......thanks for all the posts. here's a link to our post linking to you back when. been reading you ever since. glad you kept on.
http://newdharmabums.blogspot.com/2005/03/millenium-ecosystem-assessment-update.html
Happy blogversery!
And hopefully many more to come.
It's hard to decide what's the best thing about this site: the awesome pictures, the fine poetry, the lucid prose, the nudibranches and all those other unique specimens you sift from the intertubes for Friday Hope. And Sunday Music, of course.
Plus that masterly hand while not-so-gently filleting the purveyors of anti- and pseudo-scientific dreck.
I can't believe it took me so long to find this place.
Well done, Phila.
Your blog is a series of consummate backhanders, elegant and forceful and always delivered to the right set of chops.
Keep up the good work.
Lars
The comments here mean more to me than I can say.
Thanks again!
yeah, what all them other folks said. Plus some. Hope is all that's getting some of us by, and without you there would be less of it.
thanks.
oh. and God hates the Higgs boson. Or maybe time travelers. Not sure if this is hopeful or not but strangely real people seem to be talking about it.
NYT has the piece which I would link to if copy/paste was not disfunctional in firefox at the moment
it's just a blog.
you were my first "friend" at eschaton. you didn't even have a blog then.
all the other smart boys/girls, would confront me, call me a troll. engage me in arguments i could not defend because i had no idea what they were talking about.
you to would confront me, but it was different. you're a class act.
of course you chased my buddy troublemaker away. he says you're not very smart because you use too many big words, but i know he's wrong. well, he might be right about the big words thing.
probably the best blog on the net.
oh, and if you didn't write so well, you'd make an excellent photo editor.
charley,
As always, I'm glad for the vote of confidence.
I feel bad about your pal...don't even remember what that was all about, except that I was probably in a bad mood. And maybe he didn't understand the pressure that trolls put on people over there...it's hard not to make snap judgments.
You're both right about the big words, though. Or at least, you're right roughly half the time. Sometimes I do it for the sake of humor, and sometimes they're necessary 'cause of the subject matter.
But the rest of the time, I'm just being lazy or clumsy or pompous or inhospitable. Between you and me, it's part of an ongoing project of self-sabotage.
Most excellent blogging, Phila. I always enjoy reading.
Happy Blogiversary Phila.
I very much enjoy your blog, I read the Friday hope and Nudibranch Posts religiously.
Many happy returns.
The lucid prose, the nudibranches and all those other unique specimens you sift from the intertubes for Friday Hope. And Sunday Music, of course...
Post a Comment