LUDIC LOG

One year ago today, armed with little more than a free hosting service, a piss-poor knowledge of HTML, and an ill-justified sense of my own superiority, I began the Ludic Log. My goal was simple, almost humble: to raise enough money to build an army of killer robots who would help me destroy America. I have since been informed that such robots do not in fact exist, and also I forgot to charge money for the site. But I nonetheless consider the Ludic Log to be a success beyond my wildest imaginings.

Anniversaries are a time for commemoration and remembrance, but also a time for gratitude. Today, I am grateful for you, my devoted readership. All six of you have stood by me through thick and thin, through trials and tribulations, and through other alliterative dichotomies. It has been an incredibly tumultuous year: the one-year anniversary of the Bad Thing; the Death of Irony, which forced me to rely exclusively on fart jokes and punning references to Dr. Who characters for the humor content of the site; James Lileks' continuing descent into madness; the emotional highs and lows of my brief but passionate imaginary affair with the girl who works at the comic book shop; and that spaceship or whatever it was that caught on fire the other day. And yet each of you have remained loyal readers, helping me stay faithful to my creative vision. Whether you found this site because you are a personal friend of mine, or simply because you stumbled upon it while Googling for pornography, you have pretended to read the entries every single day.

Looking back at the very first entry, I'm amazed at how far the Log has come. I've changed the graphics layout of the site from mind-numbingly dull to gaudy to hideous to slightly less hideous. I've added a shop no one ever buys anything from, a message board no one ever posts on and an e-mail link that no one ever uses. References to my love of Scandinavian black metal, nacho Slim Jims, and masturbation have become more frequent and detailed. I write the site's content at a totally different job than I used to, wasting a much larger amount of my employer's money than before. I still don't have a girlfriend, but I have pathetic, unrealistic sex fantasies about an entirely different group of women than I did a year ago. George W. Bush is still president, but unlike last February 3rd, he is now a reader of this site, and sends me instant messages for several hours a day pleading with me not to mention his narcotics habit or love of underage African prostitutes on the site. I've stopped talking about postmodernism, and the other kids at blog school have stopped forcing my head down the toilet. And most importantly, the links that perked up my entries for the first several weeks are gone, replaced by completely self-absorbed solipsism.

Through it all, I've gotten more praise than I ever anticipated when I began. Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit called me a "malformed, uneducated assfucking enthusiast". Lesbian conservative Norah Vincent praised me as "the most unreadable, irritating, self-important leech I've ever stolen my blog design from". Baseball's iron man, Cal Ripken, called the Ludic Log "a site containing no references whatsoever to the Baltimore Orioles"; and comics' iron man, Iron Man, said "He sure does like to talk about MODOK a lot". Even my mother got into the act, saying "I didn't teach you how to read so you could write silly little stories about doing you-know-what in the bottom". Thanks, mom!

It's praise like this that tells me I'm on the right track, that I'm doing the right thing, and that -- make no mistake -- I should stay the course. I've e-run this site up the cyber-flagpole, and you've all chosen to salute. All I can do to reward your devotion is to say a warm and sincere thank you, and to assure you that I will remain true to the Ludic Promise: full-length entries every single day that seem funnier when I come up with them than when I actually write them. Please stay with me on this exciting journey into the world of electronic literature; no other site gives you tedious political complaining, obscure, quasi-funny half-jokes, and updates on how long it takes me to read things, all in one stop.

Thank you again for your eyes. Watch this space all week for special anniversary events, including your questions, exciting announcements, and interviews.