Today marks the
fifth anniversary of this here webbity-bloggity thingy that I decided in an ill-considered moment of idiocy to call
Flaming Pablum. It's been five years of needlessly pretentious vocabulary. Five years of misplaced modifiers. Five years of run-on sentences & creative spelling. Five years of juvenile tirades, unsolicited opinions and boorishly uptight sermonizing. Five years of grainy photographs of old buildings, graffiti and forgotten storefronts. Five years of long-winded lamentations. Five years of tear-stained recollections of things that probably weren't a third as significant as I remember them being. Five years of petty complaints about banal minutia. Five years of chronically abusing the adjectives "invariably" and "strenuously." Five years and 56, 743 invocations of the name
KILLING JOKE. Five years of insufferably swoony odes to the blinding brilliance and incomparable cuteness of my own children. Five years of broken links and obsolete YouTube clips. Five years of explaining the origins of the word "vassifer." Five years of high hills and deep valleys in quality. Five years of inconsequential ramblings from a neurotic, trivia-crazed midlife-crisis sufferer seemingly incapable of extricating himself from a paralyzing state of arrested development.
Flaming Pablum has gotten me noticed and gotten me in trouble. It's introduced me to friendly, like-minded individuals and accrued the wrath of anonymous detractors. It's won me both arguably-warranted accolades and acute embarrassment. What started as a lark swiftly (d)evolved into an omnivorous time-suck. The portion of my brain meant for mastering a wide variety of seemingly rudimentary tasks has been otherwise annexed by the indefatigable demands of this weblog. I ponder the notion of stopping almost daily. But at the last minute, something always crops up and I feel the need to post again. Will that always be the case? Who knows, but for now, there's still a bit of gas in the tank, so I'm going to keep going.
Here's to another five years?
Hey, better five years doing this then doing the usual nothing, at least you've accomplished something to show for it...
Posted by: mykola (mick) dementiuk | July 15, 2010 at 07:03 AM
ThisAintTheSummerOfLove wishes you congrats on hitting the 5-year mark, Alex. Wishing you continued success in your journalistic endeavour.
Posted by: NYCDreamin | July 15, 2010 at 07:41 AM
wow. it's been five years? time sure flies when the fratboy douchebags are having fun.
congratulations. keep it going.
Posted by: dark1p | July 15, 2010 at 08:18 AM
Hell yeah. Five more years! Five more years!
Posted by: EV Grieve | July 15, 2010 at 09:46 AM
Five years of "hirsute" and "herein"...congrats Alex! Stupefaction will five in September. Its been an interesting journey, and it's been cool meeting my blogging crew.
Posted by: Tim B. | July 15, 2010 at 11:00 AM
NICE JOB!
Posted by: East Village Feed | July 15, 2010 at 02:15 PM
Keep it coming
Posted by: Matt | July 15, 2010 at 02:35 PM
You started this blog a week before I arrived in NYC from Europe and have been an undeniable part of my city experience ever since. We don't love the same things but sure hate the same things ;-) Congrats and don't you dare leave yet!
Posted by: Sebastian | July 15, 2010 at 06:52 PM
Congratulations FP, another well-written piece. Keep it up!
And since you brought it up, what the hell does "vassifer" mean?
Posted by: James C. Taylor | July 16, 2010 at 11:23 AM
Cheers to you Alex!
Posted by: MacKenzie | July 21, 2010 at 09:54 AM