Celebrate with Me!

According to Blogger, this is my 100th post! (Now, don't waste your time counting. If they've included all of the drafts that never got published (and I have a feeling they did), then the count is inaccurate.) Regardless, let's celebrate!

I want to toast all those lost hours of productivity spent on this blog. All those times I used this blog as an instrument of procrastination. All those times I thought, "I think I shall make someone laugh today," and then proceeded to write a post that failed miserably to accomplish my goal.

For all those times, for all the sentence fragments, for all the rhetorical questions, for all the fake reader fan mail, for all the made-up events that make this blog my own, I will be forever grateful. (If by "forever" I mean "for another couple years, until I look back and despise myself for even dreaming of plaguing the world with my thoughts.)

Now, to celebrate, I came up with a couple of different ideas. I was going to give you a top ten list of the ways I'd like to kill my roommate. Or I could give you a bit of an inspirational little talk about how to write for the masses. Or I could write about the progression of this blog over the last thirteen months.

You should all know which one of those options I'm going to choose. Do you really think I'm creative enough to come up with ten good ways to kill my roommate? I mean, there are the obvious things, like being eaten by a wild pack of emus or replacing her vitamins with cyanide capsules, but beyond that, my brain starts to have trouble. We all know that my writing is crap, so that second option must be crap as well. But the last. . . oh the last. . . I love self-deprecation. And I love examining how my methods of self-deprecation have changed over time. Thus, I will be presenting an analysis of how the purpose and tone of this blog have changed over time.

Read. Laugh. Cry. Enjoy the journey.

September 2005 -- 2 posts
These are rather boring. They screamed out, "I'm sorry!" Allison hadn't really figured out what to think about the whole blogging business, and these are pretty pathetic. (At least she never resorted to doing the traditional myjournal deal with, "Today, I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before going to physics, but I didn't really like it because we were out of grape jelly and my roommate was being a bitch; she just kept saying she's allergic to jelly and she gets hives just thinking about jelly. . . ugh.")

October 2005 -- 19 posts
Here we see a real search for identity. AEiF was still in its infancy and hadn't established itself as a personal journal, an intellectual forum, or a humor column. We see a lot of mixing of issues. Some entries rant about personal goings-on, others present current life events with a humorous tone, and yet others present random how-to lists. Here we do see the introduction of two very important themes: mock trial and Allison's horrendous taste in men. Those two themes would continue to be a defining characteristic of AEiF for its entire lifespan.

November 2005 -- 14 posts
Here we see a couple of new elements creep into AEiF. First, we have the signature move of the author: posts so long no one has time to read them. (She's good at that.) Second, ranting about work--both as a waitress and as a receptionist. One key entry to note is entitled "Wow. . . Five Days Without Posting. . ." which signals a low point in the author's life when she had nothing better to do than worry about a nonexistent audience.

December 2005 -- 10 posts
You should be noticing one trend here: as the semester progresses, the number of posts per month decreases. That is no accident. Here we start seeing personal life issues creeping back into the posts--a clear indication that seasonal depression does exist.

January 2006 -- 8 posts
Again, we see a decrease in number. Obviously the author doesn't care about you.

February 2006 -- 9 posts
Here we see two very interesting phenomena. One: Allison tries to give advice. Allison, the same girl who previously spent thousands of words telling you why you should never listen to her, suddenly decides to provide advice to the masses. Two: Allison starts inventing fan mail. This should come as no surprise; but really, now. It's pathetic, isn't it? What kind of readership doesn't send fan mail?

March 2006 -- 7 posts
For some reason, perhaps it was March Madness, Allison decided to think that quality was more important than quantity. That is, she started posting longer entries rather than more numerous entries. Silly, girl. You'd rather have frequent, short updates that you can read while taking a five-minute break from work than infrequent, tediously long updates that require their own space on your to-do list.

April 2006 -- 2 posts
Two. That's it? Two? Why the hell are you all still reading this? She clearly turned her back on you by discontinuing AEiF while you weren't (or were) looking. Geesh, people. Get a backbone.

May 2006 -- 7 posts
Five of those seven were about Allison's trip to Oklahoma City. I hope you were intrigued by the OKC, because if not, this month's posts were pretty damn useless. The other two posts: all about gender. What was she thinking? She knows she needs to diversify to hold people's interest. Man. . . she sucks at this whole blogging thing.

June 2006 -- 0 posts
Yeah. . . see this for more explanation. Allison still isn't talking about the month of June.

July 2006 -- 1 post
Again, see that post. Allison isn't talking about July either.

August 2006 -- 2 posts
Boring. All about the return to campus. Feel free to disregard this month in its entirety (unless you need ammo with which to tease Allison about her shoe obsession).

September 2006 -- 3 posts
Boring again. Sorry. Her life is boring. All work--no fodder for funny entries. Feel free to send her real fan mail, replete with questions she is entirely unqualified to answer, and perhaps something funny will emerge in her writing.

October 2006 (so far) -- (this makes) 3 posts
Hey! Three posts by the 8th day of the month! She's trying to make it up to you. She's trying to be a better blogger. Don't give up on her yet. . . please?

Pretty please?

(Was anyone paying attention to the number of posts? Blogger does count drafts as posts. What a stupid fucking thing to do. All this fuss over what is actually number 87. But don't you even think I'm taking it back. I wasted 45 good minutes writing this tribute to number 100--even if it is technically number 87. So you deal with it. Mmk? Mmk.)