blizzog 2k3: The Early Days

Since most respected publications produce a year-in-review article each year, I decided that the fact that the blizzog isn’t respected by anyone shouldn’t stop us from doing the same thing. I thought I’d take a look back at the highs and lows of baby blizzog’s first year. In writing this it became apparent that there was a lot of territory to cover, so I’m splitting this up into a few posts. Today’s post covers the first month of the blizzog’s existence, a very formative and volatile time on the site. Enjoy.

The blizzog officially launched on February 9th with a little intro from me about how hard it was to create the blizzog for myself and a few words about what I hoped the site would become. At this point, there was no Smart Remarks capabilities and you can see from the post that I was still working out my HTML parsing logic. Ahh…those early days.

The first actual non-blizzog post came the next day, when Ben Curtis the Dell Guy got busted for buying some of the wacky. Thus began the blizzog tradition of picking on marginal celebrities who do stupid things.

Also on the 10th, the blizzog reached an important milestone in its development, when the “Smart Remarks Engine” (my fancy title for comment capability) went live on the blizzog. Ironically, no one had any comment about the fact that you could now post comments.

February 11th marked another important moment in blizzog history, as the first Smart Remarks were posted to “Sellout“, a crackback on my boy Jeff of JT.net for pushing me to create the Smart Remarks Engine then not staying up to see the fruits of my labor. “A concerned friend” became the first of many anonymous blizzogers to add their smart remarks to the site.

The content for the rest of February mostly sucked. As I was trying to help the blizzog find its voice we sorta hit to all fields. There was some “sites that I like” posts and some “jt.net sucks” posts and some more “marginal celebrity smack” posts. I was trying a little bit of everything to see what was fun to write about and what wasn’t.

February 17th marked my first real take on something that pissed me off, a theme that would eventually take its coat off and make itself comfortable in the blizzog for the remainder of time. “Hot Stock Tip” was about the unworldly amount of receipts that we are given by places like the grocery store and Blockbuster and how that irritates me to no end. Though, like most of the time, I found my take to be quite insightful and funny, the blizzog readers, like most of the time, didnt’ really have much to say about it. I still felt better after getting that off my chest though.

A week later I wrote my first “diary” post: my personal account of the 2003 Grammy Awards. Though a blatant rip-off of my man, Bill Simmons – The Sports Guy, this post was a lot of fun to write.

Of course what would the blizzog be without a little “NC State Sux” smack thrown in for good measure? For those of you that don’t know by now, some of my really good friends have an unfortunate allegiance to State College in Raleigh, otherwise known as North Carolina State. Part of the fun of living in North Carolina, the heart of ACC country, is the countless opportunities you and your friends have to remind each other about how much their favorite ACC school sucks. Though always good-natured, the smack can run hot and heavy at times. In my opening salvo of anti-State rhetoric, I presented “A Shout-Out To Moo U“. The post essentially described a few derisive songs I’d learned to the tune of the NC State fight songs while I was in college. It was a little good-natured ribbing before a UNC basketball game against State, which we lost…. again.

I normally wouldn’t have mentioned this post specifically in the review were it not for a few things. One, this happened to be the first post my mother ever read on the blizzog. I had been telling my mom for weeks that she should check it out because it was an outlet for my writing and I thought she’d find it enjoyable. Needless to say it was a bit awkward when she called the next day and asked, “What made you think that I would find songs about sodomizing farm animals enjoyable?” Heh. Ooops. Second, in researching this post I noticed some new smart remarks from early this December from Seth Robinson (goncstatepack2580@hotmail.com), an obvious State Fan. Note that I originally made this post in February, and Seth is posting back to me in December. Anyway, Seth (goncstatepack2580@hotmail.com) was kind enough to remind me that….

a.) The words NCU appear in our fight song.
b.) What the real words to the NC State fight song are… and
c.) That State beat us the day I posted this.

Thanks, Seth (goncstatepack2580@hotmail.com). In the spirit of giving this holiday season I thought I would remind you of a few things as well.

a.) You have to be some kind of true loser to find my site and post smack about a State-Carolina game that happened 10 months ago.
b.) I went to Carolina so I know what the words to the fight song and alma mater are. Thanks for the refresher though…. and
c.) Never, ever, ever, post your e-mail address (goncstatepack2580@hotmail.com) in the Email field of Smart Remarks. Here’s a clue. It’s really there for entertainment purposes only. Oh…well it’s also there so that your e-mail address can be harvested by every spambot this side of Seoul. Have fun getting that mortgage/weight loss/penis enlargement problem taken care of.

And, I’m spent. Tune in later this week for more of the blizzog 2k3 in review.