Swanky

mgoblog decided to get some design up in here, because it's a party. Thanks go to WestCiv's fabulous CSS guide, css.maxdesign.com.au, and the CSS Zen Garden. If you are having issues please drop me a line. A few people have mentioned issues with the header layout in Safari but I believe those should be fixed.

Why is it a party? Read on.

So. On December 4th of last year, mgoblog was ushered into the world like so:

Blog.Init()
GoBlog()
{
HelloWorld
}

Since then the content has gotten marginally better and traffic has subsequently increased. Other blogs were found. Media members were mercilessly ripped and occasionally apologized to. Numbers were disassembled and then reassembled in interesting ways. Pete Fiutak was pissed off. Strange pictures of the Pistons were found and referenced in the Free Press sans accreditation. Slap fights broke out. 2,300 words were written about Indiana football--yes, all at once. Etc.

Today mgoblog celebrates...


Er... approximately. Hits weren't tracked for the first few weeks of the site's existence but since it's probable that the the only person visiting was me, that isn't much of an issue. However, I used RE_INVIGORATE until mid-February, at which time it unceremoniously disappeared. I started using Sitemeter soon after but all knowledge of hits from that time have been lost. And Sitemeter isn't the most reliable thing in the universe. So whatever. It's an excuse to celebrate the awesomeness of everything. Hurray.

I AM SO 1337. But, taking a cue from the ever-classy Big Ten Wonk, I'll take this opportunity to plug the best part of this blog thing, finding interesting things to read. I enjoy the following blogs immensely (and other, too... if you aren't here it doesn't mean I don't like you. It probably means you don't post enough).

Let's start with... Big Ten Wonk! The only bad part of the last season of college basketball coming to a merciful end was Mr. Wonk's summer hiatus. If you've picked up this whole blog thing at some point after March, you missed out. Seriously. When the first thing you think of when Illinois loses the national championship game is "I wonder what BTW thinks," that's a guy who has gained your respect.

Second is Blue Cats and Red Sox. My interest level in baseball is very low. I like watching the Yankees choke in historic fashion so that I can imagine Tony Danza going "Samanter, Moner, oh oh oh ay! My heart is buster!", and that's about it. Despite this, I now read two baseball blogs written by Sam (<-- short for Samara (yes, a girl's name), lest gender confusion arise) of Blue Cats and Red Sox. For what reason? Well, stuff like this when attempting to finger the other side of the Urbina brawl:

He's [Dimitri Young] also very, very big on sticking up for other guys, so if Ugie started railing on one of the Tigers, I wouldn't be shocked if DaMeat leapt to that guy's defense. "Raggin' on Percival? Oh you wanna do that where I can hear you? GET BACK HERE BITCH, I'MA CRUSH YOU LIKE A CRUNCHY BEETLE."

or this just recently on a Manny Ramirez "home run," as I believe they're called:

What was fantastic about it was Manny's reaction... trotting to first like he half expected it to be caught for an out, then seeing it go into the crowd and hurling his arms into the air, not in a 'praise de lawd' style, more a 'yaaaay i hit the ball yaaaayy yay yay yay!' style. Which is so Manny.

It's not a statty blog or a newsy blog or useful in any way whatsoever. It is utterly useless and just as completely uselessly awesome. It is useless like the last precious ice cube at the bottom of the cup in the third quarter of a late August game against a directional Michigan school, one of those games where fiery death ends up inscribed on the peeling noses of everyone who attends.

Third is the Blue-Gray Sky, which has an unfair advantage because it's written by about sixty different people, giving them time to write everything. But write about everything they do. Many times I have read their encyclopedic posts on all things Notre Dame and said to myself "Boy, I wish someone with a week to ten days worth of free time would do a Michigan version of this." For those of you glaring owlishly at me and cocking an eyebrow as if to say "well?" I have this to say to you: I am only one man.

The horror, the horror.

Four: Every Day Should Be Saturday. Many people are under the misapprehension they are funny. The results are usually tragic. EDSBS is funny and also less dumb than it claims to be. They play fascism to BGS's communism, machine-gunning short, informative posts that contain no trace of professionalism or maturity several times a day. It takes a strange mind to effortlessly mix puerile humor with references to what I believe to be things that come from books ("literature?"). It also takes a strange mind to name yourself after a minor Nixon functionary. But strange minds invented all great things in life, like calculus and yogurt and knee-high black leather boots.