500

So this is my 500th post. For those of you coming here expecting to take part in my 500th Post Extravaganza and Meat Buffet, well let me just say sorry. The funding fell through so in the words of bad tourist shirts everywhere, all you get is this crummy post. It’s odd sitting down to write this post just so that I can say I wrote number 500. But alas, that’s what I’m doing and your are stuck reading it. It’s amazing to me to think that I have written 500 posts. I mean if I wrote one post a year, it would take 500 years to accomplish, though I’d be dead and only get 60-80 posts in. If I wrote a post a day, it would take about a year and a half. Oh wait, I guess that’s kinda what I did and it certainly doesn’t seem as impressive as the 500 year thing…

I wish I could remember my last 499, but they are a blur of bad jokes, cheese, paying homage to Fred Willard and certain veiled references to me knowing the entire plot of the new Indian Jones movie, provided you got the clues I have been trying to subtly give you over the last year and a half. By the way, I bet you hadn’t noticed that if you started with my first post and read everyone straight through to last Tuesday’s, you would now have precise MapQuest-like directions to my house from the corner of Jamboree and Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach, California.

Of course I am making that up. I still get lost in my hometown. Honestly, I still get lost in my work’s parking lot. It’s very big and the parking stalls are all the same. Seriously, how do old people do it? You’d think the mall would be a scary maze to them. And parking structures? Well the fact that my grandparents can get home after parking in one still amazes me. I actually got lost a few weeks ago in Disneyland’s mega-parking structure, although in my defense it was late, I’d had a few too many mint juleps and churros (so what if they were non-alcoholic – I can still get a happy buzz) and it is the biggest parking structure in America and second biggest in the world (that’s what she said).

But this post is not about parking lots or parking structures. This post is about, well, nothing worthwhile so far. Although I guess that’s been the entire point of my blogging since the summer of 2006. It almost saddens me that I can look back over that time and find that I haven’t used this blog to change the world or to make it a forum to discuss the issues of our time. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and have decided to use the next 500 posts (or 20, whichever comes first) to smarten up this blog. One of the first ways I am going to do that is on Mondays. From now on, each Monday will be dedicated to one particular grouping of JFK’s assassination theories. Next Monday will be titled ‘Everything having to do with the Grassy Knoll with the notable exclusion of picnics.’ Please make sure to come by on Monday and share with me your ideas on whether or not there was a shooter on the Grassy Knoll.

I haven’t quite fleshed out every day of the week yet, but I can tell you that Wednesdays are going to be ‘Green Wednesday’ when I give you environmental tips like ‘Don’t put plastic six-pack holders in the trash because they can end up in the sea and choke a dolphin. Burn them in the fireplace instead.’ Or ‘Oil is bad for our oceans so you should use as much water as possible and hose the oil stains off of your driveway every evening.’ I promise to have more valuable tips each Wednesday. To contribute something to the arts, I am dedicating my writing on Fridays to that noble pursuit. Though I am torn between breaking down the plays of Shakespeare by comparing them to episodes of Baywatch and explaining Opera by converting them to country songs. You know, it’s my way of bringing fancy art to the masses; kind of in the same way that Oprah only likes hanging out with celebrities because she understands them better. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not criticizing ‘The Op,’ not because I think it’s wrong, but because I fear her legal people, who ironically, are not celebrities.

When If you visit my blog this summer, please watch for my 8 part series on American Politics written in romantic novella style and only featuring men with unbuttoned shirts and flowing hair and women with, well, the same thing. To promote learning (and by learning I mean paying attention) in the series, points will be awarded for the readers that correctly count the numbers of words used like ample, bosom and throb.

And speaking of readers, I recently noticed that I have had almost 41,000 of them in the last year and a half. Now granted, myself and my work’s HR department easily account for at least 30,000 of those hits, but I want to take the time to thank everyone else who keeps coming back here for some reason. While I can’t guarantee I will write another 500 posts, I can guarantee that I might write one next Wednesday or possibly Thursday, and that’s a good enough reason to come back and visit again, right??