This blog is this many as of today:

That's right. I've been writing Monkey Muck for four years now. It's been wildly fun and a great creative outlet for me. I've been very lucky to have built such a great community of readers and commenters, Chinese spammers and asshole-ish trolls and family members aside that is.


I hit my stride and found my style and voice relatively early on. It only took me a few months to see that the best way for my blog to move forward was with a mix of the political, the pop cultural, the personal, and the purely silly. As much as I love politics, both national and international, it would get pretty boring around here if I only wrote and ranted about politics all the time. So I mix it up.

That's how I rolls bitches.

And it's all worked well enough for me to have made some of the best friends I've ever had in my life through this blog. I'm a lucky guy to have made most of your acquaintances and to have those blog friendships deepen through Facebook and email. I'm also lucky to have formulated a good policy that cuts trolls and assholes who insult me and my readers off quickly. Some of the people I've cut off have whined that I took away their freedom of speech by deleting their comments as soon as I see them. But stupid people like them forget that just because they have the freedom to say what they like doesn't mean I have to listen to them. And that includes family members of mine.

But by and large the people who read and comment on here are nice, well educated, and a pleasure to have around. And while I don't write this blog for them, I write it for me, it's my pleasure to share it with them.

I have no plans to ever stop writing this blog so it looks like you're stuck with me for a very long time.

New picture blog

I started a new Tumblr blog to showcase bad food of the last century. It's called Culinary Horror.
And yes, that's baked beans in the Jell-O ring. I shit you not.

The terrible twos

It's my two year blogaversary today! Yay me!
Lil' babies know that I've been pumping out blog bullshit for two years now.


Super models like Heidi Klum know I've been stirring the political pot with my posts for the past two years now.
Hot chicks in black know I've been making folks laugh for two years now.



Puckered up gals who take their own photo know I've been pissing off the powers that be, right wingers, and thin skinned punks for two years now.


But what about hipster chicks with bad dye jobs who hold Crunky bars? Do they know how long I've been blogging?

Nope. Oh well, four out of five groups know how long I've been blogging now. And so do you. Thanks for reading and for commenting. I'd like to say I come up with all of this stuff to please you, but I actually don't. I come up with it to please me, and if you all like it too, then that's gravy baby.

It's fitting that on my two year blogaversary that something super keen, special, and blog related is going to happen to me later today. I'm not going to tell you what it is just yet, but I will tell you that it will be a first for me and I'm super stoked about it. If we're all lucky there'll be photos of the event in a later post. And maybe even a cupcake or two. Or maybe not. Stay tuned.

Hibernation

No ladies and gentlemen, I am not going into hibernation nor is the blog. It seems however that my usual barrage of political posts are for some reason, perhaps it's because of the holidays and all the good cheer that they bring me.

This year is especially good cheery because I don't have to deal with any of my crazy family who live near by and I have not had any contact with my crazy aunt and her offspring. They all bring a huge amount of stress into my life and I'm sooooooo much better off without them (if any of them read this they'll be dialing their mother to tell her I said that and just as soon as she hangs up the phone she'll take me out of her last will and testament and I have but one thing to say about that and it is, "Hooray!").

Another reason for my good cheer this week is the post holiday party glow at our place, we're both so happy so many folks came over this past Saturday and that they got to share in our first holiday in our new to us house. Sparky and I both could not be happier to be out of our old condo and in our new house, and considering we did it all while the economy was melting down is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

But fear not my peeps, all this good cheer will only last for so long and soon I'll be back to doing political posts and sharing my opinions with you, which will piss off more than one or two of my trolls. Speaking of which, one of my trolls left me a comment, which I deleted, telling me that I should back up my opinionated political posts with facts and links. It seems that this troll has no concept of what a blog is for, especially this one. So if you're reading this Mr. Troll, and I know you are, this blog is not some term paper or academic treatise where I have to put footnotes or links in my political posts, it is however a place where I can and do make my opinions known and if that pisses you off then, well, that's just icing on the cake.

Yes, boys and girls after Christmas I'll be doing posts on the "riots" in Greece, the out going criminals who currently occupy the White House, the incoming Obama administration, and of course there'll be more anti corporate posts to coincide with the crash of our faltering free market economy. I'll be there to sift through the pieces and to interpret what happened and to speculate on what is going to happens as we watch the death throes of the conservative movement and conservative free market economics.

This burst of good cheer won't last forever, it will pass like a shoe that's been whipped at the head of our Idiot in Chief, and then I'll get back to my mix of the political and the pop cultural with a dish of silliness on the side.

Shut out

It's going to be light posting for me for the next day or so boys and girls. The guy we hired to do the painting and the repairs at Monkey Central is repairing and painting the office where I slave away on the internets. He'll be done in there hopefully by tomorrow afternoon and then I'll be back with my usual cornucopia of posts.

Also, here's some big news on the blog front, as if I don't blog enough, I've just been named the official blog master (or would it be 'blog bastard'?) of the Southern Appalachian International Film Festival. That's a cool film festival we have here in Johnson City. My friend Keith got me involved in it and he got me the blog gig with the film fest folks. I'm doing it for free because I love cinema, blogging, and having yet another forum for my views and opinions. It'll be a great blog full of info about the film fest and things connected to it. I'll have the link for you soon.

That's all for now kids, I'll be e-stalking you all later.

This blog is this many...

That's right, Monkey Muck turns one year old today!  

It was one year ago that I sat down and started writing this little blog.  It took me a few months to find my groove but find it I finally did.  I started this blog by writing almost exclusively about politics and the warwithoutendAmen in Iraq, but I came to realize that no one, especially me, wanted to read the constant anti Bush/Republicans/conservative/libertarian anti war screeds of a fat bastard like me.  So I began also writing about pop culture, doing movie reviews, writing about cooking, making bad jokes, making good jokes, pissing off some, making friends with others, and generally just having fun in between posts about how much I fucking hate all the Bush/Cheney/ExxonMobil/KBR/Halliburton/Microsoft/Wal-Mart/corporate media/Murdoch bastards.

It took me a little over a week to get my first commenter, who happened to be one the people who inspired me to start blogging in the first place, Dr. Zaius (the other person who inspired me to blog was Becca).  Then little by little people started trickling in to find me.  Getting linked by Blue Gal in my early days helped.  Her kind linkage brought me many an early reader.  Also getting linked on Crooks and Liars helped my numbers as well, I'll never forget the thrill of seeing a post I did linked on there.  I got so excited that I emailed everyone in all my address books and I told them I got linked.

Soon after that I found D Cup, the axis of Midwestern goodness bloggers, Samurai Frog, Splotchy, Johnny Yen, Kim, Bubs and his brood, Missy, Chris, Evil Dictator, and Ubermilf.  

I found some of you through the comments you left on other's blogs.  That's how I found Barbara, Captain Karen, Wandering Coyote, Tanya Espanya, Jew Girl, and more.  I also found my evil twin, or maybe he's the good twin I'm not sure, blog brother Matty Boy through the comments he left on Princess Sparkle Pony's blog.  And others of you who I started reading most every day I found you through your comments here, that includes people such as Jess Wundrun, Fran, Liberality, Beth, Gifted Typist, the lovely GetKristiLove and a few others.

And finally some of you I found through my friend Sean.  He sent me a link to some crazy gal in Minnesota's blog.  It was a good thing I clicked on the link or I would have never found Whiskeymarie or MNMom or Cheesecake Maven, and some others.

I'm glad I found each and every one of you and I'm glad you read me and I'm glad I read you because you are all such nice funny smart people with interesting takes on life and politics.  I'm grateful to be your peer in the blogosphere.  Like so many other things they portray inaccurately, the corporate media has it all wrong when it comes to bloggers, we're not the pimply faced anti social dweebs they like to think we are, we're smart funny people who happen to use our blogs to entertain and inform each other and our readers about the things the corporate media ignores.

In one year I went from having maybe 15 readers a day if I was lucky to averaging over almost 500 a day.  Over 85,000 people have visited my blog this year and I'm grateful for each and every one of them, yes I'm even grateful for the Reichwingers and the people who disagree with me because even if they don't agree with my point of view then at least they were exposed to it for a moment or two.  

Thank you to all of you who read me, who link me, and who have me listed on your blogroll or in your favorites.  It's a pleasure for me to write this stuff knowing that so many of you will read it.  And I will continue to write this blog because I plan on blogging until they pry my keyboard from my cold dead hands.  

My new avatar

I know I change avatars like other people change their underwear but I've finally found one I really like. I'll be keeping this painting of the Chinese version of the Monkey King for the foreseeable future. Until I run across another picture of the Monkey King that I like that is.

Boo ya

I did it, I finally hit the big time. I got linked on Boing Boing. Check it out here. For linking me Mark now becomes my second favorite Boing Boing blogger, Xeni you'll always be number one with me! I'm more excited than I should be about being on there, I've been a huge fan of theirs for years and I finally get on the third greatest blog in the world! Woo hoo! Thanks for the heads up Splotchy and huge thank you to Mark at Boing Boing!

Blog News

I'm sure the last thing you people want is to read another blog by me, but screw what you want, I started another one anyway. It's called Monkey Scan and you can see it here. It's a blog where I post pictures of stuff that I've scanned along with one or two lines of commentary. No long posts over there or political posts either, I'll save those for over here. I deleted Monkey a Go-Go which was another blog that I started but got quickly tired of, which should not happen with Monkey Scan since I've got a shit load of stuff already scanned and am on the look out for more cheesy ads, pulp book covers, and odd cultural ephemera to scan for use on the blogs.