I had a membership drive and actually gained members.

I KNOW!

I’m as shocked as you are.

Please welcome Chad and Kewl. They blog. They’re not necessarily good at it.

And while I’m at it… where the hell is Gus Greeper? And CJ Hixon? Shouldn’t they be here. I think they should be.

Mango is not impressed with yet another revival of the SBC. I guess I should call the whole thing off.

Whatever.

I don’t care. This is stupid, I know that. I mean think about it… it’s called the Shitty Blogs Club. OF COURSE IT IS STUPID!

It’s simple. Sign up or not. Put a button on your blog or not. Listen to Shitty Blog Radio… or not. Talk shit in the forums… or… you guessed… or not.

I’m disappointed. I mentioned Survivor and Monty didn’t even flinch. Maybe she’s to good for us now. Or perhaps, I’ve teased the survivor thing one to many times.

Keep those new members coming. And Be Proud. Be Shitty!

(A rabid monkey, hopped on caffeine will be standing by to take your call.)

Do you know what I hate?

Well besides clowns, women drivers, rednecks, Starbucks, Work, winter, political correctness, mommy bloggers, sitcoms, country music, New Year’s Resolutions, Birthday Parties, Nascar…

Okay, you get the point.

I hate it when I hear the ‘Media’ talk about blogging. They always reduce it to some form of amateur journalism. Sure there are some bloggers who have used the medium in just that way, and hats off to them. But I don’t think that does blogging justice. I think plenty of people blog just cause they feel like they have something to say.

They may not how to say it, or even what exactly it is. Yet they try to say it.

To me this is, at the same time, what is great and awful about blogging. Literally, millions of people who may or may not have any ability to write; who may or may not have any idea what they want to say; who may or may not have even thought out what it is they are trying to do.

Chances are that they ran across a blog or had a friend that blogs or read about it somewhere and thought to themselves, I can do this… I should do this!

It’s not hard to set one up, you can do it for free, there is nothing stopping you. And so they set them up. And then they blog, whatever that means.

The resultant blogs are as varied as the people who ‘write’ them. These blogs, more often than not, don’t provide some useful or necessary information. They aren’t well written and edited masterpieces. They just are. Occasionally, something wonderful comes out, but mostly it just is.

That’s where the Shitty Blogs Club comes in. We not only understand this, we embrace it. We think blogging is just like life: occasionally interesting, but mostly shitty. On any given day most blogs are shitty. They have more meme than content. They are just plain neglected. They are whiny. They have more style than content. They have more content than style. Some bloggers will get defensive. “My Blog is a big Deal! It is an award winning blog! It is going to a)bring in ad revenue b) land me a book deal c) bring me fame and fortune or d) some other unlikely goal.”

But many of us get it. We know that this blogging is just something we do for good, bad or (most likely) ugly.

This club is for those who get it.

If you join this club, I personally promise that it will never help you make a dime, it will not increase your traffic or SEO, it will never get you noticed by editors, publishers or the Media.

There is only one reason to join this club. It’s to make a stand and say to the so-called blogosphere: I have a blog and it is mostly shitty, and I am proud of it.

This club has been, erm, dormant for a while. It’s time to kick some life back into it. Existing members: recruit new members! You surely know some bloggers who ‘get it,’ send them here! Potential new members: Read the FAQ and then read this. If you still want to join, go here.

Once you are a member, you can enjoy then benefits of Membership: Not listening to Shitty Blog Radio; not posting in the forum; not buying Shitty Blog stuff; and not participating in games and contests.

Be Proud. Be Shitty!

“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, something to hope for.”

At least that is according to the magnet someone randomly stuck up by register 2 at work.

Maybe its just ‘cause I’m lazy but I figured that 3 things were just too much work and that the world would be a much happier place in a much quicker time if those 3 essentials could all be boiled down into one.

After about a half a minute of thought between customers, I decided that blogging could cover it all.

1.  Something to DO

Once upon a time people went to work and worked there and when they came home they had hobbies.  They did such thrilling things as stamp collecting or building tiny ships in glass bottles.  Sometimes they made moonshine in their bathtubs or grew perfectly seasoned larvae infested cheeses in their basements.

Then bad things happened.  E-mail meant fewer stamps, alcohol was legalized again, shrink rays were invented to miniaturize huge ships to tiny bottle sizes, and reality televison shows claimed all the maggot infested cheeses for their programs.

All of a sudden there as nothing left to do, except watch those same reality shows or playing World of Warcraft.

Then blogging was born and we were never without anything to DO again.  When worse comes to worse you can create a blog about how you have nothing to do.  Or even better, if you have nothing to do you can blog about what your kids do or your pets do.

See…something to do = blogging = happiness.

2.  Something to LOVE.

This one was even easier.

In order to keep a blog you must have some degree of self love.  You must love to talk about yourself, and you must assume that everyone else loves you so much that they want to read about all your thoughts, dreams, opinions and what you had for breakfast.

You love watching your stats climb.  You love getting comments.  You love the love that your loving minions give you comments.  You love that strangers now know what you had for breakfast.

Yourself = Something to love = happiness

3.  Something to Hope For

When you start a blog you have hopes.  You hope to get readers, to get comments, to be internet famous.  You join social networking sites and shitty blog clubs in hopes to get more readers.  You open a cafepress account in hopes that people will buy stuff related to your blog.  You put google ads on your blog in hopes that you’ll make so much money blogging that you can quit your day job.

And, according to the quote I read, where there is hope, there is also happiness.

So there you go, the Grand Essential of Happiness is BLOGGING.

If you’re not ready for that level of happiness you can settle for some mild contentment by posting in the FORUMS.

I have issues.

I know, talk about stating the obvious. It’s what I do, I look around, see what I see and then blurt it out as though no one else can see it.

Amongst the many issues is this one: I can’t stand to be alone. Now add this one: I hate people. Man am I fucked.

It is this juxtaposition of issues that drove me to look for social interaction on the Internet in the first place. This goes back to the early 90’s. I discovered usenet. What a great idea, I thought. People from all over can ‘gather’ to discuss common interests. The first post I made (probably in some Pink Floyd.alt.alt.dumb kind of thread) was flamed by some stupid know-it-all, stoner loser. I guess my post didn’t measure up to his expectations.

The same pattern followed for Bulletin Boards, Chat Rooms, and just about everything on Internet. Even the porn was disappointing.

I always think the Internet will be the perfect answer to this the need people/hate people thing. You’d think that on the web, without the constraints of class, economy and geography, that you’d be able to find a group of people that ‘fit in’ with.

As a rule, I’ve failed miserable in that regard.

Every time I think that I’ve found something that will allow me to interact with other people, it turns out that those people are as narrow minded, boring and general stupid (or more so) than the people I have to deal with in the real world.

And any of you that want to tell me that I could make it work if I wanted to are simply missing the point. Of course I could behave like a complete moron and fit in with the rest of them, but that’s not what I’m looking for at all.

So I sit here and work on my Shitty Blog Sites and make believe that if I control the rules that it will give me what I want. But we all know better.

So despite my social networking, my email contacts, IM contacts, twitter friends and blog buddies when I am feeling alone and want some one to talk… there’s nobody there.

Damn I love the Internet.

Be Proud. Be Shitty!

It’s a new month and I’m still updating this thing. Will wonders never cease?

Not only that, our very own Monty contributed a dissertation on The Ironic Nature of Blogging in Regards to Self Pity and the Public Display Thereof. Or maybe it was a manifesto on The Duality of Human Nature, Specifically on How the Grass is much less Annoying on My Side of the Fence. Or maybe it was something else altogether… I’m not sure, you’d have to ask someone who actually read it.

We are now up to like a dozen members. Go us. At this rate we will complete the first phase of our take over of the internet by the turn of the millennium.

Maybe someday, I’ll actually update my blog. And maybe someday Mango will learn to put his hostility aside and love other people. Anything is possible.

Rumor has it that we have more posts in the works from other Contributors. I know, the excitement is over whelming. Do your best to control it.

In other news: Blogging still sucks and so does twitter. a-[e] still hates everything. And Shitty Blog Radio is live most Thursday Nights at 10 PM EST (or so.) Okay, none of that is really news, but it seemed like a half subtle way to get some cross promotion in there.

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. Every once in a while, in the wee hours of the night, Mango feels remorse for the many blog posts he’s deleted. Remorse for deleting them that is, not the shitty things he said. He feels no remorse about that at all.

Remember, only losers refuse to post in the forum.

Be Proud. Be Shitty!