Three years and many puns ago

Roughly three years ago I started blogging (July 24, 2002) with my first blog Atheist to a Theist with the Chesterton quote "if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly." My original intent was mainly to comment on the news of the day and as a fairly recent convert to exercise my faith in the discussion on the Church and politics. I had no intent on doing any sort of humor which just goes to show how little I know myself. An article on Catholic blogging by Tim Drake in the National Catholic Register was where I had first heard of Catholic blogging. I recognized Mark Shea’s name in the article and so Googled it to find his blog. What I found had me hooked instantly and I explored the links in his sidebar to find other Catholic blogs. At that time there were considerably less Catholic blogs, probably between 50 and 100. Mark’s and Amy’s blogs were then as now the preeminent Catholic blogs, though it was Kathy Shaidle who started the first Catholic blog well over five years ago. Of course Mark has been on a writing sabbatical, but since he recently finished his book hopefully we will see him return soon. Like many bloggers I started by commenting in other’s comment boxes and made the jump to starting my own blog because of the limitations of commenting and the vanity of having my thoughts in one place.

I remember when I use to receive 5 to 10 hits a day and was pretty happy that anybody was reading what I had to say. Now three years later with 3000 plus posts, 10,000 plus comments, and close to 600,000 total hits I am still pretty happy that anybody is still reading what I have to say. I never had any intentions in life to write anything. Of course I also never had any intentions to one day become a Catholic. I am a Catholic and I write though I don’t consider myself to be a Catholic writer. I am humbled when those who can actually write link to my posts, though I know it is because of my parody and punditry and not because of my writing skills (of which I consider to be akin to grammatical speed bumps.) I have no problem when people correcting my grammatical errors in the comment boxes. Open source editing is fine with me since I need all the help I can get. I just hope it has improved a little bit over the last three years. I have no delusions of producing the great American novel and am pretty happy to tickle a funny bone once in a while or say something worth while however feebly the words are chosen.

So once again thanks to my readers and those bloggers who link to me. Some of the better comedy pieces I have produced were suggested to me by other bloggers or readers. On in particular I would like to remember is Michelle of "And Then!" A blog now sadly gone for over a year and she had many fine suggestions for me. Yearly I also always mention Victor Lams who is a major inspiration to me and who has been blogging for over four years. He is the blogger I also would most wish would come into a financial windfall. When Victor was unemployed for a bit of time after his company went down the tubes in an Enron like scandal his free time produced some of the most creative and funny posts ever seen. From Puppet blogging to his Lamstoons it was a sad day from a selfish prospective when he was once again gainfully employed.

I have put together a "best of" page to cover some of my more comedic posts over the last three years.