Do What You Feel Friday!: Reflect Reflectively on Year One

March 7, 2008 at 11:26 pm | Posted in America, DWYFF!, Evil Tribune, Idol, Lowell Sun, New Orleans, Noose, Prez Elimination Party | 5 Comments
Tags: your mother

Storm clouds are gathering on this Do What You Feel Friday. 

But at the moment, the sun is shining on Lowell and the weather is ideal for a stroll down memory lane. 

Yesterday marked one full year of soul searchin’ and knowledge-droppin’ at Lucy the Blog headquarters.  And what a year it’s been for the Dog. 

We laughed.  We cried.  We learned 12 things about Tyra Banks’s vagina.  We opened foreign bureaus in Pakistan, Sweden, and Chechnya.  And we licked the interior of our anus.  It was awesome!

So today, please take our paw and join us as we revisit some highlights from the last 365 days.  Or don’t.  It’s Friday, so do whatcha wanna, do whatyalike, and do what you feel.

Cue sappy accoustic Green Day song, and commence nostalgic clip montage.

We first dipped our toes into the cyberwaters on March 6, 2006, with this post: Kanye West Doesn’t Care About Lucy the Dog.  Since then, there have been 140 posts, the most popular of which continues to be This Week In the Noose: April 9-13.

This Week In the Noose was a Monday feature that lasted all of six weeks.  If I had nothing else to do with my life, I would’ve kept up with it.  No one would deny its awesomeness, and it provided an excuse to get really small and blather in a loose, meandering fashion. 

However, that shit took forever to research.  And Lucy the Blog’s global expansion has not come without costs. 

To pay for the Lucy the Blog board game due out by Christmas 2008, we had to fire two Noose research assistants.  And finances were also hampered by legal expenses incurred after an intern took offense to complimentary statements about her buttocks in a performance review.

Nonetheless, the aforementioned This Week In the Noose post has gotten more hits than any other post on this site.  By a landslide.  Why? 

Because every time someone searches for ‘crocodile’ on Google images, that post comes up early in the search results.  Isn’t that the weirdest fucking thing?  By way of comparison, yesterday that post got 94 page views.  The second-highest post got 11.  Which illustrates not only that post’s popularity, but also the site’s global dominance.

Our site’s most traffic-ey day was Tuesday, May 15, when this post was linked to by its inspiration, the ample-bosomed, glass-eating, world-beater Lenora Claire.  We thank Ms. Claire, and we desire her brazenly and without shame.

Lucy the Blog’s impact has extended well beyond the interwebs, all the way to the mainstream media and even the presidential election.  Pundits nationwide agree that Lucy the Dog’s gooseface impaled the presidential aspirations of Jonothon “The Impaler” Sharkey.  Have you heard his name since?

In the local media circuit, pressure from Lucy the Blog readers eventually forced The Evil-Tribune to release Rob Bradford’s hijacked URL. 

And our rabid coverage of The Lowell Sun has shaken the paper to its core.  The Sun’s Community Forum has not been the same since Lucy the Dog exposed Jim Campanini as a not-very-good editor who was embarassing the paper with his unprofessional, reckless assassination of the Lowell teacher’s union. 

In the wake of that post, we’ve heard nary a peep from Campanini in the Forum.  Though in fairness, he’s been quite busy reminiscing about diddling unsuspecting women in his teenage years.

Other activist highlights this year included our ongoing support of New Orleans and our Do What You Feel Friday call for the nation to come together and yank it.  Heritage Foundation researchers estimate that roughly 2.6 million readers followed our advice and masturbated in unison that day.  We can’t thank you enough!

And now let’s hand ourseleves a few awards that we worked so hard for:

Most Embarrassing Post in Hindsight: 
Death to America: Yes We Can, My Ass 

Lucy the Dog really lost it on that post!  But such outbursts are to be expected in the dull midst of sober living.  

I must say, however, I’m not as embarrassed by that post as I was a week ago.  While it certainly overlooked Super Tuesday’s positive implications for Obama, it was motivated by the skepticism I’ve always had that Hillary will ultimately reign supreme. 

I first started exploring the Hillary-Obama dynamic in this April 5th post, Bush, Obama, Botswana, and Other Things Pondered During a 14-Second Bowel Movement.  (Which, incidentally, won the award for Best Post About a 14-Second Bowel Movement.  That award, with other lesser prizes, was given during a ceremony before this program.)

Funnest Post in Hindsight:  Team Oden Relocates and a Grown Beast Weeps

On that woeful eve, who could’ve predicted the fortunes awaiting the Beast Lair?  We are thrilled for the Sensai and Perk is a Beast, and we thank PIAB in advance for taking us to a game before the season ends.  Hey, don’t the Sixers and Calvin Booth visit the Fleet Center in March?  Just saying.

Best Comment:  Tara on Pfc. John Landry, Jr. (1986-2007) & LCpl. PJ Sora (1984-2004)

I always cringe a little when I see people have linked to this post by searching for PJ or John.  I sincerely hope those readers don’t take offense to anything I’ve written, as I mean no disrespect to the boys’ memories.  However, Tara’s comment did make my heart sink a little.  On Christmas Eve, months after this post was written, Tara wrote:

“I really hope your eventual article about P.J. Sora did more to capture the essence of who he was because to know him was to love and hate him all at the same time. He was both arrogant and kind, brutally honest and funny as hell. He was the type of guy who could make you want to smack him and then want to be his best friend in a matter of minutes.

But most importantly, he was fiercely loyal to his friends and family. He loved his country, his family and the “pack of idiots” he would eventually call his brothers.

He was a talented trumpet player and was constantly goofing off at our many band rehearsals and marching band practices. He graduated in 2002 from Londonderry High School, just a year after I did. We went through marching band together and shared at least one music class together, and my only regret is that I didn’t get to know him better. But I feel blessed for having met him and for the opportunity to say that he was my friend, even if we were never all that close.”

I wanted to highlight this comment simply because I never responded to it, and I should have.  But I still don’t know exactly what to say.

Interestingly, on the very day that Tara wrote the post, I was visiting the battlefield at Gettysburg.  Two days later, I walked through Arlington National Cemetery and the lot of tombstones for those who’ve died during Operation Enduring Freedom.  That walk annihilated me.

But I must be honest and say I’m conflicted.  And I don’t know how to express the way I felt when I visited P.J.’s family or Gettysburg or Arlington.  Or how I feel when NewsHour ends with the honor roll of lost soldiers.  My heart truly aches for each one of them.  Their loss is too depressing to bear.

Yet at the same time, I can’t help but feel resigned or angry or something.  All these fucking wars.  And for what?  I realize that in the Civil War, for instance, getting rid of slavery was important.  But I can’t reconcile that cause with the image of two large groups of men running toward each other and shooting guns.  And when that fails, slamming bayonettes into each other.  Centuries and centuries of this.  We can’t figure out a better way?  I don’t get it.  And even when the cause is noble, I’m just not sure how I feel about the choice to go off and kill.  If that means I don’t support the troops, then maybe I don’t support the troops.  I don’t know.  That’s the point.

So if you ever read this, Tara, I’m sorry for the inadequate and belated response.  I’m sure P.J. was a good kid; his parents certainly were wonderful when I met them.  But I can’t help feeling like his life and goodness could’ve been better directed elsewhere.  I dunno.

Best Drug-Related Post That’ll Make Us Forget About Death and War: 
Do What You Feel Friday!: Scrape Away Your Dignity

Again, I must be honest:  I love soft-core drugs.  And when I can’t have them, I am sad.

Lucy the Blog Man of the Year:  Sanjaya

Who else?  Without him, Idol has lost all meaning; this season sucks dong.  But we should take this opportunity to thank Man of the Year runner-up Ridge Forrester, who contributed this brilliant American Idol recap.  (Unfortunately, some of the video clips that made Ridge’s post kick ass were pulled by the Forrester Creations legal department.)

We would be remiss to conclude this post without taking a moment of silence to recognize those we lost in the last 365 days, including:  Brad Delp, Mr. Butch, Jerry Falwell, and Charles Nelson Reilly.

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OK, moment of silence over.

We hope you enjoyed this year in review. 

We thank our readers, and send particularly boisterous shout-outs to Pax Arcana, Perry Ellis, Perk Is a Beast, Hate the Future, Henre, Coach Football, the Sherpa, and everyone else whose mouse-clicks keep Lucy the Blog in business.

In closing, how ’bout an encore of Springsteen at Jazz Fest.  I just love this performance.  How can a poor man stand such times as this?  Amen, boss.