Happy Birthday!

It's been a year. Really! The duck is wearing a party hat and everything, because it's his first birthday. It's the one-year anniversary of the creation of Ed's Olde Tyme Array of Frabtabulous Amazery! Shocked? I know I am! I mean, I only started this thing because the Google toolbar I downloaded for my mother had the famed 'BlogThis!' button. I figured, why not? And I did! And it's a year later, and not only am I still doing it, I'm doing it much more often, and doing it for an audience, which is frankly incredible, when you figure that I never intended to tell anyone about it. Seriously, I don't know why I stuck with it, but I'm certainly happy I have. I'm quite happy with the way things have turned out, and the past year has been... well, excellent. I started writing every day, I made some new friends, I achieved a small degree of fame as the top hit for a Google search of 'frabtabulous', and I had a lot of fun. And now it's my birthday, and it's time to celebrate. Right off the bat, I think the logical thing to do would be to reproduce my first words to you, my public- NAY! My posse. Here is "Greetings and/or salutations":

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So, givin that virtually anybody who's anybody who doesn't have a livejournal has some sort of weblog (or if you prefer, BLOG) I suppose it might be worth a shot to to talk nonesense about crap. I'm Ed. How's things?

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Well, I think I got off on the right foot. I hated LiveJournal right off the bat, and I misspelled 'given'. Go me. Well, there's one way to let the fall cometh before pride, and that's to give you a little bit of a 'best of' section, right now. I went through every word on this site, including audio, and comments, to come up with fifty-two items, that might be the funniest things I've ever written, but at the very least made me smile when I reread them. There's one for every week of the last year, although goodness knows I did not pick the funniest item from each week, otherwise there would be a lot of blank spaces at the beginning. They're roughly chronological, but in no real order. Just enjoy:

• Few people play the didgeridoo professionally, a shame really. None of the classic operas have didgeridoo parts. I blame racism.
• Oh yeah, you just bide your time Superman... wait till you get a face full o' SEA-MONKEYS!
• I know it's gotten some bad reviews, but clearly those were from people under the impression that they were going to see 'Bridge over Madison County II: Horse-Drawn Boogaloo' or something.
• Frankly, I hope the plane crashes, just so I have an excuse to resort to cannibalism!
• From time to time, I get so impressed with my own brilliance that I have no choice but to make a shirt out of it.
• If I've learned nothing else from a lifetime of reading science fiction, it's that hey, let's privatize the space industry! And if I've learned two things, the other would be to make sure your artificial intelligence is reliable before you put it in a robot that has the capacity to KILL PEOPLE! I mean, load it into a freakin' Roomba for testing purposes before you skip straight to ten-foot-tall knife monsters! Is that so hard?
• I honestly don't know how civilization advanced this far without ever before having a flashlight literally attached to a saw.
• There’s a certain logic to shortening, say, 'australopithecine'. That’s a word one wouldn't want to type twice. Frankly, it hurt to type it that one time.
• I mean, gifts huzzah, but still... there was a time when a birthday was the equivalent of leveling up, I would get an array of new skills and abilities and abskillities, or at least another few minutes tacked onto my bedtime, but there's nothing for turning nineteen.
• I like how I'm being sarcastic about what robots might do with their typefaces. It's America!
• Linguistic laziness in the same vein that makes the letter 'u' into a pronoun, 'a/s/l' into a greeting, and 'ROTFLMFAO' into 'Hmm, yes, that was a mildly amusing bon mot there, sir. Good show.'
• Because, see, while Ramune bears no resemblance whatsoever to lemonade, it is kind of like 7-up, see, which is supposedly lemon-lime flavored, right, and Ramunerime would be just too long to form a marketable name, see, and basically what I'm saying here is that the Japanese are crazy.
• Ah, Enrique my boy, you forget, gross-out comedy isn't really comedy. Much like iced tea isn't really tea, and 'Star Trek' novels aren't really 'Star Trek'. Or novels. Or anything more than kindling, usually.
• Ducky with bunny ears come Easter... Ducky as a pirate for Halloween... Ducky controlling the media during Hanukkah.... the possibilities are limited only by my ambition. So yeah, he probably ain't changing.
• This is a meal that assaults your tongue from all angles, surrounding it with texture and beating it with rusty lengths of flavor pipe.
• "Can you create a square circle?" Why yes, yes I can. "Can... can I see it?" No.
• It was recommended to me by a nameless, faceless stranger on the internet, so I went for it wholeheartedly.
• Take that, Japanese! You and your fancy efficient cars and robots and sleeping closets, you're no match for guys in rubber costumes in a scale model of your cities, now are you?
• It's a knock-down, drag-out battle for supremacy between an robot carrying a small army's worth of firepower and a guy who has a knife sometimes.
• The sort of people I look down upon, and for those of you who haven't been taking notes, I'm a big fat unemployed Trekkie with no girlfriend or driver's license who spends his Friday nights watching Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis. That's right, two kinds of Stargate. Chevron Seven is locked, baby.
• Ha ha... you've been hoodwink'd!
• I learned that the half-life of Strontium-90 is twenty-nine years. And that last sentence gave my hyphen key a nice little workout!
• I'd estimate that less than half of you all read what I'm writing. The rest of you just really like the duck.
• I'm in awe of these keys! Okay, let me paint you a picture... Okay, that came out pretty well, you should swing by and see it some time. Now, let me describe the keys to you through written medium...
• I also got cake last night. Less cuddly than the cat, but arguably more delicious.
• But at any rate, quarter of one or thereabout she asks me to walk her home. Iona college having the highest per-capita murder rate of any place in the world, ever, forever, I of course agree to be her protector for the nonce, and usher her safely home.
• But now, alas, no such scapegoat. Except, of course, the President. You can blame him for anything. Ha ha ha... he kind of looks like a monkey.
• And did some more New Yorking about, gawking like a tourist with no eyelids. You heard me, no eylids. Those folks gawk a lot, I'll tell you. Pretty much all gawking, all the time with those no-eyelids folks.
• If I am dead, please be kind enough to send me a copy of my obituary, so that I can frame it and put it on my wall.
• I invented a game, actually, called 'Poke-a-Freshman', which one plays with the aid of these newbies. The basic premise involves finding a freshman, and poking them in the arm, but there's a lot of complex strategy involved as well, that I can't really get into at this juncture. Maybe later, if you're good, and you eat all your vegetables.
• Benjamin Franklin's cold, dead claws may rake us across the face every second of every day in the summer, but now! Now is our time to be free!
• Duck vampires? Crazy, eh? What, do they suck the blood out of breadcrumbs? I mean really, what's up with that?
• This does not mean I'm anxious to spend the next half-day cooped up in Doorley Auditorium, faking an accent, talking loudly, and standing for most of it. By the end of the day my throat and feet will be places where no joy can live.
• I was born without a sense of musical taste; I can do nothing about it. I try to be like the rest of you, with your 'Rolling Stones' and your 'Beethoven' and your 'Flava Flav', but no...
• Then of course we have Klingon and Elvish. I could learn one of those, but I'm not sure if I want to be a big nerd or a big geek. Hmmm... decisions, decisions.
• How can somebody mispronounce somethings like 'Cthulhu'? Or 'Yog-Sothoth'? Or 'Nyarlathotep'? They sound just like the way they're spelled!
• I know you want to read it all at once, smothering yourself in my rich, creamy text, but hold off! Think of tomorrow. Think of the future! Think of the children!
• I tell you, when I obtain omnipotence, which is inevitable, I'm going to be a lot more sensible. A bush that burns but does not consume; now, that's classic! An awkward portrait on a buttery foodstuff? Not so much.
• And then, after a few years, I'll switch things up, and roll out the huge banners that say "Blogger has always been at war with Xanga!" and by that point, you'll all pretty much be my loyal slaves! Doubleplus awesome!
• It is my understanding, physical embodiment of soul-crushing, heartless bureaucratic system that exists primarily to serve itself, the welfare of individuals being no more than an interesting byproduct, that I am to metaphorically give you big wet kisses whilst you metaphorically stab me in the face with a rusty penknife. But me? Bitter? Why would you think such a thing?
• Okay, get this: over the course of a day, I dressed up like Arsenio Hall, started a gang war, had sex with my girlfriend, then watched a plane crash into a fast-food restaurant.
• But, alas, today was a day off. So, I did nothing. No, really. Nothing. At all. I didn't breathe, I ceased metabolizing, I quite literally ceased existing from the beginning of today until just now, when I rematerialised in order to update my weblog.
• "Oh! I'm sorry! Did I say 'jerk'? I meant 'hero'! Please, accept some of my kisses!" and I'll say "Candy-type? Or make out-type?" and she'd say "Both are available,"
• There shall be no regaling of you, by me, tonight! The patented Ed-larity© shall not be seen! Interesting and unusual word choice: eschewed! Excessive verbosity surrounding awkward sentence construction intended to delight and amuse is not gong to be found!
• I suggest we give one of the pipers a fiefdom and some moonboots to remedy the problem. Oh, and how often do you think those two objects get mentioned in the same sentence?
• Now, I'm no Christian, but I still like getting presents. And I'm no Jew, but I still like setting fires. And I'm not black, but I still like... uh... doing the kwanzaa dance. And I'm no pagan, but I still... uh... sacrifice virgins at midnight? Yes? No? A little help?
• Man, what happened to these action-adventure shows that glorified being a clever bastard, or for our English friends, a cheeky monkey?
• But everything ain't really all that much when you think about it. Or, moreso, when you don't.
• But I didn't feel like examining the scenery; this is America, and if it's not instant, it's not really gratification.
• I'm like a dog that's tasted blood; there's no taking it back now. Which brings me to my next point: I've started murdering people and eating them. No, wait, that doesn't seem right... what was it I was getting at?
• My mind is a barren field where self-confidence does not take root, and so logically knowing that things will go just fine does preclude my actually worrying about tripping over my own feet, falling forward, and crushing her to death. You say morbid, I say cautious.
• Well, I think I got off on the right foot. I hated LiveJournal right off the bat, and I misspelled 'given'.

Well, it's been quite a year. Hasn't it, Raoul?

"Breaking out this comedic device again, eh boss?"

You know it! It's a good device.

"I know I love my brief moment of existence as a more-or-less separate entity from yourself."

Who wouldn't?

"True, true. Hey, anything else you want to bring up at your big birthday bash, boss? Any other bits to pull out while they're still good?"

Yes, Raoul, that might be a thing in which I should want to put some consideration; airing out ye bits of Ed-style comedy, or komedy- nay: qomedy- before my adoring public realizes their utter asininity.

"Oh! Good show, sir! Oddly constructed sentence, with an absurd vocabulary, a hint of self-aggranizement, and some mild self-deprecation. A quadruple threat!"

Quintuple threat, if you take it in the context of a fake conversation. And don't forget 'qomedy', I've pulled that out four times now, each time like it was brand new.

"Really? I never noticed. It's just so brilliant, it takes me by surprise each time!"

Oh, you only say that because I can will you out of existence with my mind...

"Well, I won't say that's not a factor. But you're still amazing beyond compare, sir!"

You're too kind, Enrique.

"Er, you said my name was Raoul, sir..."

Hey! I created you, I can name you whatever I want. Gustav, Hoolio, whatever. Anything vaguely ethnic.

"W-"

Because ethnic names are funnier. And speaking of funny, you've stopped being, so get back in my head and let me finish off this big birthday post, alright? Alright.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Internet. Friends. If I may get mushy for an instant... thank you all. I never intended for anyone to read this, ever. It was just something to do when I was bored. And, then, somehow I had an audience, and I was writing for people, trying to entertain. And sometimes it was a challenge, and sometimes it was a chore, and sometimes I couldn't do it, but overall, I think I've done alright for myself. I quite enjoyed reading my entire site, from stem to stern, and I'll do it again next year, when I have even more to read. And hopefully I'll keep it up the year after that, and so on, and so forth, ad absurdum, all for a little site which I didn't think would last a month. Of course, that was when no one read it but myself. I know I wouldn't have done this much without people to do it for, so thank you all. Mom, Dad, the rest of my family; who basically get all the news in my life from the site, thank you and I'm doing fine. My old friends from high school, who keep in touch through the site, Andris and Lesley, and if anyone else comes by, thank you and drop me a line. My friends at Iona, who see me everyday but still come here to laugh; Jose, Meg, Candice, Alek, Dan, Monica, the twins: Vincent Avatar and Ford Dent, and anyone I missed because it's late, I'll edit you in later, and thank you all, you guys are the greatest, we should get together sometime, have lunch, your treat. My friend from the Internet, Amber; I've never met you, I've never seen you, you could kick me in the throat and I wouldn't know you, but you're really, really cool and smart and funny, your comments usually make my day, so thank you for being my first blog stalker. My girlfriend, Nicole, who I freakin' met because of this site, and who I love, and even though you often distracted me from posting, thank you. And anyone I don't know, who's never posted a comment, who's passed through and read a few things and smiled and had his or her day in any way brightened by me being, well, me, thank you. And finally, the big guy who makes all things possible, who deserves all the thanks and praise in the world and beyond: Ducky. Thanks for everything, Ducky. It was getting a little saccharine towards the end there, and I was getting teary eyed, and you bought me a nice out the way only a little yellow duck can.

But seriously, thank you all for reading. I hope to see you again at Ed's Olde Tyme Array of Frabtabulous Amazery's second birthday. And many more besides. Now, thank the nice audience, people in my head.

"Thank you!"

And now you, Ducky.

Quack!

And with that, I hope you all have a great year, filled to the brim with comedy. No, make that komedy. Aw, screw it: qomedy.