Anyone Remember The Year 2010 And How It Seemed So Crazy Then

I am suddenly nostalgic and in the mood to look back ten years to 2010 and try to remember what the hell the world looked like back then.

Back then this was under a completely different name - Amendments We Need - and the blog's focus was supposed to be on political reforms and high-minded philosophizing. But even then the postings were sliding into weekly (and then daily) words of outrage over the partisan nightmare the Republicans were creating during the Obama years, so I changed it (and busted a lot of links to earlier articles in the process, sigh).

I realize looking back the amount of writing (85) was minimal compared to recent years where I break 100 easily, although the years 2015 (205) and 2016 (307) are outside the norms. Back then I was still finding a voice, and coping with a lot of bad stuff in the Real World.

2010 was the middle of my lost years, between late 2008 when I lost my full-time job as a librarian before regaining a new librarian post in early 2013. Roughly four-plus years of career searching, thanks to the Great Recession that killed off the civil service job market: A lot of city, county, and state revenues relied on property taxes, and the collapsed housing market cut into those revenues well up to now.

Best I could find were part-time jobs, inventory checking here, temp Census taking there, unable to hold either for long while I kept hunting anything in editing (Journalism), research (Libraries), or tech (Computer skills, and studying for A+ certification on a job-hunting grant).

In terms of what I was writing on the blog, it bounced between the serious endeavors - lamenting the failures of mainstream media and such - and the quick posts - thus and so - in order to keep myself engaged with writing while the real world was bumming me out.

Man I was pretty depressed back then (and sadly that depression is chronic and not far from my mind)

I notice I was linking a lot to Glenn Greenwald back then... and that faded away in favor of Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic as well as the general team of misfits at Balloon Juice, upon which a lot of my current blogging is based. I also started linking to David Frum and Conor Friedersdorf as kinds of counter-balance of conservative viewpoints, because I try to accept the larger scope of things (even as I got to find conservative viewpoints skewing further to a vicious extreme).

I was also taunting Erik Erickson often because the SOB threatened to shoot census workers at a time I was enumerating. Grrr.

If there were any personal bright spots, my brother Phil took me to a Rays game that ended up the team's first No-Hitter. WOOHOO!

Looking back, I'm finding something that had me looking forward: I wrote an article "Daddy What Did YOU Do During the Republican War on America" projecting all the way up to the far-flung year of 2020 (oh, hi). Oh good God, re-reading this article is breaking my heart. Not just the fanciful idea that I'd actually be married with kids by now (looks forlornly across an empty house as a Florida thunderstorm rages outside), but that ten years ago some form of sanity would prevail. That somehow, the crazed Tea Party efforts by the Far Right - the media, the GOP Congresscritters, the Birthers that would metastasize into QAnon nuts six years later - would implode on itself, that enough Americans would rise up against the tax-cut obsessions and racist/sexist bullshit.

Now I know why I was looking back now. Why I'm in such a mood. Part of me remembered this, remembered the hope I had for brighter happier days in the 2010 decade. All to see it come crashing down thanks to Mitch and trump and 62 million insane neighbors.

That was 2010, ten years gone.

Are we going to let 2020 ruin everything between now and 2030?

Are we even going to see 2030?

Ten Years Blogging And All I Got to Show For It Is a T-Shirt

Well, as sold on CafePress and what not... ahem. I should focus here.

Infidel753 over on his blog announced he had completed ten years of crazy blogging and took a moment to look back at his biggest reads. Blogger.com tracks viewership stats, country of linkage, and search terms used to bring up the blog.

He pointed out how Pinku-Sensei over at his blog had done the same thing, and I got to thinking that hey, it wouldn't hurt to look back as part of the Ten Years Gone sentiment and see what was popular among the eight regular readers and occasional guests...

10) There's a book on suggested amendment ideas! Oct 23, 2007
1135 Pageviews

This is a hold-over from the days where I wanted to focus my blogging on amendment reforms and ideas, when the blog was Amendments We Need and... almost nobody read it. But this picked up a lot of traffic because of the keywords: the word "amendment" and the name "Larry Sabato," a well-known Constitutional scholar and political pundit. Sad thing is, there's nothing to this entry. It's barely two paragraphs, mostly noticing there's a book on suggested amendment ideas. It's kind of sad how the Google search algorithms work.

9) Democratic Debate Drinking Game for October Oct 1, 2015 7 comments
1144 Pageviews

This is part of a phase on my blogging when I couldn't take the then GOP Primary debates of the 2015-16 news cycle. So to cope, I wrote a series of mocking, almost horrifyingly accurate drinking rules for people watching the debates.

This isn't even the highest ranking drinking game mockery, just one that eked into the top 10. I will say more higher on the list.

8) The Danger of Trump's World View Apr 29, 2016 5 comments
1245 Pageviews

The biggest reason I get a lot of recent traffic is that somewhere around 2012 (2011?) I came to the attention of Batocchio, blogger at Vagabond Scholar, who placed links of my articles at Crooks & Liars newsblog under the Mike's Blog Round-Up daily share. Since then, other guest managers of MBRU like Tengrain and Infidel would link me as well, kicking up my traffic from fourth-tier to... um, maybe second-tier infamy.

This affected me in two ways. One, it increased how often I would blog because before then I would post something maybe once a week: Nowadays I try to blog something of interest once a day. Two, it made me try to write things of genuine thought and intellectual worthiness to make the grade for the MBRU notice.

This actually wasn't one of my more intellectual works. Borrowing a lot from Adam Silverman's more scathing attack on Trump's world-view from Balloon-Juice, all I did was add on my views of Barber's Presidential Character traits and let it out there. It had a lot of the emotional urgency - due to it pointing how dangerous Trump would be, period - which I guess made it a popular article to link. It not only got the C&L treatment, I also got linked to Infidel's individual weekly wrap-up as well as a link from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo!

7) Florida Ballot Amendments 2012: The Big No Oct 12, 2012 1 comment
1257 Pageviews

One thing I noticed from the analytical information is how I get traffic from other nations. I get readers flocking in from places like Russia and Japan for certain articles. Sometimes because the Russians were trying to hack me, probably, still I shouldn't be too paranoid. Ahem...

This was HUGELY popular in places like Japan and France, and the reason why was that I was blogging about a rare thing: the statewide amendments on the Florida ballot in 2012. There must not be a lot of other people who spend the time - at least back then - to go over each amendment in detail and offer up a suggested "vote this way". I must pop up high on the search engine results whenever someone wants to know "hey, what's Amendment 7 about" and "should I vote NO on this amendment on tax exemptions for war veterans?"

6) Florida 2014 Election: Sample Ballots and Reminders Oct 12, 2014 8 comments
1380 Pageviews

As noted with 7), my Florida-based evaluations of the sample ballots and amendment votes are a big hit with the search engines. This one got slightly better traffic, and even got more heated commentary, because of the key races for Governor, the Medical Marijuana vote, and the Pasco County Mosquito Control Board (sadly, there wasn't enough information on that year's Mosquito Control candidates, which led to a lot of angry readers). This year, I hope I get a good showing for the general election recommendations...

5) American Income, American Injustice Mar 6, 2015 2 comments
1503 Pageviews

This one is one of my prouder achievements. Building off of the examinations from better writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chad Staton, I delved into our nation's nasty little secret of police-driven extortion in the form of Asset Forfeiture, and how it was keeping poor communities broken and feeding into the cycle of mistrust between law enforcement and the citizenry needing their service. I consider it one of my better calls for reforms I've written.

4) Whatever happened to the Port-O-San Cleaner from Woodstock Aug 15, 2009 7 comments
1569 Pageviews

If the previous article is my proudest work, this is my most personal fave.

I've been a fan of Woodstock Festival 1969 ever since my high school years studying modern history, and so every year every August I find myself gushing over the event. In particular, I came to respect the man who showed up in the classic award-winning documentary working on keeping the Port-O-Sans clean for 500,000 (!) attendees, and so in 2009 I dedicated a researched blog article about Mr. Taggart, the Hero of Woodstock.

Where most of these articles are ranked high thanks to traffic links from Crooks & Liars and other bloggers, this one does not. And yet it made the Top 5 all on its own, based on search engine requests from hundreds of other people trying to find anything on the "guy who cleaned the Port-O-Sans at Woodstock." Every day I see one, three, five, eight people hitting this article - sometimes not even near the anniversary - all because they want to find any info on him too. Such is the legacy Mr. Taggart has left to us: there are so many who watch the documentary and are touched by the man's story and who want to know more...

And I'm still waiting to hear from Mr. Taggart's son! C'mon man, I need to hear your story...

3) The Long October: The Ambitious Damage of The Hollow Men Oct 15, 2013 2 comments
1969 Pageviews

This was me, waxing poetic during the big Republican Shutdown effort of 2013, what I called "the Long October." This made a big impact on the MBRU page the week I wrote it, and I later considered it for Batocchio's Annual Roundup at his Vagabond Scholar site, which added to the traffic.

2) And Iran. Day Six Jun 18, 2009 2753 Pageviews

I was one of hundreds of people blogging about the Iranian Green Revolution back in 2009, hoping at the time that the people's uprising might lead to good things.

Sadly, it didn't.

I still got a lot of traffic for this entry, most of it from France, probably because this one had photos to it, some I had created on the I Can Has Cheezburgr site using the Demotivational Poster tool. And ouch, the links have actually gone bad. I need to go in and fix those...

In the meantime, the Iranian uprising had been quashed in one way but had retained life in another: the Iranian people still vote for the most moderate, global-minded candidates they can in spite of the Ayatollah's efforts to push hardliners into office. Granted, the moderate officials can't do much, but the votes are still a major denouncement of the religious leadership, and they've led to better foreign relations that can lead to a kind of peace that the Ayatollah cannot ignore.

1) It Has To Be Done: GOP Debate Drinking Game 2016 Jul 22, 2015 17 comments
3879 Pageviews

I will admit: This one was too easy to make.

The early polling for the Republican slate of Presidential candidates was making it clear that Trump was dominating the set, and that the upcoming televised debates starting that August were going to be barn-burners (in a bad way). At one point I tweeted to Oliver Willis if he knew of any drinking games that were going to be in play for at least the first debate, and then I decided "You know what? F-ck it, I'm writing my own."

Even though I personally do not drink alcohol of any kind. I *am* keen on the microbrewery process as a purely intellectual / cooking /chemistry interest, but that's it. I'd be drinking flavored tea where I could (and hell, even drinking water to excess is toxic, so any drinking game carries a risk...)

By creating that drinking game list in July, I had gotten ahead of a couple of other bloggers (and professional writers) who were trying the same thing before the actual August event. By getting in early for the search engine parameters, I ended up at the top of the results pages for a lot of people looking to get buzzed - or drowning their sorrows - during what turned out to be the Worst of Times and the Blurst of Times.

Adding to the fun was getting Pinku-Sensei showing up, plugging in his suggested drink recipes for each GOP candidate, and which helped spike interest.

I made another drinking game for September, building off the success of this one, but by the October one I realized the gag wasn't that funny anymore and that people were likely getting drunk over the realization that Trump was winning the Republican ballot. I don't think I will create another election-based drinking game again.

Unless Ted Cruz and Marco "No-Show" Rubio make comebacks for 2020.

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So there you have it. My ten most viewed articles in the first ten years of this blog.

Of the articles I'm most proud of that didn't make the list, a popular article on Presidential Character for Woodrow Wilson deserves honorable mention. I also get a lot of traffic for the MegaCon comic book conventions, but that's about it.

I do encourage you all to of course read every article. :)

Anniversary: Ten Years Gone

It kept slipping my mind until just now:

I have officially been blogging like a madmen for ten straight years.

I started a blog - back when this was Blogspot - on May 4, 2006 for several reasons:

• As a librarian I need to learn the blogging methods to teach instructional classes to the public about it.
• I had a background in journalism and a hobby/interest in creative writing.
• I was curious.
• I had political issues to discuss.

Originally this blog was going to be a serious, academic focus on the need for Constitutional reforms: our system of checks and balances were inadequate to the demands of the 21st Century, and our government had become unresponsive to the real needs of the citizenry.

So I started Amendments We Need, and figured I could spend an entry a week or a month to write long-winded essays of reformer ideas.

It stayed that way - with long gaps of inactivity - until December 2007, when the upcoming 2008 Presidential election grabbed my interest, and I found myself blogging too often about the general craziness - the economic downturns, the rise of Obama, the horrors of Palin, the anxiety of the age - of that election cycle

I kept the title - and old website addy - until May 2013 when I changed it to this more exotic and suspenseful Notice a Trend title. Muy sexy, no?

Man, ten years of this stuff.

I've had some crazy posts: Sharing voter turnout information to Andrew Sullivan's Dish blog back in 2008 when it meant something... Blogging about the Iranian Green uprising that turned bloody (but hopefully a sign of future freedom to that nation)... sharing work with the Lost Battalion/Horde following Ta-Nehisi Coates... the constant wait for confirming my Obama Shoelace Theory (that a Republican will go as far as to accuse Obama of unpatriotic shoelace tying)... the four years of job-hunting during the dark days of the Great Recession... getting into fights with anonymous comment posters... Having Crooks & Liars pick up the occasional entry for their Blog Round-Up, and Vagabond Scholar and Infidel753 and Tengrain and Monkeyfister and Pinku-Sensei and Clarissa and... oh man I lost track of the others sharing my links, kick me I am so sorry I forgot...

Ten years of all this.

A lot of it angry, some of it depressing, but enough of it hopeful and grateful for the future ahead for all of us.

Ten years gone, but more years ahead. And this one's not over yet. There's a lot of work to do (DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD) and there never seems to be enough time, but we get by...

Did you ever really need somebody, and really need em bad
Did you ever really want somebody, the best something you ever had
Do you ever remember me, baby, did it feel so good
Cause it was just the first time, and you knew you would... - Led Zeppelin "Ten Years Gone"

And I'm 9 posts away from reaching 1000 articles.

I should break out Yes' "Tempus Fugit" next.