1 Year Anniversary
This day marks the 1-year anniversary of this blog. It is interesting (to me at least) how this all started, and I beg your indulgence while I share it with you.
For years, I have been writing articles, essays, and blistering commentary on current events and social issues, then mass emailing them to all of my friends and acquaintances, and to all the email addresses that appeared on “forwarded” message from these people. It was shameless. It was also great fun, and was something to do late at night when I was board of playing Everquest, Desert Combat or Postal 2. An on-line friend of mine in Alaska that I played Everquest with told me that she started a blog, and I should come check it out. It was on “Live Journal” and I was not the least bit impressed by the layout or the community, even if I did enjoy her posts. I was reluctant to do the same, because I frankly did not want to be known as a “blogger” and I thought that “blogging” was an extremely arrogant, if not a gay act. As if somebody wanted to read about the life of an office worker in Kansas City. I discussed this with the MOD, and he told me that I was already extremely arrogant, and nobody would read my posts anyway, so…
There is a bit of a back-story here, and it is very relevant. In the late Autumn of 2004, The MOD and I decided that we could make extra money selling T-shirts, as we both have talent when it comes to art and design (MOD has a degree, and artistic creation is his job; I dropped out of the Institute) and we have a clever insight to American culture and humanity in general. On the evening of Christmas day, 2004 we started hashing out designs and sketched them all on a 40-cent note pad. I think we came up with about 20-30 good ideas for shirts. I also think that the Indian Ocean Tsunami the following day was a direct result of our creative efforts. During the following weeks, there would be a few more good ideas, but neither of us knew how we would actually market and sell these shirts over the Internet. We played our computer games, and the idea sort of went to the back burner, until it was revived again in the spring of 2005 when we had another brainstorm of ideas for creative shirts. We started debating about distribution, and one of my main objections was that neither of us knew how to code HTML or how to market our products effectively over the Web. We decided to do some research. Later, while I was researching the costs of Web hosting and HTML programs, I started thinking… maybe I can start a free test site and buy some HTML books, so we don’t have to pay somebody else to do it. There weren’t any free hosting sites not inundated with ads, so I thought again of blogs and decided to see what different sites there were for us to use. It did not take me long to find Google’s “Blogspot”, because I used Google to search for blog sites. After reading about how the HTML code could be changed by the user, I decided to start “The Truth” as nothing more than an exercise in HTML. I already had tens of thousands of words written, so I created my blog at Blogspot, with the decision to post previous writings that I had sent out in mass emails, while I learned HTML, and planned the take over of the American t-shirt market. Good plan, but it did not work out that way.
It’s history from there. I was going to call my blog “Pravda” (the name of the ex-official Soviet state newspaper, and current main news agency of the Russian republic) which means “Truth” in Russian, but decided instead I would call it the “The Truth”, because I did not want any confusion, and the title in English fit my satirical style of writing. The shirts have again receded to the back burner because me and the MOD both have become swamped with real-life work (but the shirts are still cooking), and I have since used my blog as an outlet for my creativity and social commentary, just like I did with my mass emails. This whole project has been great fun, and I will continue to post commentary on here as long as I feel like it.
-Masterson
For years, I have been writing articles, essays, and blistering commentary on current events and social issues, then mass emailing them to all of my friends and acquaintances, and to all the email addresses that appeared on “forwarded” message from these people. It was shameless. It was also great fun, and was something to do late at night when I was board of playing Everquest, Desert Combat or Postal 2. An on-line friend of mine in Alaska that I played Everquest with told me that she started a blog, and I should come check it out. It was on “Live Journal” and I was not the least bit impressed by the layout or the community, even if I did enjoy her posts. I was reluctant to do the same, because I frankly did not want to be known as a “blogger” and I thought that “blogging” was an extremely arrogant, if not a gay act. As if somebody wanted to read about the life of an office worker in Kansas City. I discussed this with the MOD, and he told me that I was already extremely arrogant, and nobody would read my posts anyway, so…
There is a bit of a back-story here, and it is very relevant. In the late Autumn of 2004, The MOD and I decided that we could make extra money selling T-shirts, as we both have talent when it comes to art and design (MOD has a degree, and artistic creation is his job; I dropped out of the Institute) and we have a clever insight to American culture and humanity in general. On the evening of Christmas day, 2004 we started hashing out designs and sketched them all on a 40-cent note pad. I think we came up with about 20-30 good ideas for shirts. I also think that the Indian Ocean Tsunami the following day was a direct result of our creative efforts. During the following weeks, there would be a few more good ideas, but neither of us knew how we would actually market and sell these shirts over the Internet. We played our computer games, and the idea sort of went to the back burner, until it was revived again in the spring of 2005 when we had another brainstorm of ideas for creative shirts. We started debating about distribution, and one of my main objections was that neither of us knew how to code HTML or how to market our products effectively over the Web. We decided to do some research. Later, while I was researching the costs of Web hosting and HTML programs, I started thinking… maybe I can start a free test site and buy some HTML books, so we don’t have to pay somebody else to do it. There weren’t any free hosting sites not inundated with ads, so I thought again of blogs and decided to see what different sites there were for us to use. It did not take me long to find Google’s “Blogspot”, because I used Google to search for blog sites. After reading about how the HTML code could be changed by the user, I decided to start “The Truth” as nothing more than an exercise in HTML. I already had tens of thousands of words written, so I created my blog at Blogspot, with the decision to post previous writings that I had sent out in mass emails, while I learned HTML, and planned the take over of the American t-shirt market. Good plan, but it did not work out that way.
It’s history from there. I was going to call my blog “Pravda” (the name of the ex-official Soviet state newspaper, and current main news agency of the Russian republic) which means “Truth” in Russian, but decided instead I would call it the “The Truth”, because I did not want any confusion, and the title in English fit my satirical style of writing. The shirts have again receded to the back burner because me and the MOD both have become swamped with real-life work (but the shirts are still cooking), and I have since used my blog as an outlet for my creativity and social commentary, just like I did with my mass emails. This whole project has been great fun, and I will continue to post commentary on here as long as I feel like it.
-Masterson
posted by Venjanz at 5:01 AM
1 Comments:
Congrats on a year!
Now get back to work on those t-shirts so you can retire in style.
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