Happy Bloggiversary

Before the pikeyspeak faithful gets all bleary eyed and begins to lookup the date of my first post on this blog, I would assert that this day is neither the day I started this blog nor is it the first time I set foot on the lazily named blogosphere. It is also not the date I wrote the first post for my gayly named pinkfiles blog. It is none of that. Just a nagging feeling I keep getting from time to time that I've never found an occasion to actually celebrate a rather brilliantly named Bloggiversary. Lack of ideas for a new post coupled with the overwhelming urge of celebrating this red letter day - given, I couldn't wait until May, which is the actual month of my initiation - made me write this. I needed a date and here it was; I hereby declare 15th of March as a Red Letter day for "of cats and dags". So here's wishing happy bloggiversary. People please update your Google calendars so that you can remind me in the likely event I forget in future. For those who view pointlessly rambling writing with contempt, this is where you should stop and get on with your daily chores of going through other blogs of significance. Of course, Oscar acceptance speeches would make for a better use of your time. But given that my blog normally does not draw readership from workaholics (that's my hunch and not some magic statcounting software), I guess most of you lazy brothers (and sisters?) might as well read to the end of it and let me know if it was really worth whiling your time. Ah well! I was saying...

It is now three years to the imaginary date I have set myself and I can happily say that I am trying to grow stronger. Stronger and evil-er so that, had worpress.com allowed Google Adsense, Search engine optimization or any other form of blog monetizing services, I would have been foremost in the queue of what is a rather badly named 'A-list bloggers', following which I would have milked every ounce of my blog space towards ads blaring out irritating but enticingly congratulatory audio clips to the unwitting visitor proclaiming him winner of an Apple iphone, providing he clicks the link and completes an hour long survey, and enters his confidential information, and buys half a dozen products neither he nor the rest of humankind would ever use (which might lead him to ponder over the point of the whole exercise in the first place). And I would be Muhahaha-ing my way to the bank, after which I would sell off my domain name in exchange for a few million quid and settle down in the warm climes of Darfur listening to the uplifting tunes of gunshot in the sunset. But I have seen reason and learnt never to count moong dals before they sprout and so avoided the limelight and the ads and tried to concentrate on churning out posts that border on the banal and don't attempt anything above that. However, as a blogger, I was never always that wise.

Ever since the day I saw a sado-masochistic senior of mine, who I believe is no more an active blogger (unless he might have surreptitiously started a personal journal which is besides the point), I felt I could churn out a few gems of my own and who knows, I could become an author of a book in a year or two! (I am not kidding.) Now that I say that, it doesn't really speak all too well about my intellectual faculty, but what else can you expect from a brain that churns out the said banality. Anyway, my first blog (by blog I mean blog blog and not the oft confused solitary post) was all you would expect from a Rage Against the Machine inspired juvenile. My posts tried to be one of those, what I could now term, pretentiously honest ones and eventually landed me in trouble with a post that was so 'scathing' of the company that recruited me from campus that I not only lost that job, the 'scathe' was enough to cut a wound so deep into the heart of the placement coordinating professor that in a single act he banned me from sitting for placements that year while insulting my mild-mannered lineage! While the acerbic nature of the post was debatable, it was enough to end my premature rage against the system and, the juvenile delinquent that I was, I quickly reformed my ways; so much so that I set up a new blog with a pink template and writing so sugar coated that it might have put the Yash Chopra-Johar cartel/circus to shame. And yes! I forgot to mention, my first blog had my full name prefixing .blogspot.com!

So, while I eschewed a level of honesty with my second blog, there was still a part of me that wanted to be somewhere in between, which led to this blog being started (apart from the lure of Wordpress). Far from the finished product, it has some bloggers to thank for the traffic that it's generated so far. Especially it helps having someone link you and at the same time write a post that talks about streaming links for the Cricket World Cup. Some other search results (which Wordpress' blog stats tell me) that drag visitors this way is when people type "cats and dags" in their search window. My heart weeps profusely for the disappointment in their faces when they find nothing more than the title of this blog with nothing to do with Brad Pitt's 'dags' in Snatch (which, in case you haven't noticed, is the premise for the blog title, url and my blogging alias).

And before I finish off this meandering piece, there has been one more part of my blog that has spurred me on all this while, although it is a shameless confession. I have always been a comment junkie. Comments started out as instant gratification to the 'effort' I put into my posts and later turned out to a sort of an alternate discussion board universe, where some nice people found certain posts actually worth their two cents. It gave me a perverse sense of pleasure, however short-lived. I think I have definitely moved past perverse pleasures, but it still pleases one to see someone actually reading meaningless tripe, and respond to that requesting encores! Case in point: a commenter asking me to bring back the mostly pointless adventures of the legendary Riggit. I will do, but I need to work out some half a decent storyline to fit him in. So people, comment and pingback as much as you can (notice why I kept this till the end). This would be my rallying cry on this momentous occasion.

I hope to carry on posting the usual themeless stuff that is the very life blood of this blog. More half-baked reviews, more temporal irregularities between posts and last but not the least, the use of self-deprecation as the only tool of my 'Murderous Humor'. That way I only harm myself, and eventually when it hurts me beyond measure, I would choke due to lack of adjectives and invectives that might seem even remotely hurtful to fuel my brand of humor.

That will be the day I would hang up my keyboard and settle down in the Darfur of my dreams. But till then, I would brave the sunny climes ahead.