(Crossposted between all three blogs I write for.)
It all started for me with a link from The Register to Seth Finkelstein’s Infothought blog. I found him to be an interesting, somewhat out-of-the-box thinker, so began reading him regularly. Sometime later Lis Riba popped up to ask his advice on getting a high Google Rating for one of her pages. And so she became my second regular read in the blogosphere. High on her blogroll was Alas a Blog. (I knew there was a reason for giving your blog a name beginning with ‘A’.) Unable always to comment as freely as I would like there, I began to comment on Creative Destruction. Shortly thereafter, a messenger arrived at my door bearing a handwritten missive enscribed upon the finest vellum, and laid upon a silken pillow, exhorting me to become a blogger here. (It was either that, or Amp sent me an email, I don’t recall which.)
At that time, WordPress automatically gave you blog if you created an account with them, and obviously I needed an account to blog at CD, and so the blog that was to become DaRain Man was born. I started substantive blogging there after being evicted from Alas during a little flamewar, and I realised that I needed an independent platform of my own. Later when Aegis/HughRistik accepted my offer to co-blog, it was clear that our joint enterprise was going to outgrow the ‘personal blog’ concept. We decided go for a dedicated URL and hosted environment right from the start, rather than go through the agony of changing addresses later, when we were established. Hence Feminist Critics was born.
That’s my story, but how did you get here?
Creative Destruction 
My parents had sex and my mother became pregnant. Nine months of gestation later, I was born.
Your story is weird.
Comment by Robert — January 29, 2007 @ 1:23 pm |
First comment May 1, 2006 so far as I can tell, with regard to intellectual property issues. Probably via the Left Off Colfax blogroll.
Comment by ohwilleke — January 29, 2007 @ 3:54 pm |
I blame amp.
Comment by Dianne — January 29, 2007 @ 8:10 pm |
For my parents having sex? Nah. He was only like six months old at the time.
Blame the gin.
Comment by Robert — January 29, 2007 @ 8:15 pm |
I don’t know. I think I was tagsurfing WordPress. Tagsurfing WordPress is like sneaking into the underwear drawer of every big (little) sister of every little (big) brother on the planet and reading her diary.
Comment by S. Weasel — January 29, 2007 @ 8:35 pm |
Adam, our founder and MIA author, sent me an email one day, completely out of the blue.
First I asked if he was on crack. He said no.
Second, I asked if he was on weed. He said no.
Third, I asked if he was insane. He said he didn’t think so.
That was good enough for me.
Comment by Off Colfax — January 30, 2007 @ 12:50 am |
Ginmar?
Comment by Daran — January 30, 2007 @ 1:51 am |
Don’t say it’s name! If you say it’s name, it appears!
Comment by Robert — January 30, 2007 @ 2:32 am |
Wrong guy, Robert. You’re thinking Beetlejuice.
Comment by Off Colfax — January 30, 2007 @ 3:36 am |
Don’t say it’s name! If you say it’s name, it appears! – Robert
Yes, that’s right. It never takes its beady eyes of the radar screen. But you can escape the incessant google patrols by using some variation on the name: Ginrummy, Gi-Gi, Bride of Chucky…
Comment by Tom Nolan — January 30, 2007 @ 9:10 am |
Actually I just found out that Ginmar is spending time in the hospital (PTSD related to her Iraq war service). As much as it’s fun to kick Gin when she’s up, at the moment she’s down, so I suggest we all lay off.
Comment by Robert — January 30, 2007 @ 12:02 pm |
Point taken. Let me know when she’s better.
Comment by Tom Nolan — January 30, 2007 @ 2:40 pm |
In retrospect, I should have gone with “Aardvark Blog.”
I started blogging when I did a weekly political comic strip (I’m still doing it, but the frequency has been reduced to once every two months) and in 2002 created a hand-coded blog for posting the comic every week. After a while, I started doing prose commentary to accompany the cartoons; then I started doing prose commentaries without the cartoons.
Comment by Ampersand — January 30, 2007 @ 3:14 pm |
You do cartoons?
Comment by Robert — January 30, 2007 @ 3:19 pm |
Well, I got here from Alas, a Blog, which I found from reading Ifeminists, which I found from reading LewRockwell, which I found from reading WorldNetDaily, which I found from reading JewishWorldReview, which I found from getting involved in Alan Keyes’ 2000 presidential bid.
As for my nom de plume, it started out as a handle on the SciFi Channels’ Good vs. Evil bulletin board in the late winter/early spring of 2000 (the name comes from the weapon “the Glaive” in the movie Krull). I then made it my email address when I opened an account on Yahoo! in 2001 (to get graduate school information at, I wanted an email account that was independent of my college). I also began using it when I commented on websites, most notably FrontPageMag (after 9/11 I became one of the most outspoken paleoconservative antiwar commenters until I gave up on the website in fall of 2003). In 2004 I wanted to comment on what I saw as a misleading use of statistics on The Belmont Club, so I opened a Blogger account to use to comment on their blog, and started my own blog as part of that. I almost immediately realized that I liked being able to project my opinions at the world, so that at least someone otehr than myself would hear my insights into politics and society on a forum that I controlled.
Thus was the Glaivester blog born.
Comment by Glaivester — January 31, 2007 @ 12:43 am |
Oh! I always thought it was Gly-Ves-Ter. Now I see it’s “Glaive-ster” (as in, “there’s the Glaivester, glaiving copies.”)
Comprehension dawns.
Comment by Robert — January 31, 2007 @ 2:56 am |