Last night I looked up from writing my novel synopsis and eating peanut butter cookies, and I realized that this blog has achieved a phenomenal milestone. It has existed for 660 days. The significance may not punch you in the face right away, so I’ll explain. The numeral 660 is the area code for Sedalia, Missouri. That town is only a two hour drive from Branson, Missouri. I visited Branson once. I think it’s pretty much how Las Vegas would look if it were built by the cast of Hee Haw, and yet the place entertained me in spite of myself. Ergo, milestone. Don’t you feel silly that you didn’t see it for yourself?

In celebration, I devoted a few minutes to thinking about the posts in this blog, and the number of posts (176) made it hard to keep them straight in my brain. If my tentacular mass of prior posts confuses me, then it probably confuses more recent regular readers, not to mention folks who stumble across the blog.

And I don’t know about you, but when I find an interesting blog with a long history, I’m puzzled about how to locate the parts of that history I might be most interested in. I know that’s what categories and tags are for, but what does it really mean when a post is tagged “camel”? How to ride one? How to raise them? How do they taste roasted? Do you prefer regular or menthol? It would be nice if the blogger would do some extra work for me. I have my own work that needs to be done and cookies waiting to be eaten.

A quick survey revealed that while this is my general humor blog, it does often follow certain themes. Creativity, marriage, work, family, fear and confidence are common themes. In addition, 33 posts mention movies, 35 posts mention death, 17 posts include strong profanity, 7 posts mention snot, and immersion blenders figure prominently in 2 posts. Cats appear in a full 100 of my posts.

Okay, this is a perplexing mess, and I’m cutting through it right now. I’ve extracted eight general groups of posts and a few posts from each group. You can find them below, along with a sentence or two describing each group to help you decide whether those posts might be interesting to you in any way at all.

My Wife

In order to understand a lot of my posts, it helps to understand my wife. This group of posts describes about 10 percent of her being, but that’s the portion she employs daily, not the 90% capable of sinking you like the Titanic. We’ve discussed getting t-shirts that say “Bill will make you cry. Kathleen will make you disappear.”

• Surrendering the Moral High Ground  
• My Wife Stalks, Kills, Drags Home, and Eats a Kitchen 
• It’s Like Sleeping in a Clown’s Trousers 
• In Which We Make Ignorant Statements About Love
• Why My Wife Would Always Be Able to Kill Me in a Knife Fight

Travel

These posts chat about a couple of our recent vacations, both of which almost killed us. Jamaica was romantic. Disney World was nostalgic. Both were horrifying in their own way.

• Three Days in Jamaica 
• The Perfect Storm in Jamaica
• The Happiest and Most Terrifying Place on Earth
• Sparkle, or I’ll Cut You
• The Disney Deluxe Triple Bypass Plan

Family

My mother died last year, so these posts may not make you pee with laughter the whole way through. Some are a bit somber, but I tried to avoid maudlin.

• The Nicest Son of a Bitch in the Room
• The Spirit of Humor Pokes Me in the Eye
• Some Newly Polished Dignity 
• Crappy Emeralds Are Better Than No Emeralds at All
• As Sentimental as an Iron Boot 

Baron Yörg Goes to the Movies

My acquaintance Baron Yörg, a 500 year-old vampire Lord of All Things Foul and Unholy, provides the occasional movie review. I’ve been begging him to review Bambi, but no luck so far.

• Baron Yörg Goes to the Movies – Bram Stoker’s Dracula 
• Baron Yörg Goes to the Movies – Star Wars 
• Baron Yörg Goes to the Movies – The Princess Bride 

Jobs

Employment and unemployment seem to weigh on everyone these days. In these posts I touched on employment challenges, with a subtext of living in a ditch and eating dirt, rejected by everyone with more than four teeth, and forced to count my lice to keep from going insane.

• The Top 10 Jobs Most Likely to Survive the Coming Apocalypse
• Where Does “Obliteration of All Things Good and Holy” Go on a Resume?

Death

These posts contain a below-average number of chuckles, but they do touch on some real ways that death forces itself upon us.

• The Grinding Chamber
• Laughing All the Way to the Grave

Weirdly Philosophical

All right, maybe this shouldn’t even be a category, but these posts look at some odd aspects of living in the world, such as fear, failure, and walking around with a metaphorical stick up one’s backside.

• The Magical World of Falling on Your Ass
• The Death of Indignation
• The Least Romantic Man in America
• The Innermost Secrets of Fear With a Side of Cheese Fries

Top 3

These were the three most frequently viewed posts that didn’t fall into any of the other categories. Yeah, I didn’t do any work at all to list these, but they seem cute to me.

• I Should Never Be a Cyborg
• Why Your Cat Hates You
• The Ten Best Things About Being Bipolar

I hope this presentation was helpful to folks interested in checking out some of the older posts. Putting it together helped me. I had no idea I’d never written a post containing the word “spleen.” Until now.