Special Ingredients: New Years 2006

So here I sit, awaiting the arrival of my Sicilian Sampler at Spaghetti Warehouse, sawing a piece of bread off as 2005 edges to a close. The restaurant is crowded, bustling with smiles of family and friends who are winding down the Old Year with a special meal at one of Toledo’s highlights. Meanwhile, I’m sitting with my glamorous date, which, this year, is my laptop, typing out an article for my grateful fan base that hasn’t bothered to write in or, more importantly, give me money. My girlfriend is on a family vacation visiting fake relatives, leaving me, save for the laptop, alone on this holiday. What a way to end a year.

Okay, so it’s not so grim, except for the fact that I won’t have anyone to kiss once this night is out. I've entertained thoughts of paying someone to do it, but I’m not sure I could find anyone who would sink that low. Think about it: paying someone for a New Year’s kiss. That’s pretty sad. If I wanted to do it properly, I’d have to invite some girl out and buy her dinner, or at least meet someone at a bar and buy her enough refreshing drinks until she’s too festive to care. In any case, I can expect a very bad year should my girlfriend find out, even if it is all her fault.

No, I’m just kidding. Rather than spend the night moping around the house and downloading Internet porn, I decided to get out and spend the night in constructive reflection and fried Italian food. Spaghetti Warehouse as been a New Years tradition of sorts for a while now, and I wasn’t willing to spoil it just because I was alone. In fact, I figured it to be a good opportunity to immerse myself in a fresh setting and get some new inspiration, which is turning out to be case, except for the fact that my inspiration is sometimes interrupted by the consumption of toasted ravioli.

I find the concept of New Years to be pretty neat. Because of one simple change in the calendar, millions of people are now declaring this night not only a time for retrospect, but a time for new beginnings, a time to take stock in one’s life and start out with a clean slate.

In reality, you’re going to wake up tomorrow with a pounding headache, covered with the stench of alcohol and other things you’d rather not think about, discovering that there’s someone sleeping next to you that, had you not been drunk and in pain, would have caused you to react in much the same as if they were a severed horse head, except you might feel obligated to call them later (the person, not the horse head). You’re still going to have all your debts, crappy job, stupid friends, and a really angry spouse. Nothing has changed. Not a damn thing…

Oops! There I go again! Despite my pessimism about the subject, I still plan on taking a look back at the previous year and make some resolutions for the coming year. Not for me, personally. My life is astonishingly uninteresting, and I can’t think of any resolutions that I could write about that would have any meaning to you anyway. So get your own.

Instead, I’d like to take a loving look back at Pocky Box’s first year. I know it probably would have made more sense to do this on the first anniversary, but that was on Christmas, and I really wanted to focus on the magic of the holiday. That’s just a generous and heartwarming way of saying I was too busy to be bothered with writing an article in time, but I think this is a really good time to do this too.

When I started Pocky Box, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had a website before, but it was so unbelievably 1999 I gave up when I began to realize how irrelevant it was. Last year, however, I had a plan: create a website with nothing but random subject matter and hope I find an audience.

Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed by the numbers. We received an estimated 250 hits on Pocky Box in the first year, and a healthy number of those were probably C and me checking things out. With no donations and no sponsors this year, I’ve been financing the site out of my own pocket, which, for the benefit of the IRS, put me in the hole a million dollars.

You wouldn’t believe how much the single e-mail I received made all the difference. For those of you who don’t recall, I did an article about my trip to Branson, Missouri, and made several remarks that some would label “less than flattering.” Not too long after, I received an e-mail from one of the performers I talked about. He was very gracious about the article and took it for the fun it was, and I got some bragging rights. Pocky Box was being read by celebrities! Okay, semi-celebrities. Maybe not. Shut up. He makes money by singing and dancing. You make money by sitting at a desk.

In any case, while the e-mail was encouraging, I would have continued my work on Pocky Box anyway. In that vain, there were a few surprises about the content that came out of it. I didn’t realize when I started out that I would be covering religion so much. It was such an interesting topic that Jack Chick became sort of a staple character on the site. I was also surprised about how many breaking news topics we've covered. Considering the site is a hobby, I can’t always devoit enough time to make it an up-to-the-minute ordeal. By the time anyone saw a particular piece, it would have been covered a million times by more popular news venues, such as your office. Still, the Toledo riots simply had to be covered, since it was basically next door.

I was a little disappointed at the lack of nerdy articles. When I started Pocky Box, I modeled it after such fare as Encyclopedia Obscura and I-Mockery. I thought it was a good opportunity to just mess around and have fun with the stupidest things imaginable. I started out fine with the Play Doh article, but things tapered off from there. Seriously, I wish I did more like them.

While Special Ingredients sort of grows on its own, I’d wish I gave more focus to Literary Works. I have a lot of ideas, but unfortunately, they’re long and take more time than I can afford to devote. C has kept this section going a little, though.

I can’t really claim to be too surprised by C. Nothing about him fails to surprise me anymore.

This leads me to my hopes for Pocky Box in the coming year. The first thing is to get more visitors. I know this is a factor outside my control, but I want to make an effort to get the word out there about the site. If I build it, they will come, but only if I leave an address written on a bar napkin. Interestingly, print and local advertising is more accessible to me, by which I mean cheap, by which I mean almost free.

I’d like to do more articles and more updates. I’ve had a vague notion of updating twice a month, but that hasn’t been the case lately. If I had to choose, I’d give a little more focus to articles for Random Acts of Nerdness and pieces for Literary Works, but I still want to give all of you a piece of my mind via Pessimistic Politics. I’m not worried about Special Ingredients, since, again, it grows on its own.

Most of all, I’d like to tailor more of my work to you, the audience. To do that, I need to you guys to contact me and tell me what you like and don’t like. I’m sure the only reason this isn’t happening is the lack of numbers on your part, which is partly my fault. So I pass the call onto you: tell people about the site if you like it enough to do so. Maybe it’ll catch on, maybe it won’t. Either way, I’m still going to be here.

I don’t have C on hand to make his resolutions, but I’m sure they involve having sex. Frankly, I’m unwilling to help him out with this.

Honestly, I’m excited about the possibilities that await this year. I’m not going to reveal anything specifically, but I have some pieces lined up that are not only exclusive to Pocky Box, but also relevant to the country. Well, maybe just one article, specifically. And I’m not telling.

So that’s my New Years reflection and resolution. I honestly think Pocky Box is still a worthwhile undertaking, and not just because I created it. Conversely, because I did create it and maintain it, if I didn’t think it was worthwhile, I wouldn’t bother. But I still do. Pocky Box is still pretty young and needs time, attention, and (lest we forget) money to grow. So stay tuned, and let me know what you, my audience, want out of the site.

Okay, I’m done eating. I’m going over to a bar and getting as drunk as I can off of a non-alcoholic wild berry smoothie. Hey, be quiet. I’d like to see who you wake up with tomorrow. Happy New Year.