5th anniversary…of doom: The big oh-five

A kewlops, conveyor of dreams. Half man, half gargoyle, half snake, half whale, half ape, and half not very good at fractions.

How has this site survived five long years on the internet? The internet! You can’t just go on the internet. They don’t take just anybody. And how on earth does an idea turn into electronic gold? What kind of machine tooling and manufacturing wizardry (and possibly gnomes) are involved?

The process begins with an idea. I fashion this myself out of dreams and amputated unicorn hooves. I put this into a bowl held by a kewlops. Kewlops are known for their highly accurate measure of things by weight. It’s an odd skill, but so are kewlops. When the bowl is heavy enough with ideas, the kewlops takes it to the Write-o-matic 3000. The Write-o-matic 3000 is a top of the line authoring device. You insert the ideas into the hopper. Natural vibration from the motor funnels them onto a feeder. One by one, a pneumatic valve drops ideas into a mixing bowl where they are combined with perspiration from leprechauns. This forms a doughy paste which the machine dispenses into a rectangular mold. A roller presses the gunk into the mold, and an enslaved fairy dusts it with sugar and shavings of peach fuzz. This is called an ‘article.’ A ridged conveyor belt carries the article into the blast kiln for up to an hour and then to the cooling tray where it must rest for 15 minutes so the sugar can harden and crystallize at room temperature (‘crystallize’ has two Ls? go figure).

The Write-o-matic 3000. Now with 20 percent more leprechauns.

Now it’s time to ‘upload’ the article to the interweb. The kewlops takes the article from the cooling tray and brings it to the computer. I pick it up by the edges and put it into the mouth of an apterox. An apterox is an amazing creature that can swallow almost anything and convert it–via a complex digestive process–into digital 1s and 0s. It’s great. I pop the thing in its mouth and my apterox farts out the web post. You can even hook up an ethernet cable to its butt if you don’t have the Digi-gas XL: Gas to Digital Steam Converter.

An apterox and lateral view. The apterox, sometimes called the oxopotamus, has evolved an NBA-size hoop and backboard on its tail. It farts in 16 million colors.

Getting the site online five years ago wasn’t easy. There were action figure sites, 80s nostalgia sites, sites about dinosaurs, sites with robots, sites about vomit. But there were no sites about vomiting robot dinosaur action figures. It was too new and I had to fight through a lot of bureaucratic red tape to get the project running.

Things have sure changed. Five years ago, people used to ask me, “what the hell is this site about?” Now they ask me, “what the hell is this site about???” with more question marks. Culture has changed too. When I started Maximum Awesome, popular TV shows included American Idol, The Simpsons and that godawful Jay Leno. Now? Eh, well, I guess it’s mostly the same except that godawfuller Jimmy Fallon has his own show now too. The point is, things are markedly worse now that Maximum Awesome has reached the big oh-five.

In conclusion, there are still no air cars. Thank you and happy interwebbing.