It's good to be bad

Jeckles of the SBC explains why he loves blogging so gosh darn much

by Dave McAwesome

This is the first in a series of interviews sponsored by the World Blogging Organization (WBO), the independent governing body of the global blogging community. Jeckles' Shitty Blogs Club (SBC) is one of the most prominent and exclusive blogging communities in the Blogverse. Men have died during the initiation trials. Women have been reduced to all sorts of mind-rending depravity just to get their applications read in a timely manner. You are, nevertheless, encouraged to join.

Dave: How did the SBC start? Blah, blah, boring but necessary first question.

Jeckles: About a year and a half ago, a blogger who went by the moniker of anti-(everything)...Fuck you a-(e)!...made some observations on his blog about the nature of blogging. Shit like:

"Most blogs are about speaking (writing) into an empty box. ...all blogs don't necessarily 'speak' in the same volume or tone. Some yell while others whisper. Some want to give you a hug. Some just want to flip you off, though there aren't quite enough of those."

He finished with this statement:

"By the way, if you're proud of your shitty blog, I've made this badge for the Shitty Blogs Club. Feel free to take it and put it on your blog."

A lot of people responded with email and comments, and the club was born. A few months later he had a nervous breakdown or something, and he couldn't handle being in charge of this quickly growing club. He cleverly tricked me into being in charge (picture Tom Sawyer and a fence in need of whitewashing). I added contests and shit and the rest is history I guess.

Dave: How many times have you felt the sick urge to delete the entire site? (I'm tempted to do that with my own sites, like, once a week.)

Jeckles: I threaten to shut thing down on a regular basis. The whole thing frustrates the shit out of me. My little personal blog gets like 3 hits a day. While the SBC gets 50-60. It's crazy. I don't think I can really delete it. I mean I didn't even create it. If I truly get sick of it... I'll just have to hand it over to another shitty blogger to run the fucker.

Dave: Blogcafe kinda did that for you, huh?

Jeckles: Yea. That wasn't a huge pain in the ass or anything. /sarcasm

Dave: You have any choice words for the Blogcafe people?

Jeckles: Not really. It was a small outfit. It was free. They let me use the blogger interface to publish my shit. So all of the old stuff lives in blogger. Some day when I'm bored, I'll port it all over to the new site. It was free. And I think that my blogs were the only things that had that were actually being used on a regular basis or got any traffic. Oh yea... and it was free.

Dave: Did I mention that I hate when people go "yea" instead of "yeah?" Moving on...You've got issues with the Blog Explosion people too. Do you have trouble making friends? Don't shut us out, Jeckles. Don't. Shut. Us. Out.

Jeckles: I hate people, Dave. I hate them. All of them, except maybe Shutter. Oh yea and my wife. She's OK I guess. The idiots at BE, I don't really care about. They kicked me out. That was rude. Then that bitch-who-ever chick called me an idiot. I didn't like that. I mean, call me an asshole or a loser or whatever. I'm used to that. But I'm not dumb. Fucking cunt. But I digress. Let the record show that the SBC is as strong as ever and BE is up for sale and most of the idiots who ran it have gone into hiding.

Dave: The WBO is considering banning all new blogs as a general rule. Would you object to that? After all, our staff needs to start using these kickin "bannination" rubber stamps we custom ordered from Staples.

Jeckles: I wholeheartedly support this initiative. Blogging has become way to easy and trendy. There are too many new blogs and most of them will abandoned with in months. Blogging is serious shit. Don't start if you can't keep up with it. I mean if I start reading your blog and get sucked onto the drama of your lifelong battle with acne and why you dog keeps pissing in your shoes and how your boss gives you shit about blogging at work. Don't just stop. I'll never know how it turns out.

No offense Dave, but you guys need to step it up. This blogging thing is out of control, people think it's the new media, for god's sake. The WBO needs to reign these freaks in and remind everyone what blogging is really about: People who have no friends in the real world crying out for attention on the Internet in the hope that someone anyone will hear them.

Dave: When does the official SBC "Tattooed Brain Restoration Project" begin? The WBO feels it would be an excellent opportunity for you to solicit donations in the name of something pretty damn important: namely, selfish greed.

Jeckles: Ironically, most of the Shitty Bloggers do not know the true identity of TB. Nor are they aware of his re-appearance.

Dave: You recently purged the membership list of inactive members. Cool, huh? You must've felt like Stalin.

Jeckles: I had a blast. I even deleted a few members in good standing. But they are back now.

Dave: You ever meet Stalin?

Jeckles: Yes. It was a bad scene, I was drunk and started debating the whether or his policies were valid or would the Soviets be better of under a rule more like that of Mao and his form of people's revolution. The KGB would have taken me out right then and there if my buddies from the Shining Path hadn't pulled me out of the bar when they did.

Dave: Nice guy, that Stalin. See, the WBO used to be called the World Writers Council (WWC), an ancient conclave of writers, artists and pricks dating back to about 400 B.C. (when it was known as the Athens Writers Council). Flash forward a few millennia and that damn WWC wrestling organization rips off our fancy abbreviation, and we change our name when the first true blog, "Bill's ASCII Art of Nude Women" hits the BBS. We knew time was ripe for a new name. Plus, it was an excuse to get some cool new stationary. Anyway, Stalin had a blog (or "journal" as it was called in those days). "Killed a bunch of people," and "Killed some more people," are two fascinating snippets from his work. He was always sending us personal letters, dotting the "i" in Stalin with a little heart.

Moving on...What kinds of fabulously expensive prizes do the SBC Monthly winners receive?

Jeckles: I'm afraid that information is for members only, Dave.

Dave: Five hundred years from now, will we be speaking about the SBC in hushed tones as we do with the Illuminati and Freemasons?

Jeckles: I've been instructed not to answer that question.

Dave: True or false: SBC membership has its privileges.

Jeckles: False. There are no privileges that I am aware of.

Dave: I'm going to take a stab at the origin of the name Jeckles...You loved the Heckle and Jeckle cartoon as a kid, but you thought it'd be funnier if they got rid of that hack Heckle and instead had two Jeckles. Right or wrong?

Jeckles: Wrong. I could tell you that I take my name from the 'jeckles' orchid that grows on the mountain where I trained as ninja. But I won't.

Dave: The "Be Proud; Be Shitty" motto must've taken minutes to think up. When will The Gap be placing its order of 500,000 SBC t-shirts?

Jeckles: How cool would that be. Maybe I should work on that. Or at least work on a CafePress store for the SBC. I'll get back to you.

Dave: Two-part question: Favorite action figure? If you could invent any action figure, what would it be and why? Hm, maybe that was a three-part question.

Jeckles: Han Solo. HE was the bravest of all of my action figures. Shortly after I saw Empire for the first time, I decided to 'carbon freeze' by putting him in cup of water and putting him in the freezer. The next day I let him thaw out in the sun. It was so successful that I froze him again, and this time I showed the frozen Han to my little friend. Waiting for him to thaw began to bore us. We decided to release him from the ice whit a large rock. Three good hits and the ice shattered. And so did Han. Poor Brave Han. He deserved better.

If I could invent any action figure, I'd have to go with O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill. That bitch was badass. I mean she allowed the freak who killed her parents to fuck her when she was like 12 so she could get her revenge. Bad-Ass!

Dave: Shitty Blogs Club is currently (4/6/06) launching its Shitty Blog Survivor contest, which Jeckles claims to be based on the CBS reality TV series (a rather bizarre claim if we are to believe him that he never watches the tube). So...since he has no basis on which to formulate a facsimile of the TV show, the SBC version will probably be a lot different. People will likely die. I would definitely check it out if I were you. Jeckles also hosts Shitty Blog Radio on Mango Radio every Thursday evening.