Another year
It’s B&W’s birthday again. Well actually it was a week ago, but other things were more urgent to post, and I’m always late anyway, so close enough.
Seven years old. Why, when B&W started, there were no proper roads between Missouri and Oregon, and credit default swaps were things that no nice girls would wear after nine in the evening. When B&W started Pepsi hadn’t been invented yet, and dogs still wore corsets, and families still gathered around the radio to listen to Jay Leno make fun of Jerry Seinfeld’s dinner jacket. When B&W started people still thought Cream of Wheat was food, and you could get a pound of assorted chocolates for a penny, and milk arrived at the back door every morning as if by magic. When B&W started Jefferson was in the White House and LaGuardia was mayor of New York. B&W started a loooooooong time ago, man. Many happy returns.
Seven!!! Time sure flies.
Happy birthday, kiddo!
According to some historians, although there is a scholarly controversy over this fact, B & W is the first known text to affirm the nonexistence of any deity. For a complete bibliography on this controversy which has occupied the best and most erudite minds in the growing field of B & W-ology, see:
www. B &W-ology studies. com.
I may not comment much, but I’ve been following B&W for years now.
Know you’re appreciated.
Happy Birthday!
¡Muchas felicidades! Let’s get a piñata. . .
Girl,
When B&W started, you could still get crinolines made out of REAL starched linen. And they didn’t ride up. Well, actually, they did, but good girls never mentioned it. Oh, well, that’s how it be. Those were the days.
Love you Ophelia, and happy Birthday to Butterflies and Wheels!
Josh Slocum
Feliz cumpleaños!
Unbelievable! :)
Happy Birthday!
Congrats. Keep it up. Remember we are reading even when we aren’t speaking.
I have a lot of back-reading to do.
Fantastic.
Long may you run. I’ve been reading B&W pretty well from the start and it’s almost always my first read on the net.
When B&W started, there were no French people!
The world is slowly becoming a better place ;-)
Bon anniversaire!
Thanks Ophelia. I have to say I am completely addicted to B&W. Your writing crackles with verve and vivacity, and your razor-sharp percepts are laced with a sardonic wit, all of which are the perfect antidote to the daily procession of outrages. Here’s to another seven years! *raises glass*
Happy birthday to B&W and congratulations to the parents, Opehlia and Jeremy!
Ophelia, (or should that be OB?) you are an III. That is, an International Internet Institution. Without your presence, the Net would be as dull as the Vatican’s dishwater.
As Bogart once said in another context: “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”
Viva B&W!
Congratulations! Best Blog on the internet! May you have many decades to come!
Happy Birthday – proud to have been a small – okay, teensy – part of it.
Happy birthday! I haven’t been around here as much for the last few of your seven years, but I’m planning to reverse that trend. Congratulations on a great run!
Phil
Congratulations, thanks, and please keep on keepin’ on.
Happy Birthday – I came over after joining in the conversation with N Beale at talkingphilosophy and never left. A great find.
Thanks, all! Back atcha.
I guess I tell you this every year: B&W is the same age as my daughter, and i discovered it while freaking out with boredom during my mat leave.
Keep up the good work, Ophelia! I, for one, have been deeply impressed by both your writings and and the selections that you link here. So much so that whenever I come across something particularly fatuous or annoying (relevant to the B&W mandate, I mean) I think “What would Ophelia make of this?”
Happy birthday!
Wow–that’s a LONG time! Your site is a fount of rationality, and may it live long and prosper!
I second Jerry’s “wow” and am proud to say I’ve been following B&W since almost the beginning, even if it took me a while to stop lurking and start occasionally commenting. Joking about how ancient B&W is is one thing, but in my memory, at least, there was precious little else of substance around online back then to cater to “us.” That has happily changed and B&W has happily remained what it was. I look forward to many more birthdays.
Now that you have reached the age of reason, is it time you started preparing for your B&W Holy Communion?
Alas, the dogs are now wearing strait-jackets and the religious apologist families are sitting around the computer table tut-tutting the contents of B&W.
Happy Belated B&W Birthday. Your continual daily input into B&W, is just absolutely incredible, OB. You reach out to so many various people from all over the world and your consistency and dedication and openness does not go unnoticed. You have a passion within you for communication with folk from all strata’s of life and this gift separates you from the norm.
On behalf of all victims/survivors of industrial schools’; I would sincerely like to take this opportunity; on this your seventh birthday, to thank you from the bottom of my/their hearts’, for taking an interest in us. You have so terribly often highlighted systematic atrocities which occurred to defenceless children in Goldenbridge. Survivors have been constantly corresponding with me throughout the years behind the B&W scene, expressing their gratefulness. This has been mostly done through the aegis of their offspring, as they would not be literate enough to either write, let alone, use computers.
Thank you for all your perseverance as the subject matter of institutional child abuse is not conducive with pleasantness in the slightest. It takes very special people like you and your very loyal B&W commenters to bear with us.
Chocolate costs more than a pretty penny now! :-)
Happy Birthday!
Why, when B & W first started, butterflies had to get around on wheels! Thus, the name — which is now an anachronism, and therefore confusing to new readers.
Really.
Yes, and in those days I used to ride the family triceratops to work. Ah, memories.
Maybe I should change its name to ‘Ride the Triceratops’ – that’s quite catchy.
“When B&W started Pepsi hadn’t been invented yet.”
Is that so?
Well your luck is now in, if you want to sample a unique Samoan sip from its sisters’ sacrosanct virginal holy bottle -as:
“believers say the wavering form, shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle, is clearly Mary holding a rosary.”
That is after you recite seventy times seven hail Mary’s for your B&W sins.
The writing is on the B&W wall. Many happy visions!
Happy seventh B&Wirthday! I came late to the party – maybe a year after the start – but the life of this party is one scintillating spark.
I was going to say that this site isn’t as Neanderthal or Jurassic as OB makes out, as it must have been set up after the invention of the wheel. However other people have beaten me to wheel/antiquity jokes.
Congrats, OB. You were either the first or second site that I ever left a comment on, full of trepidation. I’ve kept coming back. Keep up the good work.
I know what you mean by trepidation KB Player. Dipping my toes into the waters here, with full knowledge that I am out of my depth in such waters, is a bit daunting. But how else are we to learn?
So, a hearty happy anniversary to B & W, and fond wishes for many more!
Congratulations and long may you continue.
Thanks all!