The Blog About Nothing

So, what's all this all about?

The Welcome Mat

I want you to imagine that you are walking up to the stoop of a house. 

It’s a nice, midwestern, suburban house. 

The kind that probably contains 1.5 kids, a golden retriever named Greg, and a “junk drawer” somewhere, probably mostly filled with Bic pens whose caps look like they have been the victims of war crimes. 

But you are still on the stoop. So both Greg the Golden and the tortured pen-caps are just hypothetical at this point—figments of your imagination. 

But what is not a figment of your imagination is the Welcome mat. 

It reads Welcome. 

Surprising.

But you walk inside, and in the kitchen (probably decorated in some sort of farmhouse motif), across from the war-crime-concealing junk drawer is a sign on the wall. 

 The sign features a smattering of sappy phrases in happy fonts, which are probably all named something like Southern Belle, Wisconsin Cowgirl, California Cauliflower, Wingdings, etc. The phrases are so arranged as to make it a bit difficult to determine their proper order, running in disparate directions around the sign, but the odd person who pauses to disentangle their presentation will be rewarded with surprisingly weighty content. It turns out that this plank, first taken to be an unassuming piece of farm deco, turns out to be nothing less than a religious credo and philosophical treatise and domestic-political-manifesto all rolled into one. 

In other words, these Southern Belle fonts are apparently conveying nothing less than all the things that residents of this house, apparently, do, say, and believe in. 

But mostly just do, used in the manner of an overstretched catch-all verb—as commonly seen in non-denominational church lingo about doing life together.

In this house, we say I love you. We say I’m sorry. We say Make America Great Again. We drink wine in the morning, and coffee in the evening (yep, you heard that right). We do laughter. We do 2nd chances. We do crack cocaine.

You are probably thinking, “this is the weirdest house ever.” And also “what a strange extended metaphor I’m being guided through.” 

And you are right, on both levels of narration.

You decide to open up the junk drawer. 

Next to the tortured pen caps and a couple of those mega-monstrosity packs of double-A batteries your father buys at Costco, there is an old bottle of pills. 

Somewhat concerned—and understandably so, given the cocaine part of the sign—you pick up the bottle to investigate.

The label reads:

Welcome to the Blog about Nothing. 

If you’d enjoy a bi-weekly dose of nonsense that might make you laugh and might make you think and will definitely make you feel superior to at least three other people in the world, this product might be for you. 

May contain: absurdist humor, self-deprecating stories of social embarrassment, satirical critiques of the ridiculousness of modern life, very occasional dashes of real wisdom or insight (but these often as not get lost in the production process), red dye 40.

Side effects could include diarrhea and constipation. Which seems contradictory, if you sit and think about it. Don't sit and think too hard though, you'll give yourself the last side effect: hemorrhoids.

You think, “this is the weirdest little mind-palace exercise I have ever been a part of. But I feel a sense of heartfelt, surprised gratitude that it did not go in a red-pill-blue-pill direction like I was expecting at the end there.” 

And also “why is this narrator controlling my thoughts?” 

But then you remember that the narrator is not only controlling your thoughts but also your actions, so you take the pill anyway. 

Welcome to the Blog About Nothing. We’re glad you’re here. 

What’s in a Name? 

Most blogs possess both the strengths and the weaknesses of being about something. And perhaps the greatest weakness is that they also possess the shared tendency towards torturous puns in their titles accompanied by eye-wrenching, explanatory subtitles.

“The InterNet: a Blog about Fishing”

“Swipers and Diapers: a Blog about The Perils of Post-Age-70 Dating in the Online World”

“By Book or By Crook: a Book Blog by Writers for Writers. And Also, Apparently, by Shoplifters for Shoplifters”

Or the similar “Catch Me If You Cannes: A Blog About Movies Produced By Convicted Criminals"

“The Stacked Sub’s Subway Substack: A Substack About Former Subway Assistant Managers Turned Substitute Teachers Who Prioritize Physical Fitness As A Lifestyle

“Blog About Something: Reflections on Why Something is Better Than Nothing”

“The Dog Blog: This Subtitle is Completely Unnecessary”

We are a blog that’s proud to be different.

As That Perpetually Confused Songwriter Marvin Gaye Puts It, “What’s Goin’ On?”

If you aren’t confused yet, listen up. Clarity is coming.

They say you don’t know a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. You didn’t know you wanted to walk in ours until approximately 2 minutes from now when you’ve read three more paragraphs.

About ten years ago, when our 6 shoes and 3 dumb-asses were in considerably better shape (which is to say, more shapely), we decided to organize  a 5k in which participants would run no less than 82 laps around a 200-foot oblong roundabout smack-dab in the middle of town. Why? To try to spark social agitation against whatever committee sanctioned that brutalist atrocity of an oblongabout.

In a world filled with content-crafting turkey trots, that Roundabout 5k exemplifies what we aim to do with this blog. A concrete oblong that you drive around everyday on your commute is dull and unremarkable…until one day you observe a flock of 15 college students Earnhardting around it no less than 82 times, whooping and hollering and sweating way too much for people running 10 minute miles in very cold weather. And then, when your significant other asks if anything interesting happened today, you’ve got an answer: You witnessed a highly effective political demonstration. You’re socially agitated.

To summarize in yet more words, we are here to offer you the written version of 82 laps run for no one and about nothing except our own desire to…make the world more beautiful? Or just pull a stunt? You decide.

Maybe neither, honestly. Because here is what we noticed: People think absurdity is pretty funny, just like we do. We had people honking their horns for no one and no reason except to support us doing something no one should care about. We had people leaning out windows to yell ambiguously expletive-laden support/mockery. We had people throwing granola bars still warm with the hunger of their children’s hands. You can’t put a price on that kind of thing.

We don’t anticipate that kind of enthusiastic support ten years later when we all have good reasons to use our time…differently. And we don’t need it. But only so that our shenaniganic energy not go to waste…

Welcome to the Digital Oblongabout 5k.

The Recipe

*Worry not, you won’t be required to scroll past a graphic story of a home birth somehow connected to zucchini muffins, a disclosing of unsolicited details about medical issues that organic beet root powder allegedly solved, or a story about somebody’s grandma’s uncle’s ex-girlfriend’s yoga teacher’s anecdote about picking fresh strawberries in a field just to get to your recipe.*

Here’s what you can expect from each bite of this blog:

• 8 oz. of somehow heartfelt yet entirely absurdist coming-of-age memoir a la Harrison Scott Key

• 19 collective watch-throughs of the entire Seinfeld canon

• A slight resemblance to G.K. Chesterton’s Tremendous Trifles, had it been written by three idiots 

• A dash of Andy Kaufman’s surrealist humor

• The jean jacket off the back of some good old fashioned dad rocker

• 1 cup whole milk (substitute with 1 cup raw milk if you’re an e.coli fan!)

• Alienating, out-of-context quotations from centuries you haven’t thought about in a while

• Grammatical imprecision (stylistic choice)

• Metaphors that are Confusing People and similes that are like Confusing People

• 2 freshly-squeezed lemons. Because when life gives you lemons, scratch your head, look up at the sky, and ask a couple questions: How the hell did these lemons just fall out of the sky? Was it necessary for the lemons to individually hit me on the head as they fell? Will my friends believe me when I tell them I was assaulted by sky-birthed falling lemons? Then have a laugh. A good hearty chuckle. So much so that passersby question your sanity. Because falling lemons are quite silly. It's strange and truly hilarious. Plus, what good would throwing those lemons back up at the sky do you? This is the lens through which we view life. Hope that clears things up for you.

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident (And Doggonit We’re Gonna List Them Anyway)

That all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights—and among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

That inherent to the right to the pursuit of happiness is the less-oft-quoted but no less important right to the avoidance of encountering no more Bros Talking About Random Garbage Podcasts than the number absolutely necessary to sustain human life on earth.

That the right enumerated above has been deeply and repeatedly violated in modern society to an unspeakable degree—a degree that would make our forefathers question the inherent good of civilization. Whether the founding of America was worth the consequent creation of the “ImPaulsive: With Logan Paul” podcast is a question that will keep pessimistic philosophers awake at night for eons to come.

That the first and fundamental oath of the blogging profession—like the first and fundamental oath of less important professions collectively deemed medical—is the Hippocratic one: do no harm. 

That a group of three friends from high school starting a blog intending (whether succeeding or not) to be at least vaguely humorous seems a ship in dire peril of being washed upon the deadly siren shores of Bro-Podcast-hood. 

That, consequently, we have deemed it necessary to, like the great heroes of old, tie ourselves, as it were, to the proverbial Odyssean mast.

Thusly noted, we the undersigned, hereby pledge to avoid making a Bros podcast, come Hell or high water, for two years following the publication of this essay—upon penalty of death, dismemberment, disembowelment, disentanglement, disarmament, disillusionment, death, etc., etc.

Lansing Brown

Coby Dolloff

Christian Lingner 

[Something funny in place of “Editors” Here]-in-Chief, Blog About Nothing