Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Ch-ch-ch-changes To Pound Exclaim and A New Beginning

After massive lay-offs (Obama's economy) at Pound Exclaim #! we're changing things up again. I want to talk to you like an adult about the real life things that make other things happen. (This is supposed to be like one of those earnest but eager mea culpas that corporations put out when they have to make drastic changes (due to reasons) but still want you to love their brand and they promise that things are going to be new better different exciting but somehow still the same old brand you've always known and trusted).

So anyways, this all started back in the summer of 2013. It was a simpler time. We were carefree under the sun drinking mojitos and having pizza parties at all times. No one could have seen it coming. It was the great (Eastern-European, probably) hidden meta spam link attack of '13. Unbeknownst to our staff here, and readers at home, Pound Exclaim was host to invisible links advertising sex pills. This was unacceptable. We fired the IT staff.

Without anyone that could use a computer, the remaining staff at Pound Exclaim had a difficult time running a modern website. So we hired the accountant's cousin (who is a first year undergrad at American Technical Tech School in something computer related probably), well we hired him (using the imaginary intern college credit units as payment) to getting us going on a new website. It was full analog. It was a refreshing throwback to the original days of web.

Unfortunately, a fully analog website doesn't require designers or a media staff. We had to let them go. You know, this economy and all, it's difficult for everyone. No hard feelings. Please don't use me as a reference.

With the new retro Pound Exclaim running full steam, our writers worked tirelessly on pounding out new and refreshing articles. Until they started getting a little too artistic. Poems, random musings, and incomplete thoughts littered the page of supposed articles. Maybe it was a result of the new format. Maybe it was a result of low morale. We'll never know. The writing staff was given the pink slip.

After that, it was merely a matter of firing everybody else. Everyone is fired. Go home. The doors are closed. Then with no staff, no content to publish, and no Pound Exclaim I sat in the dark empty office--face buried in hands--lamenting my life's work. This was it. Any day now the internet was going to call and shut off my website.

Then I'd be out in the streets; just another failed dot-com boomer. "I used to be somebody," I would shout at pedestrians, waving my oily rags. They'd avert their gaze and hustle on by, no doubt on their way to an internet company meeting that I would have been running were it ten years ago. (Does anyone remember interwebcream.com?)

But no. This is my chance to deny fate. I've read enough Ayn Rand to know that I am a human being and the world bends at my will. All I have to do is want it hard enough and never compromise. So I got out the arthritic keyboard and dusted it off. I put new batteries into the mouse. I powered up the old beast. Oh man, to hear those Intel Cores roaring to life. And I started interneting.

Visiting sites, commenting on articles, viewing hilarious gifs, linking youtube vids. Yes, yes, this was the internet that left me behind to drown in its wake. But I am master and commander. The waves do not sink me, they give charge and blow harder into my full sails as I Netscape Navigate the open seas of information highway. I shall surf my way to victory!

And so Pound Exclaim is making a resurgence. We have a new staff of college interns and stay-at-home-parents that want to earn $3R10U$ CA$$$H in their spare time. All of them are plagiarizing articles from around the web and doing reddit re-writes with sensationalist headlines for your reading pleasure.

You'll also notice that we switched hosting to Google Blogger. We never used the full capacity of self-hosting in the past, so why not do it for free on one of the web's top blogging platforms? If this deems to be insufficient, we'll explore alternate options. For the time being though, we just need someone to hold our words and pictures.

As a Google hosted site, you'll notice all sorts of connectivity that our lazy tech guys never really go into. (It was such a good decision to fire them). Like Google+ and uh other stuff I guess. Add us as a + 1 and follow along in this new adventure. Things may be shaky for a while. But we're glad you're here.

xoxo - poundexclaim #!

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