Roll Call for the Dead
September 11th, 2023Missing Links
Want to feel old? Think about all the blogs that have died.
On very rare occasions, I go through my blogroll to find out if there is any point in keeping links. My standard is a little vague. Basically, if you haven’t posted in a year, your link is probably going to fall. Of course, I have not applied this standard to Acidman’s blog, Gut Rumbles, which is still maintained by his family, 17 years after his death. I also kept Lost in the Cheese Aisle, the blog of the late Steve Krodman, AKA Ellison. He was doing fine, and then one day he was diagnosed with ALS, and he was gone in something like a year.
Seventeen! If Acidman had had a son the day he died, the son would be getting ready to go to college.
No one reading this has any idea who Acidman was, I suppose.
I got rid of Sondra K. today. She used to be huge. Then something happened, and it seemed like the only person who continued posting was Doug M., who is not an adequate substitute. While I was doing my culling, I learned that Sondra’s blog has been replaced by something called Sondra’s Gulch or whatever, and when I looked at it, everything was written by Doug M.
I dumped Smoke on the Water, written by Jim Seigler. He hasn’t published in eternity. He visited the compound a few years back, though.
I got rid of Aaron’s CC, a blog written by my old college buddy. When you try to visit, you get a weird window asking you to download a php file. Maybe that’s a bomb for the folks who put a fatwa on him. In any case, there is no content now. I don’t think I should be sending innocent people to a site that appears to be a booby trap.
Is blogging finally over? Maybe it is. Let’s see if IMAO and The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler still exist.
The Rott is still up, but not much is happening. IMAO is running, but I don’t see “Frank” anywhere in the text.
Russ Emerson, AKA Tacjammer, has not updated since 2018, so he’s gone. I hope he’s okay. He developed hydrocephalus all of a sudden, and before they put in a shunt, he already had damage to his nervous system.
I wonder if conservative bloggers still think they’re doing something important. Are they still fighting for the cause? I dropped all that years ago.
If you’re still coming by, and I deleted your link, I apologize, but you weren’t using your blog anyway, so you probably don’t care.
September 11th, 2023 at 7:19 PM
Well, I’m glad that you haven’t deleted me. I’m still very much alive and kicking. (And reading you regularly, one of the few pleasures I have in these degenerate times.)
September 11th, 2023 at 7:41 PM
I remember Acidman, along with several others that will tell my internet age: Elisson (who died on my birthday), Den Beste, Dennis the Peasant, Aaron’s CC, Moxie, Emperor Misha, InstaPunk, Grouchy Old Cripple (also RIP), so many others. Frank J is pretty active on Twitter and substack now, FYI.
But yeah, blogging isn’t what it was back in the day.
September 11th, 2023 at 9:09 PM
I too remember acid man and occasionally pop in to see if his daughter has posted anything recently.
I think I checked out one of your old sites too a few years back, the eponymous one.
I’m getting old, but as I recall, I also bought one of your books back in the day. I think it was the “Eat what you want and die like a man” one.
Anyway, take care and stock up!
September 11th, 2023 at 9:50 PM
Yes! Acidman, Ellison, GOC, SondraK… All excellent reads.
Remember Og? I think maybe the two of you had some type of disagreement over some kind of tool or a welder or something. What do I know. I’m a woman. I didn’t know then and I still don’t.
Any chance Aaron might go by the name Ace now? If so, I can email you that link. (That blog is kind of saving my sanity right now.) Jim is actually commenting there currently.
I would say more but I have to type this out on a phone, and that stinks!
September 11th, 2023 at 10:05 PM
Sippican Cottage is still active and rather interesting, or at least I think so.
Perhaps that isn’t a huge endorsement.
September 11th, 2023 at 10:36 PM
Acidman was one of my daily reads. GOC was another. Nowadays it’s just you, daily pundit, Kim du Toit and Kenny at Knuckledraggin My Life Away. I can’t be bothered with instagram or any of the social network platforms.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:53 AM
Wow! That was 17 years ago?!?
September 12th, 2023 at 9:16 AM
I also remember Acidman, although it’s been years since I’ve looked at the blog. Glad that the family has decided to keep it going for posterity. FYI, Kim du Toit is still very active as is Tamara Keel (VFTP). Kevin is still posting at “The Smallest Minority” smallestminority.org
But I agree it ain’t like it used to be.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:25 AM
Tim: thanks for chiming in. Glad you are still getting some entertainment out of this site. You linked to me a while back, and I almost fainted.
JP: I don’t recall reading Grouchy Old Cripple. Maybe I should check the Wayback Machine.
Freddie: Og got mad because I didn’t believe roasting a pig on galvanized steel would make me sick. I won that round. Aaron is not Ace, if you mean Ace from Ace.mu.nu. I guess he got tired of being a target for dimestore terrorists.
Thanks for the comments, old timers.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:22 PM
Interesting that you were aware of Acidman but not Denny (GOC). He blog-sat for Acidman once (and only once) when Rob went on a vacation. I say “once” because – remember how Rob HATED cats? Well, as a joke, Denny posted a ton of cat pictures on Acidman’s blog during his curation and Rob lost it when he returned. He never could let anything go and his “Acidman” side was in full display. He was PISSED about that. I think Denny poked him about it all the way to the end. Good times…
September 12th, 2023 at 7:54 PM
Rob Smith was easy to annoy, and he enjoyed it.
September 14th, 2023 at 10:11 PM
I am shocked to see Gut Rumbles site is being maintained. His grief was his estrangement from his family. I believe a daughter seemed to be his only contact. A very sad man.
September 27th, 2023 at 2:05 PM
Steve — I used to read Rob Smith daily, as well as some of the other bloggers you mention here. I think he had a son, possibly named Quintin. Also a daughter.
Rob Smith seemed angry a lot of the time. I don’t think he got over the ending of his marriage.
I remember being a little shocked to learn that he had died. (I believe the cause was Pulmonary Embolism — I used to wonder how that had happened to him.)
The Acidman blog was how I found Hog On Ice, incidentally.
September 27th, 2023 at 2:08 PM
By the way Steve, the blogosphere is alive and well — it’s just that it’s mainly now to be found on Medium.com. Lots of good writers on there, though it’s $5 / month.
September 27th, 2023 at 2:23 PM
Did they determine the cause? All I knew was that they found him dead. In a post on his blog, his daughter said he was slumped on the couch with no pills or alcohol in the house.
September 27th, 2023 at 3:07 PM
Did they determine the cause?
=> Pretty sure his daughter stated on his blog that the cause was Pulmonary Embolism. Possibly the findings of a post-mortem. I don’t remember that part.