Happy Birthday (And R.I.P), Dear Old Black Table

Six years ago today the internet heaved the mighty Black Table upon an unsuspecting internet nation, so it's my duty to pay respect.

Eric Gillin, Aileen Gallagher, That Leitch Kid, and myself were unaware if the silly little thing would ever get read by anybody or lead to anything other than to help us keep our sanity while we slouched through depressing trade magazine jobs, but it did. No, it never got bought, made any money, won any awards, or even reached a wide-reaching audience, but it gave all of us (and a lot of other writers) a pretty damn good outlet for those stories we only wished somebody would just please, please publish. Stories like this ridiculous thing, which Leitch and I were convinced would absolutely melt people's minds, took poor Eric about 12 hours to pull together thanks to our limited (and stolen) online publishing tools. Sorry, man.

It's important to remember that there was a reason for doing these things we do that went beyond page views and "reach" and "stickiness" all those other cringe-inducing words that creep into your vocabulary once you start actually getting paid to do this shit. It's important to remember that there was a time when 100 readers was a huge story and that one encouraging email from a random stranger was sometimes the only thing you needed to keep going. But the further along you go, it's easier to forget. So, congratulations, Gillin, Aileen, and Leitch.

Thank you for your continued support of time-wasting.