In September 2005, I was rather excited about all the buzz surrounding the Nintendo Revolution.
To show my support, I created a graphical signature and began using it on my forums:
 

      When the system’s name was changed to the Wii, I abandoned my signature in disgust in May 2006.
Eventually the new name grew on me and I revived my signature a few weeks later with a new slogan:
 

Now take a look at the cover of the August 2006 issue of Nintendo Power which came in the mail today:
 

Hey look, it’s a clever play on the old Black Power logo. Hmmm, where I have seen that before?
In short, Nintendo should hire me and pay me lots of money to do their PR and ad camapigns.

      A new article will be up Monday if you’re lucky, Tuesday if you’re not. You’re probably not lucky.

      In honor of 06/06/06, a new article is up on Nintendo’s Devil World. Hopefully you will enjoy my review a hell of a lot more than I enjoyed the game.

      My efforts as an analyst of 1980s pop culture have not gone unnoticed. Recently I was contacted by a special interest group called the Council for Cocaine Awareness who wanted me to design a poster for them. So I did. Enjoy.

      I’d like to offer my apologies the lack of new site content as of late, I kinda suck sometimes. All I can say is that I’m sorry and I’ll try and give you something new to read very soon.

      I had hoped to have a new article up by tonight, but that probably won’t happen now. I had jury duty today and I got stuck on a fucking jury for a trial that doesn’t start until Monday and is expected to last until at least Tuesday. The worst part is that it’s some sort of bullshit civil case, the kind that Judge Wapner used to resolve in like 15 minutes. Hey, maybe Judge Wapner can get me out this…

      Dammit, I guess not. In any case, I don’t feel much like writing anything now because I have the cloud of jury duty hanging over my head. It may be my civic duty, but it’s also wicked fucking gay. Even worse, it prevents me from playing The New Super Mario Brothers.

      A new comic is up. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own webcomic, this strip will offer you profound insight into a comedy formula that will you get you big laughs every fucking time. Or not.

      9 out of the 10 voices in my head keep telling me that there’s a new article up on the main page. I already knew about it since I fucking wrote it, but they wanted me to tell everyone else. So now you know. Enjoy.

      So yeah, a new comic is up on the Comics page. It’s my first single panel comic ever. I figured that if Gary Larson can do it, why can’t I? He doesn’t own the format, you know. Stop acting like he does.

I gave you a new article yesterday, so today I’ve decided to give you a new comic. It features professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page and my favorite U.S. president ever. Bet you can’t guess who it is.

      Michelle Trachtenberg was a guest star on Tuesday night’s episode of the hit FOX medical drama House, MD. When you are able to book a big star like Michelle, whose prior work includes Eurotrip, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The NES Drinking Saga, you should advertise that you have her because more people will watch. FOX didn’t. Shame on them.

Tracht Fact #1: Michelle is currently dating actor Shawn Ashmore (Iceman from the X-Men movies)
Tracht Fact #2: I am going drop an anvil on actor Shawn Ashmore (Iceman from the X-Men movies)

Yes, it’s really me. And yes, I really am a douchebag. I’m not a huge fan of April Fools’ Day jokes; last year, I didn’t even do one. People are expecting jokes on April Fools’ Day, so it’s hard to pull off a good one. If you simply change around your site’s layout on April 1st, people will either groan in annoyance or laugh politely because they think it’s “cute”. The only people who will actually fall for something like that are complete idiots. So when I decided to plan out my April Fools’ Day prank, I went into it with two central ideas:

1. An April Fools’ Day Joke is only funny if you actually trick people.
2. The people who visit my site aren’t idiots.

And so, I concocted an elaborate scheme to fool everyone that was set into motion well before April Fools’ Day. And it worked. To all of you who were genuinely worried about the site, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I didn’t really enjoy the prank. It was fun for a while, but after visiting the forums a few times, I felt really guilty. I thought about calling it off early several times, but I ultimately decided to see it through to the end. In order to answer any lingering questions about the joke, I’ve throw together the a FAQ.

AFD FAQ

Who was in on it?
I told Dr. Jeebus, cybersst, and S. McCracken about it. They all knew something was going to happen, just not exactly what. Valdronius and greeneyedzeke figured it out on their own after it went live.

So you didn’t actually tell your moderators? That’s cold.
Yes, I suppose it is. But it helped add to the realism. Of course, if it had been a real attack, the moderators probably would have been banned or demoted.

When did the April Fools’ Day Joke start?
March 9th. I gave cybersst an account called maddoxownsyou, I had him post a couple of threatening/annoying messages times, and then I banned him. I had him do it so that the IP couldn’t be traced back to me. Then I remembered that only moderators can check IPs, so I felt silly for going to extra lengths.

Were there actually any bandwith/hacking attacks against the site?
No, that was part of the setup too.

So were there any real problems at all?
Yes. I really did have some problems with trolls on the boards. First, there was mcdusher. While not truly a troll, he did manage to piss off half of my regulars with his bad spelling, incoherent leftist rants, and undying love for Microsoft. It boggles my mind how someone who harbors such huge mistrust towards the American government and capitalist society can openly support the world’s most evil multinational corporation, but whatever. Eventually mcdusher got bored and left. After that, things were quiet until my planned maddoxownsyou attacks. After I initiated the maddoxownsyou posts, two or three real spammers showed up. They were quickly and quietly banned.

Why did you tie Maddox into this?
Because it was believable. Maddox definitely has fans who are diehard enough and retarded enough to attempt to hack a site over an anti-Maddox statement, so I knew it would work. Maddox openly admits that many of his fans are complete idiots. That’s what happens when you design your site appeal to the lowest common denominator. If you’ve been to the site, you’ve seen the barely intelligible hate mail that he gets. According to his FAQ, “most of [his fan mail] is more poorly written than [his] hate mail”.

So do you hate Maddox?
No, not especially. I only find about 40% of his posts funny, but the good ones are fucking classics. But I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t bug me that he does way more traffic than me. The guy rarely fucking updates and his site is still huge. But what really pisses me off is that sites like BurgerKing.com do better traffic than me. The information content Burger King’s website is much like nutrition content of their food: ZERO. But whereas BK’s food tastes good, their website is completely fucking useless.

If you don’t hate him, what’s the deal with the Haddox page?
While I was sifting through the 3000 screenshots I took of Rolling Thunder, I suddenly lost the will to write anything that would take any sort of actual analysis, reflection, and effort. So I threw together the Haddox site as a distraction. Any time I can’t think of anything good to write, I make a Haddox post instead.

Can we expect something like this next year?
Absolutely not. As a webmaster, there’s a limit to how many times you can falsely claim that you’ve been hacked without completely destroying the trust and goodwill between you and your readers. That limit is probably zero, but it’s definitely not higher than one. I do not want to build a reputation as The Boy Who Cried H4X0R3D, so I will never attempt an April Fools’ Day joke this elaborate again. If I do an April Fools’ Day joke next year, it will be blatant and silly.

Oh, and in case anyone missed it, here’s what the site looked like:

Main Page: http://www.sydlexia.com/afd2006.htm
Forums: main | Syd Loseria | h4x0r3d!!!! | 8 hrs | ATTN: TEBOR. | Tebor Apology 1 | Tebor Apology 2

      Part 24 of the NES Drinking Saga is now up. Will I finally get my shit together and start updating it on a regular basis again? We can only hope.

      So there’s a pretty good chance the site may go down at some point during the week. I am dangerously close to exceeding my monthly bandwith limit and if that happens, the site will be down until April’s billing cycle starts. I am not going to pay the overages and I will decline any offers to do so, for reasons that I am about to explain…

      In most cases, exceeding my monthly bandwith could be considered a good thing. It would mean that my site recieves great traffic and is adored by several thousand regular visitors. And while I certainly do OK in terms of traffic, that is not the reason that my bandwith is almost gone. In recent weeks, I have been threatened by several people (or perhaps one person with multiple e-mails and way too much free time) who are angry with me over a Maddox parody hosted on my site. The page was supposed to be a private joke, but somehow it was leaked. Quite a few people have seen it now, including some of Maddox’s more rabid fans. These people can’t take a fucking joke (or spell… or put together a coherent thought) and they’re pissed at me for hosting the page. Their hostility has mostly taken the form of vulgar e-mails, but there have been a few unpleasant incidents on the forums too. If that were the full extent of the problems, I would just ignore these pricks and get on with my life. But lately, things have gotten worse.

      Over the last few days, I have noticed that my site has been using an unusually high amount of bandwith and that most of this added usage is coming from a handful of IPs. While the e-mails that I’ve received only make vague unintelligible threats, I am fairly positive that this an orchestrated attempt to crash my site. I have tried to use IP blocking to protect my bandwith but when I block one IP, a new one takes its place. Not only does this confirm my suspicions that someone is fucking with me, it also means there’s not much I can do to stop them right now. I am current working with my webhost, Dreamhost, to find a solution to this problem. I am also in contact with a lawyer about this matter. If there is any legal ground for me to sue these bastards, I’m gonna fucking rape their wallets. I think I may have a case. I am not sure if I can press charges over the bandwith attack, but there were 113 failed attempts to access the site’s FTP on March 25th. If that doesn’t constitute a hacking attempt, I don’t know what does.

      So please bear with me over the course of the next week. If the site goes down, don’t panic; I am not quitting and it will be back up at 10 AM EST on Saturday when the new billing cycle starts. Thank you.

      It’s been way too long, but a new article is finally up. This one is on Konami’s 1990 arcade game Aliens, based on the 1986 movie of the same name.

      A new comic is up. Does it spell the official end of the NES Drinking Saga, or is it just a convenient sight gag? YOU BE THE JUDGE. No wait, it’s my site so I should get to decide. It’s the second option, the sight gag one. Now read it.

      I’ve decided to revisit two things that have helped shape my life: Catholicism and misappropriated NES sprites. What exactly does that mean? It means a new comic is up. It also means I’m going to Hell because I eat meat on Fridays.

      A new comic is up. It’s dedicated to anyone who has ever worked retail, but especially any of you who have ever worked at a supermarket, especially during winter. Enjoy.