Everything that was bad about the old FCN.

It's time to get a few things off my chest.

I love FCN. I think it's awesome. That's why I'm in it. And that's why I love it. There's nothing better than putting your own words on a dot com and knowing that people all over the galaxy are reading it. The actual number of people might be ridiculously tiny, but hey. Theoretically, my ideas are being hung out to dry. Anyone could read it.

That said, there were some things about FCN (the old FCN) that really got to me. Here's a top 10 countdown, in non-alphabetical order.

1) That boring gray scheme. Few colors are less interesting than 60% gray. I mean, it's blander than bland. It hurts to look at. I know white is plain, but it's an interesting color. It has all the other colors mixed in. If you look closely, you can see them all. White is cool. Gray isn't. Gray is lame. Drop dead gray!

2) Low readership. We have 10 readers! Come on people! Doesn't anyone realize that the growth on this blog is just not healthy? We're dead in the water! That's going to change now that I don't have those two dead weights slowing me down.

3) People who aren't me. This blog has gotten nowhere since inception, probably because it ran for months with only Dan to help it along. The addition of Cody didn't really pick things up either. It was my occasional guest contributions that gave FCN its name. It was my visionary leadership that brought us to BlogSpot; my visionary leadership that inspired every great franchise that made us funny; my visionary leadership that kept this blog from swirling down into the hopeless mire of lameness that is a mark of every other student blog on the web, with the exceptions of all the blogs that link to FCN. The non-me contributors were Class A balls and chains. Now that they're gone, FCN can fly free.

4) 200 by 800 banners. It seems like every post these days started with a generic banner that was photoshopped using really bone-headed filters on a copyrighted picture. Boring, lame, and probably illegal. The new FCN has full-size graphics. Nothing scrunchy for me, no sir! Buh-bye forever, 200 by 800. Besides, the old banners were often totally unrelated to the actual posts.

5) LLFCN. The Least Likely (to succeed) Fan Club N was founded in our second ever post here on BlogSpot; an omen of lameness to come. Since day 1, we've been waiving the registration fee "today only." There aren't any benefits to being in the club and it's not very easy to join. And what's with that acronym? Why couldn't we just call it the FCN Fan Club like everyone else?

6) The same tired jokes over and over again. I'll give you an example. Every time we got a new reader, we just HAD to go make another post about it saying pretty much the same thing! No wonder we only have 10 readers. Everyone else's intelligence is insulted. The jokes get old. It takes creativity to run a humor blog, not cut and paste. I mean, the first time - when we got the TOLF - that was fine. But after that? Puh-lease.

7) Life Tips. Why didn't we just put a hotlink to Reuter's Oddly Enough in our sidebar and be done with it? Did anyone really think those were clever? "Don't stick yourself in the eye with a pencil. If you must stick yourself in the eye with a pencil, don't eat a pound of salt immediately afterwards. If you must stick yourself in the eye with a pencil and then eat a pound of salt, don't cheat on your final exams." What an embarrassment.

8) A million and one labels. Every post just HAD to have a bunch labels assigned to it that often had nothing whatsoever to do with the posts and were useless to a reader looking for anything. Everyone just used the search counter in the top left anyway. If I weren't so lazy, I'd go back and delete them all. But I'm lazy, so I won't. Besides, it's a weekend.

9) FCN Classics. We've been online for what? A year maybe? And we're already posting classics? How much more egotistically self-engrossed can you get? Maybe in 15 years or so we'll have classics. But not now. No way. Classics are lame excuses for not having anything better to post. Besides, almost none of the classics were written by me.

10) FCN Gear. What a cheap publicity stunt. You want to know how much money we've made on those shirts and bumper stickers? Not enough to cover shipping the check, that's how much. We spent hours designing them. We have dozens of unfinished designs waiting to be "unveiled." Waiting for what? A hurricane, or a dose of inspiration? What a waste.

So those are the old FCN's top ten problems. Wow that felt good. I had a great weekend already. Of course, if you have any other nasty things you'd like to say about the old FCN (provided they don't involve me) please feel free to unload on a very sympathetic ear. But don't you dare bash the new FCN. I know where you live. Okay, I don't, but I can at least run over to my neighbor's and kick their lawn statues over. Or I can at least delete your comment. Or I can at least go "Oh, come on!" when I read it.

So fire away.