"Happy Blog Natale, or Sumthin"

Those words came from the day's first well-wisher, Ia. She greeted my blog a happy birthday through SMS, at around one o' clock in the morning.

Yes, you read that right. Slip of the Pen turns one this day! Not that there are many people who'll care, but damn is December 29 a special day for this kid, er, corsair. This blog is my very first one, which means that Corsarius the blogger has also leveled up from infant to toddler.

The voyage began simply enough. (Now, that's dramatic.) I was looking for some place to 'self-publish' my written pieces, or at the very least, a place where I'll be forced to write regularly. (Unfortunately, 'regularly' can mean every other day or every other week.) Ia -- the mysterious lady who goes around visiting (nay, stalking!) blogs while not keeping her own -- introduced me to the world of blogging several months before December 29, 2004. At first I didn't give crap about blogs; heck, even the word "blog" is ugly. (Mabantot na salita, in Tagalog.) So it was a great moment of self-contradiction when I published my first post for my first blog, christened Slip of the Pen.

To all the people who visited this blog, thank you very much. And I mean it. Thank you to the people who regularly dropped by in spite of my oft-mentioned delinquence (for the nth time, my apologies), thank you to the people who perused every entry and burrowed deep into my archives (come on, let the birthday blogger dream), and thank you even to those who only chanced upon this page then clicked on "Next Blog" in a jiffy (it's the thought that counts). I may have used comical wording, but the "Thank you" is serious. I'm dead serious about that.

To reach 10,000+ hits whilst only posting 62 entries (What's that, almost one post per week? Horrible!) is quite a source of joy and inspiration for me. And so are the precious tags on the chatbox and comments on every blog entry. I like hearing from readers what they think about this and that piece. Maraming salamat. (That's "Thank you" in Tagalog.)

Allow me to gratify myself, and present the choice picks for the year that was:

• Sketch. In my own words, "For vanity's sake, here's a short vignette about this blogger."
• Inseparable. My poetic attempt at doing justice to Pepoy's great pic taken in UP.
• Five Acts of Valentine's Day: A Postmortem. Dissecting February the 14th has never been so fun.
• The Fall. The Corsarius tries supernatural fiction.
• Dead Cats. An old animal rights essay.
• The Mighty Mouse. In the enigmatic Transience's words, "This is f*cking hysterical!"
• Habemus Corsarium. I am who I am. Or am I?
• Disjointed Prettiness Ahead. I am playing favorites by again quoting Transience: "Pure f*cking literature." F-words can be elegant, you know.
• The Filipino Can Do It. My org, UP ACM, wins an international competition. 'Nuff said.
• The Something of Nothingness. Writer's block obliterated.
• Deviations. Fiction. Not for children.
  
• Jupiter Falls. Gold lightning, baby.
• Bottling Up the Ink. A good excuse for delinquent writers.
• Poems: Madness by the Candlelight. A trifecta of senseless verse.
  

Fortuna dies natalis, Lapsus Calami!