Tim Blair

I've always thought he should've stuck with Ken Layne's puppies template.

Blimey. Reynolds wants 20 large for a year.

The puppies template was actually the work of a girl named Jenny ... she made the goofy puppies & kitties templates that were among the default choices on Blogger.com ... If you remember that jackass Alex Beam from the Boston Globe, you might remember a funny blogger who called himself "A. Beam" and used the kitties template because it was silly & clueless, like the bitter, crappy columnist Alex Beam himself. ("A. Beam" never gave away his true identity, although I'm pretty sure he is a very funny newspaper columnist in Alaska.)

Anyway, all of that contributed to the ridiculous puppies template on Barry's second blog. (His first, which you can still link to from his current blog, wasn't a blog at all. It was some sort of crude message board.) And then people complained about the puppies, so I very quickly threw together a template based on the "Official DaveBarry.com" site.

I am amazed he used it for a whole year. Mysteriously, he never seemed to have trouble with Blogger.com, either. I think it's because Evan (Blogger CEO before the Google buyout, and now a Google exec) was happy to see the famous Dave Barry using Blogger, and maybe Evan put the Barry blog on a fancy server that always worked. This is a conspiracy theory.

Anyway, how great is it to have Dave Barry blogging? Very great, that's how great. Every week or so, somebody sends me an e-mail saying, "You used to be okay, doing the blogging. Now you don't and you are worthless." I always reply with something like this:

Dear Jackass,

I put a web log thing on my site four years ago, and updated it daily, for free, just so you would have something to read other than comic books and collection notices. I did it by hand for a year or two before that. I did an entire daily Web newspaper for two+ years before that. And I still use the freakin' blog software on a regular basis, on my site, and if you don't like what I'm using it for you can commit suicide or something. I'll wait here ...

The important thing is that I conned a number of talented writers into doing this blog nonsense -- Matt Welch, Tim Blair, Dave Barry, Elizabeth Spiers (although she built her own blog), etc. -- and they are still doing it, and you get to read them, so if you decide *not* to commit suicide, please send me Fifty Dollars US ($50 US) for all the reading pleasure I arranged for you.

Sincerely,
K. Layne

>> By the way, those ads to your left?

I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I don't see any ads to the left. Nor to the right or anywhere else. I really enjoy knowing that you're getting money for ad space while not making me have to actually look at the ads. I hope you won't do whatever it is people do to make their sites quit working with my obsolete browser.

Is this a move to an undisclosed location?

"the capitalist media corporate structure that controls every aspect of everything and already has determined the outcomes of the next six presidential elections."

Where is it his blog is going.....DU?

And, I agree with Bruce H. If you asked me what the ads are, I don't have a clue!

I remember the puppies! My first blog used the kitty template.

As for Instapundit's advertising rates - one month for $1000, or three months for #5000. Yeah, right...

Uh-oh is right. Maybe you should reconsider putting your own site back in your BlogAds;)

PS. Ken Layne, I've made a mental note to send you money at some point in the future.

Pixy, I like those Instapundit rates. I know that Glenn himself is intensely amused by the fact that people will pay that much for adspace on his blog, and if he can rake in the bucks, more power to him. After all, we're all capitalists without regret here in blogosphere, aren't we?