A Brand New Us!

The Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas is FIVE years old today!

You may have noticed there have been a few changes around here. (For one, I showered today! However, enough about me and my personal growth.)

We're trying to make our blog cooler looking and friendlier to our audience's participation (all three of you). We want you to feel like this is your second home, except for the fact that there's no guest room, no couch to sleep on, and we'll thank you to keep your hands out of the cupboard, you devious grifters.

Seriously, we want you to visit every day. Tell your friends and family to visit! Click on the ads if you like! Favorite/bookmark us!! Read our tweets!! For goodness' sake, don't just sit there, do something!!!

Yes, we are a bit anxious about the changes. Why do you ask?

Anyway, here's what's new:

• An all new look! The page is wider and with a new layout that we hope is easier to read. I can't count on my hands and toes* the number of times someone has written in and told me that they didn't get the jokes in a bit at all, and I just knew it was because they lost them in the quaint papyrus background of the page. After berating them for their weak perceptive skills, I'd sulk for minutes at a time.
  
• Comments! Comments! Comments! Now you too can experience the exciting world of a DOUI contributor and be ignored by the general blogging public. No, really we've just decided it's easier for people to comment than to e-mail us or snail mail those fascinating letters that some of you build out of cut up newspaper headlines and ads. (Igor in Detroit has produced some especially lovely ones.)
  
• A new sidebar! Well, it's somewhat new. We've rearranged some items so that they are easier to access. (No, I'm not just referring to the ads!) A good blog sidebar should compliment the main part of the blog. Thnk of it like this: If the blog were a motorcycle, say the Batcycle, the sidebar would be the sidecar. So, please let us know if Robin, the Boy Wonder stars turning up over there so we can slap a restraining order on the little stalker.**

We hope you enjoy both the new features of the blog as well as the old writers.*** We're thrilled to have been around for five years and look forward to an even bigger and better five to come. Thanks for reading!

* This is especially so because it's never really happened. If you people would write more, we'd have better anecdotes.
** And with any luck, the cops will get a decent pair of shorts on the little exhibitionist.
*** Don't ask how old, if you know what's good for you.

We're Four!

Lest you think we'd forgotten, The Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas turned four a week ago. Instead of the usual celebratory bacchanailia (a group night of watching the Smokey and the Bandit series over half a six-pack of Guinness) we decided to let the Obama inaugural stand in for the party. We just taped DoUI signs strategically to the telly and pretended that Aretha Franklin and Denzel Washington were fans of the blog.

As for the actual politicians, we don't focus on partizan politics here, so let's just say that we think of them as future cast members for the blog sketches.

Just think, our blog is now in the pre-school phase of it's life. If you're hoping that means the jokes will get a bit more sophisticated and mature, ask yourselves how many four year olds you know who fit that bill?

By the time the blog is thirty, we'll be so old, we'll seem mature by comparison to the rest of society.

Actually, it's not taking that long at all...