Buffet Blue Balls

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For the past 3920 days I have woken up, kicked the covers off, ran out of my bedroom and through the kitchen (shoving my girlfriend to the ground in the process), sat down in front of my computer, fired it up, and went to this thread on the Magic Cafe to see if today was the day Steve Brooks finally finished the scintillating tale of how The Magic Cafe came to be. Oh, please, please, please, Steve! Continue the saga! It was November 2005 when you said the story was "TO BE CONTINUED...." And then you just leave us hanging? How dare you!

The last we heard about the pre-history of the Cafe was...

"Writing down a dozen or so ideas and concepts that appealed to me at the time, I started thinking about which theme would suit my needs the best. After some serious thought, I dumped many of my initial ideas, and chose instead to only work those that showed any real promise of becoming successful."

You little tease! I need to know what were the 11 ideas you had that were somehow worse than a Cafe theme? Tell us, Steve!

For those who weren't around back in the day, I'm responsible for that section of the Cafe known as The Buffet.

I used to write a site called The Magic Circle Jerk (it doesn't exist anymore) and Steve and the Cafe staff hated that site. It might have had something to do with the fact that I'd have contests on my site where people would write disgusting erotic fiction involving the Cafe staff. Or that I'd expose things about the site like the fact that the staff frequently reads through your "private" messages, and that their active users are a small fraction of the number they claim. I didn't really care about any of this. I just thought it was fun to get them riled up.

After attempting to get my site taken down a couple different ways, Steve had the devious thought that perhaps the best way for the Cafe to win the battle would be to have some "blogs" of their own. Thus he created the Buffet. This is a section of the Cafe devoted to eight different people. Each has their own "blog." Almost all have been dead for 5-10 years. The blogs, I mean, not the people. (Although, honestly, a couple of them might be dead too. RIP.) Steve himself was the least productive. Managing only five threads before stopping altogether. Don't sweat it, Steve. It's hard to come up with interesting or funny posts all the time.

"B-b-b-b-b-but you make it look so easy!"

I know, sweetheart, I know. But I'm like a magic blogging savant. I've written as many posts in 15 months on this site as you and seven other people wrote over 11 years in the Buffet. I was made for this. (That's a sad fact. Not a brag.)

Whenever I'm in a bad mood I remember that the Cafe used to have a staff of people called "Grammar Hosts" who would read every post and correct spelling and grammar. "But Andy, how could that be? I mean, just logically speaking. Certainly anyone who was in a position in their life where they thought that was a good use of their time would have been long dead by their own hand, yes?" You would think so. But they had them. (And apparently still do, but I don't think they actually correct grammar anymore. Who knows what they do.)

Why is the Cafe and the it's Buffet on my mind? Well, because we are now weeks away from The Jerx, Volume One being sent out and I was reminded about one of my plans for it early on. 

Originally I had contemplated just copying and pasting Steve's five Buffet posts into the text of the book and repeating it over and over for 400 pages. Then I would ship them all out and just when everyone was getting their book I would shut down this site and stop replying to emails. Eventually, a few weeks later, they would get the real book, but not before I had infuriated the people who had been most generous to me. 

I had thought this was a fine idea until my friend, who is handling the paypal transactions, vetoed it because he didn't want to get thrown in jail. And I reconsidered if it would be worth it to spend 1000s of dollars producing and shipping a book as a joke.

It was the smart choice. I have dumb ideas, but I'm not crazy. And that would have been crazy. That's like "Let's waste this one precious life we have correcting other people's spelling on a magic message board" level crazy.