Wednesday, November 02, 2005

An introduction and an explanation

I think it is long overdue that I wrote a general comment providing an explanation about Alley Oop Watch and why I started it.
First, let me say that I am overwhelmed by the response this blog has generated. I believe I may have more regular readers here than I do at my main blog. I know it is not because of anything I write in particular, but more because it has developed into a gathering place for people who share a common interest - either positive or negative - in Alley Oop. I think that is terrific.

I will confess that I started this blog two years ago as a lark. I never thought anyone would be reading it other than myself. But thanks to the miracle of Google searches it has brought together a small, but devoted group of Alley Oop fans and critics. Here is the backstory on how it all started. I was visiting my mother one weekend and was telling her about my blog. She seemed interested so I decided to show her how easy it was to set up a blog on Blogger.com. The Alley Oop strip I had read that morning was still fresh in my mind when I took the two minutes or so to set up the new blog. I had been reading Alley Oop since the mid-’90s and often would be frustrated by some stupid inconsistency in the storyline, but since I didn’t know anyone else who read the strip there was no one I could talk to about it. On the spur of the moment I decided a blog would be a good place for me to vent my frustrations about the strip.

I know that at the top of this blog I refer to Alley Oop as “The world's stupidest comic strip...”, but that is clearly an exaggeration. There are many other comic strips that are far worse than Alley Oop. I just choose not to read them. There is obviously something about the Alley Oop strip that has kept me reading it all these years in spite of my frustrations. I see the criticisms leveled at the strip here as mostly a tough love operation. I don’t want to see the Alley Oop strip ended. That said, however, I welcome comments from Alley Oop fans and critics alike (and most probably wear both hats).

As for the comments, it has been pointed out that the older comments have been disappearing from the site. That is a problem that I hope to rectify soon since I think the comments have added a tremendous amount to this site. Unfortunately, I have tried to do this on the cheap for the past two years. I’ve never invested a penny into the site which is hosted on the free Blogger service and uses the free Haloscan comments. But now it looks like I will need to upgrade my Haloscan account in order to access comments that are more than a few months old. I will try to do this sometime in the next few weeks.

I want to thank everyone for dropping by and leaving your comments.

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