As it turns out, that graphically-inundated post that you see below is my 40th. Yes, that's right -- this blog has been in existence for about 40 months now, and I've written disclaimer entries to start each and every one of them.
Normally I'd do a retrospective on these posts the moment I hit my 50th, or perhaps even my 100th. Unfortunately, my memory isn't what it used to be, so I'll do one now instead. Besides, if I ever had to create one hundred links for a single article, my fingers would probably fall off.
Of course I won't write up comments for every single one of the disclaimers that I feature here; that would be just as mad. I will, however, entitle them where I can... and I'll have a few choice words for those that seemed as though they came from nowhere at all.
September 2004: First Post
- Yes, the very first post on this blog was a Disclaimer. That shouldn't be a surprise, really.
October 2004: First Post Redux
November 2004: The Evil Pinky Smirk
- The Dr. Evil reference here isn't much of a creative spark, but it spurs other outrageous antics.
December 2004: Hitting Close to Home
- This was my first reference to the John Wiegley case, although it was done in a very indirect fashion. I would later provide a more detailed discussion in my July 2006 disclaimer.
January 2005: Dogs and Lawyers
February 2005: Ruh-Rhoa, Rhaggy
March 2005: SEAN SMASH!
- It has been brought to my attention that this was one of the strangest of the early disclaimers. The writing is very melodramatic, and I obviously didn't do much of a job with the planning and writing. Nevertheless, it brought a decidedly strange image to mind...
April 2005: Touch This and Die
May 2005: Post-Palanca Drivel
June 2005: e. e. cummings
- This was probably the first true "creative" disclaimer post, and it was written in the style of e. e. cummings, an American writer who had a very striking method of poetry. I don't tend towards poetry, so this was a little strange for me... but then again, all of these posts were a little strange in one way or another.
July 2005: The Artist Analogy
- You've probably noticed that my posts got longer and longer as the years went by; this was the first of my posts to exceed three hundred words. As a result, that puts this post more in the vein of a regular blog entry, and this was a practice that would be reflected in other disclaimer posts.
August 2005: Creative Commons
- I wrote this shortly after applying for and receiving a Creative Commons License, and as such, this is the little gray rectangle's first appearance in a blog entry.
September 2005: How to Use This Disclaimer
October 2005: Cavetalk
- In terms of word count, this is the shortest disclaimer post on record. Fire, by the way, is still bad.
November 2005: Monthly Threats
December 2005: Mother May I?
January 2006: Bad Year
February 2006: It Loses Something in the Translation
- If you're wondering why this blog entry is almost completely unintelligible, I'll tell you why: I wrote up the post, converted it into Chinese via one of those handy-dandy Internet translators, converted the result back into English, then repeated the whole process one more time. Somewhere in the middle of this mad experiment, I realized that this probably invalidated every single shred of legality in the disclaimer itself... but hey, it was still fun.
March 2006: Conspiracy Theory
April 2006: This Entry is a Pack of Lies
- To quote Reiji: "...this is one of your coolest disclaimers so far." I didn't think that I'd be hearing that phrase for any of these other entries, but I guess I was wrong...
May 2006: Why Have You Not Stolen Anything From Me Yet?
June 2006: Obnoxious
July 2006: Why We Fight
- This is the first and only disclaimer post where I provided clear examples of plagiarism for commercial and academic motivations. As far as I can tell, the links in these articles are still active. As far as I can tell, the plagiarists in these cases were never penalized for their actions, and have never expressed remorse or regret for what they feel was a perfectly ordinary act.
August 2006: Staightforward
September 2006: SEAN SMASH! Redux
October 2006: Just the Facts, Ma'am
November 2006: It's About Control
December 2006: Formal Tones
- This is the first disclaimer where I ask people not to quote me out of context. I'm not sure where this came from, but I'm obviously still referencing it a year later.
January 2007: It Don't Really Matter, Boss
February 2007: Resistance is Futile
- Having not placed a creative spin on any of the disclaimer posts for a while, I decided to go nuts with this one. Inspiration came from the excerpt from Star Trek: First Contact that I was watching at the time.
March 2007: Begin Workload
April 2007: Fictive
- I was pretty amazed when I wrote this one up -- despite my constant tries at fiction, I hadn't done a disclaimer post in such a style yet. The character Kyu was originally a dig at the scientist-type guy in the James Bond movies, and I really didn't have Kyu of Philippine Genre Stories in mind at the time...
May 2007: Thou Shalt Not...
June 2007: Greetings from Warsaw
- Having written this while I was walking around Poland, I originally planned to have someone translate this post into Polish for me. Sadly, however, I ended up being extremely busy on my business trip, and thus had to write the whole thing from scratch (as well as spend a fortune on an Internet connection to do so).
July 2007: The Comic
- I had wanted the stuffed toys to do a disclaimer post for quite some time, but I could never think of the right punchline/s for them, nor could I figure out how and when I could take the photographs. Finally, shortly before this post, I had a couple of hours and an angle in mind, so I took the plunge.
August 2007: It Ain't Shakespeare
- Despite the reaction that this post got, I'm not planning to perform this anytime soon. I used a couple of my old folios as references for this one -- Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice in particular.
September 2007: Seussisms
- It doesn't take a genius to know that this is based off the good doctor's Green Eggs and Ham, which happens to be the easiest of his books to homage. (I mean, even an episode of Johnny Bravo was able to do it.)
October 2007: The Se7en Deadly Sins
November 2007: So You're a Plagiarist. Now What?
- This was a remarkably straight post in the middle of a bunch of creative musings. I started wondering what things would be like if I ever put myself in a plagiarist's shoes, and that led me to question such things as motivations, means, and consequences. As far as I know, though, I haven't actually done this to anyone else... but this is about as good a profile as I can think of.
December 2007: House of Cards
- This blog tends to have a lack of images, which means that there's often little to break the monotony of words. I wanted to do something with pictures, but I didn't think that I had enough time to make anything substantial... unless I used a templating tool of some sort. And that was when the light bulb went off in my head.
Here's to more disclaimers. At first I wasn't sure if I could keep up the old tradition, but it seems to have some sort of remarkable longevity behind it. Now, if I could only bottle up the stuff and sell it...
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