Happy Birthday to Us

by Phil Johnson

During a lull in the space walk (which is spectacular and fascinating—but every now and then the Space Station travels through a region where we lose the TV signal), I was reminiscing through the past year's blogposts.

I decided to list my top ten most memorable events. Here they are, in descending order (because I don't know how to make .html's numbered-lists count down in reverse:

Top Ten Unforgettable Episodes in Year One of Pyromania:

1. The Great Comic-book Apocalypse of 2005. This occurred, oddly enough, on the very same day I met Frank Turk for the first time. I made the post early in the morning, before meeting Frank for lunch, so he is in no way to blame. But it's a remarkable and ominous coincidence, I think, that two such fateful and far-reaching events occurred within 4 hours of each other.
   
2. The Hamburger Helper Debate. A few people were piqued by a series of posts I did suggesting that total pacifism is inconsistent with Scripture. The more I tried to lighten the mood, the more "militant" some of my pacifist critics became. In one post, I pondered some rather far-fetched scenarios designed to show that lethal force against a terrorist like Osama bin Laden needn't automatically result in harm to innocent bystanders. If someone cornered the bad guy at Costco, for example, the judicious use of a frozen ground-beef chub could save untold numbers of innocent lives.
        Sadly, however, the very suggestion of a show of force in the aisles at Costco made some of our "peaceable" friends more angry than the notion of Osama running free and unmolested. The most notable response came from Joe Thorn, who seized the opportunity to question my manhood while appealing for a more "humble [and] thoughtful" attitude toward lost souls like Osama.
        My response, a desperate plea for a time out, made the fatal mistake of injecting another note of humor into a debate about one of the few dogmas certain forward-thinking evangelicals insist must be treated with a show of solemn reverence.
        Several commenters have said that was the funniest PyroPost ever. Others haven't stopped lambasting me for my unbridled cruelty.
        Two days later, I took a long break from blogging.
   
3. Speaking of poking fun at stuff we're supposed to be serious about, this was my personal favorite of all last year's comic-book covers. The various Biblezine® parodies also rank up there.
   
4. My week in London during the terrorist strike there was one of the most unforgettable weeks of my entire life. The posts from that week will make a great chapter in my biography someday. I'm willing to open negotiations for the movie rights here and now.
   
5. The series on "The Fad-Driven Church" still frequently provokes comments. See this post and its immediate predecessors. These posts summed up as well as anything the central message of Blogyear One.
   
6. My first-ever post and the comment-thread it generated turned out to be a harbinger and a microcosm of virtually everything that has been posted since. Notice that all the current members of TeamPyro except DJP made comments on day one of the blog, and a minor skirmish with the iMonk broke out.
   
7. Speaking of TeamPyro, the shift to a team blog was sudden and not something I had contemplated long or planned out carefully, but I have never regretted it or second-guessed my choices about who should be on the team. I think the blog is better than ever, and every one of these guys has submitted several posts dealing with tough subjects in a much better way than I ever could.
   
8. I tried hard to stay on the periphery of the Great Thanksgiving Blogwar, but once again, a comic-book cover did me in.
   
9. This post summed up a year's worth of disagreements with the infamous iMonk.
   
10. I really miss the Monday Menagerie series, and I'm going to do more of this kind of stuff when time permits, but one a week was too much.
        I did some research, for example, and found that the young woman in the picture at the right is Mary Ann Bevan, who suffered from a disease known as acromegaly, and gained a modicum of fame as an Edwardian side-show exhibit, billing herself as "The World's Ugliest Woman." Her story, oddly enough, isn't as sad as you might think. She seems to have had a happy life, a lovely and loving family, and a career that in Edwardian times wasn't deemed as demeaning as it would be today. I think she really was a home-school mom. The story of her life would've made a good "Monday Menagerie" post.

There's other good stuff I've forgotten, I'm sure. Sometimes I'll come across an old post while searching for something else and get caught up reading an old comment-thread. It's a great way to waste an hour.

Thanks to TeamPyro members; the homeschool moms; my mindless, high-fiving comment-cult; the nattering nabobs of negativism who post semi-regularly; the Blue Raja; and Adrian Warnock for helping make the blog what it is today. I'm interested in readers' thoughts about the blog so far. What do you remember, appreciate, or hate the most about the first year of PyroMania?

Talk amongst yourselves. Leave comments.

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