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This is 100, an entry originally posted on February 19, 2003 in the blog nebulose.net. In chronological order, before this was Fear not.... After this comes Blunder. If you're lost, I recommend the about page.

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100

[#1] Dennis Mahoney did it first. Others later attempted to match him. Now, this snowy Wednesday, February 19, 2003, I too will prove myself.

I will update my weblog one hundred times in a single day. (7:25am)

[#2] I have cleansed myself physically and mentally for this great and triumphant endeavor. Like the priest who purifies himself before a ritual, I have wiped my index page clean, free of distractions, ready for my single, uninterruptable purpose.

Now if you’ll excuse me a moment, I have to go pee. (7:32am)

[#3] Ah, that was quite satisfying. Hope you didn’t miss me too much. (7:35am)

[#4] Others set rules for themselves when doing this. The way I see it, pretty much anything goes. Links or funny pictures sent in by readers, random lists, detailed accounts of my bathroom visits — you’re going to get it all, pretty much. (7:39am)

[#5] An amazing red bird just flew right past my window. Swear to God. (7:40am)

[#6] About that “ideas sent in by readers part” — my e-mail and Instant Messager screen name are on the “About” page. Don’t all jump at once though, guys. Seriously. (7:41am)

[#7] I just did this on the calculator — if I’m awake for 16 hours (7:30 to 11:30), I need to average one entry every 9.6 minutes. So far, pretty damn good, if I say so myself. (Though sooner or later I’ll have to shower and get breakfast, and that’ll inflate my average a bit.) (7:43am)

[#8] I’m thinking: Is there anything else one might concievably do a hundred times in a day? If I told you, “Well, I was snowed in that day, so I did it a hundred times”, what would you think of? Be honest. (7:45am)

[#9] I just started playing this in Winamp. If you’ve got 80 bucks, I super extra recommend it (with sugar on top!!!!). Later, if I’m feeling generous, I might upload a few favorite songs. (7:49am)

[#10] The sun is out and the snow is beginning to melt. Blast. (7:51am)

[#11] There’s approximately one of me, and six-some-odd billion of you. So if this were a fair world, I’d be expecting six hundred billion comments from you jerks today. Unfortunately, I gave up on that whole “fair world” thing after I stubbed my toe one time. I mean, how the hell. To me. Honestly. So angry I. Sentence fragments. Use. (7:55am)

[#12] My favorite euphemism for “Whatever floats your boat” : Whatever hoists your flag. Which expressions hoist it for you, though, dear readers? I’m still looking for a comprehensive list, but Google has not availed me. (7:58am)

[#13] I figure that when I run out of things to write about in here, I’ll go downstairs for breakfast, and the wonders of the world on that floor will jump out at me anew, begging to be posted. Also I’m getting pretty hungry. (8:02am)

[#14]

I have a ball of hemp on my desk, which I use to make little hemp necklaces with. It smells terrible. If you ever end up with a ball of hemp, don’t be curious and sniff it.

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. (8:06am)

[#15] Coming up on the one hour mark. Phew! How exhilarating! (8:11am)

[#16] I must shower now, but only a quick one — I will not let cleanliness stand in the way of my higher purpose! You all wish you could be this cool. (8:13am)

[#17] My after shower routine goes in the following order: dry off, shave, return to bedroom, unpause music player (still on FFIX, by the way), advance daily calendar, put on wristwatch, put on clothes, return towel to bathroom. Which is to say, for as long as I can remember, I’ve put on my watch before I get dressed, all while listening to music. Every morning. Little quirks, huh? (8:33am)

[#18] My girlfriend is trying to do the 100 blog updates thing concurrently with me. If you think that’s somehow “cute” or “romantic”, you are even more of a freak than I am. Sorry to break it to you. (8:38am)

[#19] Rebecca, by the way, is a later sleeper than me, so she’s a fair bit behind. Not that it’s a race or anything. No, not at all. I’m not trying desperately to keep my lead here. (8:39am)

[#20] When Dennis Mahoney did this, he got an encouraging e-mail from Michael Barrish. I’ll admit I’m somewhat jealous, but I’m confident that my own devoted fan club will begin contacting me soon. They’re just, uh, still not awake. (8:42am)

[#21] “Soft sausages would gladly procreate in the bathwater of your verisimilitude!” The Surrealist Compliment Generator. Dear reader, you are truly a wristwatch in a world of lumps. (8:45am)

[#22]

A discussion I had last Friday with Allison: What if Tom Hanks played Batman?

Photoshoppers, makers of puns, do your worst. (8:49am)

[#23] Friends of mine who went to China got me a little bookmark. It’s the calligraphy of two characters which, pronounced in Chinese, sound somewhat like the name “Aaron”. It came with a little description, listing the meaning of the characters; evidently my name means “Asia Brightiness”. What ‘brightiness’ is, I’m not sure, but that’s what it says. Revere me. (8:55am)

[#24] A kind reader has just informed me (Re: #22) that Tom Hanks could never be Batman because he doesn’t have hot enough lips. No comment. (8:57am)

[#25]

Get it, one quarter?

Now it’s definitely breakfast time. So much blogging, I’m famished. Back in a few! (9:00am)

[#26] I’ve arrived back from breakfast. Also, exactly two hours have elapsed since I started. No sweat yet… (9:25am)

[#27] For breakfast I had two fried eggs, on a toasted bagel with melted cheese. While I was waiting for the eggs to fry, I amused myself by slicing the cheese (cheddar) in the shape of a set of Tangrams, and then arranging the slices humorously on my bagel. Tragically, I was too hungry to stop and take a picture. (9:27am)

[#28] I have this little thing called WhatPulse, which counts the number of keystrokes I make. So far today, I have typed 13,538 keys.

The program’s like 200 kilobytes, so you know you want it. And after you do, you know you want to join “TEEM OF DOOM”. Yes, yes you do. Stroke your keys for the team, chief. (9:33am)

[#29] As promised: FFIX - Crossing Those Hills.mp3 (5mb). Now this is a truly a multi-media blogging experience. (9:36am)

[#30] Time to go brush my teeth and do other bathroomy things while I think of more things to write about. (9:46am)

[#31] When I take a bathroom break, I turn up my music really loud so I’ll still be able to hear it while I’m there. Is that so wrong? (9:59am)

[#32] While I was away, I was debating the relative merits of a solitary serious submission amidst this salty sea of silliness. My tendency is to want to wait until tommorow and post the serious entry by itself, but that depends on what else I think of to write about. In times like this, necessity dictates. (10:01am)

[#33] Starting to feel a little taxed. Is this only a third done? (10:10am)

[#34] At some point today I have to drive to Blockbuster to return three videos. Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, and Sliding Doors. Forrest Gump is the only one I actually watched, but hell if I’m going to take hours out of my blogging time to watch a whole movie today. (10:15am)

[#35] In the “Awesome Things About Life” category: People with cute accents. (10:26am)

[#36] Things on my desk right now:

• Bookmark (see #23)
• Digital Camera
• Tube of arcade tokens
• Chap stick
• Pens (3) and a pencil
• Gripflexer
• Keys
• Ball of hemp

(10:35am)

[#37] For the moment, I’ll resort to a funny citation. It is yet early…

Michael Barrish writes on an experience in a public park:

Walter Johnson city park. After watching a few run-filled innings of a girl’s softball game, I walk my bike to a nearby picnic table and begin on dinner. A young mother appears with her two small kids. The younger child, a boy, makes a dash for the swings.

“It’s dinner time!” shouts the woman. “You can play after!”

The boy ignores her, swinging.

“I’ve already told you once!”

The boy swings higher, throwing out his legs.

“If I have to come and get you, you’ll regret it!”

“Get it, regret it,” he sings. “Get it, regret it.”

The woman hands a bag of food to her daughter, strides up to the swings, plants herself directly before her son and in one motion wraps her arms around the boy’s legs, tackling him in mid-air. The boy, holding the chains with all his strength, twists violently, his forward momentum impeded. For a moment they are frozen like this, mother and son, as though posing for a photograph. Then the woman grasps the boy’s belt on either side, yanks him off the swing, plants him upright on the ground and smacks his butt, hard. Neither say a word, though both gasp frequently and loudly.

After a moment to re-adjust clothing and hair, the young mother leads the children to my table, apparently the only table in the park. I have the usual these days, macaroni and cheese with canned spinach; they have fast food hamburgers, french fries and soda. The woman maintains a steady stream of chatter, remarking on the nutritional value of my meal and periodically offering me their surplus condiments, little packets of mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup.

“Who cares!” cries the boy suddenly. “My daddy is fat!”

(10:47am)

[#38] Phew. I forgot to put a number on that last one for a bit there. (10:54am)

[#39] For the record, I know the page doesn’t validate right now, I’m working on it. Also the Comments RSS Feed is broken, that I’m not sure how to fix yet. You’ll just have to suffer for the time being. (10:56am)

[#40] To think, some people are still sleeping, and I’ve already done 40 semi-coherent updates. (10:57am)

[#41] Eyes wide, searching everywhere for entry material; attention closely focused; disheveled hair; chronic grin from repeated descriptive exaggeration (like this very sentence): This is the face of a 100-updater. (11:11am)

[#42] iruzekara: I THINK YOU SHOULD UPDATE ONE OF THE 100 THINGS WITH HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO PUT CHEESE ON IT
iruzekara: AND MY ENCOURAGING IM IS AS THUS
iruzekara: AARON AARON HE‘S DA MAN
iruzekara: NOW EVERYBODY PLAY KICK THE CAN
iruzekara: END

Put cheese on it indeed. (11:13am)

[#43] Becca just beat me to the halfway mark. Not that it was a competition.

Also, while I’m doing congratulating, here’s some to Alex on getting arakezuri.net. Right now I’m busy being consulted on the CSS for it. (11:20am)

[#44] Also on that topic: what should my domain name be? (11:24am)

[#45] The people who did this are freaking geniuses. (11:30am)

[#46] Current music: Dirty Vegas - Days Go By.mp3 (4.6mb). Yes, it’s that song from the Mitsubishi commercial. Yes, that’s why I got it. Yes, I download pretty much every strange song I hear from a television commercial. No, you’re stupid. No. I don’t want to talk to you any more. Who are you, anyway? (11:35am)

[#47] In the “Funny Things That Rhyme With Serious Things” category: drilled cheese. Like a grilled cheese sandwich, with a big hole drilled in the middle. Or Swiss cheese, but with the holes precision drilled by sharp industrial equipment instead of eaten away by little cheese culture microbes.

Ok, now I’m really losing it. (11:41am)

[#48] My total letter-typing count is up to 20,000 now. You can keep tabs on me at http://pulse.whatnet.org/stats/profile.php?uid=218. And once more, a shameless plug for TEEM OF DOOM. (11:45am)

[#49]

This is Sylvia. She asked that an entry be made about her, so I went searching for an embarassing picture I could post. Fortunately for her, I didn’t find any truly bad ones. (11:55am)

[#50] I’m half way done.

This is half of my face:

(12:11pm)

[#51] Favorite reply thus far:

Brieb723: you’re very strange…but very very interesting.
Brieb723: keep it up
(12:14pm)

[#52] I think the middle entries are the hardest. There’s that nice rush at the beginning, then you’re straining for a while, but then it’s all downhill again. I already have plans for my last ten. Heh. Heh. Plans. (12:18pm)

[#53] Photographing half of one’s own face in a dark mirror, by the way, is not an easy task. Two strange attempts:

(12:21pm)

[#54] Five hours since I created this insatiable, all-consuming beast of an entry.

Now it’s time for lunch in a non-metaphorical sense. (12:32)

[#55] Lunch was quite satisfying, thank you for asking. I microwaved some leftovers. Now I’m sitting up here polishing off a package of strawberry-flavored Japanese candies.

If you’ll excuse me a moment, my computer really needs a rebooting. It just stood up and begged me, and how can I turn down a face like that? (12:50pm)

[#56] That Japanese candy:

A friend of mine first introduced me to it (it’s called “Morinaga”) after a trip to the Philipines; now I get them from an Asian imports store. (1:10pm)

[#57] This entry is dedicated to Hannah:

…and that’s my last pictoral entry for a few. (1:15pm)

[#58] After this is all over, I’m going to feel like that kid who has just spent all of his money — including going into debt with all his friends — to complete his collection of POGs, and then he is either the happiest guy in the world, or he suddenly realizes POGs are totally, like, stupid and pointless. (1:26pm)

[#59] Damnit. AIM just lost my entire buddy list, and corrupted the recent backup so that I’m stuck with the version from June. What the hell. (1:35pm)

[#60] Still peeved over AIM being a stupid piece of crap. Frequent backups, folks, frequent backups. (1:46pm)

[#61] With all this devotion to making entries of my own, I haven’t booted up my news aggregator or checked any news sites all day. Usually I have it on automatic, so I know the very moment something happens.

And am I suffering from this relative unconnectedness? Nope, not a bit. Though I will fire up Syndirella now and see what’s going on… (1:49pm)

[#62] If you think the pace is slowing down now, you should keep in mind that 100 entries is about 8 months worth, at my normal average. (1:56pm)

[#63] I’m proud to report that TEEM OF DOOM is advancing steadily in the WhatPulse rankings, thanks in part to my devoted stream of mindless updates here in the land of smelly hemp and half faces. (2:01pm)

[#64] Can I put this on a résumé? “Once wrote 100 journal entries in one day. Persistent and stubborn, project-oriented worker.” (2:04pm)

[#65] “Writing a journal implies that one has ceased to think of the future and has decided to live wholly in the present … Writing a journal means that facing your ocean you are afraid to swim across it, so you attempt to drink it drop by drop.” —Georges Sand
(2:13pm)

[#66] I was only going to do one quote, but then I found a second one that was better.

“It might be of great profit to me; and now that I am older, that I have more time, that the labour of writing is less onerous to me, and I can work more at my leisure, I ought to endeavor to keep to a certain extent, a record of passing impressions, of all that comes, that goes, that I see, and feel, and observe. To catch and keep something of life — that’s what I mean.” —Henry James
(2:16pm)

[#67] If something terrible happened and numbers one through sixty-six got erased, how many would I remember? The ones I wouldn’t forget are the ones I genuinely like now. (2:29pm)

[#68] I bet I got a ton of page hits today, what with the constant refreshing and all. This is a mental note to check the logfile later. (2:30pm)

[#69] I totally need some new inspiration. Food time. (2:38pm)

[#70] I just had some ice cream.

Vanilla is the hands down the best solid-colored ice cream (as vs. chocolate, strawberry, coffee, etc). Once you start putting stuff in it, though, it’s a whole different ballpark. You just don’t compare a vanilla to a Phish Food or something. Different food groups, like. (2:57pm)

[#71] Today’s Penny Arcade strip made me laugh. (3:02pm)

[#72] Why is it that every song lyrics site on the entire godforsaken Internet is a veritable hotbed of pop-up ads and invasive Javascripts? I’m totally not exaggerating this time. (3:06pm)

[#73] On the subject of exagerating, thanks to Baxter for being my devoted spelling editor. (3:08pm)

[#74] Now playing: Estradasphere’s version of the Super Mario Brothers 2 Theme Song (2.4mb). Good stuff, good stuff indeed. (3:16pm)

[#75] This song makes me nostalgic, but that’s okay once in a while.

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don’t have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music’s for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we’re getting in tune
The music’s played by the mad men

Forever young, I want to be forever young
do you really want to live forever, forever and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
do you really want to live forever? Forever young

(3:20pm)

[#76] You might think that since I posted half of my face when I was half way done, I’ll post three quarters of my face now, or the whole grinning contraption when I’m all the way done, but if you thought that you’d be very, very wrong. (3:24pm)

[#77] Yes, Rebecca is beating me quite solidly at this point, and will inevitably finish before me. I’m okay with that. (3:39pm)

[#78] A reader has written to say that black raspberry is the best solid colored ice cream. I’ve never had it, but I’m told it “tastes like purple”. (3:43pm)

[#79] Haven’t written anything in a bit because I’ve been trying to help Alex with a stylesheet. In case I haven’t said it enough, IE is a real piece of crap sometimes. (3:57pm)

[#80] I went searching through my hard drive for any humorous pictures I had (haven’t done a pictoral entry since way back at #57!), but all I found was embarassing pictures of me. I guess this should even the score with some people re: #49.

(4:10pm)

[#81] The doorbell and the phone just rang simultaneously. I didn’t know where to run first. Then I went to the door. (4:14pm)

[#82] Alex has risen to the “Photoshoppers” challenge from #22. I give you Bathanks:

(crying with laughter, 4:20pm)

[#83] And with regard to the “Makers of puns” challenge, also from #22: I’d like to say Bathank you very much to Alex. (4:23pm)

[#84] The end is drawing ever closer. Did I ever doubt this was possible? (4:27)

[#85] I imagine that if I somehow fall asleep now, before I complete my mission, my alter-ego will rise, Tyler Durden-like, to do the last 15 entries in a trance. (4:33pm)

[#86] Fittingly, I’m back to where I started with the music — again on FFIX, now disc two.

[#87] Before today, I had 87 entries in my blog. Counting today’s individually, I just doubled that in a matter of hours.

I amaze me sometimes. (4:46pm)

[#88] I’ll admit, I never thought I’d be making evening plans for tonight without compromising “the project”. But here I am… (4:49pm)

[#89] Just lost my internet connection for a good 2 minutes. I swear to God. Terrified. (4:58pm)

[#90] Would I do it a second time? Probably not. But with the novelty factor, it was totally worth it. (5:00pm)

[#91] Hanner811: hey butternut boy, how’s the 100 going?
Aaorn2286: 90!!!
Aaorn2286: will finish with time to spare
Hanner811: how fab
Hanner811: oh definitely
Hanner811: you’re an amazing kid
Aaorn2286: hehe, thanks
Aaorn2286: that’s #91
Hanner811: anytime
Hanner811: haha
(5:04pm)

[#92] Wouldn’t it be funny if I keeled over at 99 and never wrote another word? I’d laugh. What else could you do but laugh, after such a spectacular failure? (5:07pm)

[#93] Being seven updates away from the end of a marathon like this is like being a werewolf getting that first ray of moonlight.

Growl. (5:11pm)

[#94] Rebuilding the page is super slow, with so much stuff on it. Add that to the extreme nearness of my goal and I really just want to start posting my updates 3 at a time. (5:13pm)

[#95] Dennis Mahoney asked, in his 100, if he would “dream of updates”.

How could there be any question? (5:15pm)

[#96] I’d like to thank the academy. (5:16pm)

[#97] My grandfather wrote a book, a thousand some odd pages detailing his life as a holocaust survivor and general all around awesome guy, and self-published copies of it for each of his children to pass on down the line.

My grandchildren will get to see this. (5:19pm)

[#98] One time in English class I had to write 30 sentences all beginning with the same phrase (“Once I was…”), and ended similiarly to each other to develop “strength through repetition”. This has been like that, only much worse. (5:24pm)

[#99] This is where I would just stop, if I were being ironic. Rather like a Hemingway novel. (5:25pm)

[#100] This has been 100, by Aaron Schutzengel.

• 100 entries
• 12 pictures
• 3 songs
• 3,605 words
• 20,143 characters
• 155 paragraphs
• 10 hours
• 9 comments, as of this posting.

Thank you. Thank you all.

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