:W

Well Internet,

There are some days where I sit down and I look at you and you look at me and everything that needs to be said falls into place.  Words and ideas come tumbling from my fingertips and electronic ink spills onto the page in ever-perfect Calibri font (nice work Bill Gates, you finally got something right :W).  Then there are other days where I sit down and I look at you and you look at me and no magic ever comes of the whole interaction.  We just sit.  And stare.  And let the awkwardness build between us.  With each passing second the pressure builds as well as implores a comment or observation of ever-increasing wit and hilarity.  This is an experience I have seen often in my life, in fact, most recently after the following conversation I had on a first date:

Me: Yeah, you know I just can’t effectively pull-off the drive and text.

Her: Oh, that’s easy.  I do that all the time.  You’re just not much of a multitasker.  Guys aren’t good multitaskers.  It’s true.

Me: Well, I can grab my crotch and fart at the same time, so I don’t think multitasking is the issue [:W]

Of course, she never saw the Wielgus Mark, for the Wielgus Mark had yet to be invented.  Sarcasm, once again, was confused and understood to be idle banter.  With this one, my heart never had a chance to flutter and flip and throb and do whatever it is love does to a heart.  With this one, it was a just few minutes of cheap talk and then one fell, simultaneous crushing stomp to my ego and left ventricle (the love ventricle).  She intentionally sunk the eight ball and exited, never again to be seen by mine eyes.  From that day forward, I vowed to never to do first dates on Yahoo! Pool again.

Necessity is the mother of invention.  And Jack Nicholson’s mother was his sister.  And I can sit here and state facts all day, (I just bought two crates of Snapple from BJ’s), but the fact of the matter is the empire I set out to build with the Wielgus Mark is in jeopardy.  The SarcMark is a stately, professional, opposing foe and I a lowly blogger sniveling for scraps, surviving only by my wit and ability to afford the $9.95 a month hosting fees. The SarcMark’s mere presence worries me….a feeling that my massive ego has never allowed me to feel.   I’m a man at a crossroads desperately looking for answers.  Dangling my soul as a carrot, I even petitioned the Devil for some resolution, some glimmer of hope (as a crossroads is apparently the eBay for soul selling).  But, can you believe it?  Even the Devil was cashed out of favors.  “No Deal!” he hissed with a voice that sounded surprisingly a lot like Batman’s – Not the Christian Bale one, the George Clooney one.  Yeah, I know I was pretty surprised too – and scampered off, pockets bulging full with the souls of Robert Johnson, Daniel Johnston, and Ralph Macchio.

Sure, your punctuation mark has been in development for eight years (and mine I figured out after a night of heavy drinking and cheese fries), but, SarcMark, you know, you and I aren’t that different.  We both have our eyes set on fame and success.  We’re young, smart, funny, innovative (Well, I’m younger, smarter, funnier, and more innovative; however, don’t worry you’re good at what you do too.)  And we both used our talents to identify a desperate need, a rare void in a universe of information and ceaseless communication.  And what did we do?  We addressed this need competently and absolutely.  I applaud you SarcMark.  But now we stand here, staring face to face on the sun-baked desert street of the Internet Superhighway.  Ready to draw, my fingers flitter readily above my holsters.  It’s only seconds before High Noon and my mind reverberates with the sounds of the past and faint whispers from Cort about “the click before the strike.” SarcMark, how do you feel?  Is your gun clean?  Aim steady? My aim is true SarcMark, always has, always will be.  When the smoke dissipates and the dust finally settles there will be one Sarcasm punctuation mark to rule them all and the spoils of Internet celebrity to relish in.

This must be the Nihilist in me speaking, but I guess in the end, it doesn’t really matter, you know.  We are all fighting for the same thing.  And that is freedom.  Freedom of expression.  Freedom of thought.  Freedom to speak your mind and touch the funny bone of others using increasingly more insulting and anti-social remarks.  The existence of Sarcasm in the real world is not a luxury but a right, forged by the development of human communication, and its use should not be limited or put at a premium simply because Sarcasm does not fit neatly in the confines of electronic communication.  Right, SarcMark?  Do you feel me?  It is these tenets to which we prescribe and deliver Sarcasm to all who wish to use it.

….For $1.99?!?!?

Are you kidding me?  You’re actually selling the SarcMark.  And it’s working?  You can buy a breakfast at Denny’s for that much.  SarcMark, you are not the punctuation mark I thought you were!  You go out there selling what could (and should) be had for free!  That’s dishonorable and disgraceful.  You’ve lowered yourselves to the level of Evian, Aquafina, and the guy who sells Clipper Magazine for a quarter in the train station.

Wait, you what?  You’ve sold thousands of them?  THOUSANDS of them?  You mean actual real people, with money, are buying into this thing….this FARCE?

Goddamn, why didn’t I think of that?

So you’re telling me that while I sit alone furiously pecking away at a keyboard with one hand and scraping dried nacho cheese off of a microwaveable plate with the other, the SarcMark executives are fleeting around town delighting themselves in pleasures of the flesh with media moguls, the glitterati, and the guys who write the Apokalips webcomic?

There is only one way to answer such obvious irresponsibility, gross negligence, and contempt for the working class.  Comrades, the freedom of the people is a natural right held by the throat by the powers that be.  The Internet, the Great Democratizer, broke down the barriers to self-expression set by social acceptance, the FCC, and public decency rul….

Yes, Internet.  You interrupt me again?  Listen, you interrupting me mid-blog is getting old.  Not only for me but also for the reader (Hi, Mom).  I know, at the beginning it was cute and borderline creative, but this is like the third time in a row this has happened.  Never mind, what do you want?

http://opensarcasm.org/

For reazy?  Ugh, they even took my pseudo-Marxist theme for my rant.  Jesus.  After all that time I spent researching…  I took that online course on Political Economics from Devry.  And I read Socialist literature.  Do you have any idea how painstakingly boring the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital were to read?  Then, of course, I watched Marx’s masterpiece, Duck Soup, and that was just a very confusing experience.  Really didn’t tie up any loose ends from Das Kapital’s cliffhanger.

Touché, open sarcasm guys.  At least you guys seem to indentify with and be a little more inline with the cause as I see it.

It’ll be too bad when the Wielgus Mark crushes you and leaves you in its wake.

‘Till another day.

In Sarcasm we trust,

:W

Can’t get enough Sarcasm and wit here?

Do you dream of indulging yourself in torrents of Sarcasm?

Don’t have the attention span or knowledge of obscure 90s movies and literary references to keep up with the Wielgusmark.com’s lengthy, self-indulgent blog posts?

Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?

Have no fear, simple readers, The Wielgus Mark Twitter page is your source for all things Sarcastic, brilliant, hilariously obscure, obscurely hilarious, vaguely funny, and grossly inappropriate just in “Fun Size” bundles of caustic wit.

Often groundbreaking, occasionally mundane, this is the perfect site for you if you are incredibly bored at your job or if you ever imagined getting your face-melted by twitter posts.

http://www.twitter.com/thewielgusmark Also, see our RSS Feed —>

Party on,

:W

Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Internet.  Thank you, world.  Thank you, Wielgus Mark Fan Alliance.  Thank you, me for if it wasn’t for your brilliance and ingenuity none of this would be possible.  But especially, thank you call center team in Bangalore who I hired for a special “side project” (But don’t stop to read, boys.  Keep refreshing.  Keep Refreshing.  Remember, you get a Sacajawea gold dollar when we get to two million).

Ok, I lied.

It’s actually 100 visitors…

With an 82.7% bounce rate…

My Google Analytics page has defaulted to a giant middle finger…

So thank you, Google :W  And while I have your attention, I’m really glad Buzz and Wave have immediately lived up to their potential :W

I am a man of simple means and a good heart and I will refuse to let arbitrary statistics drag down what is my God-given right to create punctuation marks out of thin air and force my friends to use them.  Besides, who are we to try to put a tape measure on the Wielgus Mark’s success?   The Wielgus Mark can’t be tamed by mortal means.  The Wielgus Mark’s true depth, value, and influence on modern cyber-culture goes beyond page views or number of Diggs (0) or Reddit up arrows (0) or amount of money you’re raking in selling ad space (-$500) – Hey, you can’t tell me my pending ad on the Righteous Brothers’ official website won’t pay off.  In fact, I dare say it is the wisest investment I’ve made since getting “Jet Fuel Only” tattooed on my left testicle when I turned 18 (Thanks, Mom for the birthday money!!).

Just because you can’t put numbers on it yet, doesn’t mean that the chances for success are lost.  Better said, the Wielgus Mark is success waiting in the wings.  And best said, it’s a rumbling Nor’easter, simply bubbling and burbling and swirling as meteorologists rifle through their shoe boxes of computer models and Tarot cards trying to divine one solitary tidbit that sheds insight to the true power of the impending storm.

“Oooh,” the people say, “those clouds on the horizon sure do look ominous.”

“Damn straight they do,” says Farmer Crosby, “I dunno how bad its gonna storm but its gonna pack quite the wallop.  Also, I betcha $10 you can’t use ominous in a non-weather related sentence.”

My friends, the easiest observation ever made was most likely something uttered by John Madden.  The second easiest observation ever made was that when Al Gore graced us with the Internet, the world around us changed drastically.  The Democratization of communication, publishing, political commentary, and yes, even pornography dramatically altered our world in great, bizarre, and horrifically grotesque ways (C’mon who gave Ann Coulter a website?).  In all ways imaginable, the Internet is the wild, final frontier, and I, its Jean-Luc Piccard stoically standing on the bridge of the USS Wielgus Mark chugging along at sub-warp speed.

“Stardate 1329.5.  The USS :W continues its aimless quest for fame, fortune, and moderate Internet celebrity. Before we continue, a couple orders of business.  Guy from Reading Rainbow, give me those sweet glasses.  Engine guy, please put a bag on Lt. Worf’s head.  There’s absolutely no way I’m looking at that for the rest of this stardate…or at least get him in contact with Jerry Jones’ plastic surgeon.  It is time we stop meandering through cyberspace and warp-speed to the glory waiting for us on horizon.  Warp-speed, androgynous robot person! Let’s fly the Wielgus Mark to triumph!!”

I, like you, dream of a day where the oral tradition of Sarcasm finds re-birth on the interwebs.  My people, I can’t tell you much but I can tell you we’re close.   The Internet is a harsh and cruel jungle but the rewards for the creative, unique, and ingenious are bountiful.

Yes, Internet, you care to speak?

http://www.sarcmark.com

Damnit.  You’re kidding me right?

Reject from a Twilight casting call, power down the thrusters.  We’ve got some thinking to do.

In two days time, we attack.

Yours in love and war,

:W