SWNID Passes 1st Anniversary Quietly, Receives Papal Endorsement

SWNID celebrated our first anniversary of blog publication yesterday. Yes, this indispensable compendium of truth and clarity began on August 13, 2005.

The celebration was quiet, as we napped on our back patio. No other guests attended the fete.

This occasion makes us especially grateful to have received an endorsement from none other than Pope Benedict, who in an AP article is quoted as saying:

I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry.

We are, needless to say, happy to provide His Holiness with an infallible source of humor, at least when we jest ex cathedra.

We also hereby assert our rights to "Seldom Wrong, Never in Doubt" and "SWNID" as our trademarks. Attention world: No marketing merchandise that exploits these distinctive speech acts without our license. We have kids to put through college.

As a reminder to gentle readers, now often numbering over 100 per day, we repost our original justification--largely fulfilled in this last year, we hope--for this blog (with minor editorial modifications to adhere to our current SWNID style manual):

Greetings, gentle readers, and welcome to "Seldom Wrong, Never in Doubt"! This is where we, SWNID, share our self-important, inflated thoughts with the world. Or at least with some of our friends. Who, we hope, remain our friends even after reading this.

Why another blog? Because we are using a lot of time to send links and such to our friends and family. This will be easier for us, and will spare some of you a cluttered inbox, if we've had the habit of sending you things of interest.

What can you expect here? Well, we don't know, because we are neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. However, here's what we expect to post:

• Links to news and opinion pieces on the web that we find interesting.
  
• Some of our own rants on topics political.
  
• Maybe an occasional link to Christian sites that we find interesting (these will be occasional because, frankly, we don't find Christian sites all that interesting for the most part).
  
• Some occasional reflections on things that are happening around us at the places where we hang out, namely Cincinnati Christian University and White Oak Christian Church (but no "inside information," as that would be inappropriate).
  
• Some reflections on what we're reading that isn't in cyberspace.
  
• The odd picture now and then.

Why the name? We don't remember a time when we didn't know this pair of phrases--seldom wrong, never in doubt. Our SWNIDish father said this all the time as a sarcastic, self-depreciating way of acknowledging that he was opinionated. So we picked up both the attitude and the phrase from him.

And to be honest, even though both Father of SWNID and SWNID are being sarcastic when we utter these magical words, we really think they're true, though we would never admit it.