I’ve been tagged by Pete Anderson for a meme that involves listing the first sentence from the first post from each month of the previous year. So here goes:

January: “In case you were wondering, my New Year’s Eve was just a tad more wilder than this.”

February: “I am operating on a prepossessing paucity of sleep and still have many things to do today. ”

March: “Robert Birnbaum talks with Martin Amis for the fifth time.”

April: “Richard Grayson alerts me to the Coney Island Reporter, a blog chronicling Coney Island’s unfortunate corporatization.”

May: “Condition of Mr. Segundo: Rattled by interlopers.”

June: “The crooked bastards at Javits want $29.95/day for wi-fi.”

July: “David Ulin raises a provocative point about Harvey Pekar’s recent prolificity, contemplating whether Pekar is authoring too many books for his own good, while likewise pondering whether Pekar’s concentration upon other personalities comes at the expense of Pekar skillfully depicting his own personal experiences.”

August: “At the the Litblog Co-Op, they’re cha-cha-chatting about the next round’s lineup.”

September: “Sunday Times: ‘The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.'”

October: “To my great surprise, there are scant YouTube links to Lois Maxwell’s fourteen Bond film appearances as Miss Moneypenny.”

November: “Recovering from many martinis.”

December: “Now this is a very interesting move, and I hope that Mr. Pierce will be granted some major technical flexibility to dramatically reconfiguring all of the blogs.”

I’m not sure what this exercise says exactly, except that the guy who keeps up this place is a relentlessly curious and cantankerous bastard who drinks too many martinis, doesn’t sleep enough, and has some political empathy. Which is probably pretty close to the mark.

For far more interesting people than this cranky rube, I tag the lovely Tayari Jones (who can now be found at the top of the revamped Bat Segundo site), Levi Asher, the collective contributors to the eNotes Book Blog, This Recording, and Sarah Weinman.