It took me a while to get here, but this is officially my 100th blog post! It’s been almost three years now and I’ve come a long way and thrown a lot of nonsense out in my movie reviews, pitches, and miscellaneous musings. I just wanted to use this post as an opportunity to catch up, and talk about what I want to do with these posts going forward. I have fallen in and out of a consistent posting schedule a few times recently, but I still love writing these posts and Ruddtrospectives and making weird dumb jokes, and the blog will persist as long as I have air in my lungs and blood flowing to my typing fingers. So for those of you who have stuck with me, thank you. And to all the people who aren’t reading my blog currently, what is there to do with your time that’s more important than reading this? Hmm?
So my semester has been as difficult as usual. I’m in College still, majoring in Writing Studies and English and minoring in Film Studies. My Junior year is coming to an end and I’m terrified that I only have one year left. Currently I’m working on getting an internship that will help me get a job at a publishing company as a copyeditor or something of the like. I write every day, and my friends say I leave so little space between words that my journals make me look like a serial killer. It’s hard to spin that and take it as a compliment, but I hear “What lovely compact handwriting you have!” I now live in Duluth, on the hill where biking is a pain. Though once I graduate I’m not sure what my next steps will be. I’m figuring it out. I still have yet to get my driver’s license, but I’m working on it. Oh, and if this is the first of my posts you’re reading, welcome. I am John. This is my blog.
I recently looked back through my blog posts and reread through some of them. There was an issue with some of my posts, I noticed my most recent Ruddtrospective on Walk Hard had posted with half of the thoughts I’d written and the rating completely erased and not included. I don’t know why or what was going on with that, it happened once before with my Ruddtrospective on F.R.I.E.N.D.S and I got very anxious when I saw this happened again. It’s stressful to think people think I’m okay posting things that aren’t finished and respond to it anyway.
I’m a deeply insecure person who is almost always grappling with several different forms of anxiety and depression, and there is one thing I can control, which is the quality of my writing. If I can say my journal is well-organized and my blog is sorted out, I can at least feel calm and grounded there. This is a long way of saying I partially recommitted myself to this blog out of a hope to escape my own frustrations and anxieties and had a minor anxiety attack when I realized I can’t fully control this idiotic technology. So that’s something or nothing, I don’t know. Sorry, I’m not used to being sincere and not speaking through several layers of irony. While we’re here I guess I’ll also mention that I constantly worry the likes and views and clicks I get on these posts are not from people I know and other excellent bloggers but from one person manufacturing all this. I worry I’m doing this all for nothing and just receiving false feedback from a single entity trapping me in a The Truman Show style reality. That I’m being humored. And the rational center of my brain knows these are illogical fallacies, but it’s been a rough semester and I’m being more honest than I’d ever like to. So let’s get back to what comes next. We’ll just put the weird aching lonely wreck that lies within the center of my mind back in subtext where he belongs.
As my semester is coming to an end, I’m pouring more love and attention into this, the home of my weird thoughts and musings. This will include more Ruddtrospectives and a return to my Flying Nun recaps, as well as more general stories and Top 10 Lists, which I enjoy writing. For those who are curious, the next couple Ruddtrospectives will be about a recent documentary series, Romeo + Juliet, Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers, and a really boring romcom he made with Reese Witherspoon and Owen Wilson.
Now that we’ve gotten the boring recap and previews out of the way, let’s get into the good stuff. You want to hear a story about my recent exploits and adventures? Have at it. Welcome to the world of John!

John VS the Mustachioed Malevolent Man-Eating Mole Men That Live Underground
I awoke one morning to the sound of a jackhammer shaking my house. I groggily shook myself awake, barely having the time to peel off my CPAP mask before the floor of my bedroom suddenly collapsed, and I plummeted to the center of the Earth. Luckily I was still in my bed, which broke my fall. I stared up towards the peak of the chasm. My comic books were up there! I would have to climb my way back up. The walls were narrow and dark, and the space around me was damp with sewer sludge. I could vaguely determine I was in one large cave by the heat the tectonic plates of the Earth were producing.
I kicked my bed post until it shattered in half and fashioned the edges into two long spikes, which I tied to my arms with my pillowcases. I grabbed my flip flops, which were being crushed beneath my bed, and flipped off the bewildered maintenance men who had attempted to fix our main sewer line. They glanced at me sheepishly and apologetically as I readied for the climb. One of them offered me the jackhammer. I grabbed it and flung it into a nearby puddle.
After a few good bounces on the bed I was able to leap my way onto the lowest part of the chasm and dig my bedpost in. It dug in just enough to provide me the leverage I needed. I began to ascend the chasm, slowly but with awesome determination. After several minutes I began to sweat. I burrowed one of the posts further into the Earth to carve a resting spot. To my confusion, the dirt gave way quicker than I was expecting. I dug further. I could see a light. I gave the dirt a good punch and clambered into the clearing I could now clearly see. There, before me, roughly 800 feet below the surface world, sat seven mustachioed mole men gathered around a fire.
One of the mole men shouted “Clyde! The humans have spotted us! Get the axe!” Meanwhile the largest of them leapt to his feet and charged at me with far more energy than I expected. As I dodged and swept his leg with one of my bed arms, I noticed a large pile of empty Vitamin C bottles. Ah. Makes sense. Clyde came at me with his axe and I kicked him firmly in the stomach. He fell back onto the fire and yelped. The room went dark. Bad move. Mole men are notoriously great at seeing in the dark. I acted on instinct and raced back out the mouth of the cave, leaping onto the adjoining wall. I could hear my newfound foes scrambling behind me. As I neared the top, I felt grubby fingers grabbing at my feet. I pulled myself up with my notoriously excellent core strength and dropped my mini fridge onto them. With the mole men defeated, I got dressed and took a bus to the bed store.

THE END.