229 Days

Two hundred and twenty nine days ago, I found myself clicking the "next blog" button. It was a cold February evening, I was bored. The usual crap was there, lots of non-English language blogs, teenage-angst blogs, best mortgage deals in California blogs.

Click

Click

Click

Hang on, go back...

But what's this?



So I read it. It was a long post on some guy's blog. I usually couldn't be bothered with the really long posts, but this had me gripped. So much so that I linked to it and I kept going back to the blog to see what else was going on. That blog was Herge's Angry Chimp and I've been a fan ever since, religiously visiting every day.

Over the months, Angry Chimp has evolved and Herge's talents have diversified and he's brought us Daleks, cyborgs, Strangeways, We love each other - not forgetting real life traumas with Dixon/Pixie. He's built up quite a following in Blogworld and we've all lapped up his wonderful work.

But now the time has come for the end of Angry Chimp. Herge feels like it's time to shut up shop, that Angry Chimp has run its course. It feels like my blog brother is leaving home. I left my first comment on his blog - his was the first one I commented on who came to check my blog out. We've essentially been together from the start and we sometimes played off against each other very well. I'm going to miss the Chimp loads, but I see where he's coming from and I respect his decision. I think Angry Chimp had somewhat been taken over by the expectations of its readers (fans!) and this possibly meant that Herge lost ownership, or perhaps even felt pressured into doing stuff that he perhaps didn't want to do.

I'm not sure whether he'll move on to other things, but I hope that, one day soon, he gets the recognition he deserves. He's a truly talented bloke and it's such a shame that nobody who matters has picked up on his brilliance.

All the bloggers who jump around between the blogs have benefited greatly from Angry Chimp. Herge's comments have added spice to the dullest of (my) posts. I don't think we'll be as lucky to find a talent such as his again (at least not for free), so I hope he doesn't delete Angry Chimp and just keeps it there for us to look back on with great fondness (and bellyaching laughter).

No doubt this post will be one of many tributes to Angry Chimp, a blog that has touched many people over the course of this year; I think the fact that lots of people will make comment about the end of this great blog is testament to this.

Thank you Herge, you made it very special.