Reflecting Day: It’s Time to Fire Topper!

Greetings Hot Dogs, please light the SOMBER INTROSPECTION AND GENITAL ENLARGEMENT incense that I know you all bought from the Olde 1900HOTDOG Catalogue for Healthe, Wellnesse, and Amateur Crime-fightinge. Yes, it is once again time for Reflecting Day, and I will be your host. I am a 7th Dan Relaxation Black Belt, and I don’t mean to brag, but every time I go navel-gazing I find my navel almost immediately. 

1900HOTDOG is doing great! 1900HOTDOG is shattering expectations! 1900HOTDOG is an immortal dynasty that will endure for millenia, crushing all those who oppose it. Now, maybe it doesn’t quite pay all the bills of two grown men with consuming fetishes for obscure media, but it’s getting there. For example, I’m moving from Arizona to Connecticut for family reasons, and not at all because this fascist state does not believe that concealed carry laws apply to functional naval cannons. I bring that up mostly to get you to join my class action lawsuit (Cap’n Brockway and the Brocketeers v. Funtastick’s Fun Center Cactus Springs Water Play Attraction, 2019). But also because this site now constitutes the bulk of my income, and I had to explain that to prospective landlords.

It did not go well.

First I had to explain Patreon itself, which I pitched as “like a magazine, but by whoever and about everything.” Then I had to explain the Patreon for my fiction writing, which I pitched as “a monthly subscription to my exact bullshit.” Then I had to explain 1900HOTDOG, which I pitched as “news and human interest” and then outright refused to answer followup questions. The world may not yet recognize Hot Doggery as a valid form of employment, but it’s getting there. And we love you guys for making that happen.

We’ve come a long way! For example, I started off here being very bad at Photoshop. The first Brockway’s Magical Girl Hole was announced with nothing but bolded text. For the second installment I made this whole banner all by myself:

So now I’m only pretty bad at Photoshop! That’s progress, and I’m proud of it. I owe that in no small part to my own dogged persistence. Nearly every day I sit down and watch a tutorial about how to Photoshop a laser dong on a battlemech rather than do something easier, and risk sacrificing my own artistic vision. That is what it means to art. But uh… okay I also owe some of that progress to Seanbaby, who makes custom Photoshops just to teach me how to do custom Photoshops:

I think he might be flexing on me with this, but it’s hard to tell what with all his constant normal flexing. 

As we talked about last Reflecting Day, we’ve moved our bonus days up into the weekly rotation. This was supposed to give us more time — to do our other jobs, to take the weekends off, maybe to do some vitally necessary promotion for once. Instead it looks like we’re just spending that time writing more involved and longer articles, because we have a crippling addiction to dick jokes about strange media and nobody will help us. They’re just laughing as we die beneath stacks of Oxycise VHS tapes!

We did a backflip over the internet and then strangled it with a jump-rope during our first themed week, honoring the majesty of Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx. The second episode of our podcast (a two-parter!) released that week as well, and wouldn’t you know it? It was also about Rumble in the Bronx. As all things are now. As they should have been all along. Please subscribe to it here, and review it here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Poddington? Castworth’s? I prefer Pudcast, but you do you.

We’ve picked up a few Hot Dog Supremes since our last Reflecting Day, so please give a steamy welcome to…

Zachary Evans, who fills every room with his boisterous spirit, and also bees.

Yossarian, who will burn this place to the ground unless they change the Sonic movie back.

Josh S, who appears whenever you whisper “Beefbod” six times while looking in a mirror.

Each of you now have to stand up in front of the blackboard and say one interesting thing about yourselves.

If you want your very own custom title, if you want it to be called out in a Reflecting Day, if you want articles dedicated just to you, if you want to be personally thanked on our podcast, if you want to secure a place in our site credits and, oh yeah — get twice-yearly deliveries of extremely cursed items from Seanbaby’s own extremely cursed library, maybe you want to be a Hot Dot Supreme. Honestly, have you even tried it? Then how can you say you wouldn’t love it? Holy shit, I just invented an unbeatable argument! 

Our next site goal is a little ways off, but it’s a big one: The PoxCo store! Actual, physical merch. For the first few weeks of this site I kept an exhaustive list of every single joke we made that could, theoretically, be a piece of sellable merchandise. Then I stopped doing that, mostly because I realized the fans would tell us what merch they really wanted, and also mostly, perhaps more mostly, because I forgot. 

And, of course, we couldn’t be aiming for a new goal if we didn’t hit the last one. It was a big ask. It was a major milestone for our site. It was perhaps the most important change we could have made to ensure the safety and sanctity of our work. We finally hit our $7000 goal and you know what that means: It’s time to fire Topper!

W-what? You’re happy about being fired?

You can’t enjoy this, Topper. It can not be this way. It must not be this way!

Topper, you’re – just give me a minute, okay? I had a whole thing prepared for this. I hired a bunch of burly men who do dick puppetry to spell out “Guess who’s fucking fired! Is it Gary from Accounting? Is it Meredith from HR? Surely it can’t be Mordisse, everyone’s favorite Eastern European night janitor who is suspiciously adamant that he is not a vampire. No! It’s fucking Topper fucking Goodmeadow!” in the shapes of twisted cocks.

Topper, I hired like 140 guys for this. You’re bankrupting an industry. Just wait. Just one second. Get away from that door. You can’t go! I haven’t even said the words. Dammit! Topper, you’re fired! I fire thee!

Fuck!

FUCK!