First off, let me start by saying Happy Birthday to Niero and Destructoid, and congratulations on 4 cocktastic years. I know, I know, I'm a day late in the wishes, but I figured better late then never.

I've seen a bunch of these posts over the past day, and I thought to myself I'd let this one go by, as I'd only been here a year and contributed only a small amount, so who was I to go writing one of these things? I've completely slacked on the Paint-toids (though I did them at work, and work is way busier) and I always hate everything that I write to the point that I rarely post anything, even comments. However, something hit me. Hard. It was earlier today at work, (I work in quality assurance at a plastic manufacturing plant) during one of our quality meetings, and I pointed out a defect to prove a point and followed it up by bellowing "BOOM!" at my molding supervisor. I realized that somewhere along the way, Destructoid and its community had invaded my everyday life.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it's true. I have clothing with Mr. Destructoid on it. His bobbleheadedness sits atop one of my televisions. You're in my iPhone (the iPod part, anyway). And now I find myself referencing you guys in my everyday speech. Not only do I find myself punctuating statements with BOOMs left and right, but I'm referencing things from this site that the people I'm speaking with will never actually recognize. Except I mentioned something about who would be wearing the dogsuit between these two guys, and my boss got the reference to the Shining, which made that kind of weird. But anyway, points. This thing has one somewhere.

Right, it's this: Thank you. Thank you to Niero, for creating this site and continuing to add more duct tape to keep it together. Thanks to the editors and writers for always doing an amazing job. And thanks to the community for being just plain fucking awesome (well, most of you). I promise to try to keep up with the rest of you and contribute more to this place, if only a shitty MSPaint representation of some awful seen Podtoid inspired.



See you all at PAX.

-GAPING MAW