Come in, sit, have a bite, take your shoes off! Okay, maybe put your shoes back on. Or at least change your socks or something, for godsakes. But anyway, welcome!

This here is the all-new turbocharged multi-authored Fanatical Apathy. A lot, as you can see, has changed. A lot remains the same, though: I’m still here, for one thing. Mo might be planning to depose me, but somehow I’ve so far managed to avoid all his clever traps (”Adam, I left a bag of M&M’s at the bottom of the well. Want ‘em?”).

So, what’s changed? This tremendous new look, for one thing. This site was designed and implemented by the amazing Jennifer of music and meaning, and I urge you to visit her site, purchase her brand-new album, and buy her gifts from her Amazon wishlist. I can’t tell you how much she’s done to get this site working and beautiful. No, really, I actually can’t tell you. Because I don’t quite understand it. But it’s a lot. Trust me on that.

Another thing you’ll notice right away is the address change. Though the old address still works, I encourage you to redirect your bookmarks and links to fanaticalapathy.com. That’s it. Pretty tidy, no?

Our new authors are probably pretty familiar to you. Mo Rocca has been a friend and cohort for quite awhile, and Chris Regan has even guest-blogged here whilst I honeymooned a couple of years ago. Their qualifications are impressive, but if you don’t know them well enough, well, that’s what the bio page is for (and not, as you might have surmised, for the disposal of carbon-based waste). Describing Sienna Kirschenbaum is more problematic: She’s going to be a tremendous part of this site, but circumstances prevent her from revealing her true identity. Please respect her privacy, or she will find you and make you respect it. She can do that.

Longtime fans will note that the site’s subject matter will now be a little more varied. This is good, particularly for anyone who remembers September, 2003, when I devoted the entire month to analyzing Denny Hastert’s hairstyle. No, I’ve encouraged everyone to just write about whatever interests them as long as it sort of touches upon something that’s happening now(ish) in some way. It’s a big world, and Fanatical Apathy reserves the right to display childish disrespect towards all of it.

So what’s this place going to be like now, really? I have no idea. That’s what I’m excited about. Maybe we’ll all write separate things, maybe we’ll start referring to and enhancing each other’s stuff, maybe we’ll just start passive-aggressively sniping at each other. It’s not knowing what the site’s going to be like that excites me, after four and a half years of knowing exactly what it was going to be like.

One common thread though, between the old and the new, is the Comments. They are still yours. Come in, socialize, comment, offer some thoughts of your own. Though our readership may expand, I’m hoping to keep the same tone we’ve enjoyed for the past few years. Somehow this has been an almost implausibly congenial place by web standards, and I aim to keep it that way. Beyond that… who knows? We’ll see.

Ready?

Go.

[Hey, are those really M&M’s down there?…]