Today is the first birthday of Faster Than The World. We'll be celebrating all week, so keep checking here because we have some fun contests to go along with the celebration.

Each of the authors of FTTW has taken the time to write a "how they got here" story of how they came to be part of this site. Maybe some of these stories are not true at all. Maybe. Maybe some of our authors spent too much time at the FTTW moonshine still. We are not responsible for the accuracy of their tales. But we are responsible for them being here, and no matter what, we're proud of that.

We posted a few already, here's the rest.

Bonnie (Raising Hell)

For the past 5 years I have been telling Michele all of my crazy stories about my kids. We usually exchanged stories while sitting and having coffee in the morning at work. She makes the best coffee. One day Michele said, "you know, you really need to write this stuff down and I have the perfect place to do it!" I had been reading one of Michele's blogs for a while and I knew that a very wide variety of people would be reading the things I was going to write and possibly comment on them and that got me very excited! I have always enjoyed writing but never really had an outlet for it. FTTW gives me that outlet, along with a great bunch of people to pal around with. I have enjoyed sharing my stories as well as reading the stories that the other writers here at FTTW have to share.

Jo (Amie)

I had been working on my little comic for about 3 years by then. A close friend, Bloo, had told her mother, Bonnie, about my comic and she has been a reader of FTTW. Michele and Turtle had made an announcement that they were looking for a weekly serialized comic to post. She gave me the website to check it out and told me to e-mail Michele if I was interested. I did and we spoke briefly. I sent them a few pages of my comic and then next week I had my first posting of Amie on FTTW. That was almost a year ago and I've enjoyed everyday of it.

Dave (Roughin' It)

I was a regular reader and commenter of ASV, and occasionally emailed Michele. She did a guest appearance once on an internet radio program, God I forget who they were, anyway she pretended to blow up and get mad and dropped a few f-bombs, and I remember emailing her something like "you almost convinced me". She was a little down about it, cause she had convinced quite a few people and they were giving her shit about it.

Anyway, so we were fakey-internet friends.

I sent her a story I had written about my schmaltzy Christmas tree and she published it on ASV. My first blog post.

Later when a couple of hurricanes blew through this part of the world I did a couple more for her on refugees and stuff.

I can't remember the one I sent her for FTTW, no wait it was two, but she gave me guest appearances, and then asked me if I wanted to be a regular contributor. I have an ego the size of the room so I said "sure"!

I'm not really a writer, I'm more of an occasionally amusing story teller. I can be serious like anybody else, but other people do that so much better than I. I hope I make people grin or laugh, or remember something nice.

Josh (Dishful of Metal/Editor)

I don't remember exactly how it came about. I had helped M with some tech stuff occasionally. I sent her a Faith No More rock and roll comic and some other swag. She helped me with some graphics for another site I was running at the time (called Dishful of Metal, hence the column name). When FTTW was in its infancy as a web mag, she asked me to contribute, and when it started getting big, she asked me to be an editor, what with me making sciences and all.

Kristine (The Last Word)

Three months ago ProducedBy told me I had to write something or he wouldn't be my friend anymore.

That's how I came to FTTW.

Deb (I'll See You On The Ice)

I'd known Jo (of Amie fame) for a few years through LiveJoural on the internets. I don't even remember how we found each other on that, but we did.

So one day she sends me an emailing saying that the wicked awesome site that Amie was on was looking for a hockey columnist. She knew I LOVED l'hockey, so I emailed turtle asking if they were still looking.

He said sure, but we need a sample column. I pointed out that the season started the next day and I'll see you on the ice was born.

Courtney (Let Me Make You a Mix Tape)

Um, I'm new here, and I just wanted to hang out with the cool kids. Have you got any pot? ;)

I met Michelle through a very weird blog Tesco and I used to write called Musical Chairs (which, this thread reminds me of what I WANTED it to be).

Timmer (The Back Booth)

I can't remember when I started commenting on ASV. I know the little dead girl in the shopping cart was still on the front page and I seem to remember reading Michele's first 9/11 memorial, so...five years, six? How the hell did that happen?

Michele had asked me to write something for FTTW back in...I dunno...September...but last fall I wasn't writing all that much and what I was writing I completely hated. I was reading FTTW almost from the start even though the whole car thing kind of went right over my head.

I'd been writing at The Daily Brief but I was getting bored to tears over there. For some reason I thought I wasn't far enough on the right or far enough on the left to really get anyone to read what I wrote and then I had an epiphany of sorts. I fucking hate what politics is doing to our country. For the most part, I'm done with all of that. I still drop a post over there now and then when some twit pisses me off, but it's mostly a safety valve for my blood pressure.

What I like about FTTW is why I called my "column" The Back Booth. It has that late on a Friday night in the back corner of a favorite diner feel. I just like the exchanges that go on in the emails and the comments. It's fun. It's no holds barred. I laugh so hard my wife gives me a "the look" sometimes. I get the feeling I could play around with everything from album reviews to straight out, bom chicka bowm bowm porn and you guys would accept it...but it better be good porn.

Cullen (All About the Guitar)

I never read ASV, but I read a lot of sites that were big ASV readers. When Michele and Turtle stood up FTTW, Emily at "It Comes in Pints?" and Dean at "Dean's World" announced FTTW. I headed over that day and became a serial commenter. Punk, fast cars and fun. What more can you want?

So, when the innerwebs zine was stood up, it was an honor to be asked to write a weekly column. It's been a fun ride. Sometimes, when it gets hard to keep up with the weekly grind, I begin to contemplate stepping out, but I'm glad that I've decided to ride it out. With the blog up, there's yet another avenue for fun.

I enjoy reading all your stuff and can't wait to see what it yet to come.

Richard (Sudden Valley Ranch)

I've been reading whatever Stefi (Obscene and Heard) writes for years, when she mentioned at one of her blogs doing a column for FTTW I followed the link and was a little puzzled. There was a whole pack of youse just writing about what you wanted to write about, it was, to me, almost too genius to be such a simple concept. Seriously, I was surprised that I had never run across such a good idea before. (Okay, I've seen digests, team-blogs, e-zine type stuff before, but they're all very rigid about their content or they suck or both.)

I saw the submission notice, tossed something in and Michele asked if I wanted to write regularly. Since I had a blog I was posting to once or twice a month the idea of getting anything written on a regular basis scared me and I said no. Then I continued to hang around, submitted a couple more things, and then I finally decided that maybe if I had a weekly commitment to other people I might be able to exercise some measure of discipline that I was unable to just for
myself. I asked Michele if the offer was still good and here we are. Plus my blog was infiltrated by a friend/family member so I don't even feel like posting there anymore, so FTTW was a fresh start in that way.

Seetwist, author of Aurgasmic

How I came to FTTW:

A few years ago I was frequenting Fark.com and posting a lot in the music forums. A thread popped up about Michael Patton selling his old autographed Apple computer on eBay, and much Patton fellating did ensue. People tossing around obscure album references and basically trying to one-up each other with their Patton knowledge. Of course, I had to join in...

I had just seen the guy perform live with Rahzel in Boulder, Colorado a few nights earlier and happened to have a recording of the show. I mentioned that I'd hook up a few of the more hard-core fans in the thread with a CD if they wanted it, and a number of people responded. There were quite a few posts to the effect of "Where the hell is Woodpecker From Mars, and why isn't she participating in this Patton thread??" I figured she was a big fan, so I emailed her and told her that I'd send a disc her way if she was interested. The next day I logged on and she had sponsored me for TotalFark.

Jump forward to March of this year. I had no job and was living off of my savings, and I had a lot of free time. I was filling it photography and writing music reviews that nobody ever read. On a whim, I asked her if she needed someone to contribute a few columns to FTTW about music and graffiti. She said "Hell yeah!", and I started the next week.

Nothing special about my story, just another hookup from a hawt chick who apparently digs me a lot... =)

Ernie, author of End Zone:

A few years ago, I think it was 2004, I was reading a site called The Soxaholix, which is like a Red Sox blog in cartoon form. Anyway, they did a post that was all about Michele's new, at the time anyway, Yankee blog called Empire of the Yankees or Evil Empire Strikes back or something like that, I don't remember, but I remember it had of course, Bucky Fucking Dent as part of the main site design, a great big picture of him right on the top of the page. So yeah Michele I found you from a Red Sox site how about that! Ha ha!

So I went over there and visited and there was lots of Yankees fans arguing with Red Sox fans. Since I was not a Yankee fan, and it was a Yankee site I kind of browsed around but I did not really give it a lot of thought. I did think Michelle's posts were funny though, even if they were all about the Yankees, so I started going back there just to see what would show up next. It was like, A GUILTY PLEASURE.

Then I started clicking around on the site links and found A Small Victory, which I became a regular reader of, because Michele would write about how much she liked the Misfits and Zombies and cool stuff like that. And it actually made me go and dig around in my basement
for my old cassettes and find my old Misfits tapes which I had not listened to in years and that was cool. It was like a re-discovery. So thanks Michele for helping me re-discover The Misfits.

And Michele did that Kids for Katrina thing to help out the hurricane victims, which was just an awesome thing for her to do. Then ASV went away. But I kept it in my Bloglines list anyway. I had a feeling Michele would come back someday, and one day there was this update in my bloglines 'Tap tap tap, is this thing on?' Michele came back to ASV with her new co-writer Turtle and they wrote stories about cool things like muscle cars and punk rock bands and being on the road in a punk band and all kinds of other neat things, and there were some people that would leave interesting comments all the time like kali and cullen and finn and pril. Then Michele and Turtle decided to leave ASV in the past and create Faster Than The WORLD.

And that's my FTTW story. Wow this is long ass. And there you go.

Uberchief, author of Uber's Corner and An Audience of Shadows:

The summer before my senior year of college, I decided that spending three years becoming a psychologist would kind of get in the way of my drinking, so I decided to become a writer. After spending the year writing two novels (don't ask, they both suck) I found an eight to five job as an editor, which I figured was a perfect job for a writer. As an editor, I had a lot of down time waiting for people to get work to me so I could stay late and finish looking at it for them, so with the help of a friend, I stumbled across TotalFark.

Turtle and I continually crossed tracks in the threads, and he is honestly one of the funniest motherfuckers I've ever known. I got to know Michele in some of the threads, and if I remember correctly, she kept me in line. Then one day, I was off work and "relaxing," and cruising TotalFark, and everything on there was completely stupid, so I started writing ridiculous fables about animals who killed their parents, committed sodomy, and knowingly passed on STDs to each other, and posting them in random threads.

Pretty soon, Uber's Corner was born, where I gave people advice through my fables. Not long after that, I got the invitation from turtle and michele. Uber's Corner about to bite the dust, because there's no way I'm going to spend time on that when I can work on FTTW.

This site embraces the spirit of the Internet. We are pioneers in the new world of writing. Fifty years ago, it was pulp. Now, it's us, at home, with keyboards and connections, delivering words and ideas of inspiration to the world, to which we owe so much--NAY!--to which we owe, OUR LIVES.

NOW SALUTE THE FLAG MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

(we are going to have a "design the FTTW flag" contest this week, so look for that).

The Pirate, author of Any Port in the Storm

A few months ago, my employer found my blog. I had a fair amount of work-related stuff in there so I paniced, deleted the blog and completely freaked out about not being able to write. Enter Travis; the voice of wisdom and reason, suggesting FTTW. A week later I was here.

Or Alternately...

While on a business trip to Easter Island for a friend of mine who used to work in the midget porn industry (but now imports casket wood from Easter Island), I stopped in Santiago. There, I was arrested for mastrubating in the bathroom of an oxygen bar by a couple of Chilean soldiers. It seems my fevered moaning interrupted a secret tryst and they were extremely upset. At my trial, I learned one of the soldiers was second-cousin to the magistrate. I was sentenced to 5 years hard labor at a rubber tree plantation. Over the next six months I kiestered enough rubber to construct a rubber raft and eventually floated down the nearest river to the Pacific. After floating around for 79 days, I was rescued by an Indonesian Freighter bound for New York. Eventually, I found myself panhandling on Broadway. I would recite dirty poetry for pennies. Turtle heard me, dropped in a nickel and told me to look up FTTW if I ever made it off the streets.

Yeah.

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The editors thank you all for sharing your stories and for making this past year so much fun.

Come back for some birthday contests tomorrow and Saturday!

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