I apologize for having not written anything interesting in recent days. There is a temptation to ascribe decreased reader interest to summer daze, to the long days and hot nights that lure most people away from their HALs and out onto their porches and other places of friendly congregation, and this is certainly happening, but I also know that I have been shirking my responsibilities as a writer. Though I look forward fondly to departing Texas, and sincerely praying never to return, endings make me morose... which is possibly the most insultingly unoriginal piece of gibberish haunting the boarded up Thunderdome of my mind. Ominously, morosity is the last way station on the road to apathy.

Can one summon a semblance of the salad days of yore through sheer will? I know not. I can feel a distant stirring in the blood, a receptiveness to bold declarations of forging a personal Golden Age or dying in the attempt. I am never one to disparage the value of words and they are fine words; so, I shall not dismiss them as "only words." Even so, the Dark Bastard is a dread foe with which not to be trifled lightly. I will need cunning and guile as well as strength to overthrow him, cunning and guile I have not displayed in too many years. Years, whole years I have squandered. Ye gods. (Of course, there is also a temptation to read great themes into a passing malaise, and of this too I must be wary.)

The looming campaign against the depredations of the Dark Bastard aside, The Secret Base has not of late been what it should. I adore "The Explorers Club" and "The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day," but I have put too much emphasis on these gimmicky features. My love for them is pure and true, but my neglect of the erstwhile meat and potatoes of this bloggy blog is inexcusable. You shall never know how many posts I have censored in the past few months. I haven't weighed in on my friends, I haven't discussed my family, I've allowed "The Endurance" to whither and all but die. (Fortunately, I have done a finer job of nurturing "The Endurance"'s real-world counterpart.) Hell, I've gone so far as to establish a stealth blog in order to experience the catharsis formerly attained through The Secret Base. No more. This namby-pamby bullshit is at an end.

The Endurance
Codename: PANDORA's standard Secret Base codename is The Sardine. Fanatical readers may remember from the mammoth "The Anniversary Party presents Codename: CHAOS" that her Christian name is Amanda. Make no mistake, I really, really enjoy typing "Codename: PANDORA," deriving from it almost certainly more glee than I should. But, in so indulging such a fancy, I lost sight of the nigh-sacred policies that made The Secret Base the best blog on ye olde internet. (Deny it? Name one blog better. I dare you.) Secret Base standards and practices clearly require that codenames are used not to preserve anonymity, but to furnish mirth and amusement. With the exceptions of Skeeter and The Watergirl, killjoys who requested any and all mention of their last names be redacted (I tease, girls) and the Anonymous Friend, about whom at his request no more specific reference may be made, I don't give a good Bog damn about you people's anonymity.

The precipitating event of the Mountain of Love's unceremonious canning from the job for which we came to this accursed place was the discovery by his superiors of some indiscreet words on his late, lamented bloggy blog; this proves that there is every reason to be protective of, perhaps even paranoid about one's identity here in the ethereal realms. I suggest not that all caution be thrown to the wind, but one of the raisons d'être of The Secret Base is to rebel against the notion that as far as the internet is concerned we must, to upend Murrow's immortal admonition, walk in fear of one another. In my use-cum-abuse of "Codename: PANDORA," I betrayed that principle and by extension mine own self.

Her name is Amanda, her codename is The Sardine, and I adore her. I may continue to use the double codename Codename: PANDORA, but only because I delight in it so, and only as long as everyone knows I am gushing about The Sardine.

And now for one of those ridiculously excessive declarative sentences of which I am so terribly fond: Prepare yourselves for the restoration of the true The Secret Base of the Rebel Black Dot Society.