Dear Readers,

Allow me to be the first -or possibly the second- to welcome you to this, the inaugural edition of Marked Accordingly V.2: The Great Escape! You may already have realised that the content of this, our MA REDUX, differs quite significantly from the first incarnation of Marked Accordingly. Perhaps you find this change exciting and rejuvenating- perhaps you find it painful and frightening. Either way, let me offer you a compact precis of the rationale for MA's spiritual and material rebirth, bursting like a phoenix from the ashes of... another.... slightly less interesting.... phoenix....

For the last few weeks, there had been a steady and incremental growth in our awareness of the fact that the original Marked Accordingly format was growing stale. We had reached the outermost limits of the diary-reviewing genre and were reduced to feeling our way along its caged circumference, pressing our miserable faces to the glass walls like method mime actors, churning out reviews that were little more then cryptic cries for help and Death's welcome release. Our plans for eventual expansion of the site into an online magazine had been overtaken by stultifying Nemesis as we clung pathetically to the premise that writing diary reviews was still FUN, that the huddled mediocrities of Diaryland were still worthy opposition. Even the abuse of our detractors had grown lifeless and derivative, as if they were as tired of squealing their insecure hearts out as we were of listening to them do so- the hours I spent sitting by my mailbox like Charlie Brown, waiting for the threats of legal and/or physical reprisals to bear material fruit, were entirely wasted. Nothing ever came of nothing. Time, therefore, for a change.

The diary review section of Marked Accordingly will live on, but it will be very much a tertiary concern. Henceforth, Marked Accordingly's sole purpose is the provision of entertainment in whatever form our contributors choose to give it. MA currently has, and always has had some fantastic writers- and to curb the impulses of those writers by forcing them to catalogue the whiny inconsequentialities of Diaryland was nothing short of tyrannical. Over the coming weeks, the new MA will be chock-a-block with exciting new ventures and contributors, rubbing shoulders with all the old favourites in a staunch confederacy of intellectual substance, incorrigible irreverence and laughing at people who aren't me and you. And possibly John.

MA is dead! Long live MA!

I hope you realise what we go through to please you - the internet public. Our social lives are slowly draining away as we slave day in and day out just to provide you with the reading material you have come to EXPECT from Marked Accordingly. Our employment is now on tenuous hook as we reply to the request that we do "Just one thing before you go, can you..." with the harsh gutteral strains of "NO TIME!". As amorous as we are, our love lives are in severe danger of vanishing beyond the horizon as we contemplate writing scathing commentary of our respective girlfriends and boyfriends, detailing their every failing; all for your entertainment.

Why do we put ourselves through this torture? Because YOU demand to be entertained and we are the poor saps that couldn't help but take up that challenge. We like challenges, you see.

Long-term readers of Marked Accordingly - all two or three of you - will be scared to note that Marked Accordingly has changed. Do not worry. All we've done is expand the scope from merely reviewing diaries to... well... pretty much anything. Hopefully this will be a welcome change for you, because, let's face it : reading review after review must have been as boring for you as writing review after review was for us. They say variety is the spice of life; and I have to agree. Vivé variety!

I have to say that we should have done earlier but now it is rooted in the actual, rather than in the ether that is thoughts, it has given us a renewed sense of purpose, and a renewed sense of interest in Marked Accordingly. It is the metaphorical kick up the arse; and one which I hope you thoroughly enjoy.