I don’t think I’m alone when I say that we were all a bit sick of Mr. Fancy Pants Ben Popken running the show. Despite his smug, girlish demeanor and Woody-Allenesque voice, Ben proved quite capable of hogging the spotlight, jetting around in Gawker-billed limousines to his various 20/20 interviews about stories I broke. Meanwhile, I — John Brownlee (“Who?”) — was pushed back into the shadows of a site I’d been working on for months before he first burst through our door with a high-pitched and smart-alecky “Hey hey hey!”

Over time, my resentment grew. and I decided to confront Ben about it. I wanted more face time. “You know, no one even realizes who I am!” I screamed at him. But Ben just smirked, put on his glittering star-shaped sun glasses and snorted: “Why should they?”

And that’s when I struck him. I didn’t really mean to kill him, but I quickly found out that punching Ben was like punching a 6 week old fetus. He just exploded. Or maybe he just told me he was going on vacation to the Poconos all this week, and would be back next week. ^* Honestly, blood lust leaves me a little bit forgetful.

The good news is that now I’m in charge. The bad news is that Ben’s sudden vacancy left the Consumerist with 12 posts a day that still needed to be filled. So we’ve got a couple of guest bloggers stepping in this week to fill Ben’s steaming, blood-filled shoes: Mark Ashley and Meg Marco. They’re both great bloggers, but I’ll let them introduce themselves.

Please give Mark and Meg a warm welcome. Also, please keep in mind that if The Consumerist falls apart over the next week, it’s all their fault. Thanks!

* – This is what really happened. Ben will be back next week.

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