eKarjala (e-KAHR-juh-luh) is a portmanteau of my full name, Eric Karjala, and an allusion to dotcom boom-era sites like eBay and eToys and eHarmony. I’ve been updating this site (with varying degrees of consistency) since 2000. Even after all those years, eKarjala has critics such as the Sacramento Bee raving, “Ouch!” Interesting historical note: Originally this website consisted of little more than some sarcastic text and an owl wearing a suit! Since then I have matured a great deal. Now there is also a Lego wizard riding a bicycle.

I am a content writer who is attempting to justify his B.A. in English from Michigan State University. Additional examples of my writing can be found on CRACKED.com (2001 to Timecop: 8 Movie Futures Already Proven Wrong) and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (Unlikely Parenthetical Statements). I’m based in New York City.

Notes on traffic: Portions of this website have been linked to by Fark.com, Gizmodo, MetaFilter, and CollegeHumor.com. In January, 2008, my Internet ’96 article was made popular on Digg.com and received over 7,500 Diggs, which generated two hundred thousand hits in a 24-hour period. When updated regularly, eKarjala receives over a thousand unique hits per day.

Your reservations about the site design have been noted. I know, there’s not a lot going on. My objective is a stylized minimalism that conceals my inability to actually design a proper website. If I were more comfortable with CSS and PHP I’d probably improve the header and make things look a bit less sloppy. But I’m pretty sure I’d still keep the stark presentation, because it dovetails quite nicely with my stark content.

The owl is named Wickensworth and serves no real purpose, but it’s far too late in the game to delete him. He’s kind of like a mascot only instead of rooting us on, he judges us.