|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Blue Pyramid is the personal website of Storey Clayton. Though it may often seem that other people are working on or responsible for its content, pretty much everything here is entirely the work of Storey. Yes, that is his real name.
Like most fun things, the Blue Pyramid has been an organic and ever-changing project. Recently, Storey has
begrudgingly started setting limits on the trajectory of this growth.
Storey first designed a webpage in February 1999, mostly for the purpose of telling the world how much Risk was being played
in his college dormitory when he was a freshman at Brandeis University. This first website,
dubbed Eire Duck's Pond of Peace, slowly grew over the next year. Storey began blogging in March 2000
and blogged daily on Introspection, My Worst Friend for over seven years. (His new blog, StoreyTelling, took its place in October 2007.)
In January 2002, with graduation from college in sight (and the corresponding loss of his Brandeis-hosted webpage), Storey
decided to move the site to a unique URL. bluepyramid.org is primarily a reference to Ray Bradbury's short
story Tomorrow's Child, which is about two parents giving birth to a small blue pyramid who seems to be from a
futuristic dimension. Storey often feels like this blue pyramid, an incomprehensible alien to those around him. The irony of
a site named for his feeling of isolation leading to millions of people connecting with Storey's viewpoint is not lost on
him.
The millions have mostly come for online personality quizzes, the first of which (The Country
Quiz) was the product of Storey's intense boredom in his first job out of college, serving as the librarian at a commuter
college. Released in January 2003, it has been taken over 3 million times. Seven additional quizzes have been written for the
site in the six-plus years since, as well as three similarly styled off-site quizzes.
Storey has also worked on a number of additional online projects, most of them hosted at the Blue Pyramid. He began compiling
people's favorite books (The Book List) in July 2002, writing a daily webcomic (Duck and Cover) in July 2005, and podcasting (The Mep Report) in
October 2005. Storey officially left The Mep Report in August 2007, but has posted on the site and continues to "guest star"
on the show regularly. Many other projects have come and gone, as are documented in the Archive and
the Timeline. They live in suspended animation, no longer active, but also not removed
from the web.
The future of the Blue Pyramid may revive some of these projects, and/or create new ones, and will certainly contain more quizzes.
Offline, Storey has collected a few accomplishments, including winning the North American Parliamentary Debate Championship
(2001), graduating Brandeis with a double-major in History and Philosophy (2002), publishing his first novel, Loosely Based (2003), and marrying Emily Garin (2003). His day jobs have
included being a receptionist, working in libraries, counseling troubled youth, webmastering, and non-profit administration/analysis. He currently has left day jobs to focus on writing, though he is also coaching the Rutgers University Debate Union.
An ardent pacifist, Storey is a non-registrant for the Selective Service of the United States of America. He is a firm
believer in God, though not in organized religion. He has been a vegetarian for over a decade. He has visited 48 states and
lived in 10 cities. An avid baseball fan, Storey roots for the Seattle Mariners.
Storey also aspires to visit the pyramids in Egypt and is known for feeling blue.