Tako Tuesdays: A Brave New World

They awoke in a fog, cold, naked, alone. They were people of all walks of life; old men who stared futility in the face and lived to see a better day, young collegians already accustomed to success, who yearn for immortality, moms and dads who just want a brighter tomorrow for their kids, and even a couple hotties. There was a shared consciousness, as the lot attempted to make sense of their new reality. Nostalgia was the immediate reaction, but no. There was no going back from this. The only way was forward, a bright light in the distance. They peered out into the uncertainty of morning, recognizing nothing but sensing the remnants of an ideal. These few, these lucky few, As alien as this place may be, it was certainly home.

Make no mistake, this was a future world, brighter, faster, more streamlined. The faces of the intrepid were of bewilderment, but in the way a child feels when she sees fireworks for the first time. At first, there was much hesitation among the group to explore, especially since everyone was still naked. But after fashioning makeshift togas out of canvas bags and duct tape, this community of heroes was ready to face the unfamiliar. And after a little investigating, it became clear that everything they loved was still here: the watering hole, where any and all could come and share a drink and a word; the library, containing any piece of knowledge desired, plus newspapers on dowels and a suspect set of bathrooms; the movie theater, which showed grainy art-house drivel that few watched and even fewer actually enjoyed. Even Father Matthew, the gruff-yet-endearing town lunatic, was still here, providing anyone with ears the information they didn't know they didn't need. This world was not so harsh after all. We can make this work, they thought. We can make this work.

Oh hey everybody! You caught me in the middle of working on my post-apocalypse novel Crimson Dusk, soon to be a movie starring Ryan Gosling Phillipe Reynolds Kwanten (oh Jason Stackhouse you sexy muh-fuh), some nobody hot girl because this project can't afford Olivia Wilde, and Mel Gibson as Crazy Father Matthew. #straighttoDVD

By now you've noticed the our facelift; new stylings, more pictures, and a more squeezable and top-heavy front page (insert comment about Christina Hendricks here). But there is function to go with all this form: posts will be more organized, easier to find, and the day-to-day read will involve much less scrolling-down-the-page-because-we've-posted-five-things-today-and-the-Quack-Fix-is-all-the-way-at-the-bottom. One game's worth of open threads won't take up the entire page! You can see a whole week's worth of content without having to click anything! I can pin Tako Tuesdays to the front page for the entire week because it's just that important! This is the progress Lewis N. Clark had in mind when he sailed west to India in 1066.

Is this change complete? Heck no. "There will be bugs" is not a sequel to the Daniel Day-Lewis film set amongst a group of entrepreneurial, mustachioed dung beetles, but a cautionary mantra for your site viewing in the next couple weeks. The big kinks in terms of site design, efficiency, and editing capabilities are essentially squared away. But when you add in the 27 million readers, FanPosters, and commenters that come to SB Nation every month, things may not go according to expectation. A total rebranding of this magnitude is crazytown bananapants, and the folks at the mothership damn near stuck the landing.

As for us here? We're still the same hodgepodge of laymen galavanting about aboard our passion for Oregon sports and our nearly-flawless use of proper English grammer. Quack addicts can still expect the same content: daily Quack Fixes, Tako Tuesdays, the Elevator, the 12-Pac Review, The Chip Kelly Statistic, Brother vs. Brother, all the game week coverage, plus the fabulous commenting engine that makes SB Nation the best place on the Internet to get together on game day and talk sports. The ATQ Sports Bar is still here everybody, it just got a new coat of paint, a couple flat screens, and Pliny the Elder on tap. Surely you can make that work, can't you?