Hank, you should feel free to edit this post. Also people who are not Hank should feel free to leave comments in this post, suggesting revisions and additions to the rules of Brotherhood 2.0.

A lot of people have had questions about the rules, and some people were disappointed when I didn't sing The Proclaimers' "500 Miles" on Monday because they thought I had broken the rules. But A. I hadn't broken the rules, although B. you would have no way of knowing this, because the rules existed only inside of my head and Hank's head, plus C. even we were not entirely sure of them. You have to understand that we didn't decide to do this until like December 20th. There was not a lot of thought given over to planning.

THE RULES

1. Every weekday (that isn't a major holiday) either Hank or John will post a video addressed to each other but available to the public. (Sometimes, Hank and John will use private videos to communicate private and/or boring things, such as how to compress videos using imovie in a way that won't piss off youtube.)

2. Hank and John will not communicate, under any circumstances, via any private textual means. No email and no IMs and no text messages. (We're doing B2.0 partly because over the last several years, living on opposite sides of the country and all, our relationship became almost exclusively textual.) Some phone calls are allowed.

3. If one of us should fail to update by 11:59 PM on the appointed date, a punishment will be meted out. We already seem to have agreed that the first such punishment would be having to sing The Proclaimers' "500 Miles" on video.

4. I think as a practical matter we have agreed that videos should never be over four minutes in length.

5. This blog will continue to feature text, and that will not be a violation of the rules. The main reason it hasn't featured text lately is that I am trying to finish my new book.