The Ert Movement began several years ago in a suburban Virginia home. A young man was sitting in a reclining chair, contemplating the nuances of the universe, when a strange bit of linguistic pondering suddenly befell him:
I am sitting in this chair, yet I am still able to move. Am I ert? The answer eluded him as he sat, his mind working feverishly on the problem. He thought: if I had some sort of debilitating disease, I would be inert while in this chair, but alas I do not. I must be ert, I have to be.

The pondering continued until the brilliant young man was forced to leave the chair to obtain a dictionary, and what he expected would be confirmation of his musing. Being ert, or so he thought, he leapt from the chair and raced to the family's copy of Merriam-Webster's dictionary. There he encountered the greatest disappointment of his life when it was discovered that ert was not a word. Not a word, how can ert not be a word? And so a movement was born.

In the spring of 2002 the Ert Movement was created with a Web site on Geocities. It was a simple page with a simple quest, but one that garnered great support from those who visited. In 2004 the site got a makeover and took largely the shape that you see today. Keeping with the tradition of “New Every Two,” we made the biggest change to date, shifting to the “real” world and off of Geocities. There we introduced the message board and ert merchandise, while retaining the roots of fan favorites like the ert journals.

It is too early to tell what is in store for 2008, but rest assured there could be an elephant or whatever replaces the iPod involved.