Highlights of things from my SEO-Blog...

` I first entered the blogging world with my SEO-blog (first named 'The Land of the Big Wingy-Dingy'), which I simply have appended onto this one's archives. Last year, I began to prepare an anniversary post, which I just got through extensively editing and boiling down....

` However, all my hard work has gone to waste because it didn't save for some reason!!! Oh! All the formatting, all the changes! But, alas...

` Here is the first draft of that post, 'as is'.

` The first post, unfortunately, ran into some severe Technical Difficulties, so my published first post was just a shadowy copy of that one...

` Hi, this is S E E Quine, the self-appointed Big Wingy-Dingy.
` Of course, I have no idea what the Ramifications of This are, as I have no idea of what the office of Big Wingy-Dingy is.
` I’m Not a Very Happy Wingy-Dingy right now, though. I just worked for five hours Figuring Out a First Post here. And then Something Bad happened when I clicked on the Blog This! button and it went Out of the Land of The Big Wingy-Dingy, so you see, it’s Sadly Gone.

` I described my intentions, as well as 'My New Bouncing, Pinkish Bundle of Allergens, Butter Cookies', who was licking my fingers continuously the entire time I was posting it.
` Mozilla didn't support the editing software very well, and I couldn't even use the color-coded options, so this is basically how it looked in the original blog when I listed the things I'd hoped to write about:

MEART: Besides being one of those deals where a bunch of brain cells is hooked up to a computer, it specifically has a camera and an arm by which it draws pictures of what it ‘sees.’ Disturbing!

Plasmonic covers: They’re really cool, but as large-scale invisibility shields, these things are Rather Disappointing in Visible Light.

VIRGOHI21: The Dark Matter Galaxy. Well something has to be hauling that nebula around!

Homo floresiensis: Bizarre mutant? No. Pygmy Homo erectus? No. Hobbit? Kinda. Ebu Gogo? Possibly…

Also: What do I Think about Things? (Possibly much more interesting than it sounds.)

` I did indeed talk about things like these in later posts, so at least that shows I had my mind set to it. I even went on about how - before my post had gotten erased - I had described my abusive childhood with an obsessive psychopath who had stolen everything I'd had, including my diaries, my computer, my sci-fi novel, my bicycle, underwear, etc.


` I had said; ‘It explains why I rode the short bus to school.’


` Har. And then, 'Things Got Better,' and then I was tortured with a bone saw and imprisoned in a 'Place of Horrors', and I lost feeling throughout much of my body due to severe emotional trauma, etc, etc, though my life did eventually become more cozy and I moved up here, etc. etc.
` My friend, Dory, had written a comment:

Hey! Sa-ra, Sa-ra
Darn, I miss you mucho' bunches. And, I can't wait to read your out-of-this-world BLOG! (Guess I'd better hurry up before it takes me six months to follow the thread) Huh?
Putting your BLOG in "My Favorite Place" ( does that rate at Portnoy talk?) And, where IS my favorite place, you ask? . . .Tune in for more or less of the oldest vestial virgin's nonsensical nonsense regarding her harried,and ubiquitous thoughts of meanness and revenge. In the meantime, I hereby officially LAUNCH "THE LAND OF THE WINGY DINGY BLOG" (Gee, I wish I had a cookie)XO


` But, as I wasn't intending on revealing my name, I shot back:

YOU DARE SPEAK MY NAME, Head Honcho of Writers Club! (It is only because you have an Impressive Title, like myself!) I shall speak YOUR NAME - DORY! Now everyone knows who you are! HA HA HA! And if you EVER CROSS ME, I shall refer to you as Dori - with an 'i'! Mua ha ha!
Seriously, though! How ya been? How's everybody? How's the property? How's the dogs? How's the festering? Thanks very much for the launch! I suppose you could have used a bottle of champagne, or at least cheap vodka to smash against it, but your way is better!
(And if you wish for cookies, at least you have Chrissy there.)
Keep being Cool and Weird! XO - Q


` The second post, Tyrannosaurus Cells and Elephant Mimicry is when I began with all that Nature Publishing Group business...
` It was a nice, short little piece about stretchy, soft tissue from a Tyrannosaurus has been discovered, as you'd think. Also, predictably, documented cases of an African elephant mimicking Asian elephant calls and another African elephant that sounded convincingly like a truck (with a link to the sound file, to boot!).

` The next post was called Unwholesome Extremists - Gotta Love 'em! It was about some fanatical wackmobile who just happens to be the mother of a friend of mine. I know now that he apparently hates her, not because she believes the earth is flat, but because she's afraid of him being evil or crazy or something because he's not just like her. As I'd written:

` Fear of Others Not Like You is a very sad thing when one is Unwholesomely Extreme. It's called Intolerance.
` Intolerance tends to spring from Ignorance.

` For example; she once asked Phil, who at the time was in college; "Why does anyone study 'other' planets like Mars? They're just science fiction!" Okay... so that pink dot in the sky is a tiny little thing meant for Decorating the Sky?

` Well, there's an explanation for her beliefs, though it is quite tragic that someone would fear others and think them damned for not believing just as they do. As I'd put it:

` Hooray! We're all going to Hell, and she's not invited! :)

` Seriously, though, that's just... Unwholesome. And... well, Extreme. Caging the poor boy.
` Not taking him to the doctor when he was too sick to walk that one time, insisting on praying for him... (Thank goodness it was just some kind of food poisoning!) That type of thing.

` My next post was my first DadStory, which was a pretty good description of my childhood, which I thought was very descriptive and somewhat clever, though it was fairly long. Here are the highlights from it...

` I remember when I was three or four; I was on my wooden swingset and my dad was having a bout of logorrhea (lit. 'verbal diarrhea'). He was talking about all this crap which most people would be trying to escape from, although I, having an Impressionable Young Mind, took everything he said religiously.
` It was all quite disturbing - he was telling me I didn't have rights in this country even though he did; that's why I wasn't allowed to do such-and-such, and I remember quite distinctly this exchange:
` I was saying; "But why don't I have rights?"
` He said; "Because I own you."
` I said; "And so does Mom, right?"
` And he said; "No, see, because I own you and Mom, just like I own the house!"
` So I said; "But I thought Mom owned the house, too!"
` And he said; "She does, in a way, just not the same way as I do."

` Yikes. Shortly after, I'd become suicidal:

` I kept thinking; "This will hurt. But what if I don't die? But I have to die! I've lived long enough. I know enough. That's good enough for me!"
` Then my dad came up the stairs and I said to him; "Dad, I feel like I want to kill myself."
` And he said; "Well, everyone does, from time to time."
` I said; "No, I mean, all the time."
` He said; "No you don't, quit fibbin'!" and continued past me.

` I... was... four!

` And on and on about how he concluded that everyone around him, such as myself, was schizophrenic (because we didn't know what he was talking about half the time), and how his nonsensical logic allowed him to play The Blame Game with anyone....

` That was my life, basically. I was blamed for many things, most of which I didn't do - something that was especially evident in the accusations requiring me to break the laws of physics (stuff like me giving him physical and mental difficulties), obviously because I was a bad kid who was plotting against him.
` But again, I didn't know that. I was a kid. And he did a really good job convincing me that he was God.

` Needless to say, he always told me to be a 'good person' like him. Well, I succeeded in imitating him exactly, and it would up getting me into Special Ed.

` And I shortly described what I'd put up with in Special Ed...

` When I got so shaky I couldn't stay put, I'd get this huge 'fear grimace-thing' and hide. In third grade, when I went to Garfield Elementry in Medina, there was this pine-green laundry bag filled with sheets for the kids to punch when they were angry, and I'd take the sheets out and hide in it.
` Mr. Peterson, a schoolroom volunteer from the Baptist Church, would then just pull the drawstring and drag me into the hall. Sometimes, even down the stairs, as that's where the school time-out room was.

` Ouchie.

` What did the principal think of this? He would sometimes assist Mr. Peterson in dragging me down the steps when I wasn't in a bag! Then, once in the allergen-filled time-out room (which had been an office at first, but eventually was stripped bare with plaster falling all around my ears), I would be sneezing, black and blue from bruises and red from hives and rugburns, and they would tell me that they had called my mom and told her 'everything' that happened.
` Of course, by 'everything,' I assumed they meant 'everything!' That's why I never bothered telling her about what had happened.
` Meanwhile, this led to me being sent to my room every single school-day until I had to pee really bad and my dad had complained to me for hours about how bad everyone at the phone company had teased and mocked him.
` Yes, that's right. He'd complain for hours about his personal problems to his kid!

` Which I then described. My non-psychotic mother had no idea that any of this was going on, because my dad didn't tell her, and I was too afraid to because I thought she was nuts. And it was no wonder I had problems in school...

` It was because of his 'Yer teachers are wrong!' logorrhea that I had no respect for my teachers. They were 'stupid', and apparently being treated like how the adults at school treated me was not grounds for getting them in trouble for any reason.
` They were just... 'stupid.'

` So yes, my childhood had truly been an insane thing, and I thought I had been its chewy, nougaty crazy core, from the way he argued with me only 'because I wasn't telepathically tapped into his delusions, so could not anticipate them'. This was why practically everything was unfair in my favor.
` And the way he continually broke me down...

` "You're fight'n and fight'n wit' me, all the time!" he said. "You're just so stubborn and belligerant. Horses..." and after one of those maddening pauses of his, he actually told me, his young daughter: "People break their spirits so that the horse just gives up and will do anything they tell it to. Nau, I've been try'na break your spirit for such a long time, so you'll behave, so I can control you, but all you do is rebel! You just think I'm being mean, but I'm try'na help you!"
` I really believed him, though, because whenever I told a teacher or counselor about how he yelled at me all the time and told me I was a bad person, they repeatedly assured me that he only did it because he loved me.
` Yeah... he must have loved me more than anyone in the world! Which of course, is why I believed him when he said; "I love you more than anyone else, even Mahm! More than anyone ever, ever will, because no one will ever be able to stand you. You actually think you're gonna get married? If by some miracle you do, your husband will wind up being a wife-beater, because no one can stand you! No one!"

` True... And then I described further abuse from the school system, such as being sat on, but worst of all... having to sing retarded songs!!! And then came six years of being locked up in the house as a teenager, believing myself to be on 'hidden camera', which at the time seemed rather logical, especially with my dad to set an example for me.
` At least I didn't get this tendency from him...

"So, Phil, you have sinus congestion? Maybe you have allergies... I have something you might try... See, before, I couldn't go outside and get things done because I was too stuffed up. But now, I take this; [places product on the table in front of him] Nasal-Crom: It changed my life!"

` ...Uh, yeah. Now do a Raisin Bran commercial!

` I was pleased when Dory left a comment (Great reading. And, I can relate really well. I do know what it's like to be accused over and over and not be guilty. It's one of the reasons I am a recluse.) Hey, when Dory gives you a compliment, that's something - she's a frickin' editor!
` And then came posts like: Plants That Correct Their Genetic Mistakes!, about an amazing discovery in cress plants which might also hold true for plenty of other organisms.
` At the beginning of April came my Bigfoot Critique posts (starting here), which first describe how legends of long-haired, giant humans became transformed into gorilla-like brutes by late-1950's Americans just after holding a 'snipe-hunt' for the mythical giants.

` Cassie said she liked the part I wrote after the birth of the term 'Bigfoot'.

` Sadly however, it should be noted that in 2002, Ray Wallace died - in his obituary, Ray's son stated: "Ray L. Wallace was Bigfoot. The reality is, Bigfoot just died." In fact, ol' Ray made an entire career out of 'Bigfoot', spinning all kinds of yarns including; "Big Foot used to be very tame...I would sit in my pickup and toss apples out of the window to him. He never did catch an apple but he sure tried."
` You think that's ridiculous? He also said that they came from flying saucers and guarded caves full of gold, but a conspiracy resulted in all of them dead, their bodies being sold to Hong Kong.

` And the part after that?

` In the 2003 book, Bigfoot!, I should note that author (and Bigfoot investigator) Loren Coleman does agree that Ray certainly perpetrated a whole lot of footprint hoaxes around the workplace. Comparing Ray's fake wooden feet to plaster casts made at Bluff Creek in 1960, he concludes that they are a perfect match.
` They are fake, he says, and so were other tracks found on his construction site from 1958 through the 60s. However, for reasons I cannot comprehend, Coleman concludes that the Jerry Crew tracks specifically were made by a real Bigfoot, even though the ones at other Wallace sites were not!

` And then, a bit about Roger Patterson's 'Bigfoot Film' and how most obviously it was one of many money-making scams by this expert fraudster and a few others - i.e., Bob Heironimus, who is still believed by many to be Bigfoot Herself! I think this part was particularly funny:

` Bigfoot researcher/anthropologist Dr. Grover Krantz wrote that Roger Patterson himself had told him that he faked bigfoot tracks "in order to get a movie of himself pouring a plaster cast for a documentary he was making. (A few days later he filmed the actual Sasquatch...)." He... what? Doc! You're a-sayin' this wasn't part of his plan?

` Tee hee! That's also where I first explain a bit about what critical thinking is, and how things like the Patterson Film actually relate to Bigfoot, even if it were a real animal!
` Now, the next post actually wasn't about bigfoot. Instead, it was a few neat e-mails back and forth with My Friend George. They're actually pretty silly if you're in the mood...
` Later that day, I'd posted the next Bigfoot Critique, continuing with the 1969 'Cripple Foot' tracks, and the amusing story about how trickster Ivan Marx and other bigfooters obsessively fought over an even bigger trickster's alleged Bigfoot remains.
` While there have been an awful lot of 'bigfoot tracks' over the decades, not many hoaxers are required to accounted for them all. And it's obvious how many of them must be fake - Bigfoot tracks come in all shapes and sizes - even digitigrade - with various kind of toes numbering from two to six. They couldn't all be made by the same species! And even if some were from a 'real' bigfoot, how could you tell which type?

` In the third Bigfoot Critique, I go over many different ways that people can be fooled into thinking tree stumps are bears (or bigfoots!) or that bears are bigfoots, or whatever...
` Experienced outdoor-types are familiar with the situation, and even they have trouble trying to figure out what the heck the shape is. (It's kind of like drunk-driving - you don't realize how dangerously tricky it is until you've done it - so I don't plan to.)


` Still, I mention one last hoax...

` As I was saying, it is very unscientific to suppose that just because you can't imagine something to be true doesn't mean that it is. Quite often, it does wind up biting people in the ass, and it's quite painful when it does!

` This hoax was particularly funny both in the fact that Bigfooter Rene Dahinden was fooled by his own work, and it also shows how people can exaggerate things:

` Now Lindquist was six-foot-two, but Linquist said the creature was seven feet tall and a lot heavier than he - which is funny, because Ken was only 5-foot-11, and 165 pounds!

` The next post, however, is entitled Richard Roberts and the Little People. Strangely, it first discusses the possibility that any type of small humanoid matching the description of a native Flores legend - the aforementioned Ebu Gogo - before, in fact, revealing that there once was such a creature.
` The post after that is about the blatant treachery that was going on when Professor Jerkob, as I call him, had swiped the Ebu Gogo bones and tried to insist that it wasn't really another species, but that, no, the scientists who found the specimens couldn't see so for themselves.

` And 13, April 2005 was my first Voobaha post, called What did one Barnes say to the other? (And who are these weirdos?). That one pretty much explains Barnes and Barnes, myself and Voobaha in a nutshell, though I've mostly mentioned Bill Mumy's weird characters over the years - I also included a picture of him with his Lennier makeup holding one of his guitars! Certainly a strange thing to behold!
` Since I also wrote about Joey - I mean, The Swill Man - he was so amazed that he posted his response on his own blog!
` And then, a post entitled Does Insomnia Ruin Your Life?

`...[M]y dad did not always allow me to go to bed at night. He'd have 'talks' with me, sometimes until the sun came up! He'd say; "I'm glad I can have these talks with you." and I would say "Yeah, me too, really!" because I believed them to be quality time in which I learned many exciting, useful things about myself.

` As you can expect from people like my dad: 'Talking' = Logorrhea. And Logorrhea + me alone = brainwashing sessions. This, coupled with severe, chronic depression, is why I became an insomniac.

` Yes, my dad used to just yell at me for not going to bed, and he's blamed me for his insomnia since I can remember. And yet, he'd make me stay up all night!

` It turns out he was just using me, abusing me, confusing me, depriving me of sleep, and not actually paying any attention to me or my feelings at all. Still, it was enough to make me feel special: I was getting attention!

` Why was that a big deal? Because I had thought it was the reason Phil's kite mentor, Larkin, suddenly was very critical of him - and especially me! He got very nasty with Phil, said that I was insane, and asked if we were brother and sister! Yes, I thought I'd said something crazy to him while I was half-asleep and caused him to become alienated from the kite-field.
` Um... turns out that Larkin is a crazy, paranoid, marijuana-addicted Neo-Nazi or something, which I later wrote about.

` Just as long as it wasn't me. Moving on, my next post was my 'Earth Day' post, entitled; Landslide-Sliding - How we celebrated Dirt Day. It was a strange trip to the island outside of our window... we did indeed slide down an eroding, 70 foot tall cliff, and Phil made a vacuum cleaner salesman out of sand that was so realistic it sold someone an Invisolux!


` Anyway, as I've used all my time to extensively edit and shorten this post ONLY TO HAVE IT ALL TORN AWAY... I must go.