50th or 51st post anniversary!

Welcome to the 50th or 51st post! A little while ago, it came to my attention via hindsight that one of my posts was particularly stupid (only one, mind you), so I removed it. How should I think of that post? Has it ceased to be, because it is no longer on my blog? Can it never be erased, since it was once up there in the public view? Is this the 50th post, or the 51st?

Anyway, as I have been looking back at my past posts, it has struck me that, even if the posts are reflective of my personality, they might give the wrong impression. For instance, upon reading my posts, I have noticed a number of entries about teeth: be it a dream about my teeth becoming Jansenists, be it a dream about eating my teeth, be it about visits to the dentist, be it eighteenth century advertisements about teeth, it would seem as if teeth have some special significance to me, when it's simply the fact that a preponderance of teeth-related incidents have recently happened to me. Or people might think that I am obsessed with sexually transmitted diseases, be it antediluvian syphilis angels, Boswell's gonorrhea, or STD ecards. It makes me wonder if someone asked Jonathan Swift, "I just read _Gulliver's Travels_, and I was wondering, how high on your hierarchy of value would you place bowel movements?" he might give a surprising answer, such as, "What are you talking about?" You know, maybe Jonathan Swift wasn't fixated on scatology at all: maybe it's just that, every day he went out on the streets of Ireland for poetic inspiration, somebody threw a bucket of shit on him. After all, in Swift's Landscape, Carole Fabricant writes that "Swift actually lived in a landscape in which excrement was prominent--not to mention highly visible and necessarily obtrusive" (24), so maybe he was a victim of feces, not its proponent. Similarly, it's not as if I was looking for STD ecards; the STD ecards found me. In the sense of not being mailed to me, but showing up on a google search that did not include the letters "STD ecards." Well, actually, I did do a google search with the words "STD ecards," but that was only _after_ I had first read about them, and then I needed to find the website again. Not in order to send anyone an ecard, of course, just to write my blog entry.

Other false inferences people might make from the past 50 blogs is that I am obsessed with cats. I do not think this is the case; rather, I think the cats are obsessed with me. Even just now, as I paused to think of the next sentence, my eyes looking off in the distance--well, okay, the floor--the Pippin cat was watching me. Why? I don't know. You'd think he'd take up a hobby, maybe do a little reading, start his own blog or something, but he's staring at me. So, it's not that I think about him too much, but that he won't leave me alone!

On the basis of these past posts, people might also think that Canada holds a special place in my heart: it is the only thing that I have begun a half-month celebration for, after all! But the very fact that it is a half-month celebration should, in fact, communicate my lack of interest in Canada. It is half a month because I cannot think of anything more to say about it. You'd never see me doing a half-month celebration of the eighteenth century because, as it should be clear, the eighteenth-century is longer than a half-month! We are in fact living in its legacy even now! Much as James Joyce could not escape Ireland, so this blog cannot escape the eighteenth century. (Although it can escape Canada. And so should you, if you don't speak French.)

As I look back on these 50 posts, something that makes me particularly happy is that I feel I have reclaimed the word "pseudoprofundities." My very first post was about how I had coined the word many years ago, googled it, and then discovered that others had taken my word! Even a couple of months ago, I did a google search of "pseudoprofundities," and this blog never showed up! Never! A "Leopoldtulip" google search could not find a hit on this website! Yet just last night, I performed the same google search, and guess what? A google search on "pseudoprofundities" lists this site second, and a google search on "pseudo-profundities" (drumroll please) lists this site second AND this site FIRST! I am winning the war against "the man" and taking back my word! It is not unlike the game Civilization 3, where, after you have built a temple, several turns later, your cultural influence expands, and you get more land! In this case, I am taking over google, one word at a time. Right now, mine is the ONLY website you discover if you google such bellwethers of nomenclature as "educodomophile," "pinguisphobia," and "belbelgbot." Perhaps after this entry, these words will show up on google TWICE! These words are my legacy ... to the world, and to myself.

I do want to soften my burgeoning egotism by admitting that pride cometh before a fall. Just because mine is the only website now listing these words does not mean that some other enterprising person will come along, use those words, and usurp google dominion over them. There is still much work to be done. For just one example, if you google the phrase, "food for thought, sh-t for brains" or "food for thought, shit for brains" without the quotation marks, my blog entry doesn't come up, even though I dedicated an entire entry to this very theme. Nevertheless, as I survey the vast expanse of words and phraseologies which are mine, I am reminded that I am not simply looking back on the past 50 posts, but looking ahead to my eventual cultural dominance.