Birth of and Death of a Flog, by Mean Eileen, Editing Queen
September 2010
When David Stern was first asked to write a Blog, he wasn’t
sure if “go write a Blog” was a trendy alter-colloquialism for “take a hike” (or
something else that was anatomically impossible). But
being a calm and mostly rational person, he pushed back his initial brawl
impulse and instead went directly to Wikipedia, not passing “go” or collecting
$200.
“A blog,” he reported to me, “is a portmanteau.”
“Port Manteau … is that in the Caribbean?” Visions of white sandy beaches and clear
blue/green water invaded my mind, pushing David’s linguistics lesson completely
out.
I had conjured up steel drums and could almost smell salty air when
David abruptly brought me back to hot, dry, Scottsdale in September
reality. For those of you not familiar –
September is the most miserable month in Scottsdale. Everyone is sick of the heat which will
continue on at least another month and it seems like everywhere else on the
planet is experiencing cooling days and even cooler nights. But I digress.
Sullenly, I refocused on what David was saying. He explained that a portmanteau is a
combination of words that creates a new word.
“Like Brangelina?”
Impatiently he huffed, “Like web and log – drop the we
in web and add the b to log. Get it? Time is my mortal enemy,” he continued. “If I become a prolific blogger, I’m going to
have to give up some other activity.”
I pointed out he was writing a book about giving up golf and
he shrieked, “THAT’S IT!!! Golf is too
damn hard anyway. As of this moment, I am
an ex-golfer and a newly hatched Blogger.
But I’m going to create my own portmanteau …replace the b
on blog with an f and wha-lah! Flog.”
“Flog,” I repeated. “Flog
means to beat or whip severely.”
David smirked and said, “Flog” is Golf spelled backward. And can there really be too many F-words?”
Fast forward to October 2012
“How long have I been writing my Flog?” David asked. “And does anybody read it?”
“You’ve been writing the Flog for two years and yes, people
read it. I can tell by the number of
hits the webpage gets."
David pondered this info.
“Hits. Any runs or errors?” I decided to let that go.
I recently Googled “the Flog” and was surprised to see that
in addition to David’s cleverly titled (by me) Flog entries, there were several
others using The Flog.
There is Felicia Day’s video blog (vlog) on geekandsundry.com. I couldn’t determine how long she has been
using “the Flog” but I assume she has no life other than to obsessively check
David’s Flog and got hung up on the name.
Okay, no life other than the acting, writing, producing, cancer-curing, puppy
rescuing, etc. etc. Still, won’t she be surprised
when she reads this.
Another more amazing Google find, was Chris Fabry’s
Flog. Now, Chris Fabry has some sort of clairvoyance
because he started using David’s blog title two
years before David even thought of it. Chris Fabry is an author and radio show host,
has nine kids and lives in Tucson.
This is extremely unfortunate because David is now on a
quest for a new blog title. I think
David is worried that if it comes down to fisticuffs over exclusive rights to
The Flog, the Fabry family outnumbers his own significantly (although I’m
pretty sure Izzy and Kaz could kick some serious bootay). I personally like The Flog and think he
should stay with it. In his wiki-search
for enlightenment on the subject of blogs, he discovered a confusing word; disambiguation. It’s a term Wikipedia coined which means clarification. Why they didn’t use clarification I don’t know – David suggests
the Wiki-folk are just being undisambiguous.
So David will continue testing out new blog names – mostly because
he doesn’t want a title others are using and he really wants to use his new portmanteau-ish word, undisambiguouslessly when he describes
the reason for the new Flog – uh- Blog (clog, schlog, polliwog, etc.). I guess he could apply it to his
consideration of becoming an ex-ex-golfer.
Stay tuned. Except for you, Felicia Day – shouldn’t you be drafting
schematics for an eco-friendly space travel conveyance or something?
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