2009: The Year of Glaven

This blog has introduced me to a lot of people over the past year, but by far the most entertaining was a man who called himself Glaven Q. Heisenberg. After careful research, I found that this was not his real name - he really was Glaven Z. Heisenberg - and that he was the I.T. guy for his library, making him a geek among nerds in the fiefdom of dork. But where did he come from? Was he the result of the Jersey Devil spawning in a puddle of mud? Did the internet weld together its ephemera and errata into a real-life avatar (the one picture of himself he posted, beside the radiology metal pasties one, showed he actually bore a resemblance to the John Frink drawing he used)?

I discovered him in the comments on Nic's blog. He was there so readily that Nic actually adapted his response line to accomodate him ("__ people have checked to see if Glaven has commented yet."). He'd be merciless in his teasing, especially when warranted, as when Nic started wearing Moeben sleeves - "arm panties" or "evening gloves" in Glaven-speak - but he'd also bestow grudging admiration, referring to Nic as Dr. Super Runner.

I had to visit Glaven's own blog, alas no longer extant, to discover his world. In it, his wife became "teh Bride, Marcy, teh Fauxlippina !1!" and everything was footnoted, including the footnotes. Though his blog was "All Bull@#$%, No Running" there was occasional running involved (and yes, I'm keeping the fake automatically-generated link), as well as his warped take on all and sundry topics. And there was endless fascination with a part of anatomy, one of the "dangly bits." In honor of that, substituting his name for that part:

Does your Glaven hang low,
Does it wobble to and fro,
Can you tie it in a knot,
Can you tie it in a bow,
Can you throw it over your shoulder
Like a continental soldier,
Does your Glaven hang low?

Though he tried to be consistently irreverent, one could discern a true family man. His readers have been left wondering how his son Ian is doing in school, how his father's doing now that he's no longer a young man, how teh Bride's doing with her cabana boy and a pitcher of margaritas. His sister has a blog, but I forgot how to find it - "nursing home administrator running blog" is not a good Google search. [Found it: here]

It was through Glaven that I discovered the multitude of interesting people whose blogs I have tainted and who have swelled the number of my blog profile views from 2000 to 3300, unless, of course, he's switched from blogging to clicking my profile incessantly. [Yeah, that's a perfect opening for a Glaven joke.]

There've been rumors of his blog's demise: that he got caught blogging at work, that he accidentally deleted everything (as he reportedly did once), that he just ran out of things he felt like writing. At any rate, he didn't leave his loyal minions any place to say goodbye. So, I decided that as a Christmas present to him and to others, I'd create that space.

Heck, I might even use the "Link to this post" function I installed and never used and connect to anyone else who wants to do their own tribute.

Merry X-mas, G. (and Happy Festivus, too).