Second Anniversary of This Blog!!!!! It Cannot Be Stopped!!!!

Yes, it's been two years exactly since that boring evening when I decided to stop merely thinking out loud, and put my utterances on the internet for the rest of the world to totally ignore.

Maybe somebody would read my blog.....a couple of people looking for something else will stumble on this mess, or perhaps a relative who felt sorry for me, wasting hours at a computer keyboard when I could be doing something productive like watching Dancing With The Stars, or America's Got Talent....or even Jersey Shore. I mean, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

But a funny thing happened....people started to read the stuff I was writing- like visitors from more than 160 countries. It just goes to show- there's a lot of folks in this world with more time on their hands than me.

And for that, I'm very grateful.

So to the new 341 people (on average) who will visit this blog today for the first time, and the 145 returnees- giving us an average of 486 readers each day- thanks much for making this so much fun to do. I never thought I had 1,127 blog entries in me.

Whoops! Make that 1,128.

I'm just getting warmed up...I can not be stopped!!!!!

Stay thirsty, my friends.

What's In A Name -"So Where's All The Trivia and The Crazy Rants?"

Some people may log on to this blog in search of obscure facts about individuals, places, and things, and are disappointed to see that there just ain't all the trivia they were expecting. So much for truth in advertising.

Others may visit, looking for Dennis Miller style angry monologues loaded with obscure cultural references that need annotations at every juncture. They too find that its lacking in the "rants" presented in the title of this blog.

So what gives? This is a blog that has minimal rants (usually involving political figures) and marginal trivia. So why the name?

The answer is....I didn't know where it came from. Until early this morning, that is. You see when I decided to start blogging I neglected to have a name for this bit of cyberspace. When I was asked to present a URL for this blog by GOOGLE my mind went blank. The first -and only- thing that popped into my mind was "Useless Trivia and Mindless Rants", kind of a backhanded poke at the pretentiousness and pompousness of blogging and bloggers- myself included. Because blogging itself can be an exercise in vanity, for better or worse. We're trying to show the rest of the world how smart we are- sometimes we get it right, other times we're lost. Admittedly.

The fact that I'm writing this and sharing with you is my admission of guilt.

Anyway....about this blog's name. I couldn't sleep last night so I popped on the TV and went to the ON DEMAND menu. IFC had the documentary about the history of MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS, featuring the surviving Pythons (John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin). I had watched chapter one previously and clicked on chapter two. The episode opened with the day the Pythons went into BBC headquarters in 1969 and talked about doing a show with the suits. The BBC brass gave them 13 shows initially- but when they asked the guys what was the name of the show they had none.

After throwing around some off the cuff names, they settled on Monty Python's Flying Circus. The name amused them, but made no sense- and it stuck. Some early audiences consisting mainly of elderly pensioners actually thought they were going to a circus- and they couldn't comprehend what they were seeing.

While watching the Python history my Inner Voice started babbling to me (again!).... the name "Monty Python's Flying Circus" was the inspiration for the name "Useless Trivia and Mindless Rants" .....but I didn't consciously know it until about 3:00 am this morning, after 801 previous posts and close to 15 months in the blogesphere.

Either that Inner Voice was right or else the old Ian Hunter album "You're Never Alone with A Schizophrenic" was more accurate than I had imagined.

So there you have it...the REAL reason for the name of this blog.

I'll see you later...."WE" must go food shopping.