I got home from my short trip to find that 1) The Theriomorph had posted an abecedarian and 2) a former regular had emailed me to let me know she was de-linking this blog because I am taking too long to stop writing about Zeke.
You wouldn’t think those two things were necessarily related. You would be wrong, dear reader; so very very wrong. It’s clear that — for instance — the abecedarian (or abecedary) is an underused literary form and thus the yin to the yang of email that tells people not to write about something dear to their hearts, an over-used literary form even if only one person ever does it.
So I spent some time this morning thinking both “I would really like to write an abecedarian” and “gosh, I hope no one else out there is in the same position as my correspondent, wanting to de-link Creek Running North but fearing the gun I am holding to their heads to force them to keep me in their blogrolls.” And as often happens, after a short time holding both thoughts in my head I came up with a common solution to both problems. I could write an abecedarian giving those people on the fence waiting for the starter’s gun their green light to de-link CRN, complete with reasons they might not have articulated fully!
And here it is, though as an abecedary/ian it’s not nearly as nicely alliterative as The Theriomorph’s.
The “Reasons to Delink Creek Running North” Abecedary
All those weird, impenetrable poems.
Blogs are supposed to be something this blog is assuredly not
Chris Clarke Chris Clarke Chris Clarke. Bla bla bla. Bo-ring.
Dearth of Democratic Party development and fundraising posts
Egregious bear pun threads
Frequently posts his thoughts about quitting blogging forever
Geology has nothing to do with politics!
Hates children, and is thus a misanthropic malcontent
Infuriating self-infatuation of the blogger in question
Jokes are supposed to be funny
Kisses up to feminists, people of color, queers, bears, etc.
Loves children and is thus a breeder-pleaser sellout.
Metaphors are hard to understand
Nezua comments here sometimes, and he’s a sell-out provocateur or something.
Opinions that differ from the reader’s
Progressive-bashing with special circumstances relating to inflated accusations of racism, sexism, and so forth.
Quaternary macrofaunal natural history isn’t the reader’s cup of tea
Rabbit posts (too many or not enough of)
Snarky, self-involved posts like this one
Toxic narcissism
Ultra-leftism may well interfere with the all-important goal of keeping the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee in the hands of the Democrats
Vegetation is boring, unlike the minute and debated details of the latest blog spat
White man whining
Xanthippe would have drunk the hemlock herself if she’d been forced to read this blog
Yucca brevifolia book is never going to get written if we keep encouraging this blogging behavior
Zeke posts (too many or not enough of)
But, er, Chris?
I like Nezua.
Ha! Love it.
Well then delink me because he doesn’t comment here enough, silly.
Better writer than you, and it makes you uneasy.
Or were you asking for contributions?
Readers who only like one or two categories of posts can link to, and subscribe to the feeds for, just those categories - and leave you the fuck alone. Jesus, what a bunch of whiners.
Asks for commenter contributions.
Begs for commenter contributions.
Commenters always begged for contributions.
This is not a comment. And I am not encouraging people to not de-re-blogroll Chris.
¡Que Viva El Zeke!
excellent abecedary. i will de-link you immediately.
sending some happy bunny vibes and virtual greenery to thistle. write whatever the hell you want, chris. i live for the egregious bear puns, and am only pouting because i can’t think of any good ones.
Don’t be silly, kathy a. “trouble bruin” was excellent. Ursa funny.
Yeah, kathy a. If I had a blog, and it linked to your blog, if you had a blog, I would immediately de-link your blog for false pun-modesty.
Yeah, that’ll teach ya.
heh. that was the other kathy, the one who is funny. i think she might have been a bruin in a former life, living in LA. me, i’m more of a bear fan.
kathy r.—“the other kathy” is how i end up talking about all the people also named kathy. i guess kathy was a popular name when i was born. but you have a gift with words!
re: kathy r.; anyone who names her microwave “trogdor” is welcome here.
Oh, good - Nezua’s non-de-comment means I will not have to suddenly alter my taste in writing in some juvenile demonstration of temper, then. I’m so relieved. Guess I can carry on loving Chris’ work at CRN.
I would like my Nom De Re Blogroll to be: Theriomorph Don’t Play That.
However we grieve and love language, sometimes simultaneously, the world’s plenty big for all of us.
Even writers.
a former regular had emailed me to let me know she was de-linking this blog because I am taking too long to stop writing about Zeke.
Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, sistah.
Geez Louise, did she have to tell you that? Couldn’t she have just toodled off (nobody knowing the difference) quietly?
I don’t get how people like this can claim to be readers of this blog. What did they come here for?
Ack!
Love the abecedary! What a clever form!
(And bonus points for the use of Xanthippe!)
I’ve never understood the readers who feel they can dictate what a blog does or doesn’t do. It’s not like they’re paying money for it, or strapped into a chair with their eyes glued open before it, or any of those things.
The blogosphere is huge. If a blog displeases a person, surely there’s one out there that does! And, failing that, one can always start one’s own Zeke-free, no-Chris Clarkes allowed blog.
(Why one would want to do that, I don’t know.)
It’s especially bizarre, as Lesley notes, when such comments come from people who claim to be regular readers. When did it dawn on them that, hey, the blog is what it is, anyway?
And when they insist on telling you that they’re taking their ball and going home, as if you’d care? Silly!
ohh- i really, really like you, alot.
You people are ALL WRONG.
WRONG!
An ABECADARIAN is the third type of camel.
Dromedary Camel - one hump
Bactrian Camel - two humps
Abecadarian Camel - three humps:
hump a, hump b, and hump c.
And you call yourselves environmentalists.
It must be very, very weird to have people you have absolutely no connection to other than mutual access to the intertubes email you to tell you they’re breaking up with you because you no longer meet their needs and it’s time for them to move on and no, don’t try to stop them because really, it’s all for the best on account of they used to love you but you’re just not moving in the direction they need to go and they’ve given this a lot of thought and someday you’ll realize they were right and somewhere well before they get to this point you’re thinking, “Who did you say you were again?”
Two things.
1) People think grief has a limit, and if you go beyond that, you are challenging their own emotions somehow.
Example: If several kids in a family lose their mother, and one grieves the longest, another will say in a defensive way, HEY, I loved mom too! (Nobody said you didn’t, asshole!) But somehow, your emotions have challenged theirs. They think your grief means you are saying they don’t have any, or enough, or something, and of course it means no such thing. They are simply defensive and maybe they have some psychological issue or grudge they can’t admit to themselves.
In your case, you blog about nature and animals and such, and when you grieve over your dog, people are thinking HEY! I loved my dog/cat/hamster/snake/iguana as much as you loved Zeke! (Nobody said you didn’t, asshole!) They think your prolonged grief means they didn’t love their animals as much as you loved yours. Even if you don’t think anything of the sort. You are just expressing yourself. They have issues they aren’t ready to deal with.
2) Another idea I have is that you speak of Zeke as a child or friend, not the culturally-approved way “pets” are regarded. You thought of him as an equal. This is TOTALLY AWESOME, but probably only to us animal rights/veggie people. But that may be the issue that is bothering them. You didn’t uphold the human/animal boundary! You were supposed to turn him into an insipid Hallmark commercial, not a spirit guide, you nature-dazed geek!
City and suburban people aren’t used to that. My husband’s uncle regarded his “bird dogs” as his best friends, and obviously thought of them as better than mere people. But as that antiquated way of (farm, country) life passes, so does that way of thinking of animals as work partners and friends. IMHO.
Pets are animals we care for out of our largesse, but work animals are partners. (Service dogs for people with disabilities are probably the closest equivalents these days.)
Anyway, you ALARM people by seeing Zeke as a PARTNER, you know, like a HUMAN BEING. You lost a soul who was on a journey with you. It’s awesome and radical. Don’t let them deter you from posting about his legacy in your life!
Five cents please! :p
You were “de-linked” because you exceeded *someone else’s* grief-length threshold?
It’s not as if you had turned Creek Running North into an “all-Zeke, All the time” zone.
I’m very confused.
Also, why the “dear John” note about it?
I miss the kids from my first marriage, stolen from me by the ex’s manipulatipon of their emotion and creative filtering of truth. Should I be shunned because of that failing?
Keep plugging.