BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

In theory, I suspect I am supposed to be posting a blog about how Martians are attacking Grover’s Mill, or going on about Orson Welles coming back from the dead because he’s actually from Planet 10… Wait… That would have been John Lithgow, and he’s not dead yet… wait… I’d better go check on that… (insert Jeopardy music here)… Nope, not dead.

But, never mind that anyway. I’m not really all about the April Fools stuff, especially given the incessant foolery I engage in on a daily basis. No, this should actually be my “no fooling” day… April Serious day…

So, let’s get on with the show…

As to the titular objection regarding my personal relevance, I should probably point out that there weren’t really any lawyers or judges involved. No darkly paneled rooms. No halls of justice… Or, justice leagues… Or super friends either…

Nope, it was just me. Well, me and a search engine… (I know, I know, the grammar police are on their way to get “I” right now so they can rearrange my sentence structure, but “me” wanted to write it that way…)

But, let’s dispense with all this April Seriousness and simply start at the beginning…

There I was, minding my own business, as usual… Another Sunday morning had rolled around, and 5 AM had reared its ugly head. Well, actually, I don’t find 5 AM to be all that ugly myself… After all, I’m one of those early risers, so I think it’s kinda cool. It’s quiet, I have the office to myself, and there’s nothing to distract me, except for those pesky chickens. Either way,  at 5 AM, believe it or not, I can actually get some work done…

But anyway… I was parked in the office, as usual, sipping my first “coff o’ cuppee” of the morn, while paging my way through volumes of email. Once I had perused, with great relish mind you, all of the advertisements for Lithuanian brides, generic Viagra, breast enlargement, penis enlargement, singles, doubles, triples, financial advice, free cans of “colon flush”, and all manner of other “hard to pass up” offers, I moved on to approving blog comments and the like. You know the drill. Just another Sunday morning.

Once finished with the comments and the like, I kicked back and surfed around. Being a bit of a “tweaker”… Not a mother tweaker, mind you. Just a tweaker. And, in case you are wondering, what I mean is this: I tinker about with my websites on a fairly regular basis to tweak them…

So, anyway, being a tweaker, once I was done with the comment stuff, I headed over to the listing of plug ins for WordPress. It wasn’t that I really had anything in particular that I was looking for, however, one never knows when there might be some kind of cool little widget, gadget, or flibbertyjibbet that would be fun to stick in the side panel. Or, more importantly, something that will make my life easier as far as maintaining my blog and website… And, let’s look at the facts here… I’m all about anything that makes my life easier. Of course, that begs all manner of questions, but we won’t go there… Not in this particular blog entry, anyway…

So, back to this whole plug in thing… As I scrolled through the listings, I happened to notice a “dashboard widget” for WordPress that was designed to let you know what your “Google Page Rank” happened to be. If you are unfamiliar with the Google Page Rank, it is a numerical value applied to your website by the search engine, Google… Hence the reason it is called a “Google Page Rank” and not, say for instance, a “Yahoo Page Rank”… Make sense? Yeah, I know, it confuses me too, but hey, it’s one of those things.

Anywho, the “ranking” is based on some manner of algorithm that I am not about to get into, what with mathematics not being one of my strong subjects. And, to be honest, much like the product ranking algorithm on Amazon, even Charlie Eppes from Numbers probably couldn’t figure it out, no matter how may chalkboards you give him. Suffice it to say, Google looks at your page, analyzes the meta data, content, links, images, linkbacks, embedded rhesus monkeys, flying purple people eaters, pocket lint, and every other damn thing it can find sitting there. Once it has done this, it assigns a numerical value that rates the “relevance” of your page.

Just for grins, I decided to install this little plug in. Why not? It didn’t take up much space, didn’t use any real intense system overhead, and wasn’t going to require much in the way of user intervention in order to get it to operate. Besides, it would be fun to see where Google had me ranked, right?

So, I did the clicky-clicky thing with the clicky-clicky thing attached to my computer. Lights flashed on the DSL modem, stuff flickered on the router, and somewhere in all that techno-garble, my computer did the download thing. I clicked install, a few scripts ran, and then the dashboard widget appeared.  Yippee! I must have done something right for a change. I had a look at the results and noticed immediately that it said, “mrsellars.com/mrblog has page rank of  zero“…

I paused. Certainly that couldn’t be correct. Just to be sure, I refreshed the screen.

The widget still said, “mrsellars.com/mrblog has page rank of  zero“…

Now, I have to be clear on something… While I’m a tweaker, I am not some kind of page rank whore. I will readily admit to being a marketing whore. I will even fess up to being “E Kay’s Bitch” most of the time.  That’s why it actually says “Property of Evil Kat” on one of my T-shirts. But, page rank whoring just isn’t my thing… Still, one would think that a domain named mrsellars.com, which has meta-tags about M. R. Sellars, a meta description talking about M. R. Sellars, with content about M. R. Sellars,  a blog authored by M. R. Sellars, internal links to stuff about M. R. Sellars, and external links to things that have to do with M. R. Sellars… Is anyone else seeing the pattern here? Good. Anyway, one would think such a pile of data  would probably have some manner of relevancy where M. R. Sellars is concerned. Know what I mean?

However, with a page rank of zero, basically Google was saying that mrsellars.com is in no way relevant to the subject of M. R. Sellars.

Of course, this seemed a bit odd to me. I figured that the plug in must not have been working. But, rather than delete it immediately, I decided to go check. Jumping on the next swell of DSL to come by, I road the crest, shot the tube, shredded the wave and surfed myself right on over to Google and ran a check.

Much to my surprise, according to Google proper, my page rank is zero…

So… I guess it’s official. I mean, what with Google being the benchmark… The yardstick by which all other search engines are measured… Hell, it’s even a piece of our vocabulary and culture… A proper noun that has been morphed by society into an accepted verb, adverb, adjective, and overall linguistic addition, which is now so deeply ingrained into our culture  as to define a generation.

Yeah… Google… (Insert heavenly sounding music here…) The  multi-colored, content caching, logo changing, power that be on the world wide interwebs…

And, so, Google has decided that M. R. Sellars is irrelevant. I feel so… um… so… well… I guess there’s no other way to say it. I feel irrelevant.

You know, in my way of thinking, this whole irrelevancy issue doesn’t seem all that fair. I mean, I’ve always spoken so highly of thos Googlites…

Hmm… I suppose I should start using a different search engine. Maybe they will appreciate me…

More to come…

Murv

Part 12 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: Where’s Everybody Going?

…And the bride and groom said let there be food… And there was food… And the food was good… And the food cost a whole bunch of money… And there were leftovers for eons… And so on, and so on, and so on…

Yep… No two ways about it. We had food. In some respects I suppose that has also set the tone for any parties and such we have had ever since. Trust me, there’s never a shortage of food.

Because of that, one of my favorite kitchen appliances is a vacuum sealer – or, as I like to call it, the suck ‘n seal machine.  I think it’s actually called a “Foodsaver®” and the company that produced it describes the thing as a “food storage system”…Or they did… Mine is an older model that E K gave me for Christmas many years ago, so they might have changed their tag line… All I know is that I put stuff in the bag, suck out all the air, and heat seal the edge – Voila! Vacuum packed food that can survive a stay in the freezer quite a bit longer than average… Wish I’d had one of ’em back then…

Of course, as I said, the overabundance of chow made for an easy go of it over the next week (plus  a handful of days). I didn’t have to cook, simply reheat – for those of you who may be new to my blog, go back through some of the earlier entries and you’ll find out why I keep saying, “I didn’t have to cook…” In a nutshell, my bride doesn’t much care for kitchen duty… Fortunately, I already knew that coming into this…

I suppose that if we had been thinking, we would have taken a better picture or two of the spread.  In all honesty, we weren’t really thinking about much of anything, other than simply getting to the other side of all this with our sanity intact. I’m pretty sure that at some point we were both just on autopilot, which is probably why we made it without  the benefit of pharmaceuticals, shock therapy, or straight jackets.  I guess it’s lucky we even have the pictures we do since we accomplished this on a shoestring, and had way too many irons in the fire on top of it all. Looking back now, I seriously doubt we could manage to pull it together the way we did back then. I don’t know if it would be just a matter of not having the energy, or if the simple knowledge of the fact that we overcame so many obstacles – not the least of which was money – would scare us out of even trying. Of course, they say love conquers all…

And I say yet again, “whoever the hell they are… “

But, I think maybe they are correct in this case. We made it happen and  it’s one hell of a memory…

I suppose what has brought it back around in my mind at this particular point in my life is the FAQ. Because of my profession I get asked all manner of questions by fans, and this one has always been at the top of the list for some reason. Maybe because I babble on incessantly about E K, no matter where I am.

And, to fuel that fire, there is also a simple, yet very profound fact that I recently realized, as I was sitting here writing this in fact,.. Next month, February 2009, it will be 23 years since I first laid eyes upon E K and fell headfirst, unequivocally, no holds barred, just plain blithering stupid, in love with her, no matter what my co-workers had said. To me, that’s a rare thing and “lightning strike” special… (Just a quick addendum: Yes, I know, February was last month, but hey, I originally wrote this in January.)

Of course, the real cause could just be that I’m just getting old and my mind is going… That’s always a possibility…

But, to continue in the sappy, sentimental vein I have started here, time has “marched on.” Life has taken twists, turns, and thrown horrible roadblocks in our path…

Friends have gone, moved away, lost touch. Some couples that were there with us on that evening have since split, going their separate ways and finding love elsewhere, or in some cases finding happiness alone. Others have disappeared, only to reappear in unexpected places. Some are long out of touch, but not forgotten.

And, as is inevitable for us all, some family members have since crossed over the veil betwixt the worlds, leaving us to face this existence without them. In that respect, one of the worst of the “potholes” along the road was the sudden and very unexpected loss of my mother just a scant few weeks after the wedding, but that is, as I often say, a different blog.

And what of Erin? (Remember Erin?)… Well, I cannot tell a lie… That little parenthetical tag throughout these missives was just me having fun. Erin was one of those friends who moved away and with whom we lost touch. E K and I both hope she is doing well, and if she happens to be surfing the web some day and stumbles across this blog, maybe she’ll drop us a line… We’d love to hear from her.

But, through it all: trials, tribulations, loss, gain, joy, sadness, and speed bumps galore, E K and I remain. Together and weathering whatever we must.  We still live in that very same house where we took our vows, where I dropped her ring, and where she strapped on her stockings with rubber bands.  We eat our meals in the room where our friends and family gathered to watch my bride smear me with cake; and we watch the morning news sitting in a chair that rests right before the window where we giggled while fumbling with our rings. Our paid-too-much-for fixer upper is paid off now,  free and clear… And the remodeling we began way back when is long done, along with many other projects since. So long done in fact that we are probably even due for a bit of a redecorate.  We have a wonderful child, we’ve both changed jobs, and I’ve even changed careers, abandoning my life as a tech to pursue my dream to be a writer. So far, that has worked out well. And, as beautiful as E K was on October 31, 1987, in my estimation she just keeps getting prettier every single day.

And, you know what else? My heart still goes “pitter-pat” whenever she enters the room – just like it did that fateful and fortunate day back in 1986 when I turned a corner in a tech center and found her waiting…

Yeah, yeah, okay… I can hear you screaming – “Sheesh, Sellars… All right already… Enough with the sappy Hallmark Channel^TM crap… What does this have to do with food… Or was that just a ploy to get us here so you could throw down some kind of Nicholas Sparks inspired frou-frou on us?”

Well, in all honesty, no it wasn’t intended as a bait and switch. I just guess nostalgia has a way of creeping up on a person and taking over. But, we’ll talk about that  later…

So, the food…

Take a good look at the pictures from the wedding… You’ll see cake, chafing dishes filled with veal parmigiana, ham, rice… Plates filled with dollar rolls, cheese, condiments… But, what’s missing?

Well, I can easily understand if you are having trouble with the “where’s Waldo” scenario here, so let me refresh your memory just a bit… Remember earlier in this story when E K and I planned the menu and blew a wad of cash at the Honey Baked Ham® Company? Part of what ate up that chunk of change from our budget were the boxes of fancy hors d’oeuvres… Or, as the young man behind the counter called them, much to E Kay’s amusement, Whores Duh-Vores…

It was probably a solid month later when it dawned on us that all of those expensive mini quiches, bite sized meat pies, and unpronounceable little appetizer morsels never made it to the table that night. They were still nestled snug and chilly in their boxes, stacked neatly in the chest freezer downstairs… That was our final glitch for the evening, not that anyone even noticed…

Still, it opened a door and presented an opportunity we simply could not pass up… When lives  settled down once again over the following weeks, we set our plan into motion… We gathered our friends, filled the fridge with beer, wine – even a bottle or two of the bubbly – and baked those boxes of goodies…

We had our party… Even if it was several weeks late.

And now, sadly – in my way of thinking, at least – we have come to the end. Not of Brainpan Leakage, of course… I plan to bore you with many more stories of the lunacy that is my life. Nor is it the end of E Kay’s and my story…  It’s merely the ellipsis at the end of this particular chapter in a memory book that will hopefully just continue to grow for untold years to come.

I know that many of you have come to expect humor from me at every turn – be it silly, dry, acerbic, or even hidden… I hope that I was able to inject some of that into this tale, and into your lives with it. I realize, of course, that some – maybe even a good portion – of this was sappy and sentimental. Well, I’m a sappy and sentimental guy, especially when I come down with a bad case of nostalgia. Don’t worry, I’m taking something for it and the doctors assure me it should clear up soon – although they say I will always be at risk for a sudden relapse, (or two or three), in the future. But, what I can definitely say about this attack of nostalgia is that in writing this multi-part answer to a frequently asked question I have been given a gift. While it may seem like nothing more than random babbling to some of you,  committing this slice of my life to “paper” has allowed me to relive something in much more depth and detail than the cursory re-tellings I’ve given in the past.

And, for that, those of you who asked the question that made this series of blog entries happen, have my humble and profuse thanks. You have given me something, that while it was there all the time, had been hidden behind better than two decades of day to day life, still in my heart but obscured from my view.

In any case, if the sentimentality here has managed to get your panties all in a bunch, just remember I warned you about it at the outset, so don’t bother to send any complaint letters…It won’t do you any good because I’ll just give them to E K, and trust me, you don’t want her answering them… (I keep telling you people she’s evil…)

Now… What with this little blog “mini-series” being born of a FAQ and all,  I suppose I should move along to the next question. So, as to the query about how our daughter came to be…

Well, you see, when a man and woman love each other…

Nah… On second thought I think I’ll just let you call the local high school and ask the biology teacher about that one.

More to come…

Murv