BLATHER REVIEW

All I did was tell it like it is...!!!

Welly welly, what have we here?! A blue ribbon! Blogosphere Hero?!!!
I wont ask how it got onto my sidebar. But, thank you to whomever is responsible!

I'm in awe that this has happened so fast! One moment I'm asked about who Rachel Lucas is -- the next she's ba-a-a-a-ck! What the huh...?! How did it happen?!

I was at work on Tuesday trying to run my printing press and listen to Lawruh tell me her man problems simultaneously. I said very little as she was arguing with herself quite capably.
I thought of the old show Inside Herman's Head and how I felt like I was watching a rerun of it.
(Why didn't it survive? It was a great premise and had Yeardly Smith (Lisa Simpson) as a cast member to boot!)

Anyhoo, I decided that I didn't want to air Lawruh's dilemma 'cause it's still developing (though very very interesting), but, I loved the idea of a Herman's Head type debate.
So, what could I debate myself about? All of the possibilities I'd thought up at first were so lamo.
But, then, hmmm, what about something blog related? Coding? Writing style? Content discrimination?
Blogrolls? A HA!!!!!
When to add a blog to yer blogroll!! No wait! Even better: When to de-link a blog! That's the ticket!

Immediately I thought of Rachel Lucas. Love her though we do, she hadn't blogged in six months and why -- when we're knee-deep in the templates -- do we refrain from taking the plunge and backspacing her URL out of the blogroll. It would be so easy... yet: we have not found the portal to the cruel marrow that would allow us to do it.
No doubt about it, mon; I was gonna write a Herman's Head styled debate about de-blogrolling Rachel Lucas! And so I did.

Then Stephen asked a question.

For some reason I'd just assumed that everyone knew and loved Rachel ... that was why the post would work! But, I was about to find out that, like so many recently welcomed bloggers, StMack did not.
"Who the hell is Rachel Lucas?"?!! "And what is it about her that has [you] debating her continued existence on your blogroll?"?!!!

I was about to type a brief response into the Comments. But the more I thought about what to say the more I knew that I was about to ramble on. I'd better make a post of it!

Then the wheels started to turn. I was about to write an homage to rachellucas.com and I immediately knew that there were hundreds and hundreds of others who want to do the same thing; they just haven't had a reason yet.... they hadn't been asked to.
So, even before I typed the first letter of the first word of the post I knew that I'd want to invite others to join in and give their tribute just as eagerly as I wanted to give mine. This had t'be good!

The thing practically wrote itself.. but I knowingly and deliberately searched for phrases like "baby head banner", "asshat" and "Imagine No Liberals coffee mug" because I sensed that these words could make the Rachel Experience an immediate memory rather than a foggy one. I tried to describe her sidebar photo as vividly as I could. I wanted to stir, in other bloggers, the same sense of presence that I was experiencing. Why why why?

In the nooks and crannies of my toasted mind I had only one goal while writing the post: coax Rachel back to the blogoshere by telling her what she means to us. Granted; it wasn't likely to happen, of course, but sometimes y'gotta dare yerself to dream...

But this wouldn't do it. My daily hit stats are anemic; my readership consists of loyal friends and fellow Munuvians. If Rachel is to understand how much she's missed then a proper tribute needs a larger audience.

I wrote my tribute and posted it. Not expecting any great horde of bloggers to drop by just because I posted something cool, but wanting this to echo further, I decided to send an email.

I addressed it to: Emperor Misha, FrankJ, Don Watkins, Bill Whittle and Mrs DuToit merely asking for additional testimonials as to Rachel's glory. If I could only get one Trackback out of this then the plan -- that I hesitently dared to admit to myself -- might actually work!

Misha, Jim and Bill Whittle responded immediately!
But when I saw that the Emperor had not only sent a Trackback, but had posted a tribute of his own, well!!! This just may be so like my dreams it's scary!
Misha gets more hits before lunchtime then I'd get in a month of lazy Sundays.
We were about to witness an homagefest of the bestest and funnest kind!! Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-ES-S-S-S-S!!!

If Rachel still bothered to check out a blog or two then she would surely stroll through the Empire.
The comments kept pouring in. So many memories and so little Rachel.

I got home yesterday at about 6:30pm and settled down to write an UPDATE to the post (trackbacking Misha's post, yakkin' about how the link to a Rachel archive that CD provided didn't include the comments threads that showed us - even more than her posts proper - that she was our friend just as much as we were hers)...

I logged on and found 15 messages were waiting for me. WOW!!

I dragged the mouse as to expose a few emails and noticed that I'd gathered quite a few Trackbacks. Hmmm.
But then I saw it. Near the top and suddenly glowing like a tomacco field:
rachel@rachellucus.com "New Comment to....BLATHER REVIEW...blahbidy blah.... "

This is not happening. I had hoped for this...yep, dreamed that this might be the result of our love letters. I'd planned to be ready for it and yet I wasn't at all.
Then I read her comment and ran over to rachellucas.com. Holy poop on a pike! She not only got the mainpage and archives back up but she posted! WOO HOO!!!!!!

Thank you thank you thank you!! But all I did was realize that we wanted Rachel back and that there're plenty of bloggers who were just itching and ready to say so.

But we gotta thank Misha for the huge role that he played as well. Without his Trackback my post wouldn't have gotten such notice, and without his readership we wouldn't have gotten all those comments. And it was HIS post that Rachel came across first. (In fact, to my knowledge she hasn't visited Blather Review since it was still on Blogspot.)
The Emperor taking the torch and running with it was key to getting rachellucas.com back up within 48 hrs of StMack asking about her!

Everything clicked!
Gawd, I love this crap!!!

Posted by Tuning Spork at May 7, 2004 11:39 AM