LUDIC LOG

Hey, Ludic Log fans! Only two days left to e-mail me and tell me why I am better than Jesus Christ for my birthday August 7th. Also, please don't neglect the excellent new arts & culture 'zine The High Hat, featuring some fine writing by me and a bunch of other smart folks!

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Hey, Ludic Log fans! A combination of exhaustion and staying out late watching In the Heat of the Night at the Movies in the Park festival with friends has caused me to forego a regular entry tonight. Instead, I present you with a very special rerun.

Although this is not widely known, my great-grandfather, Leonard Cyrus Pierce, was the creator of the world's first web log, or "blog". Entitled A Toiler's Sojourn: Wit and Wisdom for the Southern Gentlefellow, it was, much like the Ludic Log, a daily-updated forum for personal reminiscences, humorous tales, short-form fiction, political opinionating, and, every Saturday, a cheap-ass bunch of lists. Unfortunately, A Toiler's Sojourn was not a rousing success, largely due to the fact that the internet had not yet been invented. Neccessity lead great-grandpa Leonard Cyrus to write the blog on the back of shovels and across the underside of railroad ties, which restricted its audience, given that most people were not in the habit of reading shovels or railroad ties but rather books and magazines. Still, for over eight years, from 1885 to 1894, A Toiler's Sojourn was a source of delight and enjoyment to anyone who happened to be passed out under a culvert or in my great-grandfather's tool shed.

I recently came into possession of some of Leonard Cyrus Pierce's notebooks from November 1892, which contained, among other things, the following list of potential ideas for entries in A Toiler's Sojourn for the weeks that would follow. Please enjoy this unique and fascinating glimpse into the creative process of one of the forgotten pioneers of the internet.

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1. A ribald piece of political scandal-mongering in which President Cleveland is unable to satisfy the carnal appetites of his young mistress on two non-consecutive occasions.

2. A speculative fiction in which Walt Whitman is denied entrance to the Heavenly Kingdom on account of being a filthy Sodomite. At one point, Jesus Christ himself appears and offers a withering appraisal of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", and also of doing it in the rear chute.

3. Why the Cincinnati Red-Legs professional base-ball club will never catch on.

4. A critical assessment of the works of Rudyard Kipling, entitled "What Sort of a Name is 'Rudyard', Anyhow?". Make special reference to the just-published Barrack-Room Ballads; question why not more cursing. Try to work in joke about never having kippled.

5. First-person account of the Gentleman Jim Corbett-John L. Sullivan heavyweight bout, or as much of it as I saw before falling asleep in the 519th round.

6. Speculation about how the teleo-phone machine will someday lead to the dissemination of home-built scribblings over the electromagnet wires for all the world to see. Include reference to how, when that day comes, the wire-routings will be directed by a cadre of ro-bots and mechanical men. Consider how exciting and dangerous must be the life of a ro-bot.

7. Zany comic piece about the blasphemous science-whore Charles Darwin is condemned to the fiery pits of Hell, where he and Walt Whitman are eternally buggered by a disease-wracked gibbon.

8. A piece on the French painter Toulouse-Latrec. The fact that he is a very short man should be mentioned at least three times in each paragraph.

9. List of famous personages who are all going to be damned to the burning vastness of perdition, where they will be forever tormented by the twisted and soul-scarred demons of our kind and loving god, God. Possible candidates: Prime Minister Giolitti of Italy, Oscar Wilde, Auguste Monet and his god-damned cathedral drawings, Charles Darwin, this county's innumerable and unsavory hog underestimators, the fellow who owns the Cincinnati Red-Legs, any potential great-grandchildren I might have, and Walt Whitman.

10. Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun are trapped together on a hydraulic elevation-car. Hilarity ensues.