What you need to do to earn blog name mention

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I’m observing a new phenomenon that leads me to believe the blog is either succeeding or that reader perspectives have lurched into realms of the absurd.

Lots of people want me to mention their names in the blog.

They tell me they think that would be cool.

By this, I must infer they mean it would make them cool.

They are mistaken.

I know this because my blog everyday mentions my name and after nearly 1,500 posts over 7 years there is zero evidence it has made me more cool.

Worse, there’s plenty of evidence it has earned me zero of the commodity that might make me more cool.

That’d be more money.

Of course, I’m flattered people think this and would therefore love to accommodate them.

But that would change the character of the blog. Most readers are savvy enough to know when they’re being bludgeoned with product placement.

So, say, if I wrote, “I happened to be getting shitfaced with Stephen Hawking the other day and he told me a brilliant theory about how to lower my cable bill and still get local sports.”

The gratuitous mention would interrupt the flow of the story. And, plus, everyone would recognize the lie. Most of you know by now I stopped drinking with Hawking in 2009 after we got into a bitter dispute over the irreconcilable conflict between religion and science.

And he spilled beer on my lap (I believe it was deliberate).

It would be a disservice to readers just to drop in a line like, “My friend Tammy is nice!”

Worse, I’m sure it would lead to a punishing round of questions from my wife who would be eager to know more about Tammy and what she did that made me feel she’s nice.

So it’s best just to avoid mentions altogether.

I reserve the right to make exceptions whenever it’s any of the boys at the bars or Arnold Palmer. Most people are interested in reading about our interactions and — unlike that pushy klutz Hawking — Palmer and my views about the irreconcilable conflict between religion and science are mostly simpatico.

I have decided I will make exceptions when I choose for any arbitrary reason.

One is the request has to come from an insane blog devotee. They have to do things like stop reading the blog cold turkey for three months straight.

I had a friend do this and at first I was hurt. Why quit reading?

“I like to store them up and just binge read for two weeks straight while I’m in an Illinois tree stand hunting deer,” he said.

That’s truly devoted readership.

Another exception will be without exception anyone involved in “Make-A-Wish.”

I’m a real softie when it comes to that cause.

So if an organizational rep calls me and says, “We have a little girl who’s in real trouble. We offered her a trip to Disney World, but she said all she wants is to be mentioned in www.EightDaysToAmish.com.”

I’d say yes almost right away — after first forcing the charity to in exchange send MY daughters to Disney.

Learned it from Trump!

But I want to mention a name today because I got an alarming text from a lunatic reader, the kind of guy who’d spend frigid days in a tree stand reading my blog.

Well, it is that guy.

Still young and vigorous, a father of two daughters, he was suddenly stricken by a mini-stroke that caused him to lose vision. A battery of emergency tests left doctors thinking he might have MS.

He does not and his vision with treatment may be restored in six months.

The doctors say it may be stress related.

He just loves my blog — says it relieves stress — and I’m hoping he doesn’t say the doctors prescribe I double my blog output.

You have, I’m sure, someone like that in your life, someone dealing with an unexpected and scary challenge.

Please be sure to say a prayer for them and their loved ones.

And please include a mention for Dave Angus.

Related . . .

Binge reading my blog in a tree stand

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan & my blog

Shiny new home page for “Eight Days To Amish”

Arnold Palmer gave me boogies on Monday

Florida: Airborne over Disney

Conspiracy theories about Kecksburg UFO & parade

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In a week where Stephen Hawking vowed to spend $100 million to detect aliens and Donald Trump counter-vowed to spend twice that much preventing them from crossing our Southern border, Val and I marched in a parade celebrating the little green kind that make Trump’s border jumpers look like simple pikers.

It was the 50th anniversary celebration of the Kecksburg UFO incident!

Kecksburg is a tiny rural community about 20 minutes from our home.

On Dec. 9, 1965, at 4:47 p.m., locals as far as Pittsburgh were startled by a sonic boom. An inexplicable crash was reported in a wooded area near Kecksburg.

Investigating witnesses said they saw an acorn-shaped craft about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle in a smoldering pit. Its base had what one witness described as hieroglyphics etched into the sides. Soon shadowy government officials emerged and brusquely ordered everyone to scram.

Next, an empty flatbed truck approached the site. It left shortly afterwards, but with an acorn-shaped cargo about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle beneath a concealing tarp.

Add that one investigating witness, local radio reporter John Murphy, became despondent and abruptly stopped all his inquiries after being visited by two mysterious men in black suits, and that Murphy was four years later killed in a still-unsolved hit-and-run while vacationing California, and you’ve got all the makings for a dandy conspiracy theory.

The good people of Kecksburg took this all in 2005 came one rationale conclusion . . .

We can capitalize on this!

Thus, a typical local volunteer firefighter fair was turned into a three-day UFO extravaganza, complete with parade and expert speakers like my friend Stan Gordon, author and producer of the award-winning documentary, “Kecksburg: The Untold Story.”

Our friends Marty and Sue are avid attendees. They’ve never had a close encounter, nor are they wacko conspiracy buffs — at least they weren’t before Saturday.

They just like to party.

Marty, it should be noted, was essential in helping me construct the giant slingshot that became the centerpiece of one of the world’s best parties (link below).

Marty spent the past six months divining a plan to win the Kecksburg parade float trophy.

You have your bucket list, Marty has his.

We showed up Saturday morning in his basement for a strategic briefing. There were chalkboards, maps, discussion of pivotal roles, etc.

So it was like Gen. Eisenhower and the day before the D-Day invasion only with an open bar.

Everyone had a role.

Some were costumed aliens, some where military, some were civilians. Val and I were tasked with the relatively lame duty of carrying the sponsoring sign — “Neon Moon Saloon,” (Marty and Sue’s basement bar) — and bringing the entire parade to a complete and sudden 2-minute halt in front of the judges’ station.

That Marty was bringing an “Animal House” aspect to a community parade appealed to the anarchist in Val and I.

We non-aliens were all issued ET-themed shirts. My favorite showed a stereotypical alien and the slogan, “Keep Calm and Enjoy The Probing.”

Our float — a pick-up truck carrying two laundry baskets taped together and concealed with a tarp to appear like an acorn-shaped UFO — was third in a parade of about 50 elements, about 40 of them, this being Western Pennsylvania, being shiny firetrucks.

Things got off to a rocky start when the first two elements raced through the parade route like they were in a hurry to get good Kecksburg VFD bar seats.

It was unfair, because that was our goal, too, but most of us were on foot and by then stumbling.

So the interminable lag made it appear to confused parade attendees our float was the start of an entirely new parade.

Honestly, we were worth the wait.

Despite temperatures in the 90s, high humidity and varying stages of inebriation, none of our aliens passed out, which would have been unfortunate, but may have won us points for authenticity.

Less a float, and more like a rolling skit, the aliens were hassled the entire way by our uniformed military who herded the aliens with supersoaker squirt guns and shouted at the hapless civilians, “You didn’t see anything! This never happened!”

It was a great time, and the crowd loved us.

That’s why we were all stunned we didn’t win even a third place trophy.

I don’t know who won, but bar-stool conspiracy theorists are saying it was all fixed.

I’d call for a probe but in Kecksburg during the UFO Festival you just don’t know what calling for a probe’ll get you, so I’ll just stick with the company line.

I didn’t see a thing. It never happened.

Related . . .

North Koreans could benefit from a giant slingshot

A theory on conspiracies

Newt, the Alien & me

Trump’s no jackass; he’s under-qualified

One way tickets to Mars

Wouldn’t it be great if Flight 370 were found with everyone alive?

Dining on dinos to end world hunger

I was at a professional dinner recently seated with three women, all avid travelers, who were sharing stories about the most exotic meals they’d ever consumed.

That meant my role was to sit there biting on my spoon with sufficient force to ensure that neither food nor stupid observations would spill from my mouth.

Of course, I couldn’t help myself. I made about four offbeat observations that left the ladies looking at me the way cows look at passing trains.

I’m fascinated by global eating habits. What on this continent is revered as delicacy is over on that one reviled as repugnant. People cuddle dogs over here while over there they think nothing of tossing them in the wok with rice, carrots and bok choy.

I judge not.

I understand we’re running out of food and believe we’ll all need to alter our diets to meet rising demands. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll be getting our roughage from things like tree bark.

I have to imagine that would clean out the system more effectively than iceberg lettuce.

It might even become a delicacy. Fancy restaurants might serve things like dogwood salad -- and wouldn’t that bark have some bite!

One woman said a language misunderstanding once tricked her into eating squid. This was repulsive to her, she said, because she was a great admirer of the squid.

I told her I admired Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and Bugs Bunny.

She said squid is more intelligent than dolphin. She saw a documentary that showed a squid reach way around and with one of its eight arms and give an unsuspecting shrimp a distracting tap on the opposite shrimpy shoulder.

I told her I’d seen Moe pull a similar trick on Curly. I asked if she thought that’s where the squid had seen it. Now, that would have been evidence of true intelligence.

She ignored me.

“When the shrimp looked the other way, the squid seized it and ate it!”

She was confusing intelligence with treachery. There are multi-million dollar international bounties on the heads of notorious outlaws who use similar tactics.

One woman startled the table when she said she’d once eaten cat brains.

“That’s disgusting!” said the squid lover. “How could anyone do that to a cat?”

“Bullshit,” I blurted out. “Cats don’t have brains.”

Turns out we’d misheard her. She’d said calf brains.

The women asked about the texture, how it tasted and if the flavor’d been enhanced with French sea salt.

I asked if it cost more to dine on a smart calf brain than that of a dunce.

She pretended she didn’t hear me, but I thought it was a good question. Certainly, if given a choice, I’d pay more to eat the brain of Stephen Hawking over, say, Ashton Kutcher purely for health reasons.

No nutritionalist would advocate consuming something that’s been dead for so long.

I thought it was a great question and evidence that my brain should be worth more than hers.

As I mentioned, I was struggling to keep quiet, but the topic was so energizing it was hopeless, especially when talk turned to how to feed a world with exploding population.

That’s when I threw one of my big pet theories on the table. And I mean really big.

“World hunger will be eliminated,” I said, “in 20 years when scientists learn to farm dinosaurs.”

A typical sauropod, the largest animal ever to roam the earth, weighed up to 70 tons and on a football field could have its tail tip at midfield and its nose be breaching the goal line (dingbat on-field refs would still need to go to the replay booth to confirm its snout broke the plain).

Imagine the immensity.

Just one sauropod could feed a family of four for 123 years, provided the family had a freezer the size of your typical Chuck E. Cheese.

I chose the sauropod over the T-Rex for dietary reasons. Sauropods ate exclusively plants and other heart-healthy offerings while T-Rex ate things like, well, sauropods.

Of course, their diets were certainly better than ours, assuming things like Hershey bars and Big Macs were unavailable 140 million years ago.

Sadly, my grand theory was met by looks of stunned silence. It was clear they were intellectually incapable of grasping the genius of my idea.

Must not have eaten enough brain food.