I've Done It Again

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it does it make a sound?  On a related note if someone makes an egregious error in his blog and nobody mentions it did he make an error?  The answer, sadly, to at least the second of those questions is "yes".

A week or so ago I gave a birthday shout out to a worthless prat named Valentinian III who presided over the decline and fall of the Roman empire.  Just one problem, it wasn't his birthday.  Actually, just two problems; it wasn't his birthday and I'd already given him a birthday greeting in the past, on his actual birthday.

In my defence I was sloppy and lazy.  That might not seem like much of a defence but as an explanation it's more than adequate.  Since I've done over sixty of these birthday greetings before each one I do a quick skim of previous blog entries to make sure I'm not doubling up.  Of course this requires that I've got the birth date correct in the first place.  Having carefully searched the wrong date I cheerfully went ahead and wrote my blog entry without actually finding the previous entry.

And nobody seems to have noticed!  Maybe nobody reads these entries after all.  Which leads to another question; if someone posts a blog entry and nobody reads it was the entry posted at all.  For the sake of my reputation for accuracy (no, I don't have one but I'm planning to buy one someday) let's say that it wasn't.

It is my earnest hope that one day somebody researching their university degree by the now standard method of simply using Google plus cut and paste will one day base their entire work on what they have harvested from my blog.  I would dearly like to be a fly on the wall as the markers twist themselves inside out attempting to justify how they can still award a distinction grade to the results.

I've also noticed that when I make these mistakes it always results in a thoroughly undeserved second birthday shout out to someone who was barely worth a first.  The last time it was to Francis of Lorraine who was, to the extent anybody noticed, Holy Roman Emperor but is better known for his full time career as husband to Maria Theresa of Austria.  This time it was a good for nothing deadbeat whose sole achievement was to prove that vicious incompetence could well be hereditary.  Emperors with talent still patiently waiting their turn must be outraged.  Or they would be if they weren't dead.  And cared.

Anyway, I've abased myself as much as I am prepared to.  So, sorry about the screw up.  Now sod this, I'm off to Borneo.