First off, an omphalos is a belly-button. So an omphalic post is a navel-gazing one. I would coin the word omphaloptic, but some blighter got there before me and the word means a lens that is convex on both sides. The correct term is omphaloskepsis: contemplation of the belly-button.The reason for this umbilical fixation is that the Inky Fool is a year old today. It is 365 days since I wrote about branding (although I'm no longer sure of the fabulous fact I appended). Since then 423 posts have sprung, whimpering and forlorn, into the Blogosphere.
Since you ask (you do ask, don't you, dear reader?) here are my favourite twelve posts of the last year.
Data, Singulars and Plurals
Estate Agent's Dictionary
Gormless, Feckless, Ruthless and Reckless
Lionized Lions (and Lionel Singh)
Wamblecropt
Join The Majority
The Drunken, Addled, Insane Parliament of Bats and Dunces
Prepositions The End Of Sentences At
Ruelle
Snarling Snobs and Sniggering Sneaks
The Most Quoted Lines of Poetry: Now With Added Graphs!
Parenthetical Codpieces
I should thank all those who have put up links, or posted Inky Fool to Facebook, or e-mailed their friends or twittered or tweeted or otherwise done their bit to insinuate the Inky Fool into a surly and unforgiving world. If you've never e-mailed it to a friend, do so now.
Those who link here, are linked back to, and I thoroughly recommend trying all the lovely blogs that are listed down the right hand side of this page. Thank you to the Antipodean for telling me my typos. And thank you, dear reader, thank you for gazing down into my abyss. I don't know who you are, but I love you anyway.
In fact, I do know something about you. Due to the delights of Statcounter I can find out what words you googled in order to get here and the name of your server. It is a source of immeasurable pride to me that this blog spent a long time as first result if you did a Google-blog-search for donkeysex.
What little I get from Statcounter makes me confused, and rather curious. I see the same people coming back and I grow fond of them, by which I mean you.
So to the reader who keeps googling Who is the Inky Fool, just click on the contributors button on the right.
To the regular reader in the United States Senate, there's another regular reader in the House of Representatives. You should hook up.
To the readers on the House of Commons server, get back to work.
To the private detective in North Carolina, I'm innocent, I tell you.
To the other reader in Raleigh, NC, there's a private detective who keeps logging on just after you.
To the reader at Macmillan Publishers, give me a damned book deal.
And to the reader who got here searching for inky sex, come back!
Adam and Eve did not have belly buttons
You're welcome, and thank you. I can't talk any more about my favourite posts without carrying on a lot, and, uncharacteristically, I'm not going to.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday, Inky Fool.
Many happy returns of the day.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday! You've been in rare form lately. I know this because I've been sharing posts almost daily.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite, as I am a bit juvenile, is still the post about the word carminative.
Also the poetry graph. And your series about planets and movies. Okay, I'm done now.
ReplyDeleteI Stumbled on your posts a few months ago and had no idea this was such a new blog. Congrats on reaching a year. My family and friends read this blog regularly because it's fantastic.
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite blog. Many wishes for your and your blog's continued existence!
ReplyDeleteI've been a regular and irregular reader since shortly after you started, though how shortly I'm not sure, and have read every post. Some of them I've read to classes I've been teaching, such as the one on the etymology of tanks, or brackets (my personal favorite). Thanks to you & Thomas Urquhart, 3rd formers at my school have incorporated the phrase "quomodocunquizing clusterfist" into their daily vocabulary of disapprobation. I would only echo further your exhortation to the reader at MacMillan: Give the man a book deal already!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Inky-how time flies when you're reading such great posts.Expect you'll be mafficking (there's a back-formation to add to your list) this evening.
ReplyDeletePS Agree with Chris, Brackets is a particular favourite.
Congratulations! I don't often comment, but I am a regular visitor.
ReplyDeleteThe brackets! I'd forgotten them. I think that that may be my favourite post too. I have duly made changes.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday inky. May you indeed grow into a multi-million pound bookdeal (with film rights).
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday Mr. Fool. (I feel I don't know you well enough to call you by your first name.) Brackets gets another vote.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday, Inky! I found your blog several months ago and it quickly became my favorite. I had no idea it was so young because you're such a pro. Thanks for all your wonderfulness.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday! Congratulations on reaching this milestone. I love reading the posts. Remind Mrs. M. that she left a bottle of champagne behind - a little something to help you celebrate.
ReplyDeleteHardy congratulations from your regular U.S. Senate reader on this signal anniversary occasion. How distressing it is to learn of my loneliness in the upper chamber. At the same time, I am heartened (and a bit surprised) to hear of a like-reading soul across the Hill. I say surprised because it is, after all, the House we are referring to. Looking forward to future posts and the opportunity to some day fit one of your highlighted phrases or words into a floor speech or a bit of constituent correspondence. “Mr. President, this is hardly a time for faineancy. We must get to work. Economic recovery and job growth must remain the primary goal of this government and the policies we put forth. What we need is for every man and woman to play their part, to reinvigorate the quomodocunquizing, entrepreneurial spirit of the American small business…”
ReplyDelete-Alex
Inky Fool you delight and intrigue me. I look forward to continued intriguing delights.
ReplyDeleteHappy blogbirthday.
Happy be-lated birthday, Inky Fool! You make me chuckle alound at work often, and you make me thirst for more words, more words.
ReplyDeleteHappy anniversary! Don't know what I'd do without this blog - every day there's a fresh discovery to forward to word-loving friends and family members [s]
ReplyDeleteYes Browne wrangles with this thorny theological problem of Adam and Eve at length in his Pseudodoxia.
ReplyDeleteplease, visit my youtube channel:
ReplyDeletepsiquiatrasubliminal
or better so:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/user/psiquiatrasubliminal#g/u
enjoy!