This is my “good faith deposit” designed to show that I will indeed get around to discussing these delightful critters later in the post (actually, only one of them is named Critter, but they all look delightful!)

Q: What do you when you need to wake up at 5am to watch brain surgeries, and you start writing your blog post at 10:23pm the night before?

A: Write a post with a series of funny anecdotes and hope that people are amused enough to ignore the fact that your post is as cohesive as a stack of reused post-it notes.

• After weeks and weeks of having some variation of “funny olympics names” or “saeid mohammadpourkarkaragh” as our top search result, we had a stunning development last night. Our top search result was Nickelodeon los Rugrats. It’s that kind of magic that led to the creation of the SEO Confusion Conclusion in the first place. I know it had to do with This Post, but I’m blown away by the fact that it pulled in more hits than anything else. Probably just some dude from Barcelona trying to mess with us.
• Long-time readers of our blog may know that Arto is originally from Finland, and after he and I became friends in college while in Canada, I introduced him to my good friend and former high school sweetheart – a woman he later married and is the reason he’s now living in San Diego. They just had an offer accepted on a house. So congratulations to them.What you may not know is that it’s selfless acts like this one that lead people to refer to me as “The Male Mother Teresa.” The reason you probably didn’t know that is because it isn’t true.

  What is true, however, is that I constantly bring this up to remind them that they’re locked in a karmic debt to me forever.

• How did I get on this train of thought? Oh yeah, because in addition to being a talented mechanical and electrical engineer by day and eco-friendly patent-holder/entrepreneur/incredibly amazing basketball player by night, Arto’s wife is also the person who introduced me to a pretty amazing song by old-time throwback outfit Old Crow Medicine Show, entitled Wagon Wheel.
  
  Anyone who can write a song in 2004 that sounds like a classic from a good fifty years earlier (and in fact was inspired by a partially-written poem by Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan) has some serious talent. And, true to form, the folks in that band have some seriously talented names.
  

  I think I mentioned brains and engineering earlier, didn’t I? This picture kind of works, right?

  In fact, I’d wager that if the band didn’t have guys with names like Critter Fuqua, Ketch Secor, and
  Chance McCoy, that song would never have been written.

• The band is still together, and in 2011, 7 years after its release, Wagon Wheel was certified gold. Ketch Secor and Bob Dylan hold co-songwriting credits, so it’s nice to see them get some recognition – especially Bob Dylan, man. That guy can’t get no respect from nobody.
• While we’re on the topic of me tactlessly and hurriedly squeezing things into posts, all this talk of old-fashioned things (or “old fayshioned” as Dave Thomas says in a delightful old Wendy’s training video) has gotten me thinking of a joke that relates to the days of yesteryear:

Q: What goes clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop bang bang clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop?

(The answer will be posted in the comments)