The Curious Incident of the Blog in the Night-Time

[Warning: This concept is utterly stolen from "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon]

This a mystery entry. I have changed the names of the parties to protect their identities.

As I rode home from Abby’s on my bicycle late that night, two yellow cars zoomed by me. And I knew it was going to be a Bad Night. Just that morning, I had seen three red cars in a row. It had been a Very Good Day. But, as Siobban says, sometimes your day can take A Turn For the Worse.

This was what happened.

I entered my apartment and turned on my computer in order to check my Hotmail email account. I like checking my hotmail email account because I like email.

My Hotmail email account showed that I had "One New Message."

The message was from "Anonymous."

This was my First Clue that something was amiss. In detective stories, clues are often coming from Anonymous Informants. People who are Anonymous have something to hide. Sometimes they are running from the Mafia. Other times they are involved in torrid love affairs and don’t want to be Found Out.

This Anonymous message was a message that had been posted to my Blog.

I opened the message. The message said something Not Nice about another person.

Sometimes I want to say Not Nice Things about others. But Mother says that I should keep these things to myself because saying them out loud Hurts People’s Feelings.

I told Mother that this does not make sense. People have feelings. Feelings don’t have feelings. People can be sad, or happy, or cranky, or angry, or surprised. Furthermore, people can be hurt. But feelings cannot be hurt.

Then Mother got pink in the face. This was how I knew that I had said something to upset her. She said: "Fine then, saying Not Nice Things makes people feel sad."

And then I understood.

So this was how I knew that I had to Do Something about this Not Nice Comment.

I logged onto my blog and deleted the comment. I replaced it with my own comment that echoed the words of Mother. I told people to be nice.

But now there was a Mystery to be solved. I needed to find out who Anonymous was, so that he or she would not be Not Nice on my blog ever again.

In detective stories, they call this Getting to the Bottom of Things.

So I looked at my blog for Clues.

I noted the time of the Anonymous entry. It had been posted at around 9 p.m.

First, I thought about who else had previously posted at 9 p.m. in the evening. I remembered that there had been an advertisement posted to my blog a few weeks ago that had been posted around that time on a Saturday night. The advertisement said:

"Nice blog! Please be sure to check out my website where loads of inexpensive pharmaceuticals can be ordered and delivered right to your door! We specialize in drugs for male potency."

However this clue was a Classic Red Herring.

A Red Herring is a clue that is not a real clue. It leads you down the wrong path to a dead end.

I reasoned that this Advertisement had been randomly generated and posted to my blog. Computers randomly generate and post advertisements. Computers, of course, can be programmed to generate mean messages and post them on blogs. However, it was highly improbable that I knew the person who had programmed the program that randomly posted pharmaceutical advertisements to blogs. Therefore, the Advertisement Post was a Classic Red Herring.

Since this was a Saturday night, I reasoned that the person who had posted the Not Nice Comment was someone who either did not have much of a social life, or was sick at home.

I knew one person who was sick at home. The Woman Who Lives Upstairs was sick at home. However, she was currently without access to Internet. Therefore, it was unlikely that she had posted to my blog.

I have one friend, Gretzky, who is sometimes a hermit. This friend is also sometimes grumpy and sometimes makes Not Nice Comments. We would be meeting the next day to do some writing. He is working on a book. It is about how he should run the world. He was now my Prime Suspect.

I was now quite tired. Detective work takes a fair deal of energy. In addition, I had consumed quite a bit of alcohol that evening. I thought that perhaps my sleuthing skills would be sharpened after eating a giant chocolate chip cookie and having a Good Sleep.

I woke up the next morning and met Gretzky.

Unfortunately, all my Detective Work had been a waste because Gretzky capitulated and Confessed Everything the moment I saw him. He was without remorse.

But at least the mystery had been Solved.