What a blogger puts up with, geesh.

Actually for all intents and purpose I’m looking for sympathy here, but it’s purely perfunctory on my part. You see Answers.com graciously put the Newburyport Blog on their site (thank you Answers.com), and I got this “challenge” from Answers.com to write a blog post using words like “mellissophobia” (abnormal fear of bees). Good grief, like I’m really going to use “messissophobia” a whole lot on the Newburyport Blog, for crying out loud.

I have a very healthy dislike of wasps, but I certainly do NOT have an abnormal fear of bees (“mellissophobia”). I don’t even have an unhealthy phobia about people called “Mellisso.”

They also want me to use the word “Belize.” Isn’t that fun. At first I thought, well, ah ha, I’ve used belie, no proproblemo. But no, this is “Belize,” which is some country I never heard of somewhere south of Mexico. Good grief. The only thing “Belize” has in common with Newburyport, MA is that it is coastal. And, well, we’re coastal. So Ok.

And yes, they want me to include stuff about a “brown recluse spider,” like we really have those in Newburyport, MA.

Would this quixotic blog post of mine mean that the readers of the Newburyport Blog would abrogate themselves from their possible perfunctory daily, weekly, monthly peek or whatever? I hope not.

And does Answers.com really think just because of some email “challenge” that they sent me that there might be the vaguest chance that I could yo-yo back and forth between Newburyport, MA and Belize for goodness sakes?

Or even worse, that I would abandon and abrogate (well aren’t we all learning fancy new words here) myself from this coastal, New England city and become some ubiquitous blogger for some coastal place, who knows where? I don’t think so.

And the quid pro quo for my either perfunctory or quixotic blogging “challenge” (depending on how one looks at it), basically is practically zippo for moi. You’d think I’d get some big blogger prize for subjecting the readers of the Newburyport Blog to words like “mellissophobia” and “Belize” and “brown recluse spider.”

But no. All I get is some cheap gift certificate to Amazon.com, if I would win this stupid thing (and the readers of the Newburyport Blog can’t even vote or anything, good grief).

And what does Answers.com get from this silly post on the Newburyport Blog, with words like “brown reclusive spiders?” For all intense and purposes they get a whole lot of links to their website. That’s what they get. Which is real smart on the part of Answers.com. Good SEO (Search Engine Optimization). My.

And yes, this blogger from Newburyport, MA fell for the whole silly thing. Although… it’s a great idea. Maybe I’ll send out Newburyport words to websites and blogs, with the promise of some grand prize. I could come up with $50 bucks (2nd place, Answers.com. $100 1st place.) for a gift certificate to Amazon.com, I’m cheap and Yankee enough to do that. I’ll have to ponder that one. Hmmm, let’s think… and La-de-da.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport