Friday, February 04, 2005

regarding the recurrent idea that i am lonely donut man (after all, have you ever seen us together?)

Commenters are once again speculating that I am actually Lonely Donut Man. I am not. Remember that deal where Bill Gates was going to give you $250 for every person you forwarded that e-mail to? Well, I have a similar deal, only this isn't an urban legend. If it is ever learned, revealed, discovered, found out, proven, etc., that the various comments posted under the name "Lonely Donut Man" or "LDM" have been actually written by me, or that I have had some conspiratorial role in their construction, I will pay every person who has ever read this blog $250, up to whatever point drives me into bankruptcy. Since there are no small numbers of law professors who read this blog at least occasionally, I am sure they can tell me if I need anything further to give this offer the force of a binding contract, so all can be confident that I'm really telling the truth about this or that I will one day be driven into destitution as I write each and every one of you a personal check.

Seriously, everyone, not only I am not Lonely Donut Man, but I have no idea who Lonely Donut Man is. Really, truly. It's been a matter of some curiosity to me whether LDM is someone I know or a complete stranger. I also, for that matter, have no idea who "Helpful in New Hampshire" is, or who that person was who wrote all those weird comments about feral children. Again, maybe these are people I do know personally who are just concealing their identities from me, but I think it is more plausible that I don't know them.

I'm not the Evil Glitter Princess either. I do know who she is. I also know Dorotha and Cabell's real names (hint: not Dorotha, not Cabell). For that matter, I know the true identity of Silent Jay, although I can't figure out why he pays for a typepad subscription month after month if he's really not going to post more than once, ever.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmmm... wouldn't it seem more plausible if the LDM was someone who did know everyone who's blog he posts on? Doesn't he seem too invested in a certain circle of blogs and people to not be one of them? Does he post outside this circle of blogs?

I don't know if it is you or not. Could be, though. You really can't proove you aren't.

jeremy said...

I mean, if I believed that people could be swayed by rational proof on this matter, I think I could proove that I am not Lonely Donut Man. I mean, to my knowledge, while you can muck with the timestamps on posts in Blogger, you don't have control over the timestamps on comments. If that is the case, LDM left this comment at 9:40am Thursday, when I was teaching my class. But there may be some way of manipulating the time on comments that I'm not aware of (OR, for the refusers-to-believe-me, that I'm claiming not to be aware of).

jnsys said...

I do believe you may be correct on that one, and have hence releaved your razor-sharp investigative abilities... Blogger does let you set the time on your posts, but I think that comment times are based on the time-zone you set for your blog. I think I will investigate further...

jnsys said...

And could it be that one may simply change the computer time zone to set the time in the comment? Nope. I changed to mountain, and when I click preview, the time comes up as posted at 9:20 pm, instead of an hour earlier. Could be he's telling the truth :)

Tom Bozzo said...

The common digits in the Hotmail addresses of LDM, "Francine," and the anonymous Sconnie over at Pub Sociology had me wondering, but then I read a paper on timing games that led me to accept the possibility of alternate sources of causality for that phenomenon.

That, and my site meter had led me at one point to believe that LDM's computer's clock is set to Eastern Time. And while my grandmother has a computer in the Eastern time zone that has a clock set, for no good reason, to Central Time, I've taken the probability that you'd bother to reset your IP address and computer clock to spoof my site meter to be vanishingly small.

Anonymous said...

Proffer'eth I a word to the wise
a wizard not it take'th to devise
strings & hash an identity to disguise
technology's wand when waved applies
a warp to time & space to he who tries
doth Jeremy gleefully tell'eth lies
foisting donuts while gobbling fries?
One clue to thee verily shall I apprise
look'eth closely a professor in the eyes
now n'er more the donut man to despise
Lo! I humbly am but one of the guys -
LDM

Anonymous said...

Think'eth me not polite and nice
'tis no secret I am routed thrice
verily I scamper'eth like the mice
nothing of value would'st I ever entice
nor pirate am I with veins of ice
with probability I do cast'eth the dice
assuredly I dispense'th no pox or lice
from the pie of clues I cut thee a slice
my engineer eat'eth lots of rice
do'th that thy curiosity suffice?
I only seek'eth sequestered vectors to trice
'tis true and no pile of scheiss -
LDM

Anonymous said...

Q for JF and LDM, separately: Do you like popcorn?

Anonymous said...

At 9:40 am Thursday, "Jeremy" was waxing prophetic about deterministic and probabilistic causality, using Stanley Lieberson as his muse.

He did pause at times, however, perhaps long enough to blog a prewritten LDM poem.

Alternately, perhaps the professor lecturing was not in fact Jeremy, but some sort of nefarious lookalike in cahoots with real Jeremy, leaving real Jeremy free to hide somewhere composing dirty, sugary rhyme.

Since the Tuesday-Thursday morning class is largely about causality, perhaps in class on Tuesday we should discuss the evidence for and against the conclusion that Jeremy is the cause of pastry poetry.

--Evil Glitter Princess (indeed, NOT Jeremy, NOR the LDM)

Anonymous said...

What a puzzle, though Jeremy pretty much confirms that he is not the doughnut man and Tom Bozzo's technical analysis clinches it. My own 'forensics' yields a very mild disimilarity in meter and nuance, though the 'poetry' doesn't give one much to work with. Goesh

Anonymous said...

That last LDM perversion of the English language suggests that LDM has an intimate relationship with an engineer. Who do we know who fits that description?

Anonymous said...

I realize I haven't had alot of book learning but I have done some ciphering in my day. Freese is a cool customer. Trap his ghost writer and you can nail his hide to the barn door. Of course Freese is not the lonely donut man in the sense that he doesn't actually key the poetry and post it here in this blog. Has he specifically said he is NOT the author of the poems? Of course he hasn't. What little undergrad is slinking around the sociology dept. after hours, with darting eyes, making a fast ingress and egress in Freese's office scurrying away with the next poem, hmmm? What signals does Freese give to his lackey that the next poem is ready to be keyed and posted? Watch his patterns. On a certain day he may place his notepad on a certain side of the podium, he may brush his hair with his hand once or twice. There are a multitude of covert signs and signals he may employ. Who does he meet with and where? Think about it and carefully read the red herring he put out here about him not being the lonely donut man. Well, how do you like them donuts, buster??

Anonymous said...

Well, I figured out LDM's first name.. It's Guy: His clue: "one of the guys..." Get it? He's a clever one. Now all we have to do is figure out his last name, his motives, his favorite ice creams, salad dressings, pets' vet's name(s), and the location of the loot!

jnsys said...

Hmm, the search for LDM continues...