Well I’m heading home this morning. Finally. It’s been a weird trip.

Interestingly enough it turns out I’m going to miss Basil here in Chicago by about an hour.

Who is Basil? Well he’s the Code-Writing-Party-Donkey, of course.

But that’s not the right question.

The right question is really Where is Basil?

And that will take a little bit of explanation.

You see there are a bunch of us Bloggy type folks who hang out on Tuesday nights over at Successful-Blog for Open Comments Night. It is just a time of sharing ideas. Some of us do get more than a little on the silly side, though.

Ben Yoskovitz is one of the folks who usually hangs with us. Ben has a tendency to show up late and even when he’s able to spell his own name right he often makes excuses about how he’s trying to keep an eye on the donkey that writes code for his web site. Well we’re a naturally curious lot so folks wanted to know more about the donkey.

And Ben is very creative and would throw in little anecdotes about the donkey and what he was up to. Ben really should have been one of the Stooges – really he’s sillier than I am, at least to my way of thinking.

Anyway we all decided we knew the donkey about well enough that he should have a name. We went round and round about it. I lobbied long and hard for Jack. I thought it was a perfect, if unimaginative, name for an… um, I mean a donkey.

Fortunately, in the interest of family friendliness, I was resoundly overruled. Somehow we were on the subject of Fawlty Towers we got talking about the characters. Basil is the name of the main character in that show played by John Cleese. Ben suggested Basil as a proper name for a code writing party donkey and it stuck.

Well in honor of a successful donkey naming Ben decided to run a contest with the prize being the DVD set of the Fawlty Towers show. His creative juices got flowing and he thought it would be really cool if the prize could be enjoyed by more folks than just the winner. A prize in perpetuity, so to speak.

Did I mention Ben is creative?

Anyway he pushed Basil out the door along with the DVD’s with the idea that they would spend a week with a winner then move on to another location to spend the next week with someone else.

I think Ben just got tired of cleaning up after the donkey.

But Ben started up a web site to track Basil’s progress. And he has invited anyone who would like to participate (and get a chance to view the Fawlty Towers DVD’s) to join the list.

Since I was there from the beginning, before Basil knew Jack so to speak, and since I like to laugh (I remember Fawlty Tower being totally hysterical) I signed up as soon as I got wind of the whole thing.

At the moment Basil is on a train from Stanford, Connecticut up here to see Liz in Chicago. They say his train should get in before my flight leaves.

It is all very silly, but it is going to be a very good time. Lot’s of laughs. And a chance to learn about new places as people report back on what Basil does when he visits them. In fact Basil is heading to Savannah to stay with us next.

Oh. I probably should let Gorgeous know that we are going to be having a quadruped houseguest in the next week or so. We’ll need to stock up on our hay and other fodder (especially carrots). It is a good thing she’s still got her Veterinary Technician certification. We may be needing it!

Anyway I’m off to the airport myself this morning. Check out Where is Basil? to keep up on his progress as he travels around the world donkey style.

Enjoy!

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