Heidelberg the Undead Leftoid Maniac

David Heidelberg is allegedly dead.

You remember him. He's the guy who pretended to be a soft, cuddly, non-threatening Muslim over on Blair's site. Then he attacked a consortium of evil American blogs on some baseless charge that left him looking stupid. Again.

Anyhow, now he's dead, and lapping up the attention that being a corpse naturally brings from gullible people (both on the right and left of the blogosphere).

Well, I'm not a rocket scientist, but I do know not to believe a word that is printed on Heidelberg's site. I can't very well investigate the man, but I can examine the available evidence, which no-one else is bothering to do before falling down in fits of hysterical wailing.

David died of an "illness" that he never seems to have mentioned to anyone, not even his leftist pals. His girl/wife/sister/mother/inbred nextdoor neighbour "Linda", who helpfully posted news of Dave's demise on his site, isn't saying what that "illness" was, but some have postulated that David hurled himself off something tall.

I don't think so. David is totally insane, but not actually self-destructive (when not blogging). Nor do I think him ill (physically, as opposed to mentally, which he most certainly is). I think that he has decided to depart the blogging scene with a splash, soak up every last drop of attention, wait a few months, and then return with a new pseudonym and a refreshed credibility.

I'm not purely spitballing. I do have something roughly approximating proof to back up my conclusion.

Most writers have quirks. Little things that they do that identify them to their readership. For some it's purely stylistic, but often it is manifested in the literary version of a facial tic - an annoying and grammatically incorrect habit that pathologically asserts itself in the writing. These are especially distinctive, and are hard to suppress.

This is the case with Dave/Linda. Linda is Dave, and I'm not talking about the close emotional bond shared by incestuous siblings, living it up on the north coast. Linda is Dave in the literal sense. This can be seen very, very easily.

Take a look at this.

See the post by "Linda"? This is Heidelberg's alleged girlfriend/wife/whatever. She is the author of the post on his site, lamenting his loss.

Isn't it funny that she has the exact same writing quirk as David! The linking together of words with extraneous periods....like this....and here it is again from Linda.

Now go back into the archives of Dave's site. You quickly see that this is a deeply ingrained writing quirk that he didn't think to disguise.

Note the second group down (do a page search for "....") see the second one?

"peace.....Oh"

FIVE dashes, linking the words together with no space. It's more than a bit of a quirk. It's totally distinctive.

Where do we also see this? In "Linda's" latest post at Heidelberg's site:

Just a quick note to thank everyone that has expressed their thoughts and sympathies.

And to all David's friends who I haven't yet had a chance to speak to.....You know how important you all are to us....

Love to everyone....

PS - In lieu of any offerings of gifts/flower/money etc, please make a donation to Beyond Blue, whose work is invaluable to fighting the scourge of depression....An illness so awful, that it quietly robs us those we love.

See the five dashes? And I found the correlation on the same page. If you go into his archive, you'll find more of them, I've no doubt.

Sure enough. Return of the multiple periods.

There's plenty more, but I can only take so much exposure to David's site.

Beyond the writing style, there is also the question of blogging knowledge. Linda, grief-stricken, only a couple of days after David's death, made straight for his computer, signed on to his Blogger account, used the title section correctly and published the article. No doubling up, no spelling errors, and none of the clumsy "I hardly ever write" grouping together of paragraphs that you ALWAYS see when non-bloggers write on a blog.

She then went on to display her mastery of the 'sphere by following the trackback to LP, where she soaked up the sympathy and engaged anyone who dared to say anything less than abjectly grovelling about David.

Funny. You know, the way mourning can take a back seat to blog comment battles.

She also seems to have been sitting behind David over the years, watching over his shoulder as he engaged his opponents in blog jousts. So much so that when one particular commenter suggested that David topped himself, she sprang into action, saying:

Captain,

You’re a disgusting human being…I’ve read your hateful diatribes before, and I suggest that you are a greatly disturbed individual. I also recall reading that you’re a psychiatrist. All I can say is that if there is a god, I hope he helps your patients.

Incidentally, David suffered from depression, but did not suicide…Words fail me- How dare you.

She loves those....periods, does Linda.

Not only did she know about "Captain's" posting history, she knew what he did for a living. I blogged regularly for years, but I couldn't tell you what half the bloggers I know do for a living. Yet this woman, who had never before commented at Dave's site, let alone on LP, had the full skinny on "Captain".

If you're a blogger, ask yourself this. How quickly would your spouse/mother/babysitter/genetically engineered sexual plaything fling herself at the computer in the wake of your death, and be able to do what Linda did? The reality is, blogging is something you really can't share with your partner, as it is a very selfish pursuit. I know of one couple who blog regularly together. That's it. The rest of them have spouses who either know nothing about blogs, or generally despise blogging for the way it saps their spouse's free time.

David, you aren't dead. You are a person who likes attention, a person who comes up with creative ways to get it. I can relate to that. We all like it, to varying degrees. But the fact is, you will hurt people with this stunt. Statistics alone say that out of all humanity, there is bound to be one person who regularly visited your site and will be sad to think you dead. Let them know you aren't. You can still change your pseudonym and start over. The blogosphere has a short memory and in the end, this stuff just doesn't matter.