Checking my stats at Statcounter is always interesting, and it seems that lately the majority of my hits are coming from people combing search engines and looking for information on Liddy Wales.

The last time MCF did a McFAT quiz, the bonus question was who is Liddy Wales. Like everyone else who took the quiz (and there were quite a few participants), I tried to come up with some kind of answer to that question.

Here's the thing. I tried to make it clear that I have no freakin' clue who Liddy Wales is. Looking around a bit at various search engines has turned up little information, too. From the best I can tell, Liddy Wales is believed by many to be a who or a what... or maybe a where... associated with the TV program Lost.

I don't watch Lost. I don't care about Lost. I don't watch much television at all, and when I do, I never watch shows that involve as much thought and commitment as Lost apparently involves. My wife watches Lost and, to be totally honest, even listening to her talk about the program exhausts me to the point that I have to go take a nap.

I tried digging around at search engines about Liddy Wales... and I turned up little information. Partly, I think, that's because the producers of Lost are trying to keep people guessing about the topic. However, another reason I didn't find much information about Liddy Wales is because every search engine I checked showed my own stupid post as one of the top three sites for information on Liddy Wales!

Really!

I mean, look at this stuff:

Apparently, SouthCon is one of the world's leading authorities on Liddy Wales.

Go figure.

So, for the benefit of everyone who ended up here looking for information on Liddy Wales, I think it's time I stopped pretending.

Yes, it's true. I really am one of the world's three leading authorities on Liddy Wales. To be honest, the past few weeks have been exhausting and nerve-wracking for me. It's been hell on earth going through the motions, denying that I know anything about Liddy Wales, pretending that the subject is a mystery to me. I can't take it anymore. I can't keep up the façade. I'm coming clean right here and right now.

In the next few brief paragraphs I will finally elucidate everything I know about Liddy Wales. The questions, the intrigue, the rumors and the deception have to stop now. RIGHT NOW. Right here. With me. I can carry this burden no longer.

As I indicated in my original post on the topic, Liddy Wales really is, in fact, this man. "Liddy," of course, is a nickname. Nobody would actually give their child a name like "Liddy." No, his actual first name is "Lidworthington." Many of us pick up nicknames in grade-school, and Lidworthington Wales was no different. By the middle of second grade, all of his friends were calling him Four-Eyed Poopy Britches Wales. That nickname didn't sit well with Wales, who asked that he instead be referred to as Liddy. In an effort to accommodate him, the other second graders began calling him Liddy while hitting him with sticks. Only Liddy's dog, Silas, provided comfort during this difficult time. Others boinked Liddy with sticks. Silas simply fetched them.

Early in his youth, Liddy Wales demonstrated an interest in the middle ages and European history. Evenings and weekend were spent reading encyclopedic volumes of books on Florentine architecture, the crusades, and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. Teachers found Liddy's focus and interest impressive. In fact, most thought him to be a prodigious student of Reformation Histiography. So, it was no surprise to anyone that after he graduated high school, Liddy attended many Renaissance Fairs while studying to be a nurse's aid at the local community college.

At many of the Renaissance Fairs that Liddy Wales attended, local artists would have a tent set up in which they sold their wares. Liddy had often browsed in these tents, and on one occasion he decided that he'd like to buy a painting to hang in his uncle's basement, where he lived. While considering a badly done reproduction of Leonaro da Vinci's famous The Last Supper, Liddy made an important discovery.

Much to his surprise and horror, Liddy discovered that the price for the print was $27. Unfortunately, Liddy only had $15 to spend on a painting. With a sign, Liddy resigned himself to looking through the "discount" prints, unframed and mounted on simple cardboard, that were propped against a table.

After five minutes of browsing the stack, Liddy was thrilled to find, at an amazing price, a reproduction of one of his favorite works of art:

Liddy bought the Dog's Playing Poker print for $5, took it home and hung it on the basement wall. There it hung, unregarded and inconspicuous, for almost a year.

Then, one day while eating an egg salad sandwich and watching a rerun of What's Happening!, Liddy glanced up at his print of Dog's Playing Poker and made a shocking discovery. A visceral hush filled the room. The reliably entertaining dancing of Fred "Rerun" Barry, which typically made Liddy snort with laughter, went unnoticed. With a soft "thwuck" sound, the egg salad sandwich fell to the floor. Liddy's shock would have been palapable to anyone who'd been in the basement with him, had there been anyone else there. Staring with disbelief at his well-loved print, Liddy noticed something that forever changed the meaning of the masterpiece. Something that might change the meaning of civilization as he knew it. Something that the artist, with quiet deliberation, had subtly communicated to anyone with an eye for detail who'd simply take the time to study his work.

Liddy couldn't believe what he was seeing:

The white bulldog, a steadfast pooch who's moral fiber Liddy had never before questioned, was cheating.

CHEATING!

The implications were tremendous. It all hit Liddy like a ton of bricks. The bulldog was cheating. He was slipping an ace to another dog; a dog who's face was turned away from the viewer. Who was that other dog? Who was this clandestine canine with the leather collar and the slightly back-tilted ears? The ramifications hit Liddy's conscious mind like an avalanche of scandal, each realization boinking against his brain with the loud, boinking clarity of cognizance. The world as I know it is a fraud, Liddy thought. This could forever alter the way that dog lover's perceive their purebred partners. Man's best friend? Indeed! Man's paramount deceiver!

Something must be done. But what?

As as he stood considering his options, Liddy's brain was once again boinked. But this time, it wasn't the poignant boinking of truth. It was an actual, physical boinking... a boinking with a stick... a sensation Liddy remembered all too well from his days in the second grade.

It's said that a shadowy canine figure was seen leaving Liddy's basement that evening... and investigators never found the stick with which Liddy was boinked.

Most shockingly, Liddy's Dogs Playing Poker print was missing.