The Perils of Blogging Drunk

This is kind of a correction, kind of an apology, and kind of hilarious. Yesterday, while hunting up links for our Bay Area Blog Pulse, we were cruising Bloglines. The funny thing about RSS -- even if you've deleted something from your blog, once it's posted, it goes out over the wire. And apparently, if you're a MovableType user, once you've deleted something from your blog, the permalink doesn't necessarily die, either. So we saw this [NSFW]. Is it in bad taste? Yeah, pretty much. But it gave us a chuckle.

What made us laugh even harder, though, was when John at The Legal Reader emailed to explain that it was all something of an accident. A BUI, if you will:

I got home drunk last night and posted the picture (to which you linked) of Osama f**king Bush, which I found God knows where. I thought it was a good idea at the time.

Then I got up this morning, had some coffee, checked my own website, was *SHOCKED* to see that I had posted such filth, and promptly deleted it from The Legal Reader.

Then I got home from work tonight, and found that SFist has linked to my "deleted" post, and that it was drawing traffic from your link.

I had forgotten that when you delete a post in Movable Type, it deletes any reference to the post from your own website, but does not physically remove the post from the database on your webserver -- meaning that others can still link to it (if they know the link), even though your own website does not.

So, you have defeated my attempt at self-censorship.

As a rule, bloggers should not self-censor stuff once it is posted. You (inadvertently) caught me doing so. Bravo.

Well, let's just say that we don't feel so good about linking to the piece in the first place, and apologize for any shame or derision you experienced, John. We totally feel your pain. That's why SFist is hard at work on our patent application for a USB breathalyzer that will not allow you to access email or blogs if you're over the legal limit.