Days Without Incident: some rules

The thing about making up games is that you get to make up the rules.  I don't know about you, but when we were kids making up games, making up the rules took the most time and it generally seemed true that playing the game was less fun than that whole process of creating the construct of the game.

And it's still the same.

The rules might be the funnest part.

In my Days Without Incident 2012 count -- in which I'm counting the number of consecutive days that the Marin IJ can go without a mention of the god damn Grateful Dead -- the rules are coming along as we go, subject to change.  And subject to pressure. 

I started out counting only "news," meaning that there was some editorial decision made at the Marin IJ to put the opening of the gd GD music venue not only on the front page but above the fold, above an article about the shooting of an interrupted burglar by the home's 90-year-old retired police resident. I started out with the idea that the piece had to be something the staff of the Marin IJ had actually written, thereby letting them off the hook in case (could it ever happen?) the Associated Press had a wire-story about the gd GD that the IJ picked up.

My narrow definition of the rules means that I didn't count the letter to the editor three days ago about the new music venue or the blurb yesterday promoting a reading at a local bookstore by the author of a new collection of "highly colorful and fanciful" GD fan mail. My narrow definition means that the Current number of consecutive days was 4, breaking the previous record by 1.

But I have been convinced that printing the letter to the editor and choosing which reading to promote are both editorial decisions worthy of note and worthy of the count. Of course! So I am revising the score at right, from Current: 4 to Current: 0, leaving unchanged the Record so far for 2012 of 3 days.  Yes, so far in the Year 2012, out of twelve whole days, our local paper has been able not to print the words Grateful Dead three days in a row.  That's all.  
And come to think of it, maybe that makes the rules so much easier - no worry about editorial decision or who wrote it or whatever.  Just how many days in a row can I open the paper and *not* see the words.  That's a low bar, but can they do it?

Getting past three days?  That would be something to be grateful for.