Here is how John Hicks on January 7, 2011 described himself in his sign-off:
B2L2 contributor John Hicks maintains a sunny disposition.
As far as I can tell that’s the earliest public usage of the “B2L2” formulation*. (Around here we call him Sunshine.) I found B2L2 kind of catchy–I’m not sure bark, bugs, leaves, & lizards could be called catchy.
On February 11, 2011 John Hicks wrote:
Follow the Cheerios. This is one of my winning personal philosophies. I don’t know what “follow the Cheerios” means, but I plan on using it a lot more in the future. It strikes me as a sturdy, all-purpose phrase.
Some time later–alas, my records are incomplete–I received a Word document PDF from Sunshine via email attachment which consisted of only the following:
Bark Bugs promptly snatched it up as his her Facebook profile image.
bark, bugs, leaves, & lizards’ wrongnesss as a name I always felt was one of its best characteristics. It’s long, almost a tongue twister, obscure. With only a couple of terms right you could still find us fairly easily via Google, or if you couldn’t find us you would have an opportunity to further your science education.
But B2L2 is plainly easier to remember yet still kind of obscure. I also like that it harkens back to the original (the old logo, by the way, I’ve migrated to the “bark eater” page).
As it happens, B2L2.com was available, and for now you can go there to get here. Eventually, we may go ahead and make it so if you go here you’ll get there–which will, rest assured dear reader, still be here.
* We now have reports from the field that confirm Marnie Herrington, lovely wife of B2L2 resident poet Bob Hudson, came up with B2L2 while chatting with Bob and Sunshine.
p.s. If anyone would like to volunteer their graphic design services, or, say, their significant other’s services, to play around with the logo, give it a shot.
Update: Right now B2L2.com is not redirecting here because I’m in the process–and it ain’t pretty–of shifting the operation over.
B2L2: younger brother to R2D2.
Reminds of when I first started people calling Chris Paul CP3. I know he’s a good basketball player, but what’s that got to do with Star Wars?
When I first thought started posting with B2L2, I assumed that the Bark and Bugs thang was some recondite cajun reference to life in the swamps of Louisiana. The television show “Swamp People” only seemed to verify my misunderstanding. I wondered why garfish and alligators were left out. Was there some plot to rid the swamp of these creatures, especially in the wake of the oil spill. I thought I had joined a group of rabid ecologists. So when I started reading the references to eating bark, I thought the group had taken up the cause of elm trees and their plight. The japanese beetles, unlike the british ones, eat more than bark. Ha, I figured it out. It made sense. Now, the name change? What about the elm trees and all of my posters for the march on Washington?