The pressure of the approaching Chinese holiday may be getting to some of China's once-cool bloggers.

Is it me, or do the days leading up to the Spring Festival seem like a particularly stressful time of year? One could get that impression from reading group blog Bullog.cn these last couple of weeks.

Run for the most part by just one man—Luo Yonghao, once a teacher at New Oriental English in Beijing—Bullog, with just over 50 bloggers, is small enough to retain a solid personality, but big and diverse enough to almost resemble something along the lines of The Huffington Post or Salon.com. Bullog even makes the case that politics are not just personal, but sexual as well. Admittedly, it is a bit of a clique, although it claims entrance bears only one requirement, and herein lies my disclaimer: You need to have a cool blog.

It couldn't be further from that right now.

And any amusing effect holiday stress has on humans isn't helping. Luo just seems to have outright snapped. From a special notice currently on the main page:

As some friends of Bullog feel that pieces Bullog writer Luo Yonghan has posted in recent days have had an impact on the atmosphere at Bullog, Bullog Editor-in-Chief Luo Yonghao has temporarily taken Luo Yonghao's content off of the front page. ... Luo Yonghao's blog can only be visited by typing in the url: laoluo.bullog.cn.

Deleting one's posts off one's own blog, and then talking about it in the third person, well that's just hearsay. It's been Luo's behavior since the website opened that has left Bullog in the hurting state it's in today.

First three women felt cramped by all the bulls and left to start Cowlog. In October, old Internet hand Vegetable Head got fried to a crisp by Luo and his anti-Chinese herbal medicine campaigner friend Fang Zhouzi, and then following Luo's unsuccessful copyright infringement case against one media conglomerate which he then smeared all across Bullog, he lost the widely-respected North Wind, who happens to work for that company. There were at least two other major bloggers who left after large disputes, taking their readers and friends with them back to their old blogs.

So let it be said that people can and do blog themselves mad. But Luo definitely has brought this upon himself. Quite soon after Bullog opened, he and Fang overwhelmed it for nearly four months with a steady flood of posts relentlessly attacking Chinese medicine. Sure, it's unscientific and doesn't cure many serious diseases, but there's a time and a place. Veg Head wasn't even arguing in support of it or playing devil's advocate, he just wanted to see more balanced discussion, and got a flurry of eggs, mothers, body parts and turtles flung at him in return (hecaitou.com).

It didn't stop there. The special notice mentioned above is the result of a week of Luo and newly-added sidekick Kefi not even having an issue at this point, but indiscriminately picking apart Veg Head posts one after the other and mocking them to no end, with grandstanding, self-congratulating, posturing and the twisting of words all thrown into the mix. On Feb. 4, Kefi threw this in, in size 40 font:

I support a civilized Internet, so I've deleted the "curse” that was posted just now. But I've already performed the curse! And I've definitely got a raven's mouth! So it can't be undone!

1. For making things hard for me, for sordidly insulting my lover, abusing a girl who has nothing to do with here, you're not a man. I should cut you up into a thousand pieces!

2. This is my blog. My rules change when I want. I'll delete you when I feel like it. Don't be thinking you can get up in my space.

And a happy Year of the Pig to you too.