100

If  you are paying attention, you may have guessed that the title of this week’s post refers the fact that last week’s was the one-hundredth submission if you don’t count the first which was merely an announcement that I was starting a blog and features would be forthcoming.  (All of this, of course discounts the existence of my travel blog.)

So I thought I’d review some facts and figures about the blog (because feelings don’t really matter) so far.

Across 100 posts, the blogsite has received 6,046 pageviews.  Now you would think, if you did the math in your head, “Hey, that’s not bad… sixty hits per week.”  But the truth is, there are some weird anomalies going on here.  We’ll get to those later.

The truth is, with one exception, the highest pageview count was received by the first post, The Great Potato Excursion (a boyhood memoir) with fifty-six hits.  After that, the readership dropped sharply and averaged around twenty hits per week for about nine months then dropped again into the single digits range.  Obviously, some television network is airing Mr. Ed reruns opposite by blogpost releases.

By far, discounting the aforementioned anomalies, the single highest pageview count was enjoyed by …and Taxes.  If you were among the eighty-one visitors to that post, then you will remember it was not about taxes at all but the inevitability of death.  By pure coincidence it was posted on April 11, four days before the income tax filing deadline. I am sure some number of poor desperate tax filers were looking for last minute suggestions on how to screw Obama, Inc. out of one more dollar.  God’s work, I say.

But in September and October 2014, something strange happened.  The Ukraine became my favorite audience and boosted the monthly counts to 633 and 556 respectively.  No, I don’t know why.  Adding to the mystery, the vast majority of these hits went to The Greatest Invention of My Lifetime and The Greatest Invention of My Lifetime, cont., an inane two part treatise on my love affair with the word processor that had been published on successive weeks in June of 2013.  Yeah, go figure!  There was some Ukrainian spill over onto The Zen of Mustachios (81-July 3, 2013) and Cats or Dogs? (77-June 6, 2013).  Those are the facts and I can’t even begin to explain them.

But speaking of foreign countries, the readership breaks down like this:

USA                3,555

Ukraine              705

Turkey               387

France               152

Germany            147      Thanks Nicky, miss you.

Russia               127

Poland               115

New Zealand        81

China                  65

Mexico                52       My good friend, Chris (BTW Amigo, that’s just half!)

I have received very little feedback from readers.  My friend Frank is always ready with a thought or two, but I see him weekly anyway and he’ll do anything for a burrito.  The most frequent can be paraphrased to, “I didn’t get that at all!”  My former sergeant offered the most valuable insight when he corrected my use of the word “roll” when I had intended to use, “role”.  Once a mentor, always a mentor… thanks, Doug.

So that’s where we are to date.  And, considering the tissue tender nature of my ego, I think it’s probably time to change things up.  Rather than forcing the creative (non) juices to flow on a weekly basis, I will write as I am inspired by the humorous world around me and post as produced.  You may get lucky and never be haunted by my musings again.