“I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
That quote - often attributed to Mark Twain, by the way, instead of Clarence Darrow who was the actual speaker - is a pretty tidy summation of my reaction to the sad news that the official Donald J. Trump blog is deader'n Ashli Babbitt.
Word, Tubby; as the George Washington character says in Hamilton: Governing is easy. Blogging is harder.
I get it. The long-form blog is dead (he says, as he gazes out over the vast herds of Substack grazing on the lush green lucre of "voluntary contributor"). Nobody wants to read your stupid thoughts, random person.
Nobody wants to read MY thoughts, that's for sure; the traffic on this site has dropped to nothing even from the halcyon days of 2018, when a post would routinely get triple figures in views. Now I'm lucky if I can break 100 pageviews, and even that hasn't happened since the Bay of Pigs post back in April (all the "battles" posts garner looks more than anything else)...
...except for this one:
This is an obscure thing I tossed off in 2011 that included recounting this weird dream I had where my in-laws were Korean; the title is Internet-Hangul for "What dreams may come".
The only thing I can figure for that bizarre spike in January 2020 - it got over 2,000 looks between the end of 2019 and 1/31/20 - is that someone or someones in Korea Googled the phrase and came across that post instead. It looks like someone found it in October-November 2018, where the pageviews jump from a handful to several hundred and then rise steadily until November 2019. Suddenly they spike from there until the end of January 2020, and then drop back off.
So my guess is that for about a couple of months I was a meme in South Korea.
Who knew?
Whatever. The point is, that it's been almost 15 years, and over 2,000 posts, and I'm still here, still doing the old-school (seriously? Who would ever have thought in the Oughts that here in the Twenties we'd be calling blogs and blogging "old-school"? Jesus wept!) blogging thing, unlike Orange Foolius who couldn't hack it for a month.
Just to celebrate? Since I revere all Internet Traditions?
Here's some cat pictures.
That's the Small Cat, desperately hoping that a squirrel or bird will break the window and hurl itself into her mouth.
Dueling kitties, trying to figure out how to duck the early-summer heat (it was well up into the nineties in mid-week) whist wearing a fur coat you cannot remove.
Sometimes you just can't escape the heat, so you just conk out and accept that your furry ass is whipped.
Drachma in cooler times, loafing on the deck railing.
They're good cats, or, rather, they're good at being cats. And I supposed that's enough, when you're a cat.
I have more to say, but I've got to run and will be back later today to say it.
Point is...I'm still here. And there's something to be said for that.
8 comments:
I see you, ahem, clipped off your "spike" from Tom of Finland.
For those too young to recall one of the Chief's previous performance peaks, here it is.
Y'know what's weird? I know I got a shit-ton of traffic on that Tom of Finland picture...but Blogger doesn't show it. It has a huge spike in November 2016, which is probably one or more of the election posts, but for 2010-2011? Nothing similar.
And the all-time post numbers put ol' Tom now down to 10th. Here's the list of the top posts for clicks, with dates posted and pageviews:
Decisive Battles: La Noche Triste 1520 (10/12/10) - 23,400
Half FOX and half free (4/5/17) - 20,300
꿈꾸는 무슨이 오더라도 좋다 (11/8/11) - 19,800
Decisive Battles: Verdun 1916 (2/17/12) - 17,700
Decisive Battles: Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 1942 (11/17/12) - 15,200
Growth Spurt (10/24/10) - 14,900 (This one still baffles me; it's a random collection of ramblings on the video junk my kids were watching at the time, just a monsterously generic "daddy blog" post. I have NO idea why people wanted to look at it. Go figure)
Decisive Battles: Khalkhin-Gol (Nomonhan) 1939 (6/12/13) - 14,100
Hot for Something: Hakkaa päälle 2 (that's ol' Tom - 11/16/10) - 11,100
Battles that Changed History; Little Bighorn 1876 (6/26/11) - 7,520
Battles that Changed History; First Manila 1898 (8/24/11) - 7,310
I'm glad that the Cortez post got clicks - I did a LOT of research for that, and it's a great historical post on a subject that doesn't get much love. So, there.
But Tom's day has come (so to speak) and gone.
Sorry, Tom - 8th, not 10th. Still...that's not very...big.
Oh, and the "Half FOX and half free" post? ALL the traffic on that one was driven by people coming over from Jim Wright's Stonekettle Station blog, where I commented on one of HIS posts and his followers followed me back here. That WAS the second-biggest traffic this blog ever got after Tom, but really not my doing at all.
I mean surviving what has been an absolute shit year (and several pretty shitty years leading up to that shit year) and still having the will to publish anything rather than drowning your sorrows is still something.
I'm reading you, and I am glad you are there writing things for me to read. Your decisive battles posts are epics (think about writing a book!) but I love your Old Sarge stories and political thoughts. Thank you for all you've written and will write.
It is true that long-form writing, especially thoughtful, does not "sell" as much. Shorter attention spans and being able to follow short messages and comment wars over twitter may have left longer-form writing restricted more to polemics and news articles, the latter also on the decline. I actually realise that although myself I always enjoyed reading (and can read relatively fast), I am not following nowhere near the number of blogs I used to a few years back, and many of them are more like news pieces or single-subject specialised issues. And I can attest to the shorter attention spans, even for other media: when alone I can hardly watch videos/movies/documentaries in blocks longer than 15'... And other bloggers have also noted this fact about long-form blogging.
That said, there are few blogs I always check (for years now), and really the one that I am always delighted when there is a new post (especially as it does not have a regular publishing schedule, so every post is a pleasant surprise) is yours! I have found the variety of topics so interesting, and your command of the english language so impressive (in that it is not only masterful, but so pleasant and refreshing), that I thoroughly enjoy every post. Not to blow your own trumpet too much, but I don't ever comment either, except for one blog, yours. The last time I used this pseudonym to comment online was most certainly in the last millennium...
So keep them coming Chief! Regardless of the number of readers, writing can be therapeutic for the writer too, or help to get ones thoughts in order (although not a writer myself, I can only guess). And it can still have a profound effect to people around the globe. You have been my window to the Northwest (a place I have not been closer than 1000 km to -apologies for the units, that is 700 miles I guess, but 1000 sounds nicer as an order of magnitude), and through the Decisive Battles (for which I need to write a separate comment altogether for how awesome it is) a window to the world and to time! And I know one opinion coming from one guy is not much, but for what it is worth, by my own admission, I am a pretty awesome and very important guy...
Oh and many people have achievements who they keep bragging about, but who can honestly say "I was a meme in Korea"? I can only think of you and Psy, so keep them coming!
(P.S. Of course if you want more views there are some time honoured ways to do this. Lots of selfies following lip and breast augmentation surgery seems like a good one, although not sure if that is your thing. I would also say "cats", but you have that one covered. Other than that, you could consider a (useful) twitter account where you can e.g. throw in small historical nuggets you discover as you research your Decisive Battles, to help history researchers and help people discover this hidden gem of the internet (again I need a whole different comment to say how much of a gem this thing really is, as already I have written about a dozen paragraphs more than I should have...and we know not many will read long-form texts :-p)
Post a Comment