Tag: Gen X at 40 and its Readers

Tra-la, It’s May!

Comments in the morning. I just had this flashback to four years ago and my newbie blogging reactions over how nice I thought it was getting up in the morning to a bunch of stuff to read. Even though the stats are still sort of collapsing (everyone seemingly migrating to the beer blog ever so slowly), the comments are far more important at Gen X at 40 as I now and for some time have had no real expectations for this organ of mine other than being a place of pleasant if vigorous and unexpected.

You see things have changed. Last month I got about 105,000 visits from 57,207 unique visitors. While that latter number is the highest ever, I think the visits peaked in August 2005 at 338,790 but I only had 30516 uniques in that month. So I think we can see that I have gone from a 1/11 to less than 1/2. I used to kid myself that you were coming back 11 times a day. Can you say “spam filters”? It is indicative of it all, of course. Where once we thought these blogs were going to be newspapers, we are just pen pals. And that is more than good enough.

I have to give particular thanks for one particular reader this morning. Chris Taylor was good enough to share baseball tickets he could not use. I had it in my head they were for Toronto and Detroit and they enter the weekend’s mid-table letter pile. And, as it is for a Thursday, I think 5 hours driving for a 3 hour event will be a pass and I ask if I can pass them on again to someone who is going to use them and the ever kind Chris says sure. So I give the tickets away, come home to find them, end up having to dig through the recycling box to find the envelope and there it is – and it is not for the Jays against the Tigers…it’s for the Thursday night game next week against the Sox! I am so there. Six rows back of the visitor’s dugout screaming my love for Manny. I think I will go early to get some photos. My daugther is already planning the poster referencing Gerry Remy and portland.

What is the superlative of “woot”? “Most wooty”?

Four Years. Four. Long. Years.

3628 posts over four years. That is an average of 3628 posts for every four year period. All the while I have made few observations of note on the war that began weeks before the blog did, on the state of Canadian politics, on me, on blogging. But I did great Friday bullet point chats. Yes! It started just after I left my thirties and on my next birthday I will be 45.

No phrase captures what blogging means to me more that “plea for help”. While there have been highlights like astronaut art, Tantrama City and a careful examination of my relationship with pork, it has not been without its downside. The obvious cut and paste gap fillers, the riding of too many band wagons, the shoddy appeals to science, religion and law. But there has been sport, there has been travel in the states, there has been…sports and travel in the states.

And there has been you. While I have let my real life relationships drift, I have met exactly three…no, eight more people because of blogging. I mean met. The rest of you hide behind anonymity or silence. But for all of that only two have been banned with two others ripping out of here on that sea on confused anger and self-inflating indignation that likely is the hallmark of the rest of their lives. In the end – and like so many of us – I can honestly say on a daily basis thank God there has been beer. It it weren’t for the beer blog I would have packed this in years ago. And Hans. Thank God for Hans. Gary’s nice, too.

Now I have to rush again…a little late for work…again.

Cheese Punting Is Down

As part of Wikiality Week, it is important to note that the rate of cheese punting around here has gotten somewhat embarrassing. My access to baubles and trinkets depends on hefty cheese punting teamwork. Your access to fabulous potential prizes is likewise a matter directly connected to boot meeting cheesy goodness.

It is your right and duty to punt the cheese. Web 2.0 is teetering folks. To the ramparts, I say! Punt the cheese!!!

Easter Monday Plans

Easter Monday is the weirdest of holidays. A civic holiday in lieu of a religious holiday. No other religious holiday recognized in law is fixed to a day of the week so, appropriately for my present purposes, we still get the Monday off.

I have failed in my past Easter Monday plans. Since 2005, I have failed to learn more about Boogaloo music. Given two years since that thought, I could have become something of an amateur expert. So too, however, went my adult novice homeschooling in Arabic and Dutch years earlier and I have come to expect these short comings of mine. But I have also been a man of action. In 2004, I was on the Wolfe Island Ferry on Easter Monday. In 2006, I bought a banjo as it was the day before Happy Me Day! Because I needed a banjo. What are the things I need ten days before the 2007 version of HMD?

1. A trombone mouthpiece
2. a newly shingled roof by the end of the summer
3. a garden shovel
4. passports by the end of the year
5. shotputs

That is not too bad. And just to fill out the calendar, this blog started almost four years ago, on a day which was four days after Easter Monday 2003.

Today I will brew. I will do laundry and dishes and scrub here and there first but in the afternoon I shall brew…unless I nap.

Nice And Quiet

What a pleasant week it has been without the refer logs leading me to the reviews of the whacked complaining of rudeness and telling lies about lying, with strangers making unwelcome accusations against each other of no interest to anyone. How nice to have the conviviality of sport and group work making for gentle days of peace. It is like the thought of the Russian gent to the left: “hmm – a hole, a line and hope of a fish.” There was a time when I stopped arguing elsewhere as arguing gained nothing: it was like shouting at a shoe that did not fit. It is nice to experience the same stopping here, moving on now between the group projects and the sports and whatever.

Maybe there is another level of bloggy understanding where ego leaves us and we know unknowing as it is? Be the link.

Friday The First Chat Of 2007

Like you, I measure out the days in Friday chats now. If I can just make it to Friday chat without emptying another jar of ginger marmalade, I say to my self, I will be OK.

  • The first group project is going well. I think this one is a high level starter discussion. Next I am going to post one about what to do with the Senate…maybe. Wait for it, though. Don’t take off on the topic in these comments. I think I will propose one every Monday leading up to the next election. The rules are basic. Very strict focus and no debate. If I need to spin out a debate, I can add that in another post later in the week once the ground work is established. I will create a category for group projects and introduce them with the prefix “GP:”.

  • The Randy Johnson experiment is over. The Red Sox’s chance for the pennant look better and better for 2007.
    • Hmmm…I wonder why their work may get interrupted?

    UK scientists planning to mix human and animal cells in order to research cures for degenerative diseases fear their work will be halted.

    One personal guideline I have for my universe: no dog-boys.

  • Syracuse lost to Pitt last night in basketball. Watched it on the best spent 25 bucks a month I have ever spent sports cable TV package. We seldom consider what a boon and blessing premium package cable TV is. Anyway, Syracuse was not looking like a team that would get past the first round of the NCAA’s, though there is some spark there. Pitt was dominant, a wall. Syracuse may get there but they need to get less chippy. Less jack-the-three with 50 seconds to go.
  • Another quarterback from the CFL makes good in the NFL. Good for Garcia. Beat the Giants.
  • I am not sure what to make of CBC’s upcoming Little Mosque on the Prairies. I am not sure I like my comedy to have twists or premises that ties it into a set of opportunities that may limit it…but then again I am quite certain I do not like my comedy provided to me by the CBC. Not since The King of Kenstington anyway – which was a ground breaking culturally inclusive kind of comedy if you think about it. That being said, one thing – one man – gives me great hope for its success: Carlo Rota. He is my favorite actor on TV ever since the Great Canadian Cooking Show. I want to be punched on the shoulder by him one day and hear him say with his belly laugh “you’re one hell of a guy, Al! Beer?”. If anything or anyone can make that happen please email me. These things are possible, you know.

That is it. The day beckons. Don’t forget to listen to David Sommerstein on The Beat Authority at 3 pm EST and then Mike Alzo at 8 pm with The Folk Show both on NCPR. And try to fit in Darcey’s Friday Night Blues and Beer which should be posted about 4 to 5 pm this afternoon. It is a full day.

A Fabulous Yule Bullet Pointy Chat

That is what I wish for you all. The gift of fabulousness. This season brings out the fabulousness in all of us and lets us witness the fabulousness in each other – in friends, family as well as strangers. Be fabulous to each other and to yourself. That is the true meaning of the season.

  • One way to be fabulous is to ensure you stuff double digit paper money into those Salvation Army kettles you run into in the malls and outside the liquor stores struggling to get the gin from shelve to punch bowl.
  • Gary is playing tunes from The Jam this week. Careful readers will know the tale of how that band and Paul Weller in particular got me through my late teens with a certain fabulous modish style. Where is my green German paratrooper parka anyway?
  • The Red Sox have had a run of signings for 2007, especially in the bullpen, that makes me proud of my six shirts: Coco, Tek, Nomar, a gold shirt, a Ted Williams rookie shirt and a long sleeve blue. I also have an umbrella and a beach towel. And books. And stuff, too. Oh, and a Many Louisville slugger. And caps. I think their plan to make money off of franchising the brand is working out.
  • Ian, who I never have met but who does seek out my advice in things fluid, summarizes the season’s particularities in his family. Best advice I have heard this year? You do not have to go and visit them, whoever the “they” are to you and yours.
  • Hey – I need a cut and paste from the main stream media. What is a blog without a certain measure of MSM copyright infringement? Besides, the courts know about it:

    Providing Web links to copyright-protected music is enough to make a site legally liable, an Australian court ruled in a case that created legal uncertainty for search engines around the world. The full bench of the Federal Court, the country’s second-highest court, has upheld a lower court ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of the Web site in question, as well as Comcen, the Internet service provider that hosted it, were guilty under Australian copyright law.

    A very Merry Christmas to all the digitally thieving buggers out there, too. Because the copyright infringing thief and their half-witted amateur and professional apologists in the new e-world (aka iWorld) are people we should remember at Christmas as well.

Must run. I am working on about 15 hours sleep so far this week due to reasons beyond my control and need to get where I need to get to so that I can think about napping later in the eleven days off to come. That is right. I am taking Yule off for the first time since 2002. Woot.