House of Eratosthenes

Nobody reads this blog, the saying goes. Except, since we started distinguishing ourselves that way, people have been coming by to read it. And that trickle of traffic has been slowly but surely rising throughout the last four years…in that time, more than one other blogger has come by to say “Hey, I’ve got the real blog that nobody reads!” But then they respect a sort of virtual trademark that we don’t really have, and allow us to continue to claim the tagline as our own.

That’s a good thing. “The Blog That Nobody Reads” has a sort of slippery, surreal definition to it; it doesn’t mean “no traffic.” It’s rather like the literal interpretation of “utopia”: noplace. House of Eratosthenes refers to thinking in such a logical way, that you gift yourself with being able to perceive things that ought to be, according to convention, beyond your grasp. “The Blog That Nobody Reads” indicates that nowadays we don’t do this so much. Nowadays, we settle for being told what to think by others.

That, and an informal blogging policy that here, we don’t mold and shape what we say in order to get more traffic. That’s how you fall into the trap. That’s how you end up saying silly bullshit things. Like, for example, that fire has never melted steel before — and a lot of other stuff like that.

But of course we do have Sitemeter. And we pay attention to it. It does have meaning to us. We do like making friends, and we’ve made some good ones here. Also, the numbers are doing some interesting things. They tell a story of readers who pop on in, and make it a point to keep on keepin’-on. You nobodies, it seems, are real creatures of habit. The daily hit total climbs or else it does not climb…on the days when it does not climb, it stays where it was the day before almost precisely. I mean by that, within five or ten hits, out of a daily total of between four and five hundred.

We are, evidently, being incorporated into daily routines of strangers.

Now, this is a source of interest, and it also inspires hope. We do not write, in these parts, for the benefit of readers with diminished attention spans…we absolutely do not do that. We labor, we linger, we inspect, we analyze, and when we engage in process-of-elimination, we tediously enumerate all of the possibilities. This is a cardinal sin, of sorts. We break rules of writing in favor of rules of sound engineering. And it gets pretty damn dry, sometimes, we think.

Like right now.

Anyway, September of ’08, although no doubt somewhat modest according to the average among four-year-old blogs, was nevertheless a record for us, and caps a trend of record-breaking over the last year (click on the thumbnail to the right for more detail). We look forward to hearing from our new readers, for in the end, what we’re advocating is not quite so much political conservatism, but simply — thinking like a grown-up. That makes for better friendships than political ideology. And if this is just a slice of Americana, perhaps our weary nation is outgrowing what had become previously become a national pastime of thinking like a spoiled brat. Maybe we’ve just outgrown the bullshit. Maybe we’re just so fed up with being told stupid idiotic things…like we never should’ve gone into Iraq because Saddam Hussein had no weapons and therefore was just a harmless, lovable old teddy bear who’d never hurt anyone…or when your President is being questioned in a disposition under oath, he gets to decide what answers are nobody’s business and therefore when he gets to lie his cheating, perjuring ass off…or that the Government set up explosives around the World Trade Center to justify the passage of the PATRIOT Act and the War on Terror…or GOOD SIR YOU MUST CONTACT ME AT EARLIEST IMMEDIATELY I HAVE 25,000,000 TO BE WIRED TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT HAVE A GOOD KIND REGARDS LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU…

…well, maybe we’re at that point you get after a lot of drinking, when you can feel your body start to be overwhelmed by the toxins. When the room starts spinning — it’s just not fun anymore. Maybe we’re sick and tired of the nonsense.

The possibility exists that it’s this whole subprime/loan/mess/bailout thing that really put us over the top in that department. That’s a pleasant idea to entertain, for us, because there’s a wonderful example of thinking like a child, and being rewarded with exactly the kind of disaster you get after the children have been put in charge of things. We already know for sure, that this particular event was the inspiration of our loquacious ramblings snagging a “quote-of-the-day” award for us this month.

Hooters & Horses It’s just a theory, at this point: We, as in the Big “We” that represents all of us, or a majority consensus therein — are tired of the bullshit, and we’re tired of the lies. If we can’t make ’em go away, we want them to at least improve in grade. Stop trying to fool us with tidbits of nonsense that can only fool complete imbeciles. We have grown to the point where we are ready to test what we are told, with meaningful tests, in the moment in which we are told it.

We’re demanding something better than bumper-sticker slogans that sound good, and reflect juvenile populist rage and nothing more.

Right now.

And Sen. Obama’s going to see if he can get elected as our President. Heh!

Ah well, this can still turn out any which way. But for now, The Chosen One is in a spot in which I wouldn’t want to be if I were him. I like my theory. Sure I like it because the outcome that would substantiate it, is one I find pleasing…not necessarily because I’d bet a lot of money on its likelihood. But I’ll take pleasing. There’s only one way to test it, anyhow, and that is to wait another five weeks. We’re ready to test it that way.

Welcome, all you nobodies not stopping by to not read the Blog That Nobody Reads. Take the time to look around, and write in. Introduce yourselves. We don’t bite.

I’ve been a nobody all my life. So I just naturally gravitated here. It’s comfy. Morgan has great beer, and we go to Hooters every now and then. ‘s’all good.

🙂
- philmon | 10/01/2008 @ 11:33
I’m always not reading this thing, because I have an abundance of nothing to not be doing.
- Andy | 10/01/2008 @ 12:47
I wasn’t here in September; I just found the site today.

Seems like my kind of thing.
- Apollodorus | 10/01/2008 @ 17:03

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