Hearing-Apparated

If you know me, even a little, you'll recall I have this, um, thing that happens pretty frequently, when I hear the right words wrong, or hear the wrong words right, or...whatever, it just happens a lot, okay?

Some examples are in order:

There was the Bagel of Doubt incident;

The Avril Lavigne "Promise me you've never gonna find your blanket" moment (all right, that was Mona's moment, but I take credit for Mona so I will take credit for the moment);

and the "Disappointment Only" moment.

Now has come this:

I am, on a late Tuesday afternoon somewhere in the recent past, in charge of three noisy tired children who are playing a noisy tired game of Harry Potter and the Omelet Afire upstairs and probably bringing their fake wands within centimeters of their precious eyes, but whatever.

I am tired too. I will deal with the eyes-poked-out issue if it becomes one.

So I am downstairs getting dinner when I hear my daughter shouting, in her best Harry Potter voice:

"It's Smelly Armpits! It's Smelly Armpits!"

Hmmmm.

I'll send a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com to anyone who can decipher what she was really saying.

Ah, now you're reading, aren't you? Cheeky monkeys.

A New Low

Why do bloggers go on and on about their traffic stats---to their AUDIENCE?

Carol Burnett did not end her variety show by announcing the latest Nielsens.

Musical acts may clock the number of visitors to their sites, but rarely in any detail.

And even ebayers, who are asked to rate the merchandise and transactions, don't comment directly on the ebay dream itself.

(and good thing for ebay, too. You guys are losing us, sellers and buyers alike, with your inscrutable software and your little virtual stores).

Here at TTH, we've refrained from such navel-gazing and mirror-crooning.

Until now. And for an excellent reason. Because I can't wait to tell you how essentially unread we are.

Time to have a...comment dit-on?...frank discussion of those little pixel points we call site visits and page views.

To understand this technical discussion, you have to know that in our heyday (last year), we had 35 unique viewers per day (some of them were me, and I'm not so unique).

Then we dropped to a respectable 23, and held there no matter what I did or didn't do.

But something crazy and unprecedented happpened this summer: We lost 10 daily viewers between June and now! And those who do visit have rapier-like attention, clocking a minimalist .17 seconds in their Wham-Bam attempt to move on to likelier prey.

It sort of makes me feel like I can say anything.

I am drunk with power.

Caution: The last guy who felt that way has also reached a new low, such that he's cornered the market on the phrase "a new low."

Illustration here is copyright of and graciously lent to me by the uniquely gifted Bryan Ballinger.