blogs, messages, bottles

What is a blog post, really, but a message in a bottle, seen by who-the-hell-knows? People from randomly launched searches click through to a blog with a spattering of search terms, paw about the post for a few moments, and then leave -- never to return. Google analytics tells me that this happens over and over again. There are at least six billion people in this world. And about three thousand of those are unique visitors here. Each one has his or her own intricately storied life, one which for a moment crossed here.

I have been surprised at how much blogs are like bait. Once I wrote an entry on oil prices. And guess what? Somebody from Saudi Arabia showed up. Somebody out there trolls even insignificant blogs for oil prices -- even Philosophy blogs. That's hard core. Maybe I shouldn't have used that phrase, since it might attract people more from Bangkok (12 visitors), Tokyo (3), or even worse places -- like San Fernando Valley, CA (luckily, 0).

I've had precisely one visitor from Almaty, Kazakhstan. What was that about? I had to search the internet just to figure out where such a place even was. (After that search, I came to appreciate that there are a whole lot of "-stan" named locales around too.) And, too, there are lots of little (and not so little) countries in Africa that I still need to collect. Perhaps a series of African tribal philosophy would start pulling them in.

And some singular (albeit frozen) soul from Iceland made a visit here also.

But at least no wandering vikings on a tour through Greenland have ever visited my site. That would be the last straw. Or, the last Mattak,[1] I suppose; or maybe Kiviak[2] -- that stuff has to be nasty.


REFERENCES

[image] "Message in Bottle" Dutchcorner Oct. 16, 2007 (Accessed May 28m 2008)

[1] 'Mattak' is a whale skin with a strip of blubber inside, regularly given as a gift on Christmas in Greenland. Apparently, it tastes like coconut, but is tougher to chew and so it's swallowed whole sometimes.

[2] 'Kiviak' is another traditional Christmas food of Greenland. If your Viking-Eskimo cross mother-in-law really appreciates you, then she will give you this treat of raw flesh of an auk, buried whole in sealskin for several months.

O.