Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever tried to recall a joke and all of its details as you were telling it to a group of people?
The first time you ever heard the joke, you lost all of your composure at how hysterically funny it turned out to be. Tears came to your eyes and you slipped into a falsetto chuckle or even a pig like snort as you made every attempt to regain control of yourself after hearing that punch line that went along the lines of “….if you beat a fish it will die” or “….because it can”.
When you gather a group of people to retell the joke, you manage to forget a minor point in the middle of the story, or even how the delivery of the punch line (autocorrect just changed that to “pun blind” for me) should be. In the end, you’ve absolutely ruined the funniest joke you’ve heard in awhile. At the same time, you’ve created an awkward moment between you and your audience where they now question whether you can adequately function in a civilized society when you’re prone to deliver nothing but “pun blinds”.
Writing a blog which hits the mark and conveys your point with all of the coherence and organization necessary to transcend random babbling on the internet can be a challenge. It’s like telling one of those jokes that busted your gut the first time you heard it.
Big picture, there have been several entries in the collection of 366 blogs I put up this year, along with all of the entries I posted in the years before which have hit their mark.
They conveyed my point. They evoked the emotion I was shooting for. They didn’t leave you with a sense that I had taken to guzzling the bong water. They were the ones that I got right.
Unless I talk to everyone who happens across my blog, I have no way to qualify that statement though. There are only a handful of people who have either placed a comment on the blog itself, or through social networking, or even in person.
In comes the math. On a daily basis I take a look at the statistics on how many unique visitors knock on the door and how many page views take place. Aside from the human born feedback I receive, the statistics are the only other device I have to measure the quality (or lack thereof) of my writing.
The problem there is that statistics only measure my ability to discuss not only the things rocketing through my skull, but the skulls of others.
The key is to not fall into the trap of writing about what I think people are looking for. The day I resort to that tactic is the day I start writing based on focus group opinions and polling data.
Not interested.
So based on the statistics alone, I’m providing this year’s biggest hits. Some of them were published under the Letters From The Past banner, and others came well before that.
Title / Publish Date / 2012 Rank / All time rank
Don’t Be Messin’ With My Green Tea / May 18, 2011 / 10 / 3 – This particular blog tore into my statistics because several other green tea fans had taken to the search engines asking if Lipton had changed their recipe in their citrus flavored green tea.
My relationship with the good people at Lipton borders on that of codependent. First they give me the good stuff that I love, and then they change the recipe to rival that of doe urine. But then, they change it back. Kinda. To cap it off, they try something else which just doesn’t feel right and subsequently leaves a weird aftertaste. At the time of this writing, they’ve stopped their shenanigans with the recipe. Anymore incidents and I think I’m going to buy Codependent No More for my e-reader.
White Liberation Theology / Mar 26, 2011 / 9 / 12 – One morning while on one of my infamous staycations, I called into a Houston radio station in order to tell the host that his saxophone playing sounded racist. It was all tongue in cheek. The host is a conservative, and most conservative white guys on the radio are characterized as the being racist for the silliest of reasons. In the process, I joked that I could hear the “white liberation theology” oozing out of his playing. I subsequently wrote a blog about the incident and defined “white liberation theology” to be the rejection of “white guilt”.
Alert Me When / July 22, 2009 / 8 / 14 – This particular post was one of the first ones I put on TharpSter.Org. It actually started out as a note of Facebook. Since it discusses procedures for using Lotus Notes Sametime (an instant messaging utility), the post has garnered its collection of hits as people have asked the search engines various questions on how to use it.
Texas To Name Official State Font / Mar 30, 2011 / 7 / 8 – This was a gag news story I posted upon learning that there were people out there working to ban MS Comic Sans from offices and other professional establishments. It would seem that all of the problems in the world have been solved by now if we’re resorting to worrying about things as innocuous as a font. Why not ban 44 ounce cups of soda from an entire city while you’re at it? The post itself tends to get hits whenever people look up “Texas state font”.
Monkeys, Knives, Super Heroes, & Really Cool Pictures Lifted From The Internet / Jan 29, 2012 / 6 / 10 – It would seem that researching the aspects of a monkey knife fight on the internet is a popular one. When I posted this one, I had participated in a spirited discussion earlier in the day at Cubeville trying to determine who was going to shepherd a project. When all was said and done, I characterized the event as a collection of monkeys with knives. In addition I found a really cool picture depicting such a fight. The picture is generally wrong in many ways, but I still tend to laugh at it.
A Palatable Remote / Feb 9, 2010 / 5 / 2 – At the time I wrote this post, our pit bull Hope had been with us for just about a month. In that short time, she had shown us that she liked to chew on things. Over the course of a year, she would chew up five or six silver remotes for our AT&T Uverse service, some headphones, some shoes, and even the rosin Junior uses on his viola bow. Earlier this year, the vet had to go in and remove the remains of a noise making stuffed toy from her gut in order to save her life. She’s only allowed to chew on Kong balls now, as they haven’t succumbed to her impressive bite strength.
I’m The Customer Who / April 23, 2012 / 4 / 7 – One day while wandering around at Blockbuster, I got really pissed off at the attention we received while we shopped and the inattention we received at the register. I fired off a blog as a result. Within a matter of days and through no means of my own, the blog found it’s way into a discussion forum about Blockbuster. The site hosting the forum was dedicated to the hatred of Blockbuster, but was populated by more employees than by customers. Those who responded to my bitching trashed me in that forum, and even copied their responses as comments to the blog itself. To this day, those comments are still pending, waiting for my approval to be posted. Ironically enough, all of those who trashed me were employees who failed to acknowledge or realize the fact that their brethren had provided bad customer service in the first place. I expect most of the hits on this particular post linked from that particular forum.
It should also be noted here that this particular post was the first one to feature my repetitive mentions of the lovely and talented Scarlett Johansson in skin tight attire and loaded for bear (or bare).
New Trend In 2012 Vacation Requests / Oct 29, 2011 / 3 / 5 – Excuse me while I wax nostalgic about the end of the world as predicted by the Mayans. This particular post was in anticipation of the upcoming end of the world. At the time I was in the process of putting in my 2012 vacation request. At one point or another, I had encouraged those who believed the Mayan prediction to put in for Thanksgiving off because we would all be gone in time for Christmas. The hidden agenda here was to free up time on the vacation calendar for Christmas so that I wouldn’t have to fight anyone for it.
She Did A Mean Macarena To The Funky Cold Medina / Sept 9, 2012 / 2 / 6 – There was a point this last fall where every blog title I posted was a song lyric. This particular one came courtesy of Sammy Hagar. Beyond that, the blog was just one of those entries where I had absolutely nothing to write about. As a result, I just typed things which were going through my head at the time. The only reason this particular post got the number of hits it did was because of an animated gif I linked to which depicts a character banging their head on the keyboard until it’s a bloody glob of goo. People searching that picture out end up finding it on the epitome of my writer’s block inspired ramblings.
The Constitutional Convention / Oct 12, 2011 / 1 / 1 – The number one crowd favorite which generated more hits this year, and for all time (since July, 2009) is a post about the Constitutional Convention. Not really though.
The post was actually in response to a declaration made by humorist and cartoonist Scott Adams on his own blog that Government was broken. In response, there were those calling for a Constitutional Convention in order to create a new government for us all.
Now I really don’t know how serious Adams was about things with this post. Regardless, I called ‘bullshit’ on the premise. The reason government is broken is because it’s not playing by the rules which are established in the Constitution.
Let’s look at it bigger picture though. The number one post all time on this site is based on people looking up “Constitutional Convention” on a search engine. I read this as a sign that something is wrong in our country today when people feel compelled to look that up. Don’t you?
So there you go.
Ten posts which have changed the course of the internet based on my subconscious ability to perceive what will be entered into an internet search engine.
Tune in tomorrow folks, and you’ll find out which ones were my favorite.
