Virtual Flaneurism

This effectively sums up my week.

Anyone who's anyone has heard of John Hodgman's wonderful collection of hobo names. I was reminded today of this website, which takes the list a step further with an illustration (or four) for each name.

The first ten names:

#1: Stewbuilder Dennis
#2: Cholly the Yegg
#3: Holden the Expert Dreamtwister
#4: The Rza
#5: Jack Skunk
#6: Jack Skunk Fils
#7: Lord Dan X. Still-Standing
#8: Marlon Fitz-fancy
#9: Bazino Bazino, The Kid Whose Hair Is On Fire
#10: Whispering-Lies McGruder

It is the end of the year, making it a time for some humble reflection. Instead of just talking about myself, I've decided to share with you a list of the top ten most popular pages from this year...all whilst talking about myself, of course. After, a handful of thoughts and self-deprecating comments that the following list inspired.

Now, the top ten:

10. August 29th: #1114

That a Cathy cartoon made it this high on the list is really very discouraging. I almost closed up shop on this one.

9. April 10th: #193

A personal reflection on leaving New York, as well as a link to Joan Didion's wonderful essay "Goodbye to All That". Not funny, so what were you linking it for?

8. October 9th: #1461

The "Awesome Sweaters" video. I might've wracked up all the hits on this page myself.

7. July 14th: #775

Yet another personal reflection, this one ultimately about my decision whether to stay in graduate school. Probably the dumbest post I've made - which is saying something.

6. July 13th: #767

You all liked to read my ramblings, apparently: this post was a segment from a piece I wrote in 2007 about my nephew's birth. It involved jokes about baby testicles, so maybe that explains the number of hits.

5. July 9th: #733

Naive Secretary E-mail Thread. I think I stole this from Ben and failed to give him credit. Remedied, bitches!

4. August 25th: #1089

Neil Patrick Harris + Silly Bandz + Sexual Innuendo? I fully support your approval of this one.

3. April 25th: #298

A battle of the "bands" where two fools try to outdo one another using children's musical instruments. I liked it, but you clearly liked it more.

2. July 30th: #889

The people of Reykjavik have spoken.

1. September 28th: #1359

It says so much about the readership of this blog that the top page is (1) about Obama and (2) a double entendre about sexual penetration. Good to know you're all as immature as I am.

Some thoughts:

- From my exploration of your top hits, it has occurred to me that you all either do not click the music pages, or simply do not like them. However, that is not true! Your top 5 searched tags for the year were cat, video, dogs, music, and gay. First, you all are clearly amazing, because those tags are some of my favorites. B, it appears that, while you aren't clicking the music pages themselves, some (or many) of you are regularly clicking "music" to check out all of the song posts at once. So, basically, I'm gonna keep trolling you with music, and that's that. Expect more Styx.

- You all seem to enjoy reading my writing. Seriously -- three of the top ten posts are "reflection posts" involving me rambling and you reading. The implications of this are mind-blowing -- should I be writing more? I am inclined to assume that you are mainly clicking these pages so that you can link others to them as a joke.

- I use Google Analytics, which gives you a rundown of where your visitors are coming from. Who knew that I had readers in Texas and Chile? Good thing I kept those racist Incan cartoons to myself. Also, it is telling that all of the Texas readers are from that great homo-hacienda of the South, Austin. (PS. Yes, Google Analytics is so stalkerish that it tells me where you're reading from, down to the city. Unfortunately, they've yet to integrate Google Maps and Analytics, or I'd be all up in your home addresses blog hits).

That's it, kiddos. Onward and upward to a fantastic 2011.

This evening I looked through a collection of "rules for writing" by published authors that Pete had forwarded to me. As a creative writing student, suggestions directed towards aspiring writers was relatively commonplace (one of my favorite rules - and one of the more impenetrable I've come across - has been, "Write what you know about what you don't know." I have my own interpretation, but make of it what you will). The pleasant part of these "rules" is that they are anything but - published authors almost universally amend such lists with the fact that there are no rules for writing. Even so, one can usually find a novel thought among the lists, so they are worth looking through.

These particular lists of rules got me thinking about writing - or rather not writing, which has been my habit for the past nine months or so. The thought of writing seriously again got me a bit frightened: do I still (or did I ever) have a talent for this; when would I find the time; would it be a waste of that time? This immediately reminded me of something one of my first creative writing professors said on the topic of writers avoiding writing.

"Only bad writers think what they write is any good," he said (or so I now humbly paraphrase). "We avoid writing because it could be bad -- what we write -- and though usually it isn't, and though when we do sit down and do write we have moments of clarity and genius or maybe spend three hours on one simile that we ultimately erase, despite all that joy, we are constantly frightened that this thing we love to do, this thing that exposes a part of us is not going to work. Like one day we are going to sit down at our desk and, like a pacifistic Jack Torrance, find we can do little more than repeatedly peck ERROR ERROR CANNOT LOCATE TALENT onto a page. And this thing is so important that the thought of it not working is terrifying enough to make you not want to try. But then you write because it frightens you, because you want to create something good despite the risk that you'll break -- because if it didn't frighten you, if it didn't matter enough to scare you, then you couldn't be a writer."

Not only do I agree, but this is the Catholic guilt of writing rules. Write, or you're not a writer. Dance, or you're not a dancer. Teach, or you're not a teacher. I could go on and on. If only these thoughts got me writing, rather than digging through old short story compendiums and daydreaming about prospective projects.

From a Child's Mind: Types of Bitches