The Results Are In

After over a week of staring at a "Data will be available within 24 hours" message on Google Analytics, I was finally able to access our blog analysis today. Some interesting nuggets:

• We've had one international visitor (Fontainhas, Portugal)
• 43 unique visitors
• 67% of visits are from returning readers
• 1 person viewed the site from the yantra.com domain. Google cryptically added, "Russian" in parenthesis after that visitor.

So, there are a few things we can conclude from all this.

First and foremost, it's time to start turning a profit on this sucker. In the next few days, you can expect to see pop-up ads, pop-under ads, and an original kind of fund-raising where the site operators make updates while they're working on someone else's dollar. These three revenue streams should provide enough cash to allow myself and billkell to live comfortably and continue to make our car payments. If all else fails, fuck it, we're making this a warez site.

Second and secondmost, we're making serious headway into the hard-to-reach Northern Portuguese demographic. We'll exploit this by making approximately 1 out of every 3 posts in Portuguese, starting with the remainder of this one:

Todo o mundo é estágio, e todos os homens e jogadores das mulheres meramente.

Adios, zapatos.

NYT - The Center No Longer Holds

Illustration by Project Projects

The article doesn't add a whole lot to the debate, but this nugget was interesting:

Consider a G.O.P. tactic that has come to be called "catch and release." After the leadership has assured itself that a controversial bill will pass, moderate Republicans are released to cast highly publicized votes of "conscience." This is one reason why so many big bills end up magically squeaking through with no votes to spare.

Kafka dreams

Last night I had a dream where I was in a scummy part of town with a few people. I had to sleep, so me and one of the other people laid down against a wall on a really sketchy street (or inside a sketchy house). I woke up to find that there were rats covering my hands. They started biting me, leaving my hands with lots of bite-marks; they looked almost like snake-bites. I was freaking out, and implored the people I was with (who knew the area) to take me to a hospital. They told me not to worry about it, and that I'd be fine. The last thing I remember is worrying about catching The Black Plague, but they still wouldn't help me.

Google turned up some instances where people have had similar dreams (rats biting hands being the important motif). The only thing I was able to find was the obvious analysis that a rat represented a deceitful person in my midst, and that being bitten means I've gotten screwed over. Forgive me for thinking that's a little lame. It's not nearly as interesting as the meaning behind the dream where all my teeth crumble.

Maybe the important part of the dream wasn't the rats (although it was the most vivid). Perhaps what was important was the fact that none of the people I was with were helping me.

Where's Jung when you need him?