Site News: Housekeeping

First, I want to make sure I thank everyone again for their donations on behalf of Johnny Coldcuts. I appreciate them, even if he doesn't.

By the way: Does anyone get my thank-yous? PayPal notifies me of each donation, and then I reply with a thank you; but for some time I've wondered if those thank-yous are going to the donor or just to some PayPal addresss. I don't think I've ever gotten a reply.

If no one's actually getting these thank-yous, I'm sorry. All I can say is: I've sent out a thank you after each and every donation. Let me know if you've received them. If you haven't, I have to figure out what I've been doing wrong in replying.

UPDATE: It turns out there were a bunch of donations in the past two weeks I never thanked the donors for. I'm sorry about that-- it's that problem I mention, below, of putting off responding until I can think of something funny to say, and then forgetting to respond at all. A good number of donations came in through last week, and I put off responding. Then I went away for the weekend, and completely forgot I had people to thank when I came back. I hope you'll forgive the lack of consideration.

Next: I'm adding blogs to my blog-roll soon, maybe this weekend. If not this weekend, Monday or so. I used to be able to keep up with those who were adding me by checking Technorati. Not to brag, but I can't do that anymore; I've got too many linkers to scan through the lists looking for new ones.

So, if you're linking me and want to be linked, please drop me an email as soon as you can.

Give me your address and the name you want your site listed as. If you want to spare me some effort, put the whole shebang into a href= etc. format (but leave out the beginning and ending angle-bracket thingees, so I can just cut and paste). Also let me know if you're a new blog. I usually put new blogs into the new blog showcase for a period before moving them onto the regular list.

I link most people who ask or who link me, except if you're racist or something like that, and except if you post so infrequently that you're sort of not really a blog at all.

Next: Emails. I've been bad about responding to emails. For one thing, I've been getting a lot more. For another, I've had a bad habit of clicking on an email, reading it, and thinking, "Let me respond later, when I can think of something interesting or witty to say." Trouble is, I rarely do think of anything especially witty to reply back, and then I just don't respond for a long period. Sometimes I forget to respond entirely.

I have a new rule that I'll respond as soon as I read an email, even if I have nothing interesting to say, except for "Thanks." So I'll reply more quickly, but unfortunately they're not going to be quality replies most of the time.

But please keep sending them! The tips are great. Also, if you have a blog-post you're especially proud of, let me know about that, too. I won't necessarily link -- it depends on how good I think the post is, how much the general topic interests me, and my mood -- but I do link a lot of those. I write more than I read (unfortunately), so unless you're one of the biggest bloggers, I'm probably not going to stumble across your best posts by happenstance.

Let me know. Just also understand that I'm not going to link everything sent to me, and I won't necessarily have good reasons for not linking. One thing about the format I've settled on is that it's Headline-based, which sort of means that anything that gets posted on its own has to be headline-worthy. (Instapundit isn't headline-based, for example; he just posts stray thoughts.) So usually something I link either has to be big enough, important enough, or good enough for its own headline, or else has to fit comfortably as an update to some other headlined story.

Okay, now this is actually bragging: I've finally passed 2000 unique hits per day. I honestly have no idea why my traffic goes up sometimes. I'll do lots of good posts and see traffic fall or remain steady; and then in a slow week, one without any big humor pieces or some link from a big blogger, I gain 10%.

I suspect it has nothing to do with what's on this site, specifically, but what's in the news generally. A "Big News Week" produces more traffic, even when I'm not posting much.

But thanks for everyone who's reading.

I'm curious just as to how/why new readers are suddenly hitting on this site. If you feel like letting me know, mention it in a comment or drop me an email.

Lastly: I'm working on the Haiku Contest announcements. My plan is to post what might be called "The Wildcard Round Results" later tonight, and then the actual winners tomorrow or Sunday. At this point, it looks like Mr. Paul Anka will be hosting, and the judges will consist of Geoffrey the Duck, Johnny Coldcuts, and a Special Celebrity Judge to be named later. I'll just say this Special Celebrity Judge might or might not favor very tight t-shirts that accentuate his plump man-boobies.

No, it's not Oliver Willis.

Update: In case anyone cares, I'm more likely to link something when it involves a nice catch of underreported/underread news, or something buried in, say, the 9-11 report that no one has really noticed. That's the Gold Standard to me. I'm always looking for that sort of thing, but I don't find it too often on my own.

I'm less likely to link pure opinion pieces unless they're really good or they have a new angle. Opinions I have, coming out my butthole.

And, this may seem strange, given that this is chiefly a humor blog, but I'm also less interested in humor pieces -- again, unless they're really, really good. It's not that I'm trying to shut out the competition or anything (although, who knows, maybe that's going on -- I don't trust my own motives; I don't know me well enough for that). But again, it's more that I think I've got that part of blogging covered pretty well.

Not that there aren't funnier writers or funnier postings out there; it's just that I already do a lot of that sort of thing, and I'm chiefly interested in beefing up my blog when it comes to my weaknesses (such as deeply-reading reports for hidden nuggets, or catching under-reported stories in the press, or providing Steven den Beste style deep analysis).

Just mentioning that, because I get a lot of emails about humorous pieces, and I usually don't link them. It's not that I don't think they're funny, it's just that my main interest in linking is calling attention to news that others may have missed. I just have a higher bar for humor links than for news-links.

You might say, "Well, gee, this is funnier than your crap, but you posted that, didn't you?"

To which I say, "Well, yeah, but that's because it was my crap." If I set my own bar high, I'm barely going to be blogging at all.