WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE: a two-part article that I published on here on April 9 and 10 was read by someone who then remarked about my piece on his blog, and it turned a bunch of his readers onto my site. That is, my work was complimented by another blogger.
And the result? Et factum est, legunt, et descripserunt.
In English: “They came, they read, they registered.”
Or, the lesser event that I want to believe is that the use of a certain four-letter word attracted the attention of a bunch of internet surfers who typed it into their browser and that brought them to my site with the same response—to read, therefore to register.
That is, what I want to believe is cause = effect . . .
First came the cause, then the event
When there is an occurrence—especially one not expected nor seemingly having been predictable—the human brain/consciousness often (usually?) sees this occurrence as an effect. The brain/consciousness then goes looking for a cause. When a cause is not found, some people write the whole affair off as a “mere” coincidence.
But the human brain rarely has difficulty in finding a probable cause—even when it is, in fact, a rather improbable cause.
So it is that my brain/consciousness is looking for a cause: nealumphred.com has enjoyed a minor explosion of New User Registrations unlike any that the site has experienced in the eight months it has been up and running.
And it all began on April 9.
Below is a list of the first eighteen days of the month of April 2014. The first column is the date (obviously); the second column (in parentheses) is the number of new articles that I posted that day; the third column (in bold print) is a number representing units of new registrations received that day.
An obvious response to the “fuck pieces”?
The figure “1” on April 1 stands for the average number of new registrations my site receives during one day as determined by the first three months of this year. It could be 1, it could be 10, it could be 100. On April 2, I received exactly twice as many as normal; a normal day sees a range of 1-2 registrations (that is, the normal, base amount and up to twice that amount), as can be seen by the first week of April.
April 01 (1) 1.0
April 02 (1) 2.0
April 03 (1) 1.5
April 05 (0) 1.5
April 06 (1) 2.0
April 07 (2) 1.0
April 08 (3) 4.0
April 09 (1) 5.0
April 10 (2) 3.0
April 11 (0) 4.0
April 12 (0) 4.0
April 13 (2) 5.5
April 14 (1) 3.0
April 15 (1) 4.0
April 16 (1) 2.0
April 17 (0) 4.0
April 18 (0) 3.0
April 19 (0) 2.5
April 20 (0) 1.5
April 21 (1) 3.0
April 22 (1) 2.5
As you can plainly see, the increase in new registrations began on April 8. On that day, I posted three new pieces, following a day in which I had posted two. So the five postings in two days could account for that jump in registrations.
What the fuck happened?
But here is what I want to see: that the relative eruption of registrations are an effect due to a cause. And I have my cause picked out: on April 9, I posted a piece titled “congress fucks with the most efficient benefit program in the country . . . again (part 1).”
On that day, I received five times the normal amount of registrations.
On April 10, I posted two articles:
• “the return of the little red motor scooter (and five dollar buck lunches, too)”
• “congress fucks with the most efficient benefit program in the country – again (part 2: the truth about the postal service’s manufactured losses).”
On that day, I received three times the normal amount of registrations.
On the next two days (April 11-12), I posted nothing new, yet I still received four times the norm on both days! I want to believe that his is continued fallout from that other person’s mentioning of my writing on his site.
It is possible that I am inferring a specific cause when, in fact, the event is just a likely occurrence given the length of time my site has been up, the number of articles registering on browsers, the number of accumulated readers casually recommending me to a friend via email or conversation, etc.
Since the title of this piece that you are reading is my third posting blaring the near-ubiquitous but nonetheless forever frowned upon “four letter word,” the next two weeks should be interesting, hennah?
FEATURED IMAGE: When I typed “what the fuck: into Google, I wasn’t certain what would turn up in the Images section. I found the image above as a magnet available on Amazon and found it apt and funny. But when I scissored away the text, the image didn’t look good as a header. So I found the juxtaposed photos of the two Republican presidents that graces the top of this page elsewhere. . .
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Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)