(WARNING: Gonna ramble a bit here)
The platform I use here to move stuff into an Attic with boxes of thoughts to pile atop other thoughts on fashioned storage bin cat seats, things I’ve talked of before with towel topped windows is Word Press. It works for the most part. I switched to it a couple of years ago and it seems to be the de rigueur of places to sit and muse with cats.
As with anything it has its plusses and minuses. The minuses being its concept of “Blocks” for the writing, one of the most frustrating things you could possibly imagine, the simple concept of a word document, which is all a blog is for the most part really, is lost in some unnecessary attempt to be singular, maybe, I have no clue.
The plusses being the ability to share posts, if that would be a thought, or to check “numbers” to see how your stuff plays.
I don’t have ads at my site, not that I wouldn’t succumb to the possibility of a few extra cents in my always need of a couple of extra cents world if that were a possibility (and curse then incessantly at that maybe necessity) but I’m not one to dismiss the idea, its more because I don’t have the traffic that might make that appealing to some advertiser’s Ad boxes in corners or sides or tops of pages. I’m just some dude with a written or sung blog with pictures and the talkings of cats. It’s not really all that Ad compelling I wouldn’t think. Lori and Tom, my pals and their own blogs, have much more of an argument for such.
But the main thing I’m a fan of, like I said, is the ability to check numbers, relatively small ones in a large blogosphere of large blogosphere numbers but small numbers that are still big to me, to see that I actually have some occasional eyeballs on some occasional worked words, even if just a few.
I have this ongoing group messenger thread with my three best from the college days who I’ve mentioned here at length before, Iived with some of them actually, comfortably, in unsightly way to too stretched out elastic jammy day ways, somehow still friends (they were seriously stretched) some who have come to define “tolerate” when it comes to a Frankenberry over the years, as I’m sure you may have of your own, college or not, friends who you can dumb with, with no concern, say stupid things, have jammies droop, be stupid things and wonder sadly of those that don’t have the pleasure of the same.
I added to our group message earlier today …
Lori and Tom you probably already know this , I’m sure, but I was looking into stats at the blog and I kind of accidentally came across where to find my tally’s, my viewed posts number totals of in a time period, in the last quarter, last year, all time etc, but also to see a tally of where the views were from, especially internationally. It seems “all time” the most views I have from outside of the states are from China, then Finland, the UK (probably all my cousin Liz, a school teacher who is surely using my posts as cautionary tales for her students but with warnings spoke with an English accent so it’s cool. Hell, you could say fuck off an die with an English accent and I’d be Ok with it and even consider the request) and Germany, though in the last year Finland tops the list with almost the same view number for the year as their all time, so the last year seems to be when they joined in on the FrankenAtticParty.
(disclaimer: I added that bit about my English cousin in the message thread, she is real though and might have even actually warned her classes of the Frankenberry in such a way if she were smart, which she is).
There’s an old 80’s tune from Alphaville “Big in Japan” that I was a fan of in college (dating myself) that I will now have to amend the title of I think. Just the title, not thematically, as I’ve always gotten a kick out of that phrase “How are things going for you all at home?” “Not as well as we’d like but hey, we’re big in Japan.” So maybe now “Big in Fin-Land” or “Big in Beijing” or “Big in Berlin” or “Big in London” whatever. Just a thank you to all my international friends from across a now small ball for checking in with me … and most especially for coming back. I have imagined you all and that maybe I’m doing something word worldy right in my word wording for an audience I know is there.
I’m still a radio DJ at heart, though I’m not really on the air anymore, don’t care to be, the sometimes voice tracked show to fill in for the help but the one thing you always do as a jock is imagine that one person to talk to, or maybe a small group, that is there listening to you. Same concept here.
Still in the message thread and where I mentioned Finland being big in the last year for the number of views I thoughted that maybe there’s some nice Finnish woman who is a fan of mine, likes my posts. Mark, of the three, replied with “Don’t flatter yourself my friend”.
Oh, that’s cold dude.
It is though, cool, to check these stats and see the international.
Mark then added “It is nice to know that your posts transcend borders and languages and that when you send the words you’ve sweated and labored over so much out into the world that there are people all over that world to receive them.”
An Amen on that Mark.
I was surprised though to see that my top post, by quite a good margin, is a one I wrote right at the beginning of this pandemic nightmare back in March 2020, one with silly “Pirate” talk, before the GOP started trying to keep the pandemic alive with more death, and included my parody version of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al”. Some of it is obviously dated now, but some is not, and this one, after all of my parody tunes, continuing parody tunes, and I have quite a few here, is still one of my best so it seems my Frankenblogonado’s are a pretty discerning type and I still wonder, listening again, of how the hell I did it as it’s way better than I think I am.
A Frankenberry says thanks from his Attic, Attic International, me and my furry girls, my little Bella, Mimi the Quirky, Cricket the Blind, a Thanksgiving thanks if you will, from storage bin cat comfy spots, for “tolerating” me and for coming back on occasion.
Cheers international all,
frankenberrysattic.com 