They had Wayne and Garth impersonators at the thing?
The 90s, huh?
All right but how can Wayne’s World be part of a whole Kings’ Dominion? Are we to believe the dominion encompasses more than a single world? Given the difficulties in establishing a functioning imperial bureaucracy over even a single planet?
Is this a bit?
The heck?
OK, but the “Mid-No-Way” is worth a chuckle at least the first time you hear it.
Reference: Functional Analysis: A Short Course, Edward W Packel.
Comic Strip I’ve Wanted To Punch Harder Than I’ve Wanted To Punch Anything Else In My Life Today
Sunday
Funky Winkerbean
Monday
Luann
Tuesday
Funky Winkerbean
Wednesday
Luann
Thursday
Mary Worth
Friday
Mary Worth
Saturday
Mary Worth [1]
[1] With the footnote that if you did not know the context then Saturday’s Mary Worth would be hilarious. Any comic strip where someone barks out “Bah!” is 90% of the way to hilarious. But trust me. In context? You’re going to want to punch this comic strip harder than you’ve wanted to punch anything in your life. Promise.
Reference: The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space (Studies in Military and Strategic History), Rip Bulkeley.
This is a special Statistics post, commemorating the event of Another Blog, Meanwhile finally reaching its 100,000th page view, sometime during the 6th of October, 2018!
I had hoped people would enjoy getting to look back at how the number of page views has grown, over time, until it’s finally reached a number literally higher than it has ever reached before.
My thanks as ever to all the readers who looked at one or more of my pages, concluded that this was a strange lot of talk about mid-19th-century cabinet secretaries, and then went on to some other, popular blog.
Now, the view-per-view ratio has stayed a pretty constant 1.00 throughout this blog’s history.
Reference: Lilo and Stitch: Collected Stories from the Film’s Creators, Editor H Clark Wakabayashi.
Time again for my monthly review of how many people come around this blog, and what they seem to be coming for. I’m not sure what I expected. A decline, I suppose. I always feel like I’m fighting a battle against popularity. But now that Jim Scancarelli is back and producing new Gasoline Alley comics, there’s no reason for people to come around trying to understand what’s going on with the comic. People are curious about Alley Oop, but not as intently. People might come to miss Hazel and Henry, but … like … really? And Henry hasn’t quite stopped running yet. Anyway, here’s the big picture and it’s about as I expected:
I mean, it’s not all a steady little decline. The views-per-visitor was 1.84, up from 1.76 in August. But it was 1.90 in July, so, yeah, maybe let’s not talk about that either. Anyway it’s always in the range from 1.75 to about 2.00 page views for each visitor.
So I didn’t earn another two hundred or so page views last month. 2,644 views in September, down from 2,848 in August and 2,984 in July. Lost nearly two hundred unique visitors, too. 1,436 visitors in September, down from 1,619 in August and 1,569 in July. I had expected that going from cartoons — in the Betty Boop and Popeye two-reelers — to half-hour-long radio — the Stan Freberg Show — would hurt readership. A half-hour densely-written radio show seems harder to skim than a cartoon short. But there’s evidence I’m wrong about that, too.
For all that I’ve got fewer readers, they’re staying involved, at least per capita. 174 things were liked around here in September. That’s basically the same number as were liked every month going back to April. It’s March since there was last a like-total outside the 165-to-180 range. There were 50 comments total in September, up from August’s 39 and July’s 36. It’s nice to have any month where there’s more than one and a half comments per day, anyway.
OK. So which of the comic strip explanation posts were most popular in September?
I’m really happy people are finding that Phantom Weekdays update, since for once they’re finding the most current update. And stuff is happening pretty fast and big right now.
My schedule — subject to change to respect breaking news — for comics updates in October is:
My most popular non-comic-strip thing was the recap of The Stan Freberg Show‘s second episode. The first episode was rather popular too. I’m wondering if I’m filling one of those gaps in Internet Knowledge by providing an episode guide for these. My most popular long-form piece was Yes, I Am Aware Of The Historical Irony. This makes sense. What’s more universally communicable than me geeking out over some tiny bit of local history?
In August there were 60 countries sending me any readers at all. 16 of them were single-reader countries. How does this compare to September?
Country
Readers
United States
2,039
Canada
80
India
74
Australia
71
United Kingdom
58
Italy
34
Germany
22
European Union
19
Romania
18
Hong Kong SAR China
14
Philippines
14
Singapore
14
Norway
13
Brazil
12
Austria
11
Malaysia
10
Spain
10
France
9
Japan
9
Sweden
9
Netherlands
8
Mexico
7
South Africa
7
Russia
6
South Korea
6
Czech Republic
5
Egypt
5
Croatia
4
Denmark
4
Indonesia
4
Uruguay
4
Switzerland
3
Taiwan
3
Belgium
2
Finland
2
Greece
2
Jamaica
2
Peru
2
Qatar
2
Saudi Arabia
2
Sri Lanka
2
Thailand
2
Trinidad & Tobago
2
United Arab Emirates
2
Bangladesh
1
Belize
1
Bulgaria
1
Chile
1
Colombia
1 (*)
Fiji
1
Honduras
1
Iceland
1
Iraq
1
Israel
1
Kenya
1
Kuwait
1
Macedonia
1
New Zealand
1 (*)
Poland
1
Turkey
1 (*)
Once again 60 countries sent me readers. Yes, I double-checked that I didn’t look at the wrong month’s data. 16 of them were single-reader countries. Yes, I checked again that I was looking at the correct month. Colombia, New Zealand, and Turkey were the only single-reader countries two months in a row. See? I have to be looking at the correct month. And yeah, 2,039 readers from the United States. Yes, I checked that I didn’t hit the Chuckletrousers number. Still weird. Looking at month-to-month totals it seems like half my readership decline was just people in India and Canada not coming around. Maybe I need to comment more about Australian politics to get them back?
October started with my blog having reached 99,519 viewers, from 54,713 unique visitors. Yes, I’m excited by the idea of reaching 100,000 viewers too. When I do reach that I can start the countdown to the Fibonacci number of viewers, 112358. Won’t that be exciting? It will too.
As of the start of October I’ve posted 273 things on this blog for 2018. There’ve been 177,181 words published total. That’s 18,197 total words published over the month, down from August’s 20,725. I’m averaging 641 words per post this year, down from 654 at the start of the month. There’ve been 641 comments total, for an average 2.3 comments per post this year. That’s the same average as at the start of September. There’ve been 1,671 total likes this year so far. That’s an average of 6.1 likes per posting, down from the start of September’s 6.2.
You can follow Another Blog, Meanwhile by RSS, using whatever reading tool you like. If you’d rather put it in your WordPress Reader, use the button that says something about adding the blog to your reader. It should be at the upper right corner of the page. You can find me as @nebusj on Twitter. All my postings should be announced there as they happen. Thanks for reading.
(Goes outside, breathes the fresh air some. Comes back in and looks again to see what it looks like.)
Huh
(Rubs his head, walks over to see if there’s some engagingly crazypants movie on Turner Classic Movies. And then comes right back to see this all again.)
Really would have expected these lines to have crossed again years ago, you know? Anyway. Huh, I say, and I stand by that.
From the Google Books N-Gram Viewer and not something I just made up. Also, really, didn’t the last person you ever heard say ‘yuppie’ say it in 1992 at the latest? Even granting it takes time to write books and longer to publish them and all that’s all pretty weird.
Reference: Safer C: Developing Software for High-Integrity and Safety-Critical Systems. Les Hatton.
Really looking forward to next week, gotta tell you.
And so you understand where I’m coming from, I read the comic strip back in the mid-90s during Les Moore’s Summertime Lisa Near-Missapalooza European Tour, where every day for about 12 years straight we saw in panel one, Dead Lisa Who Would Die Of Death departing some great European tourist attraction, in panel two nobody we know, and then in panel three, Les running into the scene crying out for Dead Lisa Who Would Die Of Death.
(This past week, Mopey Pete and Boy Lisa were told by their boss at the comics company that they needed a new flagship character. Mopey Pete’s girlfriend who inexplicably hasn’t shoved him over a cliff yet suggested “Atomic Ape” and the boss loved it. Then since the boss figured Atomic Ape needed a sidekick, she suggested “Charger Chimp” and the boss loved it too. Then Mopey Pete spent half the week yelling at his alleged girlfriend about how they were trying to do SERIOUS stuff here and he always hated kid sidekick characters and I guess somehow a chimpanzee has to be an annoying kid sidekick? Anyway, his alleged girlfriend was gone from the strip Saturday and if she has any sense, she’s put in for a transfer to some three-generations-and-a-dog strip like Ben or One Big Happy where they avoid focusing on the hateful characters quite so much.)
Reference: The Frozen-Water Trade, Gavin Weightman.
Not counted: two instances of pies shown on display in the window fronts of bakeries. My reasons for this are that pies are appropriate items to have on display in the window fronts of bakeries, even in real life; that said windows are not shown open and so the pies cannot be considered even loosely to be on a sill; and that there is no way to know the temperature of said pies on display and therefore whether to ascertain whether they are cooling relative to the general decline of the universe.
I know, I’m shocked too. And you know what else is shocking?
Oh yeah, also? A big gee, thanks to the Apple imagineers behind the spreadsheet Numbers who made it impossible to make this as the bar chart I wanted, with bars that started out in the indefinite foggy mists below and rose to zero and stopped there. I’m not as annoyed with you as I am with the Google Maps imagineers so your pit of wolverines is actually just a closet I’m going to lock you in with them, and they’ve been convincingly told you routinely insist Firefly is crazy overrated.
(T-shirt bought in a tragic incident where it was the last full day of the only honest-to-goodness vacation they’re getting all year and the bar had a kind of funny-ish name and it seemed like it made sense to get something as some kind of souvenir and they only had the one shirt left and who even knows what size it is because now, with perceptions un-tainted by the desperate need to have a year’s worth of fun in under 144 hours, they could never, ever wear it, and feel too embarrassed to throw it out or to donate to some needy person, who would also refuse to wear it, so there it sits, taking up the only space in the drawer next to the three pieces of good underwear.)
…
…
L
Reference: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W Tuchman.
Not a thing. Nothing at all. Yeah, sorry folks, this one caught me by surprise. Shall pass on word if I get any, but I guess we’ll see what gets printed Monday and whether Olivia Jaimes takes over the strip or something. When I have more I’ll post it at this link.
It’s bizarre that they would have introduced M T Mentis as this major new character if they were only going to use him for two stories. Also that if they expected a farewell that they’d go out on a story quite as mundane as Wizer and Alley Oop getting confounded by Alexa and having pizza. (I’ll get around to that shortly.) But I hadn’t even heard rumors of the strip ending, or of the Benders considering retirement, before this.
Called tails, coin bounced out of control and rolled under Dig-Dug
Called heads, came up heads
Called tails, coin flopped onto shoe and got lost in the laces
Came up heads before anyone could finish calling
Called heads, came up tails, swore they called heads instead
Called tails, cool friend snatched coin out of the air
Got into argument about who gets to call and who gets to toss, get into heated round of rock-paper-scissors to decide tossing and calling order.
Called tails, came up heads, agreed to extend this to three-out-of-five
Called heads, two-tailed fox emerges from video game to ask what your problem with him is
Called heads, came up tails, swore they called heads instead; a brawl ensues
Called heads, landed sideways when it got caught in a crack in the floorboards, had temporarily the power to be Dick York and also read minds
Called heads, power blipped out mid-toss and couldn’t see the coin
Called tails, came up heads, agreed to extend this to four-out-of-seven
Called tails, noticed was two-headed coin, causing accusations of cheating; a brawl ensues
Called heads, tossed coin, never came down because you forgot you were on top-secret spaceship flying to Mars
Called tails, tossed coin, never came down because you forgot you were on top-secret spaceship flying to Mars
Called heads, came up it was the Mount Rushmore national-parks quarter so arguably both sides are heads and it isn’t even a cheating coin; a brawl ensues
Called heads, came up tails
Reference: Computers In Spaceflight: the NASA Experience, James E Tomayko.
Source: This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, Loyd S Swenson Jr, James M Grimwood, Charles C Alexander.
Bonus: six of these are also titles of upcoming Doctor Who episodes.
Also bonus: I am way too proud of “The Bois are Barque En Têt” considering it only works to the tiny extent it does if you know that the Têt is the largest river in southwestern France and even then it isn’t actually “funny” so much as it is “adequately researched”.
