Surfer Stories

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April 23, 2005

Surfer Stories

Well, hello, Halliburton. G'day, mates in New South Wales. Middle Valley, you're most welcome too.

I don't know why site-meter stats are so fascinating to me. I think this near-obsession is related to my penchant for making up characters to go with each passing motorist's face as I drive around town. I don't really pursue long stories about each one, if for no other reason than there's another coming just behind, but I do sketches. Caricatures, maybe.

So, when I signed up for the free counter, I should have known that it wouldn't be long before I was imagining biographical vignettes for the faceless surfers who happened on the site because their chosen keywords made it appear among their Google results, or because they were reading the rare post that links back here, or because they were on a fellow Rocky Top Brigade blog. I couldn't care less about the numbers: I don't sell anything on this blog, I don't provide links for money, and I am well aware of the vastness that absorbs whatever voice I have as soon as I click on Publish (and that the relative extension of that echo would be negligible even if I was an "advanced species" according to a certain well-known "ecosystem" of blogs).

No, the real interest found in the web counter, for me, is in the Who and the Why, not the How Many. The site I use shows the flags of visitors' countries beside the records for those visits, and I'm always looking for something other than the ubiquitous Stars & Stripes in the list. Don't get me wrong; the primary purpose of this blog is to inform Chattanoogans and residents of Hamilton County of their civic world. (I also hope to become a major civics resource for all Tennesseans, but that will take time.) Therefore, I expect and am honored that the majority of my visitors are local. Still, seeing a hit from China or Iran, or, for a thrill, from the reeeeally scary enemy states (Canada and France), gets my curiosity going. Japan. Switzerland. And Uruguay! Here's a shout out to Uruguay!

ISP names are another good source of input to my imaginings. Someone at Halliburton was reading this year-old piece of fiction and must have clicked to here from the RTB roll that's on the sidebar. Why? The Daily Show appeared on the log, but I sort of cheated for that one. The State of Tennessee is a regular, and the State of Georgia is not far behind. There can't be too many users logged in to a host named mail.bobcorkerforsenate.com at this point, but someone there checks this site fairly often. If only more were descriptive in some way, instead of the mere "Comcast" and "BellSouth" and "AOL."

I'm humbled by all of the above, even if many visitors don't stay to read. The so-called Information Age is an amazing time to be alive. Just don't mind me sitting over here innocently ascribing characters, desires, shortcomings, favorite foods, melodies ('em fancy folks call 'em leitmotifs), and psychic awareness levels to the people on the other ends of the IP addresses.

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