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April 01, 2005

Blogbatland Update

…and a humorous personal story thrown in for free

 

 

 

First the update

 

Well folks, this has been a busy month at Blogbat. Between all of the insanity in the world during March and the many visual changes made around here early last month and the dramatic increase in daily visits (a good portion of them appear to be by frequent-flyers), I’m pretty excited about April.

 

To the last point, we’ve seen a 3-fold increase over visitors in February, 4-fold over January. It’s a comparatively mild growth rate compared to some but more dramatic compared to others and still coming at a good clip no matter. We are as yet in the hundreds range per day but if the exponential increase continues I suppose it might not be forever. But much more importantly than that is the fact this blog is somehow giving something to at least a few people. And really as far as I’m concerned, even if just one or two of you get something out of what is posted here, if I challenge you to think, to laugh, or to wonder why, I would be happy with this little fireside chat. But numbers are good in the sense that good ones attract advertisers who in turn can make this blog self-sufficient. And well, it does stroke the ego of any self-respecting writer, but that goes without saying.

 

 

This month's announcements

 

Our date format will be changing April 04 to the standard American civilian one. From now on the dates will be indicated with month first, followed by day and then year. For those of you reading this who happen to be of the female variety, “date format” has nothing to do with dinner and a movie.

 

UPDATE:

Some of you might have noticed Blogbat was comment spammed today. The scope was pretty large and while I’m pretty sure I didn’t delete anyone’s actual comments, if I have, my apologies.

 

So I’m going to get to work right away on implementing that spam filter I promised last month (which found its way to the back burner as is often the case for the non-squeaky wheel).

 

And now for your story

 

I felt it was necessary to visit on you the above-clarification about “date formats” really for no other reason than to segue smartly into a certain experience to which I recently was a party. In this experience the need for such a clarification under the most amazing and unlikely circumstances became quickly and abundantly clear much to the enjoyment of everyone's funny bone.

It centered around a matter that arose while I was with a few friends and acquaintances last weekend over a game of all things, Uno. As we were handing out the cards the girl sitting next to me asked what the object of the game was (my first flag was her unfamiliarity with a game played at all points across the globe), whereupon I informed her that the object was “to go out”. Almost instantly her eyes grew to be about the size of saucers and haltingly laughing in incredulous amazement she asked, “You mean the object of this game is that you ask someone out?” There are of course times when we all really miss it, but this sweet and actually rather intelligent girl had just uttered a classic. It was almost too good to believe as the room grew silent save some stifled snickers. I too found it difficult to recover from this but eventually as others looked on aware of the punch line which was sure to come I recovered enough from the grasp of the inescapable levity arriving at my doorstep to clarify. To wit I told her there was implied an “of” towards the end of my original statement followed by the item (also implied) in question, “the cards”. We were not trying to “go out”, we were each trying to be the first to “run out” or “empty out” our hand, which I suppose in other English-speaking countries could also run afoul among the overly innuendo-conscious.

 

The funny thing about language is that even among those reasonably well-versed in it as well as familiar with those speaking it is that we are from time to time provided with some of the most memorable moments, of which this one for me ranks high. When you add this to attempts at communication of any sort between genders (as was the case here) such events are even more impressive. It really was fantastically funny and I don’t think I will ever again be able to underestimate the female’s ability to misinterpret any word or unintended nuance which may in future instances happen to flow forth from my lips or actions in some form or fashion. Although I am still convinced it is unnatural and rare to see such a thing and I believe rather, it is the accepted duty of the man to fully and regularly misinterpret the words and deeds of his female compatriots as it has been since the beginning of time and any reversal of this in all frankness casts the whole of our cosmos out of balance, it’s fun to see it work the other way from time to time still.

 

 

Posted by Martin at April 1, 2005 06:49 PM

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