The coincidence of the date - 17th May, 17th March - reminds me that things have lately been a bit quiet on the comment thread to my "request for favourite Irish jokes" post from a couple of months back.
I am hoping to make that an ongoing collection point for the great, bad jokes of yesteryear. I should find a way of putting a permanent link in the sidebar (DONE!).
So, please, continue to leave your fripperies there.
I don't even insist upon the 'Irish joke' theme. Any kind of joke will do - so long as it is cheesy enough. After all, my original offering in the post itself combined the 'unbelievably obtuse Paddy' genre with the 'marooned on a desert island' genre and the 'Genie gives you three wishes' genre; and a couple of my readers' contributions were of dubious eligibility also. And then I went and snuck in the infamous "An awfully BIG word for a 10-year-old" (go check it out, if you dare) there, because I was too shy to post it on the blog proper. And I have a couple more old favourites (think Ronnie Corbett in the Big Chair) I've been meaning to add to the thread for a while.
So, anything goes from now on. Give me your poor, your tired, your muddled japeries.
I may even award a 'prize' of some sort to the most outstanding contribution every once in a while. Show me what you got.
11 comments:
You are getting quite snazzy with all the handy features. in-text link-backs, side bar links to oft asked questions, a running interactive joke stream...
As you oft say this is a private salon, I'd say all your salon guests must feel pretty special about all this attention to detail you're putting into our reading pleasure.
I confess I have some hope (not too megalomaniac of me, I trust?) that these blogs will endure for posterity.
At present, we don't have many 'real-time' readers. And I've never been that excited about the live-as-it-happens diaristic nature of most blogging.... or about the interactivity of it, to be honest.
So.... I'm trying to make it as easy as possible to navigate around - links, labels, recommended posts - for the benefit of imagined future readers, perhaps people who will come to this 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, long after I have ceased to keep it up, and who may thus just be wandering around at will, rather than just periodically checking the latest new posts.
But if you feel like I'm spoiling you.... enjoy!
ah, but i started off as that random person "wandering around at will" post-December 2006 ocean earthquake off the coast of Taiwan, which cut me off from my USA-side regular reads.
No earthquake, maybe no Tulsa? I wonder if I'd have come across this eventually anyways. Probably not, I do very little random net reading. I have my favorites and stick to them.
Ah, yes, but how exactly did you find me?
Were you using a search engine?? What were you looking for?
I wasn't looking for you. I came across a comment you made on another blog I frequent, China Law Blog.
When you signed off on your comment you linked back "Froog" to your blog address.
I clicked on "Froog" to see what that was all about.
And I found you.
Ah, I see.
I wonder what comment that was. I very rarely comment on blogs at all, and almost never on CLB.
I know I should do it more often - it is clearly a good way of promoting my own blogs. But I'm not really very keen on the idea of promotion. I'm trying to rely just on accidental discovery or word-of-mouth recommendation.
"But I'm not really very keen on the idea of promotion"
(a) you are bizarrely conflicted about keeping this a private salon and wanting to attract many random readers.
(b) I would think you'd comment on other blogs because they have something on them worthy of comment, rather than only to attract links back to you.
Well, you see, I'm not a blogaholic like you.
I don't read other blogs all that assiduously, and I very rarely feel moved to comment.
And if I do, I could of course comment anonymously, or at least omit my URL link to these pages. When I post a comment with a link, I am uncomfortably aware that I am at some level 'touting for business', and thereby compromising my high-minded principles about keeping these blogs cosy and intimate.
I see.
The fact that I read your blog and comment does not mean I am looking for business, either.
I have no business to promote.
I have no blog to which I hope to entice visitors.
I comment because I find something noteworthy, something I identify with, some interest was raised and I have a question... or any other reason.
Returning to your earlier point about being 'conflicted', Tulsa, I don't see any inconsistency.
When I think of attracting new readers, I mainly think of it as being a very slow and long-term process; I imagine people in the future happening upon this blog, long after you and I have abandoned it.
But I wouldn't mind having more readers NOW as well. I think the sense of 'intimacy' is more to do with mood and friendliness than numbers per se; and this would still be a pretty small blog even it had ten times the number of readers. I think we could still preserve the 'salon' feel of it with several dozen, perhaps even with a few hundred regular readers.
We haven't enticed OMG into conversation yet, have we?
OMG has a front lawn, in-laws, nightly dinner prep, and morning runs to the Albertsons to catch the 9am to 12noon special on beef brisket.
And now it's summer, which, for US-family people is a pretty intense family-travel time.
OMG is stable!
So, i don't think we'll be able to entice her into conversation anytime soon.
HomeinKabul, with her exam prep procrastination and transitional life stage is a much more likely candidate for conversation. Though more so for Froogville than Bar Prop.
by the way, are you (or I) planning to abandon this anytime soon? I'd like some notice. :)
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