What brings you here 2009

Geez, post one tiny picture of a naked woman and your whole blog turns permanently into Times Square. (Er, the seedy Times Square of my youth, not the oppressively unobjectionable Times Square of today. [Or the celebratory Times Square of tonight.]) I was going to write my annual “What brings you here” post that tallies the top queries drawing readers to this site, until I discovered that Polly Walker’s nipples, which last year drew 30% of this site’s visitors, now draw nearly twice that: 58%. Almost all of the other queries disappear in the statistical noise.

It’s true that I updated this blog far fewer times in 2009 than I did in 2008, but I did add 46 new posts, which isn’t nothing, and none of that new content was prurient — in fact there’s been only one new post in the “sex” category since “When on Rome” two years ago. You’d think that the drawing power of Polly Walker would be dwindling, not growing. You’d think that a few fuzzy flesh-colored pixels would count for little next to the attempts at erudition, humor, personal reminiscence, political ranting, and heartwarming family anecdotes that make up the preponderance of the site.

Well, sex sells. Hopefully the thing it’s selling is a little intellectual uplift to the single-minded degenerates who stumble across this site!