16 March 2012

Blog Stats

It’s been over a year since I started this thing, so I’m totally qualified now to inform you about the world as viewed from the perspective of a seasoned blog veteran.

No, just kidding.  I just wanted to tell you some things I’ve learned from obsessively checking my blog stats this past year.

Things I Have Learned From Blog Stats

1. Firefox is a very popular web browser.  So is Chrome.  Explorer, not so much (but who’s surprised by that?).  Safari’s lagging even behind IE.

2. There’s a browser called Iceweasel.

3. I have kind of a big following in Malaysia.

4. Number three may have something to do with the fact that for some reason I keep getting a lot of traffic from a teeth whitening webpage.

5. I hope number four is because I have nice white teeth.  I really can’t tell what the hell that site’s spamming.

6. I’m *this close* to breaking 6,000 page views.  This doesn’t include my own views of my blog.  It does include the teeth whitening views of my blog.

7. There are a LOT of people getting misdirected to this blog by running Google searches about muscles.  My muscle post has 395 total page views – more than three times the page views of my next-most popular post about the hippocampus, and more than ten times that of an average post.

8. Number seven happened because I stole a really useful image from someone else.

9. Outside of muscle terms, neuron terms, and my blog name, “love like woe zombie” is the only Google search term that made it into the all-time top ten search keywords used to access this blog. (Apparently someone used this term eight whole times to link here.)

10. In the past month, these search keywords led people to this blog a total of 35 times (gosh, I’m sorry!): “hippocampal relay”, “neuron”, “sex chromosomes”, “how to make sarcomere structure model”, “26’ uhaul truck total length” (P.S. I can totally answer that one for you – it’s 26 feet), “let them eat kait” (oh my God someone actually typed this into a search engine!  Maybe!), “sarcomere model on paper”, “3x3 inch wall tiles photos”, “axon synapse”, and “bathroom tiles”.  As far as I can tell only three of these 35 clicks were meant for me.

11. I have earned exactly zero dollars from my lack of advertisements. You’re welcome.

These all seem really self-denigrating, so I wanted to send a shout-out to the guy who sent me an e-mail saying he’d found my blog by searching for something like “zombie apocalypse survival” and stumbling onto this post.  Man, you made my freaking year.  Thank you for letting me believe that some of these accidental clicks are luring in people who actually read some of the rest of what I put here.  I hope your novel-writing is going swimmingly!

Thank you all for reading this blog.  I am in awe of all of you and am deeply humbled by your support.


P.S. – Guys, seriously, if you ever see me making a typo please let me know.  I found like three today and it was depressing.

01 March 2012

DO NOT PEE ON THE TOILET SEAT

Okay, ladies.  I’ve tried to be nice but enough is enough.  It’s time for you to be told.  DO NOT PEE ON PUBLIC TOILET SEATS.

You would think this would be like saying “Do not jump parachute-less out of a plane” or “Do not pit chimpanzees against badgers in a cage fight”.  It should be a ridiculous mandate because the eventuality against which you are striving is unrealistic, deeply irresponsible or even impossible to realize.

Ladies, I should not have to inspect a public toilet seat for your urine every damn time I sit down on it.  The toilet seat surrounds a big, wide hole full of water.  That hole (it’s called a toilet bowl), that’s what you should be aiming for – not the seat.  You put your legs on the seat.  Your entire private area should rest comfortably in the big wide open space into which the pee is supposed to directed.  Your water, ideally, should all end up pleasantly comingling with the toilet water.  It was designed that way!

I know why you’re scared to sit on that seat.  I know you have reservations about where other people’s butts and legs have been.  I know the concept of restroom etiquette may be new to some of you.  So let me outline my three solutions to this pee-on-the-seat problem for you, in order of personal preference.

Number one.  If we all band together and learn how to pee correctly on toilet seats (and again, that’s legs and butt on the seat, privates over the hole), then we can all sit our butts down in comfort and get on with our respective days.  Because let me reassure you, you don’t get herpes from toilet seats.  Or AIDS.  On a day-to-day risk basis, you really don’t even have to worry about infections or rashes caused by whatever awful flora inhabit other women’s thighs – you should probably be more worried about getting hit by a rickshaw on your way to work.  Just take a deep breath and get over your weird bathroom phobias and just sit the hell down on it already.  

Number two.  You can build up those quads and learn to hover more accurately over the really big water-filled hole (remember, that’s called the toilet bowl), rather than the little plastic ring around it.  Like I said, that hole is really big.  Your pee stream is comparatively small.  This is not NASA, this is hitting the broad side of a barn.  Even if your pee goes all wonky and starts spattering and running down your leg and whatnot, you should still be able to accomplish peeing into the toilet rather than onto it.

 Number three.  In a worst-case scenario, go right ahead – pee on the seat.  Pee all over it, and the floor and the walls and the ceiling, for all I care.  You know why?  Because right there next to the toilet – and I really, really hope you already know this one – there’s a roll of paper which was created for the express purpose of wiping bodily fluids off of surfaces.  Ideally that surface is your body, but if you want that surface to be the toilet seat then fine, I’ll happily support your right to wipe the everloving piss out of it (literally).  And you know what?  That paper is free.  Even in public restrooms.  You can use half a roll to clean up your waterworks festival and no one will complain.

Just please, for the love of God follow any one of the above three techniques to spare the rest of us the full tactile glory of your excretions, because I am tired of sitting on your pee.  I’m really damn tired of it.  Don’t make me come after you.