{"id":3907,"date":"2013-12-12T16:40:55","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T21:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3907"},"modified":"2013-12-15T14:40:38","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T19:40:38","slug":"one-hit-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3907","title":{"rendered":"ONE HIT WONDER"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I began this blog over ten years ago (Nov 11, 2002<\/a>), I had modest goals in mind. If I could reach 5 people a day and share with them the various things that I have learned in this “classroom of life”, it would be great. I called myself “an eternal student of life”; unlike all those eternal student sites out there written by anxious or narcissistic graduate students, my own ‘classroom of life’ truly does go on and on, despite the fact that I was through with formal schooling many decades ago. The “eternal” part reflects a spiritual longing (although not at all a ‘certainty’) that my living and growing conscious experience will not in fact be completely ended when my body dies. But hopefully, I can deal with that issue another day.<\/p>\n

Back here in the earthly realm, it turned out that my blog at first attracted more like 5 people a week. But I carried on with it, even though it was quite certain that my thoughts were never going to go viral and become another Huffington or DailyKos or Hot Air. I still liked it, even if no one else did (except my friend Mary, shout out to her given that she stuck with it thru thick and mostly thin). After I moved over to Word Press in April 2010, things picked up a little. I actually did reach about 5 viewers (about 8 to 10 page hits) per day for most of the week. But seldom did I significantly exceed that amount.<\/p>\n

Within the past year, I actually did have one post that “went viral”, relatively speaking. For me, any post getting over 10 total views a day is “viral”. My one big hit was published on May 17 of this year, and it was in regard to a certain Dr. Chauncey Crandall<\/a>, a cardiologist who used somewhat questionable marketing techniques on the Newsmax site to promote his for-profit newsletter about heart health and disease prevention. Let’s take a look right now at my top 10 blog posts as far as total hits over the past 12 months:<\/p>\n

Dr. Crandall and The 4 Things – 7,294
\nThe Tao of Richard Wetherill – 604
\nLes Cason Memories – 253
\nWhat Ever Happened to Cor-Ten Steel? – 233
\nWhy Does Sad Music Make Us Happy? – 116
\nRADIOLAB Review – 93
\nFruit Fly Wars – 46
\nTime for a Classic Cheap Watch – 45
\nTerry Jones\u2019 Crusade: Taking sides in the Middle Ages\t– 40
\nJung, Hitchens, Jews and God – 38<\/p>\n

So yes, I am now a “one hit wonder”, thanks to Doctor Crandall and the hard sell behind his newsletter. I’m right up there with the likes of Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge, Question Mark and the Mysterions, The Blow Monkeys, and Vanilla Ice. I guess that it’s better than not having any hits. But it still makes me scratch my head, as I have lots of other posts that are more incisive, better thought out, and addressed to more important issues than that one. My big-hit post was just an observation about a minor web occurrence, i.e. Dr. Crandall’s bait and switch sales routine on the Newsmax web site that exploited viewers’ worry about their health. There was an important point behind what I said, but it wasn’t a situation that truly affects the nation like fracking or NSA surveillance or health care reform.<\/p>\n

For a while there during the summer, I got nearly 100 hits a day (topped out at 116 on Sept. 23). But things are now trending downward, and I will soon be back to 10 views daily. My moment in the blogosopheric sun will be over. But so what. It just shows how arbitrary “success” really is in the world. I’ll bet that many of the bands that had one big hit in their career wonder “why that one<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

PS, as to my “relatively popular” sarcastic review of RADIOLAB, I must admit that NPR now has an alternative science report that should be taken seriously. It’s called Science Friday<\/a>, and it’s not dippy entertainment at all. Compared to RadioLab, SciFri is much more serious, but in a comprehensible, easy listening way. NPR still has Radiolab, but at least they are hedging their bets now with some real science reporting.<\/p>\n

Finally, with regard to another “relative hit” (according to my low standards) . . . this regards the Rev. Marek Bozek, a priest leading an unusually rebellious Polish-heritage parish outside of St. Louis that dared to sass the Roman Catholic establishment in 2010 regarding a variety of financial control and doctrinal issues. Actually I had two posts about Bozek and his parish (St. Stanislaus), one with 33 total views<\/a> and the other with 24<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just to follow up on this enormous wave of interest ;^)<\/span> , Bozek and St. Stans are now negotiating to join the Episcopalian Church<\/a>. That’s not exactly a big surprise; plenty of disgruntled and disillusioned Roman Catholics end up with the Anglicans. I did that myself, in an earlier phase of my life. Being Episcopalian is OK, and there certainly is more ecclesiastical leeway for most individuals. But I’ll bet that the St. Stan people are going to miss the spiritual depth of Catholicism, and are in for a bit of a let-down when they realize that their new church leadership doesn’t really think that the Communion ritual is all that sacred. Well, I wish them luck in their Anglican incarnation. Perhaps they can help the Episcopal Church to find whatever it is missing in regard to attracting and keeping its practicing members (its downward trend of baptized members and Sunday attendees continued into 2012<\/a>; for example, worldwide membership was about 2.4 million in 1990 and 2.07 million in 2012.)<\/p>\n

As to Rev. Bozek — he will now become just another boring ex-Roman Catholic prelate within the Anglican Communion. He had his moment in the sun. So, it looks as though Marek Bozek himself has joined the ranks of “one hit wonders”! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I began this blog over ten years ago (Nov 11, 2002), I had modest goals in mind. If I could reach 5 people a day and share with them the various things that I have learned in this “classroom of life”, it would be great. I called myself “an eternal student of life”; unlike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3911,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions\/3911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}