no more after this I promise

...because apart from anything else, it's clearly palpably nothing, except mysterious. It's 'why did someone put a bit of screwed up paper in that keyhole' mysterious, or Nancy lying on the rug and meowing at me mysterious. There's a reason but it's surely about the dullest reason you can imagine. So this is the visitors to this blog in the last week. As you can see, the vast majority of them are from Sweden although I'm fairly positive they are not. You may recall a few weeks ago the second tranche of visitors, many, I can't remember how many but hundreds, were from the Netherlands. That has now completely gone: the dutch have become absolutely no longer interested in what I have to say. The second tier now is Australia which all things considered is how it should be. 

So clearly some scattershot internet reflex is visiting this blog pretending to be Sweden but leaving no messages and doing nothing more than visit, I don't know how but I am fairly sure that no-one is actually reading or looking at anything. If anyone can explain why this is happening I'd be interested to hear it, but I can also happily ignore it. 

I am offended no-one at all visits from South America or Africa, my south-of-the-equator brethren have forsaken me almost completely (kudos to Indonesia and Thailand where the real fans are). Not even New Zealand?! Disgusting. 

doing things

I know how stupidly meta and self-obsessive it is but it just intrigues me why most of my readers lately have been in Sweden (or have somehow managed to have the system eg Google Analytics whatever that is think they are coming from Sweden) with the second biggest readership the Netherlands. Don't get me wrong I love Sweden and the Netherlands, in fact all of the places that apparently house my readership here are intriguing, sensational, delightful places I am sure in many ways. But still why Sweden! If you are one of these people, please let me know. Yes, I did see a Swedish film the other day and I wrote about it, but I don't think that can really be the reason (Swedes aren't going to care greatly about what this dork thinks about that movie I am sure). 

Looking at what people look at makes me look at things I have written here (I note that a lot of the video links are now dead, I really don't know what to do about that but I guess you can't keep spinning the plates forever, and for all that, often in the past I haven't even explained what I've linked to, just led into it, and now going back I have no idea what it was). I remember over a decade ago somebody I haven't spoken to for a long time said he was surprised at how much personal information I gave away in this blog, and I was quite taken aback - because I thought I played my cards very close to my chest. I noted a little while ago that all my posts were credited to me with my full name. That intrigues me because I couldn't even imagine a time when I'd make it possible to align my full name with this production. But there you go. It obviously happened. 

Nancy and I have had another really nice low-key companionable day today just hanging out by the heater. I cleaned the kitchen, watched some bits and pieces of movies (for the course I'm teaching this semester), the only time I went out was to go to Newmarket - Cheaper Buy Miles, the chemist, the supermarket - nothing special. It has been raining fairly heavily a lot of the time as I noted the few times I took rubbish to the bins etc. 

Some of the time I've been listening to the audiobook of Bill Carter's book The Late Shift. I don't really know why - I have no huge stake in late-night tv shows in the US though I did watch Letterman quite often in the 1990s - but Audible told me I had credits and for some reason that book came into my mind. It's engaging enough. It does all seem kind of incredibly petty and juvenile, at the same time. 

I have to say so far so great with this apartment. I am very impressed by it. It's a really nice place to live and a testament to a great architect with a bit of a vision. Looking forward to doing things with it. 

världen är liten

I occasionally peek at the stats for my blog. I am not obsessy about it, because after all, why bother. I am amazed anyone reads this stuff at all, as it's unlikely really to mean anything to anyone other than me and Nancy and a few other nearest and dearest and even they are unlikely to get too much of enormous value out of it - IMO. Particularly since I am fairly sure it's repetitive anecdotes and/or versions of the same general philosophies, if you could call them that. Anyway. I am still intrigued at the top five above, although frankly I am not sure what period that covers - the last 15 years or however long it's been since I started this shizzle? The last year? The last month? It's not clear. Nor is it really important. It is weird though that Sweden is leading the way, it's not famous for its bots, but maybe that's what they want you to believe. The Netherlands, similarly, I don't really get although when it comes down to it, I don't absolutely get any of these countries' interest particularly, although of course I know all too well that the majority of visitors are coming attracted by the blood-in-the-water of a particular keyword or one of the very popular entries I have come up with such as the one where I muse on the words to the H R Pufnstuf theme song or the one where I muse on Knockout comic from the 70s. I'm not going to link to them you'll only click on them and continue to skew the demographic for those especially boring entries though tbf maybe slightly less boring than most of the others, at least in what they promise. Since you've read this far I'll tell you what I've been doing today: I was writing a lecture this morning, and watching The Towering Inferno (I'm about half way through it) - this is not as random as it seems, or at least, it is but the lecture was at least in part about The Towering Inferno. Then I had two meetings, one IRL and one online, with men whose PhDs I am cosupervising. Then I tried to revise/boil down my CV for an application I'm helping someone with at work and it didn't save, so I spent probably all up one fruitless hour divided into two fruitless half-hours in contact with Apple to try and figure out why, when I have almost 300GB of memory on my laptop, a simple word document was causing the computer to tell me I had no memory left. I got some messages from Alanna asking if I would be able to go to Daylesford or Castlemaine or wherever the hell it is Jon Michell lives to record some drums/percussion on a couple of her wonderful songs, which of course I would, although I am woefully out of practice when it comes to drums and never really mastered percussion (yet). Also, late in the day a delivery man came and gave me some things I had ordered in the mail, including this book by Bret Lunsford which looks really good and suitably delightfully esoteric (I haven't read much of it yet, but I note that Harry Smith doesn't get born until around p. 83 of a 200-page narrative, which by the way I'm fine with). Also some recent record releases from K and some button badges which I didn't order but I'm very happy to have. 

Pretty cool huh

So tonight I think I will most likely finish watching The Towering Inferno, maybe have a light supper... packet soup? Possibly finish drinking the bottle of Lakka I have in the fridge and maybe try and write some more book-chapter-that-has-been-hindered-by-the-house-move, and also possibly put a few more things away, although I'm really hanging out for Lachlan to build my shelves - then I'll know I'm really ensconced, although the curtains in the bedroom are a very find grounding (thank you Laura).