The Little Lurker that couldn't

I'm plaphored. I feel bloody silly. I thought I was a successful lurker. I often browse blogs because I love this window into other people's lives. That is the same mechanism that makes me stare at lit windows when I'm walking the dog and wonder, from the bits I glimpse, how people decorated their rooms, what they chose to live with, whether they're happy with the space that shapes them.

Should you be thinking that's voyeurism, OF COURSE IT IS! Without the sexual kink but voyeurism all the same. Out come the Anthropologist's shoulder pads (I like the 80's yes, and I DO remember them): what do you think Anthropology is all about? First you pay THEM so you're trained in how to do it, then they pay YOU - and off you go invading people's daily lives and interpreting it to your heart's content. With a bit of luck you might even turn out not to be all that wrong; if you're very, very unlucky your informants will just pull your leg, at times both of them, and though the results may be disastrous in terms of science (oh but what is science, you ask), they may turn out to be self-aggrandising. Woman, thy name is Margaret Mead.

Here I must digress. (Oh please, if I didn’t you KNOW you’d be disappointed!) Kindly explain to me how someone with that sort of mug managed to be such a temptress. Granted, it may have to do with the fact that when you’re literally trapped with the natives and this is in the 20s and 30’s, no internet, no downloadable porn, only the natives, sexual dimorphism in PLAIN VIEW plus the horror of learning those impossible languages and coping with their gastronomic errors and misguided customs, well, you have to make do with what you have at hand, so to speak.

(Should any misguided cetaceanologist find himself in this white hole of a blog, check out Bateson’s work on deutero-learning and social hieararchy in dolphins - the man wasn’t just an exotic homewrecker and Naven-obsesser. Well, if you work with cetaceans you should know this ALREADY. If you don’t, get Pryor’s and Norris’ books while you’re at it. Great fun to read about the primordial broth.)

So I was a happy lurker. Then I decided to install a site metre, just for the fun of it because the traffic here surely doesn’t warrant it. Or so I thought. In 24 hours I had close to 70 visits. I can understand that when your blog shows as recently updated some people might be induced to give it a click. And then there are the regulars (SHALOM, REGULARS! *Enthusiastic wave*) But 70??? Who are you people??? Why are you here??? How on earth did you find me??? Then I realised I could see who’d been to my site. I also realised every blogger with a site metre knows I was there. And we were not amused. What is the point of lurking if you’re visible? That’s not lurking, that’s being inept and NOT EVEN KNOWING IT! I so wanted to be a nerd…

My practical sense sadly being what it is, I devised a quick and brilliant solution. Quick note on my practical sense: it’s almost nonexistent. I do find solutions for everything but they’re usually pretty convoluted. The easy solution is in fact so easy as to be fully invisible to me. So you can see I’m absolutely NOT exaggerating for dramatic effect, I’ll tell you how I solved the problem of knots in the cables connecting the speakers to the stereo: enlarge the knot till you have a hole and pass the very, very bulky speaker through it. Only while doing the last one did I realise I could have simply unplugged the bloody things. So said solution was to give up my site metre. Yes, I’m smart that way. Of course THAT WOULDN’T HAVE SOLVED ANYTHING, they’d still have my details. So I’m keeping the metre. It’s a good way to remain humble, most visitors couldn’t leave this place fast enough. Or maybe they just have REALLY BAD TASTE.

I’ll now go and eat for three and perhaps, PERHAPS, this Yom Kippur fast WILL NOT kill me. I barely survived TishaB’Av as it was. This I dislike, I may go an entire day without eating because I’m lazy or not hungry - but if I know I CANNOT eat I can think of nothing else. So I will not be logging on until Saturday evening. AND THAT MIGHT JUST KILL ME EVEN FASTER!