Devious praise

Here’s a comment that would cheer any blogger. I’m sharing it verbatim:

“Your blog is really excellent. It inspires the readers who has that great desire to lead a better and happier life. Thanks for sharing this information and hope to read more from you.”

Ignoring its ragged prose, I read it with appreciation because it was sent as a “comment” about this very blog.

Then, partly because I screen comments, I read on.

As it turns out the comment is as far-fetched as cheery horoscopes (“Great wealth will come your way!”) or cloying fortune cookie messages. (“You are greatly admired for your wisdom and perseverance.”)

The fulsome praise for The Red Electric comes from “Custom Term Papers” and was generated in response to a post tagged “University of Oregon” and “Oregon State University.” See: "Enjoy the game but not the war.”

Clever, huh?

A search robot seeks posts with academic-related tags, lays on kudos to ensure acceptance from praise-hungry bloggers, and then lures in plagiarism-susceptable undergraduates. Those would be students with the “great desire to lead a better and happier life” … but without the will do the work required to achieve it.

“Custom Term Papers” is here to help.

It gets worse. The phrase “really excellent” isn’t something I’d want to see in any of my students’ written work. Grammarians call words like “really” (and “very”) “intensifiers.” "Excellent" is excellent. It doesn’t (really) need “really.”

Really.

Also, there’s the serious subject-verb agreement problem with “readers who has.”

It’s scary how so many human foibles (pride, greed, ambition, deceit, sloth, error) are exploited by one little encomium.

Success and the "anti-viral" blog

Recently I posted my 1000th entry on this site. I suppose it was a milestone of sorts. If my site meter is correct, each post averages 46 readers.

The Red Electric clearly hasn’t gone “viral." Anti-viral is more like it.

Also, the average visit numbers are distorted by Sarah Palin.

Or, to be exact, her glasses.

Let me explain.

The day I presented an in-depth analysis of Palin's specs, the site did go relatively viral. If I recall correctly, 700 Palinites flocked to The Red Electric. I’m sure that most of them wanted to emulate the beguiling Palin look. Instead they got references to Marshall McLuhan and Dorothy Parker.

I resist measuring the success of this site by the volume of visitors. Striving to be “popular” for popularity's sake, as we learned in high school, is a fool’s game. Sure, I could make several changes to increase The Red Electric’s popularity. Focus would help. I pretty much write about whatever is on my mind. I like it that way. But I’m told that to be successful I should focus on earthworms or planters’ warts or hubcap collecting.

(Full disclosure: I have a focused site, Backspace Typewriters, devoted to these grand old writing machines. I post there only major developments in my typewriter world. It works out to once a month or so. About as much as one person can take. I understandably get very few visitors, but those I do get, often comment. Alas, not so here at The Red Electric)

No, a subject-constricted, popularity-constrained site would be no fun. I’d rather roam widely: Quakers, my dad’s Buick convertibles, Peace Corps memories, Hillsdale secessionist impulses, “active shooter” alerts on my community college campus, the future of journalism, political mind games and — Sarah Palin’s glasses.

The result is that about half of the 46 daily visits result from the happenstance of chance search engine surfing.

I once wrote about how my iPod cords get tangled in my backpack as if they were engaged in some surreptitious electronic-device orgy. I tagged the post “sonic sex” and ever since I’ve found sonic sex addicts (yes, they exist) visiting the post. I fear my musings were not what they had in mind.

I recently went on vacation and didn’t post a word for five days. I figured the visits would drop off in my absence. To my surprise, the numbers actually increased slightly. Two explanations: Search engine hits keep happening no matter what I write today or tomorrow, and regular readers wonder about my whereabouts. It’s a stretch to say they were worried, but who knows?

So, curiously, in my absence, the site took on a life of its own. Not to be morbid about it, but I wonder whether web sites continue and even grow in popularity after their authors have moved on to the Big Blog in the Sky.

My soul is strangely warmed by the thought of blog immortality.

Until then, I look forward to composing the next 1000 posts.

Free beer for bloggers, but why?

I have a natural suspicion of commercial television stations and their cut-throat, lowest-common-denominator programming. Their smiley news drives me to the remote off button every time.

So when KATU invited me to a “Blogger Meet-up” last Wednesday, I was skeptical.

What’s in it for them? I wondered.

To find out, on a balmy Wednesday evening I mounted the Chinese Steed and scooted on over to the hulking KATU studio on Sandy Boulevard.

I was greeted at the door, asked to sign in and was handed a name tag.

Someone directed me down a hallway and I wandered through the bowels of the place to a room full of … yikes! … bloggers!

About 70 of us stood around nibbling finger food, drinking wine and beer and talking blogger talk. I was probably the oldest blogger in the room, but no one called me "sir." When I told them about The Red Electric and showed them my card, several actually said, “Cool!”

Some bloggers already knew each other. Several had been blogging four or five years. I've been flogging away at this less than a year.

I met three blogging friends — Christy, Rodger and Terrish — who all have knitting blogs, (yes, you read that right, KNITTING) Respectively their sites are neitherhipnorfunky.com, www.overabundance.wordpress.com and www.shibuknits.com.

Bill Roberson, who works at the station as its web producer, has a site under construction that will be devoted to old motorcycles and will be called greatoldbikes. He is also versed in scooters. Afterwards I showed him the Chinese Steed, and he showed me his 1978 Kawasaki KZ1000 Z-1R, which, he informs me, was a limited-production motorcycle that was the fastest bike in the world in 1978.

Bill is a big fan of old British bikes like Nortons. The name of the German manufacturer Triumph came up. I agreed to send him a photo of my Triumph typewriter, oddly enough, made by the motorcycle company. Same distinctive logo.

Cat has a site called Fry Kitty. Under the web address, frykitty.com, is the line “Always obsessed with something,” which, come to think of it, applies to a lot of bloggers, including this one.

J.D. Roth is just starting a site, Oakgrove Crossing, for the little unincorporated community of Oak Grove, which is squeezed or nestled (depending on your perspective or mood) between Sellwood and Milwaukie. His site a little like what I’m trying to do with Hillsdale News. We agreed to stay in touch.

A former PCC student of mine, Kyle, was there, but he threw me off because his name tag read “Jake.” I asked him why and he said, “Because I felt like being ‘Jake’ tonight.”

I said, “Cool. “

I think he was there for the beer and finger food.

James Bash reviews classical music on his site. He also writes music reviews for the Vancouver Columbian. His day job is writing arid technical prose. He confessed that the blog and classical music are where his heart is.

Bill Nothstine has a political site called P3. He recommended joining "Drinking Liberally," a group of liberals who apparently do, regularly, nationally, and locally at the Luck Lab on Belmont.

At some point the station folks invited us onto the KATU news set, as if it were some kind of local media shrine. We were directed to line up around the anchor desk for a group photo and told to put our beers away because that would look tacky.

The photo may end up appearing before a mass, tacky-averse audience. Who knows? Plied on shrimp and cheddar cheese morsels, Fat Tire Ale, and good companionship, we didn’t care.

On the way out we were given a gift bag with KATU’s compliments. When I got home I poked around inside and discovered a can of WIRED energy drink, a chocolate bar wrapped in paper sporting the “Blogger Meet Up” logo and a minute Chinese-made 128-meg thumb drive.

I never did figure out KATU’s motive. Maybe, they just wanted to toast fellow communicators.

Or maybe they know something the rest of us don't.

Or maybe we matter more than we think we do.

As if it matters….