Editors, Hootie and the Blowfish, and that magic 20,000

Hold my hand
Want you to hold my hand
Hold my hand
I'll take you to the promised land
Hold my hand
Maybe we can't change the world but
I wanna love you the best that, best that I can
Oh, The best that I can

From Cracked Rear View, Hootie and the Blowfish, 1994

       Well, it's simple... The Desk wracked its brain and a couple of search engines and couldn't come up with a Who song about taking somebody to the Promised Land.
       The Who have lots of songs that are appropriate for all kinds of situations, but even after looking through the box set, Thirty Years of Maximum R&B it just couldn't find one that was right for today's edition of ... whatever.
       Tommy, Sell Out, Who's Next, The Kids are Alright, Who Are You, Face Dances, Quadrophenia, Live at Leeds... Yeah. More albums than the Desk can list off the top of its head. Not including how many concert videos and a couple of really lousy movies. The Who have to rank as one of the top five rock acts of all time. And at one time, they held the banner as the Loudest.

       OK, enough of that tangent. Back to the point.

       Now the Desk is not into public gloating... much... but it's been asked by several people what is the big deal about the Desk's monthly hit count bouncing over and under twenty thousand every other month. OK, its not on par with CNN or Drudge. But they don't do what the Desk does. Nobody does. But this is the Desk, not whoever.

       Before Dr Leftover took over as direct controlling Webmaster in February of 2001 the Desk Website hadn't had over a thousand hits in a month. Within a three months the Desk went through the 10,000 mark and has never looked back. Since last fall the Desk has been flirting around the 20K mark, sometimes over, sometimes under. But the current average comes out to just under 20,000 hits a month from almost forty different countries.
       Not bad for a Website that does not pay for links, does not pay for hits, does not accept directed traffic, will not bid for search engine placement, and so on. Every hit, yes, each and every hit, is some poor misguided soul who is being subjected to the Desk's form of madness unawares. And some come back for a second or fifth dose.
       It's true... A lot of the Desk's traffic is repeat visits. For whatever reason.
       Of course the Urban Legend page and its subsidiaries is still leading the way as the reason most people stop by and send in email.
       But more and more the Desk is getting traffic into its fiction pages. And, judging by some of the letters received, the Desk's fiction offerings are a more or less welcome break from other stuff on the Web.

       Question from the audience: Fine, we're happy for you, what has that to do with Hootie and that Promised Land song?

       We're getting there, hang on.

       No the Desk does not claim that 20,000 hits a month is the Promised Land. Nor is it even remotely implying that anything it has EVER written is either it itself, or directions to it.

       The Desk types out what was described by an editor at one point as: Barely Readable, semi-literate gibberish. He also went into some detail about how it was almost entertaining and could be considered an affront to the English Language for grammar and usage and then wondered how the Desk ever got through High School Rhetoric Class. Note: The Desk is NOT denying this.
       A proofreader described one of the Desk's stories as a 'Roller Coaster on Paper' and said she had to read it in one shot because she couldn't stop.
       So much for editors.

       Which is why the Desk is not beating down the doors at the nearest publishing house.
       Recently it talked to a publisher's representative who went out of her way to talk about how much stuff they were buried with and how you really should have an agent.
       Publishers, editors, proofreaders, representatives, and now agents? Thanks but no thanks.
       The Desk will simply continue to do what it does and we'll see what happens.

       In any case.
       This is the Promised Land for the Desk.
       Yes it is.
       And it only has YOU to thank for it. Without you The Reader, the Desk would be Jabbering to Space without anybody out there knowing it.

       Thank you.

       The Desk is there, in the Promised Land as far as this world goes.
       Doing what it does, without an editor standing over its typewriter ON its desk with a pistol in one hand and a pot of coffee in the other ranting about things like Deadlines and Production, and without covering riots in a city council meeting over a garbage strike. The Desk is able to do what it wants, or needs, to do the Best that It can....
       " ...Hold my hand
       Maybe we can't change the world but
       I wanna love you the best that, best that I can..."

       Yes indeed.

       So.

       Thank You Again.

       Enjoy what's here, and what is to come.

       More POLITICS coming including whether or not President W has misplaced his backbone.

       A SPORTS bit in the works about Sporting Overkill.

       New installments of theHunter weekly.

       A Study on what difference the Desk's Faith has made to its life.

       And maybe even something new on the Humor side of the Desk about..... well... whatever.

       Stay tuned.

-30-

NOTE ON TERM: -30- is old newspaper jargon for End of Copy signifying the end of a submitted article so the editor didn't have to think too much about whether or not there was more coming.