Monday Big Words Update: Putting People In Their Place (one person at a time)
January 12, 2009
I saw two movies in theaters this summer: The Dark Knight and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Since I’m busy writing books and making money from same, I can’t be bothered to see every film that comes out every week that it appears. Solid money would bet that both of movies that I paid money to see in a crowd setting will win one or multiple Oscars, so this is once again testament to the fact that I have good taste and that I don’t just wander aimlessly into a stadium setting to get away from my house. Dark Knight was the best superhero movie ever made and Heath will get some sort of pity Oscar due wholly to the fact that he’s dead now, but Button will garner more Oscars because it was released intentionally later in the year (Oscar has a short term memory) and it plays more Oscar cards than Dark Knight. Not to mention the fact that Fincher is long overdue.
And while it sunk my career with Buffalo Rising (and sunk Buffalo Rising as a credible publication, period), Batman: Gotham Knight was the best animated film I’ve seen this year. It’s got Batman, it comes in a metal case, and once again, it bridges the gap between Batman Begins and Dark Knight. What more do you need?
I’m not going to waste any more space blathering on about comic books or comic book movies on a Monday Update, so we’ll move on here since I’m capable of writing about more than simply reviewing what I have time to watch and since I’d rather create than rent and watch movies….
Since persons who are too cowardly to come at me head on have been launching slings and arrows (who read this site on a regular basis), the previous three paragraphs were for him. Let’s continue with this send-up and then we’ll get on to regular business….
Site hits. If you want to talk site hits, let’s talk real man numbers, shall we? I don’t have any major publications posting us on their home pages in every single township because they don’t have any more original contributors who aren’t on the union staff payroll, eh? Big Words is one man, one site, and a whole SHIT-LOAD of site hits. Cook all the stats you want, but here are some raw numbers (top site hit days among the average, which is around 75 unique site hits per day) you can take to the BANK for fiscal year 2008:
Week 31 2008: 604 Unique Hits Sold
Week 43 2008: 527 Unique Hits Sold
Week 50 2008: 763 Unique Hits Sold
Week 1 2009: 767 Unique Hits Sold
Lowest INDIVIDUAL site hits for Fiscal Year 2008 in a given week (drum roll, please):
Week 27 2008: 230 Views
Month Stats and Highs:
April, 2008: 1,924 Unique Hits
July, 2008: 1,981 Unique Hits
October, 2008: 1,723 Unique Hits
December, 2008: 2,163 Unique Hits
Harumph, I say. This is not even mentioning the 150,000 site hits that Think Twice Radio hits every month that I’ve had a show there that hasn’t been a holiday month. If all else fails and I develop an inferiority/self esteem complex, though, I suppose I could ask one of the five or six publications I write for to nominate me as their blogger of the year, though, but then again, I don’t have to battle those sort of esteem issues due largely to the fact that I have readers who support me and spend money!
Even without a flagship newspaper backing me and ordering me to write a few times a month as an added responsibility to my low-paying sales job, I still manage to draw a crowd that kicks the ass off of most online viewerships. Tumbleweeds are most definitely NOT rolling by this site and in addition to Gamestop corporate, most Gamestop employees and the majority of the informed Buffalo inernet public, I bring my own crowd to the party. Nintendo used to tilt stats in their favor and play around with pie charts to make it look like they weren’t getting killed during the Gamecube years, so bandy you bald ego all over your one tiny site all you want, pal. I’ve got five or six sites, one radio show and eight books by the middle of this year, so keep it up. Go seek therapy, because you don’t want to pick a fight with me.
As for Gamestop, I’ve got so much great intel for this Wednesday that they should probably batten the hatches in Grapevine Texas (the corporate headquarters) two days from now, drop their socks and grab the soap. Seriously, when it rains, it pours, and I’ve got enough scoop to last us all two weeks, so I may bleed some local info this week and corporate info the following week. Keep that scandalous freedom of information pouring in, company drones and otherwise! Feel free to email me with additional crippling stock information at:
There are some loose ends I wanted to catch up on (since I have an ACTUAL audience instead of some random people who click on a company mandated banner and then click out of the box to find something interesting), but we’ll save them for another day. A few Monday bullet points:
-Calendar dates are lining up for the Monsters Of Verse and Breathing Room bookings for the next three months. I’ll have a full calendar for you by the end of this month. JR Finlayson will be holding a symposium for the Clarence High School Poetry Club TOMORROW and that episode should be up on Think Twice’s site by the end of the week.
-’Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me Is Going To Destroy You Part II (better known as the Gamestop skewering essay) is running all week for free in Night Life magazine. Scoop it up on stands everywhere in the greater Buffalo/Toronto area with over 90,000 copies currently in distribution every single week!
-’Pussy Magnet’ (an essay about our two cats) is up online this month at Acidlogic.com. Search it and click on the article on the home page. I’m having some issues listing direct links on this site so until I figure it out, you’ll have to flex your intraweb chops by typing phrases like Acidlogic.com in your browser window and figuring it out by yourself. If you’re too stupid to figure that out, odds are that you’re illiterate and you should walk away from your computer before you hurt yourself….
-In all seriousness, take two minutes and REGISTER at BuffaloMe.com! For a community/networking/blogging site in the Buffalo area, there is no equal. It’s quick, it’s user friendly, you can post songs, photos, blogs, meet new people in your area and register with the greatest of ease not to mention the fact that it’s the fastest growing LOCAL site in Buffalo! What else do you need? Support local! Myspace is all well and good, but do yourself a favor and pop over onto BuffaloMe.com. Great site, great people, zero censorship.
That’s all I’ve got for today. There are a lot of irons in the fire so check back daily throughout the week. Plenty of ground to cover. I should have another radio show by week’s end, too, but why spoil all the surprises? Quixote Wednesday I’ll be dropping an honest to god bombshell or ten directly in Gamestop’s direction. Tune in in two days and start loading your sawed-offs now,
Tom Waters
