We’re all about the numbers here on Planet Man.
And by numbers, I mean statistics, not mathematics. Because, I mean, really — if God had actually intended for us to pay attention to math, He would have given us more fingers and less calculators.
I took a Math 12 class in my final year of high school. I lasted three weeks. It took that long for me to figure out the teacher wasn’t speaking a foreign language — apparently that’s what calculus sounds like. I dropped out of the class to join the choir. If I told you my singing has been compared to the noise a cat makes after catching its tail in a woodchipper, you will understand how much I hate math.
Statistics? Ah, now we’re talking (excuse me while I shiver with excitement. OK. Better now.)
By statistics, I mean sports stats, and by sports I mean hockey. If you’ve read my profile, then you know I’m all about the being hit with several ounces of vulcanized rubber moving very, very fast. Preferably not in the lower groin. Or the face.
At one time, I took great pleasure in memorizing Jacques Plante’s goals-against average over my morning corn flakes. Mind you, that was when Jacques Plante was still playing. And, you know, still alive.
Statistics are useful in so many other ways as well. For instance, did you know I’ve seen 68.9 per cent of the movies that opened in Vancouver in 2001? I know — sometimes I even impress myself. About 96.8 per cent of the time, actually.
I keep track of our household budget, which has the added benefit of allowing me to watch our dwindling resources and pretty much calculate the exact date Viking Woman is going to kick my unemployed freelance bum out the door.
In fact, half the fun of writing a blog is in the numbers. There is a tab labelled Blog Stats that lets me see how many unique visits I’ve had each day. (That number would be a lot greater if the bad people at wordpress.com would count my own visits. Talk about your party poopers!)
The Blog Stats show things like how, on April 23 this year, I hit my all-time daily high of 84 visits. Or how, in October 2008, I averaged eight visits a day.
The idea, as every blogger offering to trade his firstborn for a single Google ad will tell you, is to attract great hordes of visitors. There are several ways to do this, including being an excellent writer with important things to say, but I’ve already tried that and, let me tell you, it was barely worth the effort.
Another way to boost visitor numbers is to submit your blog’s name to a site called condron.us. I’m not sure how this works, exactly, but every time I do so, my numbers go up.
How long those visits last (I’m assuming they range in duration from “Hey, this guy is talented. And good-looking.” to a low of “Where’s the boobies you promised? What a load of bollocks!”) can also be calculated. Well, it could if I was using a program called Google Analytics. But I’ve tried three times to read the instructions and each time I ended up lying in the dark with a cold compress pressed to my overheated brain.
In the meantime, I can always use my skill with numbers to do other chores. Measuring things, for instance. We’re very adept at that task here on Planet Man. Heck we don’t even need any tools — we can do it all by eye.
For example, ladies, did you know this . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is nine inches?
Amazing, eh? And you know it must be true because men hardly ever lie. And, by hardly ever, I mean only about 90.7 per cent of the time. But who’s counting?
Bitemymoko 