Silflay Hraka

There’s a new career in the Army of One: muleskinner.

Superhero Do’s and Don’ts
Rules for choosing a superhero name:
? Don’t call yourself by your real name, e.g.
Mr. Fred Pinchuck, The Amazing Stevie Foster

? Don’t call yourself by someone else’s real name, e.g.
Mr. Teddy Kennedy, Captain Dean Martin
…..
Supervillains to Avoid:
? Emitorr, the Nuclear Radiation Man
? Thargorr the Planet Crusher
? Dr. Slaughterhouse
? Garth, the Gonad Detonator Supreme
? Dr. Disemboweller
? The Slasher From Beyond the Stars
? Krisparr the Incinerator
? Sun-Up, the Solar Sodomizer
? Mr. Rip-Your-Nuts-Off-And-Eat-Them-In-Front-Of-You

How many times have you published a really good post, something that you thought was a finely crafted model of trenchant wit and amusing scholarly insight, only to have it sink into the vast waters of the blogosphere with barely a ripple? How many times have you thought that here at last is something that will get me a bit of recognition from the blogerati, only to be wrong? I think that this happens to almost all bloggers, big and small. Sometimes it’s just timing. If you put up a really good post about your kid or some arcane bit of knowledge on the same day that Britney Spears assassinates Yasser Arafat, it’s not to get the attention it would have otherwise deserved. Sometimes there is no good explanation, as the child of your mind sits there, ignored, a wallflower at the school dance, while everyone around you dances with the popular kids.

Frustrating, isn’t it? Don’t you just want to find the nearest water tower, climb up and start taking potshots? I know I do, and I’ve got at least a half-decent record at attracting attention from my betters. The problem is that there is no proven acceptable way of saying Hey you lot, take a look at this! And admit, you know you want them to. Blogging, if nothing else, is the bleeding edge of vanity publishing. If you didn’t think you had something valuable to say, you wouldn’t be doing this.

Trolling referral logs is slow, and the bigger the target, the less chance it has of working. Bill Quick’s referral logs move so fast they smoke. Your visit to Instapundit is viewable in his logs, if you get lucky, for about a minute.

There’s always e-mail, but it’s frowned on, smacks of desperation, and you still have to hope that somehow your letter stands out somehow from the crowd of hundreds or sometimes thousands of other e-mails.

That’s one problem. Here’s another. I’d link to you more often if I was able to read you more often. Making one circuit through the blogroll over there on the left takes a week, at a minimum, and that’s with me reading just the stuff on each blog that was written that day, and I am nowhere near as busy as the big guns. If the best example of your skill appeared a couple days before I showed up, I’m going to miss it. Deep down, this grates at me. I’ve read enough of you to know that that there are extremely talented and knowledgeable writers in my blogroll that not only don’t get enough attention from everybody else, they don’t get enough attention from me.

So I have a request, one that I think might go a ways towards solving both problems. If you think you have a good post, e-mail me the link. I’ll read it, and once a week, I’ll link to the ones I’ve gotten. It’ll be an index of what you and other bloggers think is their best stuff. At the worst, you’ll be exposed to Silflay Hraka’s crowd, such as it is. What will likely happen is that people who are looking for stuff to link to, but might not have a lot of time, will drop by, find something that interests them, and link to it. Your memes are guaranteed exposure, and the more people that participate, the more people will pop by to take a look.

I’ll post the first index next Friday, and I’ll probably mail this around to the blogroll sometime this weekend. If you’d like to have a link posted, just e-mail one to me, along with a category for it, like Family Life or Domestic Politics or alt.misc.fetishes and a teaser line, like the model Blog Critics uses on its front page. On the off chance you decide that all of your posts are deserving, try to winnow it down to one, ok? People who like your stuff are going to stay awhile, so you’ll get more exposure for the rest of your blog, and you’ll pick up permanent visitors at a faster pace.

Let me know what you think, and I’ll adapt the whole thing as it goes along. I think it’ll work well, and will shed some light on stuff that have been otherwise overlooked.I’m looking forward to linking to some of the best stuff in the blogosphere.

Of course, that’s assuming someone reads this.

Update: Information on the latest Carnival Of The Vanities, as well as upcoming hosts and the vast variety of other Carnivals, is posted to the main page of Hraka every Wednesday. The latest update may be found here.

If you’d like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here. If you would like to be added to the Carnival announcement list, send an email to cotvanities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

“SAFE!!!!” No More

This is further evidence that people are dumbasses and have gone ballistic. A father (34) and son (15) attacked a coach for the Kansas City Royals during a baseball game, and as the tattoo-clad redneck was led to the police car he said the coach, “Got what he deserved.” And I thought I cared about my sports teams.

If a photo is worth a thousand words then this guy’s shot says, “I am a complete a-hole and should be arrested on site, regardless of whether or not I have actually done anything wrong. I am not capable of speaking in complete sentences and panhandled in order to be able to afford my ticket into the game.”

Mark sporting events off the list of safe places to take the family, along with monuments and tall buildings. People suck!!!

Okay, partner……..DRAW!!!!!

Florida has become the standard for completly screwing up voting procedures. Mired by reports of hanging chads, numerous recounts and dumb old people, this is where good intentions go to die. Perhaps all of us could learn something from the state of Nebraska, where it appears that close elections are decided much easier and much faster. Yes, it does seem a bit archaic, but it solves voting issues in a relatively quick and painless manner. Instead of Nebraska public officials spending so much money on advertising, their dollars might be more effective spent learning the intricate strategies of “Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

Money Dance! Thanks to our Amazon tipster! Another $5 in the tin for the communal beach house.

Wanted: Idiot

Here is a list of resume mess-ups. I am particularly interested in the job that #10 might land you, yet I want nothing to do with #5.