4,600

This is a four thousand six hundredth published post of The Secret Base of the Rebel Black Dot Society. 4,600 is not a particularly noteworthy number, like, say, 1,000 or 5,000, but it is round enough & large enough to justify this commentary. Of late, I've been much more interested in the metrics of The Secret Base. I've always championed quality or quantity, & still do, but in some ways that it a false dichotomy. (And I don't just mean in Stalin's famous formulation that, "Quantity has a quality all its own.") What I mean is that over the last several years I'd grown increasingly dissatisfied with The Secret Base, ruing plaintively that things weren't the way they used to be. The Secret Base had in many ways ceased to be a joy, ceased to be an inspiration in & of itself. Many days "The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day" was the only thing that prompted me to blog, & increasingly even those would be packaged into sprees of days' or even a week's worth of songs. This was in large measure a problem of my own creation; the fewer posts I published, the more pressure I imposed upon myself to stuff those posts to the gills with features, opinions, & amusing turns of phrase. This desire to make each post both massive & an event in & of itself lead to fewer & fewer posts being published, as each required more work, more inspiration, & more time to prepare. The less frequently I published the more The Secret Base felt like a job, & the less frequently I published as a result. This negative feedback looped looked & felt like a death spiral.

Numbers proved a life preserver to this sinking blog, this drowning blogger. The latest technological overhaul to the Blogger interface required a change of template; I was displeased by the arbitrary nature of this mandate, but if the fiends at Blogger weren't going to support The Secret Base's template then my only choices were to switch templates or give up the ship. The new template included not only a permanent archive, but publication metrics built into that archive. Lamenting that the enterprise was sick, that the good old days were the days of old, it did not take me long to realize one crucial difference 'twixt the salad days of yore & the present morass: Back in the day, The Secret Base was published a lot more often. I published three hundred eighteen (318) posts in 2012, the fewest since our foundational tear, 2002, when the interwebs were more primitive, "social media" was only just being invented, and The Secret Base had two hundred seventy-five (275) posts. There was a clear downward trend in the second decade of the 21st century, with 2011's three hundred twenty (320) posts, '10's three hundred twenty-three (323), & '08's three hundred twenty-two (322). The two most outstanding years of this blog's existence, as determined by volume of publication, were 2007, with five hundred ninety-one (591) posts & 2004, with an astonishing six hundred seventy-five (675) posts. That's a pace of almost two posts per day (1.85 posts per day), & almost a whole post per day more than '12 (0.87 posts per day). Quantity is not the same thing as quality, but my impressions & memories of the periods involved reveal that satisfaction with The Secret Base is directly proportional to the volume of publication; the more posts I published, the more posts I wanted to published, & the happier I was with what I published. There was correlation there, even if not causation.

As to the question of quality versus quantity, methinks my annual Mass-attendance goal provides a useful case study. The danger in counting the number of Masses I attend is that the goal of attending Mass could become to meet a quota rather than worship the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, & the Holy Ghost. Experience shows this to be an empty concern, a snare set by a devil to dissuade me from being more observant; the more Masses I attend, the better a Christian I am, the more tolerant & forgiving of my fellow man, the more generous in both spirit & action, the more cognizant of & joyful in the peace of Christ. In a similar way, though publishing the R.B.D.S.O.T.D. as an independent post could be dismissed as empty number-chasing, as cooking the books to impress the bosses; this, however, is rightly viewed as a trick, a snare of the dark bastard, a trap into which I'd been falling for years & years, to the detriment of The Secret Base & this disappointment of my treasured readers. No, publication breeds more publication. Publishing the R.B.D.S.O.T.D. as an independent post is not pulling rubes in off the streets & paying them to bulk up the audience in an second-rate magician's theater, it is the gateway to publishing two & even three posts per day. It is the path to a more persistent, more satisfying Secret Base.

After a rough start to the year, with five of the first six months of '13 failing to see an average even one published post per day, the last three months have seen a deliberate effort to raise the post-count & accompanying increases in your humble narrator's interest in The Secret Base & satisfaction with the blog being published. The salad days are not back again, not quite yet, but we're definitely back on track for the first time in years, since at least '07. This will be the forty-second post of September, the year's most productive month yet. This will also mean that through the first three quarters of 2013, two hundred seventy-three (273) days, two hundred eight-four (284) posts will have been published, an average of 1.04 posts per day. Nowhere close to '04 or '07, but better than any other years since that second peak in '07. Through the first six months of the year, one hundred eighty-one (181) days, one hundred sixty-eight posts were published, a 0.93 posts per day average. Over the last three months, ninety-two (92) days, one hundred sixteen posts have been published, an average of 1.26 posts per day. The road back to respectability (even if only self-respectability) & readability requires persistence & intentionality. Quantity is not the same thing as quality, but quantity appears to be necessary for quality.

Urbi et Orbi
Through the end of this month, I have attended Mass forty-four (44) since 1 January, well on the way to our annual goal of fifty-two (52) Masses, even without Advent & the Christmastide's flurry of Masses. I've also partaken of the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession) thrice this year, twice in the last week due to unusual circumstances.

This Sunday's first reading (the Old Testament reading, expect for a few special, all-New Testament Sundays a year), was a delightfully angry outburst from the Book of Amos. The following selection does not quite match Sunday's reading, but it amuses me more—Amos 6:1-3:

Woe to the complacent in Zion,
to the overconfident on the mount of Samaria,
Leaders of a nation favored from the first,
to whom the people of Israel have recourse!
Pass over to Calneh and see,
go from there to Hamath the great,
and down to Gath of the Philistines!
Are you better than these kingdoms,
or is your territory wider than theirs?
You would put off the evil day,
yet you hasten the reign of violence!

The Rebel Black Dot Party Song of the Day
The Aquabats!, "Pool Party!" from Myths, Legends, and Other Amazing Adventures, Vol. 2 (Captain Thumbs Up!)

Commentary: Not to be confused with the altogether darker "Pool Party" by Mu330.

"Pool party, baby,
It was a cool party,
Cool pool party,
La la la la.

"The ratio of girls to guys is five to one,
There hasn't been a party like this since 1981,
Come to my party, let the games begin,
We've even got floaties if you can't swim.

"(Your pool rips!)
I cleaned it yesterday,
(Girls look cute)
In their swimming suits,
(Holy guacamole!)
We've got chips,
So come and take a dip,
'Cause my pool rips!

"It was a pool party for the cool kids at my school!
It was a pool party for the cool kids at my school!
It's so cool in my pool,
It's so cool in my pool,
It's so cool in my pool,
It's so cool in my pool,
Yeah yeah yeah…

"There's no pool at my school,
There's no school in my pool,
Well, there's no pool at my school,
So it's cool in my pool,
Yeah yeah yeah yeah!"