Wait! People are paying attention to me?

I recently badmouthed Galleycat, because enough with the lolcats thing, okay?  And that goes for everybody.

I just hate the internet.  I want to go back to making Xerox chapbooks and selling them at the groovy record store.  I want a world without Google Chat.  I want personal correspondence to be measured in days, not minutes.

So, anyway, Galleycat responded.  Scary!

I live under the assumption that nobody reads this page, so I can say whatever I feel like and it’s like John Boy Walton’s journal, which burned up in the big house fire later in the series.  (That always sort of confused the whole faux-authenticity of The Waltons in my young mind.)

I know a few friends read the page, but friends aren’t real people!  Until they break up with their spouses and spend two weeks on my couch.  Then they’re a little too fucking real.  But as far as strangers, well, how could they possibly read the blog?

In order to answer a question constantly put to me by the guy who runs Flaming Spinach, I set up that Feedburner thing.  The RSS is on the side of the page and you can click or something or whatever.  Supposedly, that tells me how many subscribers and hits I get.  The count is always zero, which means that I’m right about my readership and I can go ahead and badmouth esteemed blogs like Galleycat.

The comment comes from Galleycat’s co-editor Andy Heidel, and I found myself caught off guard, after a giddy moment where I stuffed the books I’m publishing into an envelope and wrote “TO ANDY IN NYC” in crayon on the front.

I thought…oh, better not.  Because he’ll ruthlessly attack me for making fun of Galleycat.  Plus, I try not to publicly cross Greatsociety with my publishing venture because I believe it’s bad for business.  I can see it now:

“Oh!  He’s a publisher!  Cool.  What’s this?  He runs Greatsociety.org also?  Let’s see…”

*click click*

July 14th:  Today I was chased down First Street by the disembodied penis of Richard Nixon and I kept tripping on my Gingham dress.

Though, I don’t know…  If I just open up and use my real name and still act crazy, it might be marketing genius.  It’s an open secret, anyway.

Andy Heidel knows about marketing stuff like that, so I’ll let him advise.  Because, see, while I unsubscribed to Galleycat, clicking on Andy’s name led me to Heidelblerg, his personal blog, which I subscribed to right away to fill that new gap in the mystical world of Google Reader.  And there are no goddamn lolcats there!

And that led me to the other blog where he works:  The Not For Tourists spot for New York and, yes, they have one for DC.  (Amusingly, my weekend job was recently featured on that site, as well as the old family business.  So I did not subscribe because I’m haunted by demons.)

There’s no real debate about sending the books to Heidel because, in the end, I’m a whore. So I’ll drunkenly email him some night this week.  One thing’s for sure – I wish I knew about his services before now.  After burning through two slack-jawed, waterhead, spineless publicists, I’m just this side of organizing flying wedges like the Irish did in the 1920’s.  Go to the countryside and burn the homes of publicists!  Blow up their golf carts!  Poison their skim milk lattes!

I could have used a groovier sort of publicist.  But, oh well, there’s vodka chilling in the freezer and that’s what it’s all about in the end.