Markers and milestones.

A few things have happened over the past couple of weeks that just... weren't really all that important in the grand scheme, not in comparison with everything else that has been going on, that was much more serious and important. To make matters worse, time and I appear to be on poor terms again, as even though the days have seemed to fly by, looking back at my blog, only about a month has passed. It seemed like longer. Faster, longer -- one disproves the other, doesn't it?

Anyway. Other things also become apparent while looking back over the blog, milestones that I didn't see much point in celebrating when bad things were going on, and honestly probably wouldn't have felt were a big deal even if they hadn't been. Nothing has ever seemed more hubristic and masturbatory than those journal entries or message board notes that obnoxiously triumph "100 POSTS!!!" and yet...

Several entries back, the Mojo Wire reached 100 posts, each authored by yours truly. Around the same time, the blog got it's official 500th visitor [Re: not unique visitors], probably having reached said accomplishment unofficially about a week before, as the sitemeter counter came a little later in the blog's life. Of course, this doesn't account for those friends who read from the comfort of Google Reader or my mirror blog on Facebook.

The same counter also tells me that my traffic has rose to about 7 visitors a day, 3 of those tending to be people actually reading what's on the page, while the other 4 are unique hits that only stay long enough to see they want nothing to do with what goes on here. Most of said "unique" hits are because of my entry "Tandoori to Go" which is the number one search result for the phrase on Google. People looking to order Indian food to go and instead finding my production notes and depressing, insomniatic rants are usually from Canada, or the fertile crescent. I guess if I had the start up funds, I'd move there, and open a restaurant with a crack team of delivery people.

Ah, dreams.

The blog itself is just a little over six months old, far longer than I thought I'd actually stick with it, and I guess this post is, in part, celebration of that time. I've found a lot of use for this space, and even though I am not entirely pleased with some of the ways I've chosen to use it, being able to write and plan things out here has been greatly beneficial to me. After the week or so spent writing about Steven, I feel more cemented here. I've said it before, and I haven't been wrong yet -- I think I'm sticking with this.

Finally, I'd like to use this space to show off a creative thing that my cousin Travis Cole has been up to. Travis is a recent graduate, who's about ready to start a new job in Maryland, but his passion is sampling, a genre of music I don't know loads about, outside of a couple of DJ's Anna told me about, the work RZA has done on samurai cartoons and Kill Bill, and the Boondocks Mix tapes that were released in conjunction with Aaron McGruder's excellent TV series.

Travis puts his own tracks up here, on his Myspace page. He's particularly fond of using old jazz and funk tracks, and has passed along to me several blogs which post mp3 recordings of old, discontinued LPs in the genre, all conveniently posted on Rapidshare. I give you those sites' links here, here, here, and here, but am remiss to name them specifically as I don't know the owners of the blogs, nor how under the radar they wish to fly. If any of them find this blog, they can of course request to have the links removed, or their site mentioned by name, by putting their request in the comment section of this post, or e-mailing me at mojo.wire.productions@gmail.com.

I'm not a huge fan of jazz and funk music, but because of my exposure to the genre through Joey Strummer's work, and my love of grind house and Blacksploitation films, I've found a lot that appealed to me, and I know some of my other friends really like the music, so this should be right up their alley. And I encourage everyone to check out Travis's work, too.

Here's to six months and 500 more.

Cheers.