600

It's been a while since we gave a shareholders' report.  After all, it is you, dear reader, that make Life on the
Far Side a going concern and keep it growing with your great ideas and donations to the cause.

We chose the event of the 600th published article as an appropriate time to catch everyone up and what's been going down.

First of all, the hit counter is spinning madly.  We get about 300 visitors a day, less on weekends and more when our scribblings are actually coherent, or cross-published, whichever comes first.  The audience is split almost in half, with about 52% from the US/Canada (but I repeat myself), and 48% from Asia, Russia and Brazil, with a healthy mix of Eurospace in there.  The top 2 countries continue to be the US and Indonesia, both of which indicate promising signs of intelligence out there.

We are rapidly approaching a quarter-million pages served, which is likely the morning shift on some sites, but for a one-man show coming from deep in the jungles of Borneo, we think it's pretty damn stunning and we intend to use it as an excuse to drink brandy and smoke cigars.

As for the donations to pay for all the high-tech equipment that brings the Far Side to you each and every...well, OK, once every 3 days on average, we haven't received squat since installing the new Bitcoin system.  You may recall that PayPal wanted a whole ream of personal data and copies of IDs and all that.  WE told them which part of Elon Musk's alpha-male anatomy would be suitable to filing all that personal data and promptly established a Bitcoin account (for all the freakin' good it's done).  It could very well be that the lack of donations is a function of the declining quality of work around here, but we prefer to blame it all on Bitcoin and PayPal.

Radio Far Side is doing considerably better on YouTube than Vimeo, while the Yuku channel is langishing in anonymity.  We're about to peak over 4,000 hits on YouTube in the past five months.  Yeah, yeah, we know...fardly viral that, but hey, how many does your channel get?  Neener neener.

The Wordpress mirror site has suddenly and inexplicably taken off.  We're not complaining, you see, we just want to know how we did it co we can repeat the process elsewhere.  The Twitter account might actually do best if we gave a damn about it, which we don't.  Same with Farcebook.  But we still put a little effort into keeping them up to date anyway.

Meantime, back at the ranch...er, jungle, we're preparing for our annual Far Side Thanksgiving report, which is one of the perennial favorites out there in reader-land.  We're also fixin' to start a Big New Job, which is taking a lot of time and focus away from our regular musings here, but hey, we're keeping up with the average post count.  One of these days, we may even go in an clear out the 173 unfinished articles, too.

Our Big Goal for the Coming Year (OBGCY) is to get more regular readers than Far Side staff.  For some damn reason, our payroll seems to be expanding far beyond what would seem reasonable and proprietary for an effort like this.

At the end of the day, we want to thank all the regulars out there and welcome the newbies.  We'll try not to scare your right off.  It's been a long strange trip (thanks Grateful Dead!) getting to 600.  We just can't imagine what things will look like around here when we get to 1,200.  Hopefully by then, someone will have figured out how to use Bitcoin.  :D

Keep the faith and keep coming back.  We'll keep trying to education and inform, not necessarily in that order.  Special thanks to the good folks who write in and scold us for trashing up the 'net.  We really appreciate your efforts and look forward to more tongue-lashings in the near future.

Once more unto the breech!

The Jungle Judgeth Not

DATELINE - Deep in the Jungles of Borneo - It is still before dawn here in the jungle.  The silence is palpable and crushing.  I can hear the leaves turning eastward in anticipation of the sun's appearance.  The darkness is so thick I break of a piece and stash it in my pack for shade at midday.  The tribe is still asleep.  Monkey dreams stir minds and catch the breath.

I am the only electron junkie in the village.  I am not yet ready to cut my ties with the unbalanced world.  I tell myself that I need to track the storm front, but in knowing where it is, it knows where I am.  It is a curse.  The vegetable drapes and vegetable walls of my enclosure flicker with the dangers of toying around in the slime pits of civilization.

A blip on the radar: Singapore will start registering and licensing blogs critical of the government.  I update my lexicon so that all mentions of Singapore will be replaced with the word "Spaghetti", "law" will be replaced with "sausage" and "fascism" will become "sauce".  Problem averted...at least until 'spaghetti' becomes hate speach against Italians.  Until then, looks like Spaghetti's sausage is spreading the sauce again.

I perform the classic mental exercise: am I paranoid if they really are out to get me?

And who, exactly, is "they"?

The answers to those questions will solve the world's energy crisis.  Except there is no energy crisis here in the jungle.  All is fine.  Life is sweet and melts like cotton candy in a rain storm.  There are no problems in the jungle.  I drop my last handful of coins in the satellite uplink vending machine.

Pale pink corpuscles of light begin to stream across the sky.  Soon, another day of heavy leisure will be upon us.  I brace myself.

The top of the volcano explodes with Moses fire while the rest of the world lies in edible night.  A bird starts reporting the night's events, then another and another.  Soon my reverie is taken down with a full Nelson to the count of monkey snorts.  One more day in paradise, damn it!

The problem with government is that it creates a need and then steps in to fill it.  Here in the jungle, the law is expediency.  There is no need to regulate paint when there are no stripes on the road, nor road to stripe.  They will tell us we need hospitals but everyone is healthy until the civilization tsunami crashes on our heads.  Neuroses are created, not made.

The cat stalks dream vapors as they slide through the underbrush in search of beetle eggs in which to gestate.  Time here does not pass, it eddies like a child's finger through warm chocolate batter.  The cracking of tree bones is deafening as they strain to drink the warm starlight creeping down the mountainside.  The birds cacophonate as they await the conductor to finish his 3-minute egg and tea.

The world of sickness seems so far away from this place.  Here in the living world, it is as hard to find suffering as it is to find concrete, and just as much use for it.  Hurry is watching the snails race down at the river.  Stress is finding the right bamboo shoot to chew.

The darkness is receding fast now.  It is only pools among the trees, like drying puddles after a storm.  I check my pack to ensure my dark is still there before it is gone completely.  The Moses fire has spread from the mountain top to the tree tops and is slithering down the trunks toward the dream commuters.  Soon the train will arrive and the crowds disembark.  My silence will be broken but not irreparable.  The monkey music has begun.

That other world has lost its magic, and with it goes sanity.  Here in the living world, all is magic, and magic is the only cure for madness.

The day has begun.