I’ve got a little list—I’ve got a little list… – Sir William Gilbert, “As Someday It May Happen” from The Mikado
I promised in my “Anniversary” column that I’d provide a list of my top ten posts, calculated in a number of different ways, and though I actually made the counts that very day I’ve for some reason not been able to get around to putting the column together until now! So without further ado, here are the figures as they stood on July 10th.
This first is a list of my top ten columns, as determined purely by number of hits:
Top Ten (# of hits)
Name Date # of hits by 7/10/11
Coming and Going February 10th, 2011 5,970
Courtesan Denial December 4th, 2010 4,637
Meretrices and Prostibulae November 3rd, 2010 4,127
Numerology January 24th, 2011 3,360
Acting and Activism January 8th, 2011 2,721
Who Did Your Tits? October 1st, 2010 2,623
January Second January 2nd, 2011 1,875
Plaçage November 22nd, 2010 1,771
International Sex Workers’ Rights Day March 3rd, 2011 1,574
The Slave-Whore Fantasy (Part One) December 2nd, 2010 1,537
Some of these are unsurprising, but some appear to make no sense at all; why in the world should a post about the amount of money the State of Texas wastes on locking up hookers be my most popular by 29% above its next-closest competitor?
To understand the reason, one must take image searches into account; for several months this spring, the single most popular search which led to this blog was “Texas county map”
or some variation on it, which led to the first illustration in my February 10thcolumn. Similarly, searches for pictures of Veronica Franco
led to the December 4th column, “Pompeii” and “Temple of Fortuna Virilis” both found my November 3rd column, “Mardi Gras tits” turned up this young lovely
in my October 1st column, and Googling for illustrations of the fictional planet Gor
turned up these Boris Vallejo illustrations in my December 2nd column. It tickles my sense of irony that thousands of searches for “Mira Sorvino” ended up at my January 8th column about her rude
and unprofessional treatment of Dr. Laura Agustín, but I am nothing short of astonished that almost two thousand people cared enough about sofa beds to end up at my column of January 2nd.
Since these results tell us nothing about the content of the columns, I disallowed them and came up with this list:
Top Ten (corrected)
Name Date # of hits by 7/10/11
Numerology January 24th, 2011 3,360
Plaçage November 22nd, 2010 1,771
International Sex Workers’ Rights Day March 3rd, 2011 1,574
Ashley Madison January 30th, 2011 1,439
Madame de Pompadour December 29th, 2010 1,366
Phryne July 31st, 2010 1,133
Storyville September 3rd, 2010 1,113
Japanese Prostitution October 21st, 2010 1,104
By the Numbers April 20th, 2011 1,095
Here We Go Again… August 26th, 2010 1,060
Though many people searched for information on Phryne and Madame de Pompadour, many others found those articles by searching for pictures of the ladies (especially this detail from “Phryne at the Festival of Poseidon in Eleusis” by Henryk Siemiradzki), so I’ll include two runners-up as well: “Wife Swapping” from November 20th and “November Q & A” from November 27th.
Ranking the top ten posts by the number of comments they elicited gives us a completely different picture:
Top Ten Comments
Name Date # of comments by 7/10/11
That Is So Hot! April 19th, 2011 191
Speaking in Prostitute June 17th, 2011 170
Their Lips Are Moving April 25th, 2011 132
Pendulum April 9th, 2011 128
Creeping Rot April 18th, 2011 123
Public Service Announcement June 12th, 2011 120
Savaging March 27th, 2011 115
Neither Cold Nor Hot April 6th, 2011 114
May Q & A May 31st, 2011 97
Interview: Jill Brenneman (Pt 4) February 24th, 2011 96
With apologies to Eliot, April appears to be the chattiest month!
Most posts seem to have a great deal of interest right away, then trickle off; others seem to attract interest consistently as time goes by. Here are the posts which show the smallest variation in number of hits from month to month:
Ten Most Consistent (in chronological order)
Name Date
Do You Party? July 14th, 2010
Modern Marriage July 18th, 2010
Phryne July 31st, 2010
A Whore in the Bedroom September 9th, 2010
Think of the Children! September 30th, 2010
No Other Option October 17th, 2010
Wolves October 18th, 2010
Japanese Prostitution October 21st, 2010
Wife Swapping November 20th, 2010
Plaçage November 22nd, 2010
Interestingly, there aren’t any posts from this year in this particular list. Finally, I’d like to finish off with a list of my ten favorite posts which don’t appear on any of the other lists:
Ten Essays Maggie Would Like To See Get More Attention
Name Date
Advice for Clients August 21st , 2010
Five Women in Whitechapel October 5th, 2010
Heart of Gold October 6th, 2010
The Love-Hate Relationship October 7th, 2010
Amazingly Stupid Statements October 10th, 2010
Deadbeats October 30th, 2010
Ban the Super Bowl! December 11th, 2010
Social Autoimmune Disorder January 12th, 2011
Creating Criminals January 15th, 2011
A Little Help From Our Friends March 11th, 2011
Plus ALL of the fictional interludes!
One Year Ago Today
“New Film Reviews”, my first of a number of similar columns, containing my reviews of Doctor Detroit, Full Metal Jacket, An Indecent Proposal, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pretty Woman, Total Recall, Whore and The Wicker Man.
