And the door prize for our 10,000th visitor goes to...

...an anonymized AOL user from "North America" Jun 21 2006 12:17:46 pm.

The executioner is perplexed by this purported milestone. Questions arise that already have answers.

Who am I congratulating?
myself.

Are you one of the sentient blog readers to whose benefit I profess dedication?
Who knows? You spent 0 seconds reading. We are no closer.

Did you wake up today thinking "I want to turn into a number today, for only as a statistic do I have any impact on the world!"?
No. Nobody thinks that but everybody winds up doing that anyway...especially when their number is up.

Are you grateful you weren't one of the many who come here by way of googling for "sweaty liberal thong party"?
No, you already were unidentifiable and you came from a bookmark or your browser doesn't put the referring URL in the HTTP get. I outted when you browse which would be trouble enough in some workplaces but your OS, ISP and browser version argue the computer is in the den or the bedroom...or business is so slow that surfing won't hurt it.

If you start thinking of yourself as just a number, an indistinguishable increment to the averages, at least you have aligned and scaled your thoughts about yourself to match the attention which all of humanity save your acquaintances allots to you. Sadly, this fails to actually put you in tune with humanity, which only presents itself to you one face at a time and each busily finding themselves to be unique and in need of uniqueness. With a bit of luck, your humility will be appreciated...but not emulated.