A blog is a strange refraction of ourselves. It's a constructed personality, a segment of our interests. I doubt most people are completely represented by their blog entries and conversations. This is both a strength and weakness. At every juncture, I ask myself "Is this a topic for this blog?"

DemiOrator contains a fairly specific segment of my interests. It contains information and things I find interesting and think deserve a wider circulation. As time has gone on, I've relied less and less on cues from fellow bloggers as to what I showcase here. Again, this has pluses and minuses. As a minus, I feel removed and distanced from the community of bloggers. As a plus, I don't think my topics are typically part of the "echo effect" common in many of the blogs I like, where a news item or subject propagates through the blogosphere, creating a chorus where it's difficult to pick out specific voices.

Part of the blogging experience for me is the disconnection between what I think I'm projecting and creating in DemiOrator and what my hit counter statistics tell me about my newest visitors. I have a basic hit counter that only shows the last 100 visits. This is fine because I still get well below that number per day. Searches leading to DemiOrator always provide me with puzzling material so I'm going to list a few that consistently show up. I'm going to link the searches with the term and also link to the post found on DemiOrator. This is pure self-indulgence on my part but, as the saying goes, it's my blog and I'll be boring if I want to.

• Tre Tre Crip - The Tre Tre Crips were mentioned in passing in "A grassroots tactic but you need a law...", and it shows up high on the search page. I wonder why people are searching on the Tre Tre Crips?
• Donkey Punch definition - A little less popular recently but my post The Return of the Curious Case of Cafe Press still shows up on the first page of the search.
• Soldier salary - I ain't no expert but because I quoted another source in A Soldier's Salary, I show up high in the ranking.
• Men are assholes - Even though I qualify it in Some Men are Assholes, it's still the second listing on the search page.

So the image that could be built up about me, based on the popular searches, is that I'm a misanthropic Catholic activist in the military with a penchant for hitting women into unconsciousness during sex. (I've mentioned previously that "Catholic statistics" is also a popular search.) Is it any wonder that this disturbs me?

I am Jack's schizophenic alter-ego. Fear me, worship me, forget me.