As you would imagine, it's entirely reasonable to wonder what people are thinking about your blog. So you expend great energy prettying up the site, because you couldn't think of anything quipy today, in the hopes that people will be fooled by your better-than-OxBlog design, and not notice the absence of any relevant content. You try to come up with something timely -- like a list of movies to watch at the great impending film festival. You try to infuse urgency. You try to get people involved (you write in the second person.) Then you venture off-blog and send emails about your blog. You try to figure out how to create RSS feeds for your site.

Nothing seems to work. You're still left with your one incestuous inbound link from your friend's blog. Yeah, it would really help if a lot of your friends had blogs. But in "Volvo Democrat"-land (only, south-Asian) blogs haven't caught on yet. Yeah, they're still downloading tunes and cocktail recipes on their now-color cell-phones.

So, naturally, you get excited when you begin to see hits off of Google and Yahoo searches. Yeah, who would've thought people still use Yahoo to search? Yep, #2 on the results if you're looking for "Gregor Bregovic". #6 if you're looking for "Iranian Actress Susan Taslimi". The down-side? #1 on the results if you're looking for "shock & awe lingerie". And you're on the front-page for all those "french hardcore porn" searches. Hey, blame the Film Fest.