We were up a bit in March, and by “a bit,” I mean 44,000 page views ahead of February’s numbers. That’s encouraging to see. I don’t know what to say. Things are cool right now. I’m breaking my ass to keep the blog side of the site updated, with work, school and “real life” (whatever that’s about) taking up a goodly portion of my every day, but something like this makes me feel like it’s worth my time to do so, so thanks. I’ll keep showing up as long as you will. Probably longer, but only in that “tragic fall from grace can’t let go” kind of way. Cue the sad music.

The Obelisk received an astounding 284,538 page views for the month of March 2011. As of the writing of this post, there are 23,541 posts and 621 registered members on the forum. The General Discussion board alone has 979 topics, and the new TV/Movies Discussion has already passed Live Reviews in both topics and posts. I guess people watch more tv than they go to shows. Probably better for keeping their jobs, which I can relate to.

Looking at the map, the site had visits from all 50 states — doubled the Wyoming numbers going from 3 to 6 — and 115 other countries around the globe, including the much-in-the-news Libya, Syria and Iraq. There were also hits from all over the South American continent, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile and Peru. In the US, sunny California gave not-nearly-as-sunny New York a vicious spanking. Not even close. A special “hello” to whoever checked in from Napa. I liked Napa.

Alright. We’ve got business to handle and this is the last thing on my to-do list before I can go home for the weekend, so let’s get to it:

Kings Destroy: I’m putting them first for a reason. I have FOUR (4!) copies of the album left. I’ve been saying all along, and it’s been true all along, but never quite so much as now: if you want one (and you do), get one while you can. You can buy from the link in the sidebar, or the official Maple Forum shop.

The Maple Forum: Well, you already saw the store link, but here it is again, just in case. Monday or Tuesday I’ll be officially announcing that forum030, the third release, will be Blackwolfgoat. Figure I’ll let the cat out of the bag early for anyone who reads this far and give the details after the weekend. As with Clamfight — the impending forum040, in case you missed it — we’ll be working with the good people at Earsplit PR (site here) on the Blackwolfgoat record, so there will be plenty of information to come, including the release date. Like everything else so far, it will be a limited edition pressing.

audiObelisk: The latest podcast seems to have been reasonably well received, and we’ve had two track premieres in the last two days (here and here), so I guess there’s no shortage of activity there, which is fun. Music on a music blog — who’d have thought? These things seem to be a measure of the webublog hierarchy these days, so while the likes of Stereokiller and MetalSucks get the big first tracks, I’m happy just to be included where and when I am. Hopefully there will be more of that stuff going forward.

Features: My interview with American Heritage will go up next week (it just has to!), and after that I have Hour of 13 and Graveyard in the can. I kind of went nuts with interviews in February, but I’m almost caught back up, so I’ll get on setting up more phoners one of these days. I apparently just don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not buried nostril-deep in work. Speaking of…

Reviews: Remember how last month I said I was 30 reviews in the hole? Well, after a month of hard work and perseverance, I’ve managed to whittle that down… to 38. I’m an idiot.

Again, if you’re waiting on a review, your patience is appreciated. In April, we’ll have discs from Liturgy, Megasus, Against Nature, The Osedax, Bong and more, but I just can’t do more than one of these reviews a day (did you see that Pentagram writeup???), so thanks for sitting tight.

Roadburn: I fly out to The Netherlands on Wednesday, April 13, to attend, and write about, and photograph, this year’s Roadburn festival at the 013 Popcentrum in Tilburg. If you’re going, I hope to see you there. I’m the guy drooling over all the merch and shelling out Euro after Euro for the espresso machine, for future reference.

Visual Archive: Basically, it comes down to Slevin being busy at work and me not wanting to bother him. That’s really the holdup on the process. I was thinking of making a board on the forum for live photography and poster/album art in the meantime, as a kind of compromise, but I need to see how far along he is with the coding and if that’s just completely undercutting work and time he’s already put in, which of course is not what I want to do. One way or the other, we’ll get there.

That’s enough out of me. If you’re reading this (and even if you’ve stopped reading already and gone to get a sandwich or do whatever it is people do when they’re not sitting in front of computers), thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you, too. For commenting, for posting on the forums, for correcting my factual and typographical errors, for liking stuff on that Facebook thing I keep hearing so much about. All of it. Really. Thank you.

More to come,

JJ Koczan
Hoax Poke Taskmaster

Tags: self-aggrandizing, The Numbers

This entry was posted on Friday, April 1st, 2011 at 4:05 pm and is filed under The Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.