Thanks to everyone who checked in over the weekend. It came down to the wire, but yesterday morning, we passed April’s total to wind up with 22,457 page views for the month of May. I know that’s not so much more than April, but if you think about it, April was action-fucking-packed, with travel to San Francisco and The Netherlands, whereas May was pretty much just the normal day-to-day. Beating April’s numbers even with nothing really out of the norm means more to me than it otherwise might. Thank you.

According to Google, which I’m using for everything but the actual numbers at this point (though I should use theirs, since they’re higher than Yahoo‘s), The Obelisk had visits between May 1 and 31 from every state in the US and over 110 other countries around the world — even Bangladesh! Hello, Dhaka!

Not sure what’s up with Central Africa, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Burma not showing up. Come on guys, get with the program! It’s not like there’s anything devastating to humanity going on in those areas or anything…

I’ll try and keep this short (and probably fail, as usual). There are a lot of good things coming up for June. I’ll have interviews with Fatso Jetson — it happened — Stone Axe, Eyehategod, The Melvins and more, and I’m in a perpetual state of being behind on reviews, so there’s going to be a shit-ton of those as well. Here’s the updates:

Shirts: I’m getting tired of saying “I’m on it” every month and then doing nothing, which is a good sign. As of right now, I’m slated to go to New Brunswick on Thursday and I’ll talk to the printer then.

Roareth: Yeah, so you know how The Maple Forum‘s first release was set to be out in May? Heh. So much for that. Roareth, following an injury to their vocalist that delayed the recording, are in the mixing stage now. On my agenda for the day is to email Aaron for an update, so I should hopefully have that by tomorrow.

audiObelisk: I’m glad so many of you downloaded and hopefully enjoyed the Dio-cast. That was really great. If you didn’t see it, the June podcast is up, and it’s the Man’s Ruin tribute. If anyone knows Frank Kozik, please forward it along. I haven’t been brave enough to email him and ask for an interview yet. To anyone who voted for the British-only podcast, that’ll be coming later this month as the July transmission.

On the Radar: It’s starting to feel a little stale to me. If you dig the On the Radar section, please speak up. I like finding new bands, but MySpace tracks always sound like shit and are hard to review. If you think it’s worth it, I’ll keep it going, but I’d just as soon find another way to explore unheard acts. If you have a suggestion for how I might do that (short of hosting demos, which I don’t have the bandwidth to do), please let me know. I have some ideas.

Buried Treasure: At some point, after the UK podcast, I’m going to do a “Best of Buried Treasure” compilation of tracks from purchases I’ve made over the last year-plus. I’m looking forward to that. I’ll also be staying in Vermont for most of the month of July, so if anyone knows any good stores up that way, I’d love to visit a couple shops while I’m there. More on that later.

Alright, I think that’s about it. Thanks again to everyone who checked in during May. I love the forward momentum this site has. I know it’s summer now and people are going to go outside and not necessarily spend their entire day on the internet (though I have no idea why they’d do such a thing), but I’ll be here, so please keep The Obelisk in mind as you go about your business or whathaveyou.

Humbled as ever,
JJ Koczan
Happenstance Pituitary Taskmaster

Tags: self-aggrandizing, The Numbers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 11:01 am and is filed under The Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.