Every so often I check my CaptCliff web blog to see if there are reader comments. Usually there are few to none. Nothing unusual there. I recognize that, for the most part, we who blog are pissing into the proverbial wind. We who write, whittle, draw, sculpt, paint, compose or collect rare endangered ferns do it for ourselves, not so much for public recognition. I mean, let’s be honest, we all fantasize about being famous and having a national fan club that rivals Elvis Presley, but the fact remains…..our thoughts and perspectives are usually too idiosyncratic to matter much to the other 5 or 6 billion people on the planet. Everybody is understandably busy…with their own lives. It is the social irony and existential futility that makes art so precious. Most, but certainly not all writers or painters or so called starving artists get recognized and/or become famous only after they stick their head in an oven, drink themselves to death or have their memoirs found in a dusty trunk long after their body was found… floating down the Seine.  We do it for our own pleasure and creativity, but, like every other child of God and child of Man, we sometimes wish to cry out, “Look at me! Look at what I created!!” I guess that is one reason I am always tempted to buy something at art fairs, even tho I might not completely like the work or cant afford it. At the very least I like to say to the sweaty artist sitting in the uncomfortable looking director’s chair at the back of the tent-booth, “Pretty cool stuff dude!” or “Very very nice.” You can see it means alot to them to say something and actually pay attention to their individual creations, unlike most people who are stuffing their faces with funnel cakes and walking right by every exhibit.

Anyway, I find it interesting that occasionally I do get a comment on my blog but usually the spam filter identifies it as garbage-spam. How do they find me? So I write a blog piece about Stendra the new Viagra, and some foreign company with a bot program writes, “Great article. Keep up the good standing!!” What? What does that mean? It probably means someone in the Philippines doesn’t have a complete grasp of the English language and uses idiomatic expressions incorrectly when trying to sell me their black market version of Viagra. Still I appreciate their comment and will definitely keep up my standing.