I rarely look at the stats for this site because I really, truly am not a person concerned with his own popularity.  I think my various angry rants over the last two years have shown that pretty conclusively.

But every once in a while, I check out the stats just to see if anybody is really listening.  And here are the fun things I noticed about the most recent perusal of said StM web stats.

One, the overwhelming majority of you are still using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as your browser of choice.  Really?  I mean, really?  Okay, it’s your life, I’d never tell you what you could or couldn’t do with your computer.  But, for real?  If I can start twittering, you can download Firefox.

Two, I am huge in Australia.  I must be the vegan, atheist David Hasselhoff of Australia.  Okay, I don’t have the Hoff’s German numbers, but next to the US, the most hits the site gets are out of Australia.  I hope I get to come there someday and say hello to each of you personally.  And if I do, do you have a couch I could sleep on?

Three, I also get a lot of hits from the previously-unknown-to-me mecca simply called “European Country.”  I hear “European Country” has some very nice weather this time of year, and that the people are very friendly.   To all of my friends in “European Country” and “Australia” - oops, sorry - Australia, I’m sorry to be so US-centric all the time.

And finally, we’re just this close to the 20,000th download of the StM podcast.  This may seem like a relatively small number (compared to say, the numbers Hoff gets in Germany), but for a little show I record with Garageband in my tiny studio apartment, I think it’s actually pretty scary.  Who are you people?  And why haven’t you joined the forum?

On a sort of related note, I had a bit of inspiration just last night about some other sites I’d like to start in the very near future.  I began StM just over two years ago so that I could talk about a wide range of subjects, and to offer a sort of counterpoint to all of the one-issue websites and podcasts out there.  However, after some discussions in the forum, and after years of my own observations of this particular issue, I think there is at least one single-issue website that I’d like to get set up in the next couple of months.  It would be primarily for vegans and for non-vegans interested in the vegan take on this one, particular, vegan-related issue.

Sorry to be vague, but the URL I want is still available, so I don’t want to give any clues, lest some unscrupulous person take that URL before I can.

Anyway, this new endeavor won’t take away from my work here at StM.  It’ll just be a place dedicated to this one particular issue I have in mind, so it’ll be much easier for me to run.  Plus, I’d like to get some other vegans involved, too, since I think this is an issue of great importance to the future of the vegan cause, and I don’t see it currently being addressed with any consistency anywhere on the internet.

Anyway, enough vague talk of the future.  For right now, there are some really solid people in the forum, there are contributors and there are podcast listeners all helping to make StM something I can feel good about doing.  Thanks for hitting up the site (especially you plucky Australians), and thanks for sticking with me through all my angry rants.