IN WITH A BANG

Like any big time blog, mine keeps track of the number of hits it receives and the

I knew I should have asked this guy for tech
advice when I had the chance.

countries from which they emanate. It's impossible to determine which nationalities read specific posts, though. Making things more difficult to figure out, while certain posts receive X number of hits over 24 hours, the overall number is much larger. 

This means (I think) some people are just passing through; others are trying unsuccessfully to leave automatic comments in order to get me to click on their websites, which would either leave a virus on my laptop or lead me to porn. Which to choose? 

But it wasn't until I started the "Under COVID" series that things got interesting. Almost immediately, most of the hits started coming from Italy -- which, at the time, was the epicenter of the pandemic. 

Is it possible that COVID-stricken Italians were scrolling through Blogger looking for whatever information they could, and stumbled upon my sardonic contributions? Did a regular reader send a friend in Rome a link, which then got passed along to others? As so-called 9/11 truthers like to say, I'm just asking questions.

And, as you can see, he means it.

More interesting: Shortly after the president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, banned the utterance of the word "coronavirus" by its citizens and press, I started getting hits from, you guessed it, Turkmenistan, for the very first time.

Not a lot of hits, mind you. That's because, according to Central Asia expert Alexander A. Cooley, Turkmenistan's government controls not only the media but the digital nodes going in and out of the country. 

That piece of information is rather interesting, since almost every day a new COVID piece went up, I received exactly one hit from Turkmenistan. Now, if you live in a repressive country where you know the government is watching your every keystroke, would you take the chance of reading a blog which lately has devoted itself to a New Yorker's reaction to living under the specter of  coronavirus -- a word your country banned from use?

Maybe -- if you had a super secure computer with a jim-dandy firewall and top drawer

But he loves dogs!

antivirus software. However, in a country with an average salary equaling $37,000, that seems unlikely. More likely is that someone had the ability, the security, the power to visit my blog without fear of reprisal. 

And who might that be? Hello, Gurbanguly! May I call you Gurb? Or would Bang be more appropriate? Either way, thanks for trotting by!

Banning stuff is nothing new for this strongman. Not just freedom of speech, press and religion. That's old hat (or whatever that white thing is on his head).

Gurb, you see has also banned black cars from the capital city of Ashgabat, considering the color "unlucky". That's rather odd, since Gurb had already been president for 12 years when he called out the tow truck squad. And he's consistently reelected by 97% of the vote. Sounds like a lucky guy to me.

"Hello, ladies -- you like?"

Just two months ago, Gurb, who stopped coloring his hair in 2018, outlawed Ashgabat salons from dying men's hair.  Seems the president-forever-and-ever doesn't like competition! 

Yet, ironically, he's also banned men younger than 40 from leaving the country. Men under 40 tend to have darker hair than they do by the time they hit Gurb's age of 63, so that law's a head scratcher (but not dyer!).

So now I know what to talk about in future pieces to get the attention of a real live president: coronavirus, hair dye, black cars, and leaving the country at a young age. But I'm never mentioning Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov again. Not out of fear, but because I can't remember how to spell it. 

UPDATE 4/15: Looks like I've been slacking off on checking my stats. I've received 21 hits from Turkmenistan in the last week! Gurb just can't get enough of me!

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