Saturday 31 May 2014

TRUTH IS JUST AS STRANGE AS FICTION - Bottom 10

Real Life can be much more interesting than fiction.

My ten posts on this blog that get have the lowest average weekly traffic.
Why a bottom 10 and not a top ten?  Surely showcasing the better, more popular blogs would be smarter?  I've never been one to equate popularity with quality.  Sure, some may be popular because they are quality.  But the popular ones are already getting traffic, the unpopular ones are the ones that need the boost.
There are two main ways to determine popularity (or a lack of) total views or the average weekly views.  Now, the total views favours the older posts.  One view a week for a twenty weeks is gets better results an entry from last week that gets nineteen views.  I don't like that idea.  So, I've gone for a weekly average.  That does preference newer posts that have the burst of views from their first week... but isn't as skewed.  Any anyway, if they do that badly, their results will have settled down by the next time I do this.
At this stage I've done 20 posts..  As such these bottom twenty are half the posts, it's not like all of them have done too badly.
The list goes from lowest average (10) to best (1)

10.  Cue the Horror Theme Music - The Camp Scott Murders

  • Fair enough.

9.  Cue the Horror Theme Music - The Miami Zombie Attack

  • You probably remember it.

8.  Cue the Horror Theme Music - Graves of the Insane


  • The mass graves of Bedlam patients unearthed... to build a subway.


7.  Random Truth - 10 Truths about Chi-mas


  • What it say on the tin.  But with added crazy.

6.  Why Isn't This A Film - Alexander & Draga


  • A love story that may have resulted in WWI.

5.  Cue the Horror Theme Music - The Giant Prehistoric Virus Returns

  • French scientists unfreeze a giant prehistoric virus to show that they can.




  • The truth about a French noble woman who may or may not have led a pirate fleet against her own country.


3.  Simpsons Did It - All You Can Eat (Part 1)

  • All you can eat Sushi.

2.  Why Isn't This A Film - Bass Reeves

  • One of the greatest US Marshals and an early African-American law men.

1.  Cue the Horror Theme Music - Murder House

  • The scene of one of the US's earliest mass murders.
~ DUG.


Friday 23 May 2014

WHY ISN'T THIS ON SCREEN - "Coya, Come Home"

Looking at film and television.   Some real life people and events should be films or TV shows, like...

Coya Knutson (1912 - 1996) Congresswoman.

Coya planned to become an opera singer, but after attending Juliard she realised she wasn't going to make it and returned home.  She married Andy Knutson, an alcoholic who beat her and they adopted a boy called Terry.

She went into local politics, and eventually, upset with the agriculture policies of the Eisenhower administration, she ran against and defeated the sitting congressman and became the first female elected for Congress by Minnesota in 1955.  The Speaker of the House offered her a seat on any committee she wanted, with Agriculture her obvious choice.  The Speaker got her the position over the sexist objections of the Committee Chair.

When it came time for the next Presidential election, the Minnesota party officials supported Adlai Stevenson Senator in the Primary, hoping that the local Senator Humbert Humphrey would be his running mate.  Knutson supported Estes Kefauver because his agricultural policies were popular in her area and campaigned for him.  Kefauver won the Minnesota primary but lost to Stevenson.  Stevenson however made Kefauver his running mate.  Knutson became unpopular with the party locally.

She won a second term and moved to Washington with Terry to get away from Andy and his beatings.  Rumours started that she was having an affair with her Chief of Staff.  And then came the letter.

Signed by Andy, but possibly written by party officials it pleaded with Knutson to come home and be a proper wife and mother and to stop seeing other men.  The letter got into the hands of reporters and was printed under the headline "Coya, Come Home."

Knutson became the only sitting Democrat to lose their seat in congress at the next election.  She was defeated by Odin Langen, "A Big Man for a Man-sized Job," in a tight race.

After her election defeat she divorced Andy who died a few years after.  She is often cited as an example of sexism in politics and feminist martyr for obvious reasons.

~ DUG.

Saturday 17 May 2014

SIMPSONS DID IT - The Good Morning Burger

Real Life can be much more interesting than fiction. With over 500 episodes, The Simpsons have used a lot of ideas.  So many reality is starting to copy them...


7th May 1992: The Simpsons Season 3 Episode 23 "Bart's Best Friend Falls in Love" features an advertisement for The Good Morning Burger.

Saturday 3 May 2014

CUE THE HORROR THEME MUSIC - Poveglia: Island of Madness

Real Life can be much more interesting than fiction.  Some real life events sound like the first 10 minutes of horror films...

Poveglia is one of the islands in the Venetian Lagoon and is considered by some the most haunted island on Earth (You have to go to Europa for the most haunted island in the Solar System).  Oh, and it's now available for a 99 year lease from the Italian government.

Cue the Horror Theme Music...