Burque Babble: Post #500

Both the goat and your humble blogger have gained a few pounds over the years

Occasionally your humble blogger considers doing something far more respectable and writing a novel. Or maybe some sort of historic account of the Wheatland Hop Riot or some such early 20th Century event. At other times, he gives thought to doing the truly respectable thing, shutting down the publishing mega-empire known as Burque Babble altogether. To date, neither form of respectability has been put into practice, and the disreputable virtual fishwrap you, dear reader, infrequently click upon has reached the virtual milestone of its 500th post.

As one who tends to count things with a certain mania, your humble blogger has calculated from time to time (okay, maybe more like from time to time to time to time) the number of total words he has inexpertly scrawled electronically via this blog. Given an inherent inability to edit my attempts at prose, my posts tend to be too long, with the average word count somewhere around 500 most probably.

I also read that the average novel has around 125,000. Quick calculation of 500 posts at 500 words each leaves us with a total of 250,000. Two average novels. As I am a sucker for the David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest, Richard Ford Frank Bascombe trilogy type tome, I'm probably still a little short of a "real" novel in my mind. Regardless, 250,000 is a lot of just about anything.

Having tried to write a novel once or twice or seven times before, I realize that fiction writing is quite different from the projectile vomiting that is blogposting. Given edits and revisions and more edits/revision, my claimed 250,000 blog words probably equals 10,000 or less in "novel word years".

Then there's the whole "quality" thing. No matter. Today, the day of its 500th post, the mega-staff at Burque Babble chooses to disregard questions of what might have been and what it all means. Instead, it will simply note that this is the 500th little electronic blip thrown into a vast ocean of electronic blips over the last three years.

The staff will also make the claim that it is looking forward to reaching future milestones...a 1,000th post, a 10,000th. It will even go so far as to assert it will try to stop calculating in its manic brain the number of total words reaching a, say, post 9,326 would mean in "novel word years".

Lastly, a big thanks to all who have happened across this humble electronic blip over the years, especially those who have taken time to comment, email or come up to me saying "ain't you that Burque Babble guy?" Regardless of your opinions relative to the crippling weakness of my prose and/or ideas, your readership and involvement in this very, very little enterprise continues to be most appreciated.

P.S.: For those who want to see just how many pounds your humble blogger has gained, KNME has made, once again, the mistake of having me on their little "In Focus/The Line" show at 7:00 or so tonight, Friday (with re-airings at obscenely early times no sane person would watch television at during the weekend). Remember, as they say, that television always adds 10 lbs. to a person. A less well-known fact is that being on TV makes one's crazy stupid-looking hair look even crazier and stupid-looking. Trust me.