Rocket Bomber - article - snark - Shortlist: 5 Reasons...

…why the charts are posting late [this week]:

1. Shugo Chara on Crunchyroll. 81 Episodes and counting. (also on Cruchyroll: Ristorante Paradiso and Shangri-La, though those haven’t become major timesucks. yet.)

2. Aria. The Anime Where Nothing Happens ™. And Yet…

it’s not even like the main characters (all female, btw) are wearing miniskirts all the time (or ever… more’s the pity) or that there are love polygons (none — I mean, none) or that aliens are invading so our brave heroines have to pilot giant robots to repel repeated daily assaults.

Nothing. Happens. And gods help me I love it. I now own 39 (of 52) episodes on DVD (and refuse to admit to downloading fansubs of every episode 9 months ago) and whenever work—or the blog—gets to be too much, I just load up some Akari, Aika, Alice, and Ai — and whatever it was I was stressing over doesn’t seem so important anymore.

Love the soundtracks, too. Someone needs to import these so I can, um, actually pay for the MP3s I’ve been listening to for a year or so.

3. Work. [40+hours a week, still]
You folks want to pay me for the charts? Hm? Well, until then I have to make rent & beer outa somewhere.

4. Data Entry Sucks. Hate it. Beer makes it barely tolerable, but only just. (and the heavy consumption of beer isn’t exactly helping the process…) I’d get someone in India to do it for me but that would cost me like, twice what I pay for rent each month.

Data entry is the hidden engine behind the charts: the cost of admission, the core, the real work involved (can’t just browse to some site with the data — there is no other source, I’m the source) — yeah, yeah: I apply some fancy maths to it, too, before I serve it up to the general public, but the math is just frosting on the cake; the ‘cake’ is mind-numbing, boring [gods is it boring] data entry.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t always finish the data entry on time.

5. Lack of feedback.

Oh, I know someone out there is reading it. And I do get a modest smattering of linkbacks. And precious few comments (up to five a year — woah, let me sit down… it’s like I’m drowning in riches…) but week in, week out there is only me, the sites, the data, and the grind.

No outside feedback. No attaboys, no compliments, no complaints, no objections, no corrections, no death threats… I don’t even get spammed. Just three links a week & the dozen regulars, and…

Well. If it weren’t for Free Porn from Simon I might have no reason to keep up the blog at all. (I figure I ‘owe’ Simon at least $200 bucks at this point — not that that’s the only reason, but anything that keeps me going can only be a good thing for him, me, and the rest of us)

Honestly, if I were the regular sort of attention whore (and I don’t deny I’m an attention whore — I have a blog, after all) this echoing silence might be enough to put me off my game for good.

So.

Well.

OK, so I have to know. I have a burning curiosity deep in my soul and the release schedules and the sad, pitiable information on sales from quote-regular-sites-unquote just doesn’t do it for me. That’s why I compile the charts.

…But I don’t have to know right now. So long as the data is saved and I can get around to it soon… or, eventually… there is no compelling reason to waste the rest of my day off doing data entry for a nameless, faceless internet that doesn’t even bother to acknowledge my efforts.

[insert The Bird here]

It’s 2 am, I have a few beers left and precious few hours before I have to go back to work (the work that pays the bills) and I don’t really feel like typing title-volume-rank into the spreadsheet anymore tonight.

Charts soon. just not now. Maybe Tuesday.
[and if you’d like to change any of these circumstances in an effort to induce me to post on a regular schedule, I can only say: Tempt Me.]