The Darwins analyze their own blog.
Darwin: We don't really tend to have long comment threads these days. But then, I guess we haven't hit any of the issues that automatically generate long controversies lately.
MrsDarwin: I have absolutely no interest in issues-based blogging.
Darwin: I like issues, but even when I get around to writing about them I seem to focus on issues that don't generate many comments.
MrsDarwin: I only write about myself, and there's only so much other people can say about that.
Cue 30+ comment thread.
ReplyDeleteI'm often amazed at what posts do and do not generate a lot of comments. But if you do want to ensure an active comment thread, write about either breast-feeding or some other aspect of parenting (co-sleeping, etc.)
Or modesty or liturgy.
ReplyDeletePerfect storm topic: Modest dress for stay-at-home mom's to wear while co-sleeping and breast-feeding at Tridentine liturgies because they aren't all like those uncaring parents who don't homeschool, which, incidentally, is why anyone who disagrees with this post is a Gnostic Calvinist Universalist Bi-Metalist. (And why don't we get on the gold standard already?)
ReplyDeleteOr sex.
ReplyDeleteOr, bring back the bras.
ReplyDeleteLooks like we were cross posting, and I flipped a coin between sex and bras.
ReplyDeleteGreat minds think alike.
I think most people who get het up about modesty in comboxes just want the frisson of talking about sex without the commitment of having to type S E X.
ReplyDeleteOr, bring back the bras.
ReplyDeleteBring them back? Where did they go?
Why was I not informed of this?
Betty, don't you know that visible bra straps are the #1 cause of lascivious thoughts on the Othodox Catholic Male?
ReplyDelete*in*. Autocorrect strikes again.
ReplyDeleteLet's see, there's always the pants controversy. Not for nothing, underwear is the weakest link in my wardrobe. My strategy for buying one pair at a time fell flat when I found a pair that worked and then I could no longer find the style in the store. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteThe real secret of long comments threads is to have more obnoxious commenters. I can send you my schedule of rates and fees, if you would like.
ReplyDeleteBrandon, I started reading your comment, but there was nothing about me in it so my eyes started glazing over.
ReplyDeleteLying.
ReplyDeleteHiroshima.
Also, I'm willing to commit to a never-ending thread talking about MrsDarwin.
What? I teach kids all day for a living. I need hobbies.
Rob Alspaugh
Looks like I was prescient.
ReplyDeleteYou need a good, navel-gazing post about waterboarding, pro or con. Actually, not even pro or con. Just write the words "water" and "boarding," and then step back and see the sociological experiment unfold.
D'oh. Last comment was mine.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, another topic guaranteed to spark controversy: anonymous blog commenting.
Oh, and just to make sure you get a few more hits: Ron Paul.
Rob, I fear you and the dirt you can dish about my wild senior year.
ReplyDeleteSent from my phone as I make a strategic retreat from the kids I'm supposed to be teaching. Here's another controversial topic: how to teach American history to children.
And should I be concerned that my kids are in the kitchen smashing grapes to make Communion wine? Answer: better the kitchen than the living room.
You could add circumcision and either the pros or cons of homebirthing. For Tridentine skirt-wearing orthodox grain-free homeschooling Catholics.
ReplyDeleteWho don't vaccinate.
I've found that there's a limited amount I can say about myself, but there is NO LIMIT to the number of times I can say it.
How about you go in an entirely different direction and start talking about Beyonce or the Kardashians. That would expand readership.
ReplyDeleteTo veil or not to veil...
ReplyDeleteNursing during Mass: acceptable practice or outrage beyond mentioning
Children: Do they even belong in Mass? Mothers have a dispensation to care for young children and the cry room is in the back or why does the sixty year old that tsks the toddlers spend Mass chatting about what's for breakfast.
Any and all of these...:)
Little known story about me: in 1996 I traveled to Washington DC to do some intern work with a group focused on bringing modesty back to the Tridentine Mass. I was the group's representative to the Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew that fall, and it so happened that I sat in the same pew with Robert Kardashian (who, as we all know, reactivated his law license to defend O.J. Simpson) and his daughters. I, of course, was draped in a mantilla so large that I was a formless mass, but Kourtney Kardashian wore a skin-tight dress cut down to here.
ReplyDeleteAs the mass progressed, Kourtney became more and more uncomfortable because Bill Clinton was ogling her bra straps from across the cathedral, so she asked if she could borrow my mantilla. Of course, I was always willing to advance the cause of modesty, so I handed it over. Kourtney's sisters snickered at the mantilla, but she was so taken with the idea of modesty that she eventually took up wearing shapeless overalls and stoles that covered her shoulders.
I, however, could only take so much of having older men back me into a corner to discuss modesty with me, so I broke off with the group and went home to edit my memoirs into my college application essay.
I had a decent comment, but then I read Lauren's post and the only thing I can hear in my head is My Hero's voice going "It's not you I hate, Karsashian, it's what I became because of you...."
ReplyDeleteLook at it this way-- your threads average more responses than I have posts in a month!
My silence has a price. Are you really ready for the world to know about what we did to those homeless people on the bridge on Friday nights?
ReplyDeleteDon't get me started on the witch's familiar that nearly killed us all.
Rob Alspaugh
Look, if you're going to homebirth (an event which normally occurs ten lunar months after having had S E X), skirts just make sense. You don't always have time to get your pants off in the middle of a homeschool lesson about the history of co-sleeping in colonial America just to deliver a baby who you will then breastfeed during said lesson, a feat of multitasking that it would be foolish to complicate through the addition of a brassiere. At least that's what Mrs. Darwin told me while we were standing outside the local Tridentine parish after our kids sneezed and said "Bless you," respectively.
ReplyDeleteWe promise our silence on some certain late evenings with too much port wine if other parties agree not to discuss certain wedding guests who came a year early from Germany. :)
ReplyDelete*horrible pun*
ReplyDeleteBehold... The Word Of Blog.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWait, is it acceptable to lie in order to prevent someone from being water boarded for having bombed Hiroshima while not wearing a bra?
ReplyDeleteShould the choice of wearing or not wearing a bra be moved to the metaphysical for those of us who have no real choice?
ReplyDeleteCan a Big Girl metaphorically choose not to wear supporting undergarments, no matter the demands of basic comfort and reality? If so, can a gal who does not require the support instead choose to wear a thick shirt as a metaphorical bra, instead of wearing a literal bra she has no physical need of?
Michelle, I had forgotten about the German wedding guest until this very evening. Wow.
ReplyDeleteIs the port wine incident when Darwin was sending fire balls up the chimney?
Rob, are you really going to divulge such damaging information? Baby, I'm Amazed By You.
Matthew: WHAT HAPPENS IN NEW ORLEANS, STAYS IN NEW ORLEANS.
Has anyone here noticed that only Catholic blogs refer to 'comments boxes' as 'comboxes'?
ReplyDeleteHit the search engines if you don't believe me: Aside from a few trademarked products that have nothing to do with blog comments boxes, the term 'combox' simply has not caught on among the reprobate.
I have to wonder (idly) whether there might not be some tenuously Darwinian story of survival, adaptation, and 'ecology' here.
Where's the "like" button?
ReplyDeleteI need to forego commenting because I'm brain dead from too much social media. Plus I've got to go feed in my free range kids some locally grown sustainable grains, so they don't range off into the vicinity of some evil mega-corporation that sells heart attacks and diabetes.
Oh Mrs Darwin- another little known story about you. You have so many of these stories up your sleeve I really suspect you must be 75+ years old at least. You hide it well. You could market your moisturiser.
ReplyDelete"We don't really tend to have long comment threads these days."
ReplyDeleteHmmm. 34 comments. Revel in the irony! (I don't get this many in a month, not even on Facebook.)
David,
ReplyDeleteYeah. Goes to show, once again, that you never know what posts will end up generating lots of comments, but it's almost sure not to be the one you spend days thinking out and writing in great detail.