THE FIFTEEN MINUTES I ALWAYS WANTED

NOTE: This post is purely self-congratualtory twaddle and is quite likely of interest to no one except the author. If you get bored, just click away. Don't feel obligated to comment just because you're here.

On the other hand, maybe you've been in a similar position. In which case, say whatever's on your mind.

When I first started blogging, I had a dream - more of a pre-conceived notion really - that one day hundreds of people would read my blog and go "OO! Look at this brilliantly-written post!".

As it turned out, those hundreds of people were actually dozens, they came one at a time, and none of them were actually all that blown away at what they read. But they at least found my writing amusing enough to want to come back for more. After a while, a lot of them didn't even come for the writing, they came because they liked me as a person. The writing was secondary.

I've been blogging for almost four years now, and at this point in my evolution, most of the folks who stop by do it because of who I am, and not what I write.

And it's good to be loved, and it's good to have a circle of friends who give a damn.

The downside to this, of course, is that when one of these friends links something I wrote, I have to wonder... how much of this is liking the writing, and how much is liking the writer? To which question there can never be an honest answer.

So it makes me question whether my writing is worth a crap on it's own, or if I'm strictly getting by on charm.

What I've always wanted was to write something that got picked up, passed around, "oo"-ed & "ah"-ed over, and generally admired WITHOUT my having to lift a finger to do any self-promotion.

That's never really happened. Sometimes I've written stuff that I thought was very good, but in order to get it noticed, I've had to e-mail links. Other times I've written something clever, then posted it at IMAO where it would get some attention (heck, even got a link from the Puppy Blender over there once), but then I have to wonder how much of that attention was due to the sweet cachet of the IMAO brand name, which owes it's value principally to Frank J.'s comedic talents.

Recently, however, something happened to validate me that can only be attributed to good writing, and it feels heavenly.

Last Saturday, I posted a entry at IMAO called "I Am Huff Po". When I'd first conceived of it a couple days prior, it occurred to me that - if I did it right - it might resonate with a lot of people and actually generate a lot of traffic. I waited all weekend for some reaction after posting it, but outside of a few (VERY few) comments, the piece seemed largely ignored.

*sigh*

So after 40 hours of gathering dust, I do what I do with a lot of my IMAO posts - I cross-posted it at Bad Example for the benefit of those readers (friends, actually) who can't stand the insanely-long load times at IMAO.

And that's when it happened.

Blake of Laughing Wolf - a friend and reader - posted a link to the version of "I Am Huff Po" that I'd posted at Bad Example. Not at his relatively low-traffic personal site, but at the highly-visible Blackfive.

Which was VERY cool, but I didn't take it to be necessarily a reflection on the quality of the piece, since I know Blake, and that could taint his objectivity.

And that's when it REALLY happened.

Michelle Malkin linked to Bad Example. Not only linked, but linked as an update at the TOP of the post (she usually updates at the bottom).

Little Green Footballs linked to Bad Example. Not only linked, but with the enthusiastic phrase "dead-on parody alert". I also noticed that it got 156 Diggs. Now, I'm not exactly sure what a Digg is, except that it can be used as a relative measure of the post's popularity. Considering that most LGF posts get under 100 of them, I take this as favorable feedback.

JihadWatch linked to Bad Example with the giddily ego-boosting description "a terrific parody of/addendum to Michelle Malkin's magnificent "I am John Doe" piece, skewering the Huffington Post's willfully clueless Leftist jihad enablers."

It popped up on the GWRRA message board.

Bookworm Room said "hilariously funny [...] Read it and laugh."

Someone even put it on an Investor Village message board.

It's probably in some other places, too, but Sitemeter only gives me the last 100 refers, so that's all I know about.

The point is this. None of these people know me or like me or owe me anything or mistakenly think they're linking to something Frank J wrote. This praise isn't for me as a person, or for me as a member of IMAO, it's strictly for what I wrote.

I can't begin to express how good - how reassuring - this feels.

The funny thing is that people who read the posts that linked me are all going to wonder the same thing - "Who is this 'Bad Harvey' fella? I've never heard of him. Must be some overnight sensation."

Overnight... yeah...

2000+ posts at Bad Money

1000+ posts at Alliance HQ

5000- posts at Bad Example

100+ Precision Guided Humor posts spent honing my politically-oriented comedic ear

4- years of averaging 5+ posts a day.

Overnight...

Anyway, yeah... it feels good.

Now if the Puppy Blender will just put down his hobo-filleting knife long enough to toss a link my way, I could die happy.

UPDATE: Hot Air says "well played".

Redstate says "Read on via the link. It's worth it!" and describes it as a "riposte".

Blonde Sagacity says "Must Read!"