Tuesday, September 19, 2006

From Brussels with love

Another small milestone is passed, as visit 25000 is clocked up on Sitemeter. I wouldn’t have bothered to mention it, only the address of our mystery guest caught my eye…

Domain Name eu.int ? (Unknown)
IP Address 158.169.131.# (Commission Europeenne)
ISP Commission Europeenne
Continent : Europe
Country : Belgium (Facts)
State/Region : Brabant
City : Linkebeek
Lat/Long : 50.7667, 4.3333 (Map)

Time of Visit Sep 18 2006 11:07:04 am
Last Page View Sep 18 2006 11:09:05 am
Visit Length 2 minutes 1 second
Page Views 3
Referring URL http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/
Visit Entry Page http://diesirae.blog...arth-in-balance.html
Visit Exit Page http://diesirae.blog...arth-in-balance.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC+1:00
Visitor's Time Sep 18 2006 5:07:04 pm
Visit Number 25,000

Two full minutes, they spent – which translates into nearly EUR 300 based on the pay scale of the average EU flunky. That might seem a lot to you or I, but of course in the European Commission that’ll barely buy you a quickie with the office catamite, with nothing left over for having any awkward investigative journalists arrested. Happily for our hard-pressed public servants, that’s a service the Belgian Police are content to supply for free.

Sharp-eyed and/or overly retentive readers will spot something of a pattern emerging here, seeing as #20,000 was someone in the Australian Ministry of Defence. Could it be that all my readers are tax-fattened hyenas leaching off the public tit and surfing my feeble offerings in their ample free time? I’d hate to live in a world where that could be true. I’d go and check a sample of other visits to find out, but that’s too much like hard work, which would wreck my chances of ever landing an equivalent job someday.

Of course, this could just be Aunty M swinging by to see if I’ve produced anything fit for human consumption lately. Even from here, I can almost hear her heartfelt sigh of disappointment. Sorry, Aunty…


Aunty M, yesterday. To paraphrase my good friend Bender, whenever I say “Destroy all Eurocrats”, I always whisper “…except one”.

12 comments:

Desargues said...

Sigh. I guess I'll have to resign myself to being visitor #100,000 or so.

Could government bureaucrats be so cynical or masochistic? I mean, they're getting paid decent bucks to do at least some work, and they instead surf the blogs of people all to happy to skewer them mercilessly? If discovered by their corrupt superiors, I guess they'd say they were doing 'opposition research.' Strange is the life of a state agency flunky, I tell ya.

Or maybe they couldn't resist the temptation of looking at Scandinavians going hanky-panky amid some endangered shrubbery?

Thomas Pauli said...

Belgium! http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-09-19td.html

Thomas Pauli said...

Sigh. Billions spent in developing Software which is able to display an URL correctly! To no avail!

Here is the link to this truly ethusiastic article about Our Capital Brussels:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/
eon2006-09-19td.html

The Dog of Freetown said...

There's is a lifestyle I fully intend to take up shortly.

Pat said...

Enough of this 'I just happened to mention it' Ivan. You truly are a one for backing into the lime light. How do you know that was Auny M yesterday? I thought she had had her hair cut.
And a grudging Congrsts I suppose!

Anonymous said...

Well, at least I can say, I knew you at visit 5000.

Cheers.

Sam, Problem-Child-Bride said...

25,000!

I've just been to check on mine and I have a splendid 7019 which i would have been quite chuffed about had i not just read 25,000 over here! And you only started a month before me.

Mumble...grumble...I'm not bitter... grumble...mumble.

Ivan the Terrible said...

Well, er.. um... January is always the busiest time of year, Sam. Everyone knows that...

Sam, Problem-Child-Bride said...

Mumble.

Grumble.

Gorilla Bananas said...

Sam, these figures are meaningless because they include google searches.
I have compiled long list of ISP addresses that came to my site via google searches for "ape sex" or something similar. These perverts must be traced and shamed without mercy.

Ivan the Terrible said...

Hey now, GB, steady on! Can't fault a person for having excellent taste, now can you?

The Aunt said...

Of course it was me. Since I'm no longer in range of my home wi-fi during the construction work, I'm forced into lunchtime sneaky reading (which is permitted, within decent limits, my employers realising it's better, quicker and chheaper to let me use the web to, say, buy train tickets, rather than lose me during the opening-hours-enforced nip down to the station during work hours).

But since Ivan's drawn attention to me, I'll be on the "watch" list for years. No more sandwiches for any of you for the next three weeks or so.