Our friend Kevin Kim has recently begun and ended a storm-tossed relationship with a fellow by the name of Zach Shatz, who has written a slim book in which he attempts to explain Ultimate Reality through the prism of, well, prisms. Kevin did an interview with Shatz about the book (which, judging by this interview, is nothing more than foaming New Age poppycock), in which the author came up far short of impressing me with the coherence of his thinking, or the profundity of his insights.
Kevin has lots of readers, and one of them wrote him a witheringly scornful email about the interview, which Kevin promptly posted. Finally, Kevin, having had an increasingly frustrating behind-the-scenes email exchange with Shatz, has lost all patience with the man, and has posted the whole correspondence online.
Lesson to be learned: don’t expect Kevin Kim to help you disseminate your bullshit.
You can follow the whole exchange as linked below:
The interview.
The letter from Kevin’s reader.
Kevin applies the final smackdown.
8 Comments
Thanks for the shout-out.
Lots of readers? I appreciate the kind remark, but my numbers have been down for the past six weeks. At first I thought this was the typical end-of-summer slump, but the slump has continued uncomfortably far into September, which makes me think I’ve truly lost some readership. I used to average about 350 unique visits per day, but lately am at around 250-270. Of that number, only a couple dozen or so visits come from regulars, I think; the rest are random Google hits as people search for porn with the word “hairy” in the search phrase, and find my blog instead.
One strange thing: a long while back, my brother David sent me a link about tonsilloliths, aka tonsil stones. I slapped a post up about that, and have had a couple dozen hits per day ever since. I had no idea that so many people were interested in those things, but a lot of folks type “throat pellets” into Google and find my article. Then again, I recall wondering what the hell they were whenever I spat them out, so maybe these folks aren’t all freaks.
And on that fragrant note,
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
You had tonsil stones? Ewwwwwww. I’ve never even heard of tonsil stones, but they sound revolting.
Along with every other human being my age, I had my tonsils taken out, a remedy universally applied in the early 1960’s for the slightest infirmity. A cough or two, a scratchy throat, any existential malaise whatsoever, and willy nilly, under the knife you went.
Like you, I have noticed a baffling slump in attendance. Perhaps the method of data-gathering has been altered. Or perhaps we suck.
Tonsilloliths form in the “crypts” at the back of a person’s throat as bacteria munch on the food and dead skin particles that collect there. The end result is a whitish or greenish or grayish chunk of matter about the size of a tiny piece of gravel; when you hawk it up and spit it out, it glistens. If you make the mistake of smooshing it, the thing releases a smell that’s arguably worse than a thousand farts from a thousand kimchi-eaters.
Type “throat pellets” into Google and you’ll see my post is somewhere in the top 10-20 search results.
Kevin
The slump comes from overblog.
There are now so many blogs competing for our attention that many of us have cut back on blog visits. Conversely, because there are more blogs out there, some folks are looking for blogs that address their own special interests.
The number of visits to my blog went down for a while but has crept back up, mostly from Google searches that stay for zero time to read my posts. Must be speed readers…
My blog’s eclectic nature probably catches a lot of different sorts of individuals doing Google searches but fails to interest them any further.
Such such is life…
Jeffery Hodges
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Hi Jeffery,
Oh well, so much for our existential hopes. We had a tiny splinter of the world’s attention for a minute there, but now, once again, we might as well be shouting up a drainpipe.
“Throat pellets” or tonsiloliths ARE revolting!
When I was a little kid and did not know what they were, I used to refer to them as “throat poo,” because, unfortunately, that’s what they smell like. I, too, was a “smoosher.”
Hey, what’s Zach’s email? He’s an old friend
I’m afraid I don’t know, John.