I've officially been running site statistics for one whole month now (Level 10 Hit Counter), and looking through referral statistics can be, shall we say, eye opening.

Not so very long ago, I wrote about a press release from Lycos, in which the company expressed surprise that CNN and FoxNews personalities such as Rudi Bakhtiar, Paula Zahn and others get more web searches than established colleagues such as Barbara Walters. I surmised this was a result of testosterone-rich men searching for nude photos. Since then, I've received dozens of hits from Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search and AOL Search for phrases such as "Rudi Bakhtiar fake nude," "Ashleigh Banfield nude image," "Suze Orman nude photos," "ladies of Fox News naked" and "Robin Meade lesbian." All of which, I suppose, goes to prove my point, but makes me feel sorry for the poor souls who have visited my site in search of revealing photos of news personalities. Even more so, now that I've discussed the subject again. So, to those of you who are here hoping to see Rudi Bakhtiar doing a lap dance: sorry. I'm opposed to that kind of thing. If you find photos of Paula Zahn in revealing lingerie, please e-mail me the address immediately so I can ... um ... send an e-mail protest to the site's sponsors. Yeah, that's it.

I also need to make a special apology to the person (or persons) with a relentless fixation on television anchors and appendages; numerous searches for "Robin Meade legs," "Paula Zahn legs," "Rudi Bakhtiar legs," and "Suze Orman legs" have ended in bitter frustration amid the relatively banal and gams-free pages of tlhines.com.

What are the most interesting search strings that have brought visitors to tlhines.com? Let's start with "2004 e-mail addresses of pot producers in china" at Google. There I am at number 10, pulling in the masses of people who search for such information. At Yahoo, someone found me by searching for "Chicago blog penis was too big." Hey, I can't tell you how many times I've heard that "penis too big" comment. At MSN Search, someone looking for information on "nuns in Caribou, Maine" found my home on the web. Good thing, since I happen to be the world's foremost expert on the subject.

Most surprising search? "Jude Allman Lazarus" at Google UK: "Jude Allman" is the name of the main character in my as-yet unsold novel Waking Lazarus. Why is someone searching for this information in the UK? Beats me, but I'd be happy to send him/her the manuscript if he/she is interested in repping it.

And finally: most disturbing has to be "mutilate castrate torture" search string from Google. I'm not sure if it was more disturbing that someone was looking for that information, or that I actually created a post that had all three of those words in it.

I also receive steady traffic from blogging friends and neighbors; that blogrolling stuff actually seems to work, so I'll take this opportunity to thank (and link to) bloggers who have brought double-digit traffic to my humble abode in the past month: One Hand Clapping, Ed Kemmick's City Lights, mtpolitics.net, Parkway Rest Stop, Dim Sum Diaries, Rocket Jones, Secular Franciscan, Wulfgar, Better Living Through Blogging, Big Sky Dave, Ministry of Minor Perfidy, Billings News, Sugarmama, Unbillable Hours, Sarpy Sam, and Big Skies.

As often as not, I'm finding referrers come from comments I've left on other sites (yeah, I suppose everyone knows that). Surprisingly, though, I seem to have a fair amount of lurkers--folks who read, but aren't compelled to comment (perfectly fine). According to my site statistics, I've had 633 unique visitors in the last month, but comments from less than 10 of them. Hmm. I guess that's what you'd call the silent majority.

Another surprising statistic: almost a full one-quarter (24.8%) of all visits have no referrers, meaning people type in the address manually. Is that typical? Perhaps some of you more enlightened blogging veterans can shed light on this for me.

Now, back to searching for photos of Paula Zahn in--er, I mean, working.