I have been in a bizarre competition of late. On a site that lists blogs and counts how many people have visited them from that site, I have been involved in an intense battle for third place.

The thing about this site is that nobody ever seems to go there, so the numbers advance on their own at a glacial rate. However, if someone takes a liking to your blog (or if the author of the blog should decide he or she wants a higher ranking), it is possible to click on the link enough times in succession that the number of hits rises dramatically and immediately.

I started out at the bottom of this listing, and someone (I suspect Joe, whose own blog is listed there) gave me a great deal of artificial advancement early on. Once I saw the potential, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Not wanting to disrupt things too much, I advanced slowly, by a few hits per day, until I reached the number-three position.

The next time I looked, the blog called "The Naked Muffin," which had been in third place and was relegated to fourth place by my brilliant and beloved "Upside-down Hippopotamus," was back in third place again, beating me by two hits. Naturally, I advanced myself to third place again, beating "The Naked Muffin" again by a few hits. Again, the next time I looked, I the situation had reversed itself: me in fourth, hers in third. This struggle went on for several weeks, until we narrowed the wide gap between the third and second positions to only about twenty hits.

A few days ago, finding myself again in fourth place, I decided enough was enough. The story of my life is that I have maintained a continual struggle to be merely satisfactory, not because I am only capable of producing satisfactory results but because I could not be bothered to do anything else. No longer. I quickly advanced myself the thirty or so hits I needed to get into first place, and there I have remained since then. Interestingly, "The Naked Muffin" has advanced itself only the twenty or so hits it needed to maintain third place.

Sorry, but Rob is not the only one going places. As I type this, plans for my new sexy lifestyle are taking shape.

I'm movin' on up!