A belated welcome...

...to our visitors from MSNBC.com.

Let me explain.

enrevanche is a modest little blog, but then (as Churchill famously remarked about Clement Attlee) we have much to be modest about.

When I started blogging in earnest in October 2004, the only readers were a few friends and relatives; we have grown slowly to a (clearly deeply disturbed) readership that averages roughly two hundred unique visitors on a weekday, somewhat less on weekends.

To an A-list blogger, our daily traffic wouldn't even be a blip. For a guy sitting in his little apartment in New York City thinking out loud about food and politics and posting rants about his health and photos of his kittycat, it's nothing short of amazing. I mean, I knew my wife (a real, actual professional writer) would read the blog because I could shame her into it, but people are choosing to come here voluntarily. Who'd a thunk it?

Imagine my surprise, then, when I looked at my site logs on Friday and noticed that four hundred visitors had come streaming through the virtual gates in the last few hours.

As I would say if I were twenty years younger and typing a Three-Keytap-Rumba text message to a friend on an ergonomically disastrous cellphone:

OMG, WTF?

It seems that Will Femia, at MSNBC, had linked to the latest installment of the Carnival of the Cats at enrevanche.

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement. In fact, the entirety of the reference in Will's online column was:

"Carnival of the cats Ug."

But, as the old saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Just make sure you spell the URL right, even if you can't spell "Ugh."

As of this writing, Mr. Femia has sent us roughly 1400 new visitors (and they're still coming, albeit at a reduced rate as the link ages and the weekend is upon us.)

A-list blogger Laurence Simon, the originator of the Carnival of the Cats, points out in an e-mail that this is not a new phenomenon: "Bloggers Beg MSNBC: 'Smear Me Too'" (from Scrappleface, Oct. 2002.)

So thanks, Will. There's another Carnival of the Cats at Watermark tomorrow. Send them some link-love.

(Update: Somehow I missed Laurence's earlier post at isfullofcrap.com regarding Mr. Femia.)