Two of them At Last and Quiet Please were actually about sailing, real live sailing, boat on the water, me in the boat, sailing stuff that really happened to me, what this blog is supposed to be about.
Three of them were sorta kinda about politics. One Man One Vote? showed a couple of maps illustrating some facts about how America elects a president. The Undecided Voter and The New Commodore were allegories about a fictional yacht club reflecting on the election this week.
Even though most of my readers come here because they are sailors, or are at least somewhat interested in sailing...
- the posts about sailing attracted 2 comments in total
- the posts about the election attracted 51 comments.
Hmmm. What am I supposed to conclude from this?
- Tillerman is a really bad sailing writer.
- It is hard to write about sailing in an interesting way but Tillerman still sucks at it.
- Politics is more interesting than sailing, even for sailors.
- Tillerman should quit writing about sailing and start a new fictional blog about the goings-on of the new commodore and staff at USYC.
- Tillerman should move to Hawaii and take up body-surfing.
Update: At the suggestion of Mr Greg Andkris there is now a poll over there >>>> where you can vote on the future direction of this blog.
17 comments:
If I comment on this non-sailing post, I'd be contributing to the problem not the solution.
Stick to the sailing, I "switch off" when you talk about elections and "sell" stuff.
zzzzzzzzzz
Edward - how Zen of you.
Laser Runner - good to know that at least one reader actually wants to hear about sailing. Sorry if I occasionally seem to be "selling" stuff. It's just that vendors send me their stuff to "review" and I feel like I owe them at least a short write-up in return. Maybe I could redress it by choosing to write some product reports describing what total rubbish certain products are? My Uncrustables review went down very well (except with Mr Smuckers.)
I thought Zen was something like "Hot tea and iced water on my coffee table. Soon they will be the same temperature." Maybe that's just fourth-grade physics.
I think this posting of yours should be a poll. I want to cast a vote for the yacht club saga. I was just beginning to care about those people and their struggles to find direction in a troubled world and now they're gone. Ripped from my life.
Of course, since I'm now officially addicted to actual sailing, I want more of that too. Can we have a poll and do the hundred pennies exercise? I'll put fifty on the YC, forty on sailing, and ten on product placement, since I'm American and I find that sort of thing oddly comforting.
Tell me about it! I was moderating a panel at a marketing conference this week. The panel was about financial services. The panelists chatted on about banking and stuff. The audience was falling asleep. I asked the panellist what they thought we culd learn from the Obama campaign. Then and only then did the audience wake up.
The point is it's all most people care about right now. Don't worry it will wear off by next week and we get back to sailing and worrying about our imminent poverty.
Can you imagine the posts you could do if Obama were a sailor? Wow.
I think you should write about whatever you write about. I read all of your posts and if I'm not mistaken, that's the whole point, to give the only 3 time top ten sailing blogger of the year something to get through the workday.
I was about to answer the poll but I need more options. Is that really what this blog is about? Didn't it used to be about fish or something?
I love a poll that lets you vote for everything.
Go ahead, homme de talle, keep adding stuff until you find something I won't like.
Fish are now an option
What the...where's 'nubile young women in lycra' ?
Every Laser regatta.
Really? Dang! I shoulda bought a Laser.
You betcha. You shoulda.
Vang tension. And nubile young women in lycra.
I just voted and it felt good.
My choice was made easier by this funky computer I have. Everything that Mr. Tillerman writes shows up with big spaces between the lines.
If you squint, you can see other words between the lines, and sometimes these other words are funnier than what he's writing about.
So, on my screen, it doesn't matter what he's writing about, there's usually something funny there if I read between the lines.
I voted to let him write about whatever the hell he wants to.
Its so true though don't know why.
I guess we only sail so much - though those that do (ie you) are in a good position to keep posting on sailing.
Anyhow keep up the good work. And this is a poll that the whole world can join in
Of course we want to hear about sailing here. But some voyages lend themselves more to the written word than others; some are better illustrated in picture or video, and some just seem to defy description. As elsewhere on the ocean, the moods and voices of sailing are many.
And, let's get some realism here -- for many sailors, the sport is really about working on boats -- toiling over teak, spasming (is it a word?) with wrenches/spanners in confined engine rooms, making emergency repairs to sails, re-bedding deck hardware, scrubbing and painting boat bottoms, haggling with marina owners, scheduling haulouts, drilling out rotted balsa core, trouble-shooting trailer lights, trying not to get fiberglass stuck to oneself, rebuilding cleats, and lubricating winches. Sometimes this work happens in scenic, exotic locales. All of this seems under-represented here.
And then there's an area that the T-man does cover occasionally, and which would be nice to see more of -- service to the sport. I'd like to see more discussion somewhere or other about race and protest committee duty, about the guys and gals with sore arms from setting and hauling up anchors for race marks, the people who take care of the race equipment, the folks who organize the regattas.
And, then there's just silly whatever. Sometimes we need our silly whatevers.
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