bookofjoe chosen as "Red Hot Blog of the Day!"

So yesterday I was just sitting here doing something close to nothing (but different from the day before) when an email came in from a website called RedNova.

It read:

Congratulations! Your site was recently chosen as one of our Red Hot Blogs of the Day!

You can find the page here.

Your blog is also listed in our archive here.

Have a great day!

Sure enough, there's bookofjoe, just as they said.

But what gobsmacked me was the unbelievably fast company that put me in.

I mean, the first three blogs they chose, on January 20, were AndrewSullivan.com, Boing Boing and InstaPundit.

Then came The Gadget Box and on January 24 moi, their fifth selection ever.

I'm single-digit, at long last.

But look at the blogs that have followed after me into their hall of fame: ZDNet Tech Blogs on February 7; Arts and Letters Daily on February 10; Kottke.org on February 25; Lawrence Lessig on March 2.

They picked me ahead of Lawrence Lessig?

Wow.

How'd I fall into this tub of butter?

Big shout-outs to my great site engineer PW and to my crack research team.

Better straighten up and fly right now that I'm on the big board, what?

What kind of fascinates me is that in the virtual world you generally don't know if someone's cited you for something good, though you definitely hear about if you've messed up.

It's sort of like how, when someone prefaces a remark with, "I'm going to be completely honest with you," it's almost always something negative that follows. But I digress.

I mean, I stumbled upon USA Today's December 20, 2004 designation of bookofjoe as a "Hot Site of the Day" only by a quirky accident while diddling around in late January: USA Today never told me.

And if not for RedNova's email to me about this latest accolade, I'd not have a clue it ever happened.

What is the sound of something good happening in cyberspace?

You say you're not hearing anything?

Your hearing's perfect.

This was only a test.

If this had been an actual emergency....