Ever so slowly, I am unearthing the treasures of WordPress.

Maybe you’re a Blogspot user and you often find yourself wondering “Why can’t I [fill in the blank]?” in the midst of your blogging endeavors. You probably can [fill in the blank] in WordPress. It’s a little bit like baking your own bread: it takes a little more skill than buying a loaf at the store but the results are well worth the effort.

[ASIDE: WordPress has not paid me a dime for this endorsement. Damn them.]

One of my favorite recently-explored features is Stats. I’m just nosy that way.

For example, 132 people have viewed my blog since I kicked it off. (No, that does not include my own visits to the blog — WordPress says so.)

Search phrases that have led to my blog include: “south beach diet phase 1 recipes” and “sugar free pudding on south beach.”

I have been “protected” from 1 spam comment.

And then there is my favorite stat: referrals. This nifty feature shows me how people get to my blog. Predictably, most of my referrals come from my old blog, with Facebook coming in a close second.

But then I noticed three people who had reached my blog from a site I’d never heard of before. So I clicked on it.

Had a long-lost friend added me to their Blogroll?

Well, not exactly…

As it turns out, WordPress also has a feature called “Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)” and that feature, through the mystic cosmology of the blogosphere, felt that a particular post of mine was a second cousin to the above post and linked it at the bottom.

It seems that “Marquesate” is also an aspiring writer and also complains about not posting, and in the opinion of WordPress, that’s enough. It’s a match. We’re virtual soul mates.

I’m sure we’ll get along just fine. Although for as much as we might otherwise have in common, I can’t really relate to his recent divorce from “a lying, cheating b—–d who proved himself to be a ‘typical’ squaddie.”

Truth be told, I didn’t even know what a “squaddie” was — I had to look it up to make sure it was publishable on a PG-rated blog.

The crux of the matter is this: I had grandiose plans to expand my repertoire of gay military fiction with the epic saga of a young squaddie who overcomes initial fears to become a hero on the battlefield — well, probably not a squaddie because I’m not British and as they say: “Write what you know” — but any attempt I make now might be misconstrued as plagiarism. WordPress would testify against me.

Will I ever catch a break?

Never mind. Best of luck to you, Marquesate. I’ll graciously decamp to my usual children’s fiction and rom-com screenplays and try not to resent that you called dibs on the fertile soil of martial homoeroti¢a.

I owe you at least that much. We’re practically family.

WordPress says so.