Szczecin, Zachodniopomorskie

Pronounced like it's written, I'm assuming – that's where a recent Jeopopolis visitor hails from, in Poland.

As both a statistics and geography junkie, it never ceases to amuse me to check the hit counter doohickey I installed on this site and learn the weird things that lure visitors. Inexplicably ­ – or until I learned of Google's purchase of Blogger ­ – the average monthly number of visits more than doubled, beginning in December. And I mention Google because the doubling is made up near exclusively of Google image searches (a touch frightening on its own, considering all I read about image theft in illustration and design circles). More amusing to me though, is the list I keep on file of countries where visitors originate; last week, the oppressive, Internet-starved regime of Burma/Myanmar became the 115th nation to be represented by a visitor to Jeopopolis. What was the Myanmarian doing here? Image-searching on Google for pictures of "mo" (crazy Myanmarians, always wanting mo') – hitting up my illustration of a blood-sucking mosquito.

But if you told me three years ago that I'd have visitors from Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen and Zambia (not to mention hits counted from the Faeroe Islands, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and the Palistinean occupied territory) – I would have said you were pulling my chain. Not so much anymore.