Rule 2 Sunday: things are both slower and faster these days.

Friday evening sometime, The TrogloPundit passed 30,000 hits – a milestone accompanied by both pride and disappointment.

Regular readers (both of you!) will remember the cartwheels and handsprings that followed my 20,000th hit – only two weeks after passing 10,000.

Well, the road to 30,000 was a little longer. Twenty-eight days: almost twice as long.

Pout.

But wait! The road to 20,000 was greased by a few big links, most notably Conservative Grapevine’s link to this post, in which I captured the entire Madison Tax Day Tea Party counter-protest in a single picture. That link alone generated over 2,000 hits.

I haven’t had one single G-I-normous link since then. The peaks and valleys have been much closer together.

So here’s the good news: while it took longer to get this third 10,000, my daily average is still up. As of Friday, I was averaging 297 hits per day – 23 more than on the day I passed 20,000 hits.

At this rate, I’ll never, ever make a million hits in a year. Ah, well. This steady growth is fun, too.

Now, on to the links, in which I thank all of you who have so generously contributed to the aforementioned growth. Remember, by reading further, you agree to click at least three or four of these links. That’s binding, people.

• Stacy McCain is holy unshirted hell on deadline when news is breaking.

• Grandpa Steve has found the missing link. The link between Groucho and Karl, that is.

• Moe Lane: “Except for blowing stuff up for government safety agencies,” which I understand is a job that is made of awesome.

• Storm’n Norm’n says: heh.

• Smitty says DNA-based decision-making is false. I assume he doesn’t include dating in that statement.

• Fisherville Mike is half of the team that brought us the best Sonia Sotomayor graphic we’ve seen so far. Nope, you’ll just have to click over yourself to see it.

• No Sheeples Here – the Greatest Photoshopper Ever Born – is the other half of that team. She’s experimenting with her sidebars these days. Oh, and Carol…if that’s “trashing,” then we need to work on your Rule #4. Seriously, my 7-year-old throws better insults.

• Pundette’s traveling to a wedding, and cleverly came up with a ready conversation starter.

• Marathon Pundit proves that some stuff is too weird to be made-up.

• I think we got off on the wrong foot with the guys over at The Daley Gator. So, with an eye toward making up:

Hat tip Grandpa Steve for the picture. Automotivator by Trog.

• Snaggletoothie: if you can type, you can massage.

• Steve Eggleston misses Winter.

• Awww, Paco called me special. Gee, thanks man, that’s…hey, um, what exactly do you mean by “special?”

• Blogprof: spitting in liberalism’s eye equals success. Hang on, lemme get this loogie going…

• I can’t decide whether Donald Douglas has good taste in women or…not.

• Pat Austin notes a lady who can hold her breath for a really long time.

• Chris Wysocki sees pretty good for a blind guy.

• You know who I haven’t linked to in a while? Track-a-Crat. Let’s just click over there and see what he’s…oh…oh, my God…what is that?

A special note to Dr. Melissa Clouthier – as I’ve mentioned before, my post titles automatically head over to Twitter. She noted one of them in a tweet of her own. Thanks! I see now that a few others have replied to my tweets – how come Twitter won’t send me an email when that happens?

As always, if you’ve linked me and I haven’t linked back, please let me know!