No, you’re not going crazy. I upgraded my blog account and along with that decided to give the blog a new look when I realized the true price of using a free blog.

I was actually quite happy to keep using the free blog account that came free with my Web site hosting package from GoDaddy, until I noticed some of the advertisements that were running in the banner at the top of the blog. One of them was a link to a fundamentalist Christian Web site that promised to tell “the truth” about the conflict in the Mid-East, and how Biblical prophecies spell out everything that is to come in that area of the world. Another was for a dating Web site; the text with the ad mentioned a “sexy, single Israeli woman.” I can’t remember precisely what the third one was, but it too was related to Israel.

See, I had written a blog entry that was an editorial about Israel. So I’m betting some marketing software residing on one of GoDaddy’s servers keyed in on that and decided to serve up ads that would be “tailored” for my readers and me. Because with today’s technology, you can do that, you know: key in on what’s in the hearts and minds of consumers using algorithms and silicon chips.

Except that my blog has covered a number of topics. Israel happened to be on my mind recently because, well, they were at war and what happens in the Middle East inevitably affects the U.S. sooner or later. But that doesn’t mean I want to be associated with fundamentalist interpretations of Biblical prophecies (I’m not even a Christian), or that I want to date Israelis (I have nothing against the concept of dating an Israeli woman, but I have been in a monogamous relationship with the same woman for five years, and I don’t think she’d cotton to me fooling around behind her back with any woman, Israeli or otherwise).

Anyway, art is about expression, as is this blog. I didn’t want this blog to be advertising things that have nothing to do with the way I think or feel about things, so I decided to shell out some dinero for the ad-free blog.

Don’t get me wrong: I intend to maintain my open-door policy. Anyone is welcome to post here. I will not censor posts except under extreme circumstances (for example, spam is gonna get flushed, period; and I won’t be a party to outright slander). That’s different, though, because in these threads it’s clear what opinions belong to whom. Whereas ads in my blog imply some kind of tacit endorsement of what’s being advertised (or least it feels to me like it does).

Anyway, I hope GoDaddy didn’t pay too much for those marketing analytics capabilities.