Blog Trail

How bored do you have to be to do this? Since I started my own blog (actually for a month or so before that) I've spent hours hitting the 'Next Blog' button up in the right hand corner of the screen. It's not quite as much fun as it used to be, what with all the advertising sites and erog (erotic blogs) out there, but it's still fun. Okay, the latter have always been fun. Anyway, I recently decided to keep track of the sites I happened upon by chance, one after the other. Here's the resulting list:

SPASTIC
ultimate com bet
Slowly Going Bald
O fantástico mundo de Moller
primícias poéticas
SynthDef
Jirmania
Me, Myself and I
A blog a day...
is4031chik
Define Normal
A Bigger Piece Of Sky

What follows is a Brief Commentary.

I struck gold with the first tap, because SPASTIC is a great blog. Dedicated to "the preservation and acknowledgement of the the subjuncitve mood in communication," the author(s) pull(s) out wonderful examples from the likes of 50 Cent and the Marx Brothers. Well written all the way around. Author very fond of the word wont, as in 'the author is very wont to use the word wont'. I will definitely return to this blog.

ultimate com bet seems to be some sort of advertisement for gambling. Or something like that. In any case, I wasn't interested and stayed there about a second, tops. I'm never returning to this blog, if I can help it. If my gambling addiction doesn't get the better of me. Even then it'd be tough.

Slowly Going Bald is another good site, written by a guy in his early twenties embarking on a career as a critic and teacher. His taste in books and literature match up with mine better than most, but then that gap almost always feels infinite. Has a great quote somewhere on his sidebar that I hadn't read before, from John Stuart Mill: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." But now we have Al Gore, not to mention about a billion Deanocrats, so who knows? Anyway, I might go back to this blog.

O fantástico mundo de Moller is about some heavy metal band, and written in in Portuguese. I think. The foreign language interested me more than the content, but not enough for me to stay around very long. And I won't go back.

primícias poéticas More Portuguese, but interesting to me because it includes three (and only three) poems written by Octávio Roggiero, the blog's author. I think. I tried to translate these poems but didn't have much success. My heart goes out to anyone writing poetry, and I think it's great that he's just putting it out there himself. There's a chance I'll go back to this site, even though there would be very little point, since I don't understand much Portuguese.

SynthDef is a site that's written almost entirely with little rectangles. I don't understand this language either, and what's more, I frankly can't see how anybody could, since every letter looks exactly the same. I don't think I'll be returning to this site.

A blog a day... is a fairly new blog (started last month) by some guy named Leo at Princeton. That's what the profile says, anyway. It also says he "love to smile, to laugh, to make friends, to cook and to eat." Well, good for him. Perhaps he will consider me a friend, now that I've linked to his site. And that is one fine looking casserole he photographed for the second entry. I might check back with this one, just to see other tasty looking dishes like that.

Wow! Paydirt again. is4031chik has as its description a quotation from Boethius, the Roman philosopher well known to fans of John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. "Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired." As if to emphasize the point, today's post is the lyrics for some song I've never heard of. Obviously she's crazy about it. Personally, I think simply posting song lyrics is pretty lame, but there are plenty of other entries that reveal her as a nice young woman starting bible college somewhere in Colorado. She's been keeping this site going since 2002, which I think is longer than any of the others - maybe all together. At the very least, I will check back at this site in three years to see if it's still going. I'm betting it is.

Define Normal is another winner. I think I'll just quote the author, who goes by the moniker "The Red Pants of Justice." Here's what he says: "We should all have a name fit for a superhero and this just happens to be mine. Welcome to my blog. It's the view from where I sit, a twentysomething filmmaker trying to decipher the white noise of everyday life. A bold attempt to make sense of popular culture, current affairs and the crazed underbelly of this strange and bewildering world in which we live. The score so far: Me 0, World 1." Great stuff, TRPoJ! He's only made 3 entries so far, but I'll definitely be back to visit this site.

A Bigger Piece Of Sky is all text, which I think makes for a fairly booring site, and I can't say that the material grabs me rightaway either. I'm not sure what to make of the description right below the title: "You can ride the wheels into the sun, feel the wind upon your face. Or you can laugh into a loaded gun, and you'll likely lose your place." From someone with the initials R.E.K. "Nick Carraway" is originally from Long Island and now hails from Texas, which I guess explains the title. Bigger than Montana, huh? Funny how size is so important to Texans. The native Montanans I know just live it. They don't really need to talk about it.

Well, that was fun. And not one advertisement or porno site in the bunch. And not nearly as many teenagers in Singapore or lonely housewives in Alberta as I've come to expect from previous, undocumented Blog Trails. Hope you join me next time.

Happy Trails, everyone!