I keep forgetting to blog, or ramble on at length, as the case may be. Now that I can't access blogger from work I rarely post, since when I'm at home I am fulfilled with litterbox-scooping and cat-medicating. Our newest foster cat is actually with the vet right now, we suspect he swallowed something indigestible or he has some kind of virus. I really hope they figure out the situation fast, not only because I hate to think of him stuck at the vet's but also because they charge an ungodly 'boarding' fee for overnight stays. Not to belittle the industry but damn, vets have it made! They can basically charge whatever they want and almost never get called on malpractice. That, and the fact that their charges can't complain about their bedside manor. I'm selling them way short, and if I wasn't so squeamish about guts I'd probably be one, but again, damn!

Anyway, back to blogging, the increased filtration by my company's network finally forced me to learn about aggregators, so now I happily use Google Reader to read most sites; this allows me to read all the blogspot blogs I like, nicely circumventing the ban. Of course it makes your blogroll look like a bunch of spammy emails and you realize that once you strip away the photos and fancy layouts, most blogs are kind of boring. Especially when you can't read the snarky comments, that's where the real action is most of the time. Lucky for me, Brownstoner is still unhindered by my network's prejudices, those guys crack me up.

I should take my site off Blogger anyhow, since they've been deleting people's music posts without telling them. But again, why would I use up my free time doing computer stuff better suited to my hours on the clock? Anyhow, I think I might be able to blog this site directly through Flickr ... there may be a lot more pictures on this site soon!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cats, Job, Web

From a post on Brownstoner:

I think jimmy legs is real he's posted for years. The others are all Dave.
Posted by: guest at June 19, 2008 10:56 AM

Whew! I was beginning to worry.

Labels: Funny to Me, Web

If I may step away from kittens for a moment (okay I forgot to bring in the newest pictures), I want to do something actually blog-related for once, namely link to a couple sites that merit attention.

First up is Vice Magazine's blog. Vice's main site is blocked when I'm at work and generally I'm pretty sick of the magazine and the way its record label automatically ruins any band it touches. But its blog, which is just on a Typepad subdomain, often has good stuff. Case in point, brief interviews with Indians representing each caste of its society. The Indian Caste system is something that's always fascinated me, especially since in the US, we're not supposed to have such delineations. But of course, we totally do but we're not supposed to speak of it. Capitalism is supposed to smooth all of it over, but all it does is build resentment in my estimation. But India, with its rigidly defined classes (and many subclasses), whenever you ask somebody there how they feel about it, they're always like "Oh, it's great! Everybody loves it!"

Secondly is Cracked Magazine. You may know this magazine from your youth as mostly-lame ripoff of Mad Magazine (which was itself a lame ripoff of the Kurtzman-era Mad Magazine). But the web version (I dunno if there is a print version anymore) is replete with mildly amusing articles that appeal to the Baby-Bust generation. At least males from this generation. Some hit that pointless ranking gene that seems to be present in guys, ie, "The 7 Most Underrated Movie Henchmen" (including that "Kill Frogs" guy from The Muppet Movie). Some are actually pretty astute, despite their sophomoric inspiration, such as "The 5 Biggest Pricks in Congress."


For sheer day-wasting, Cracked is doing its darnedest to please (see Hateful Stereotypes Behind 5 Lovable Cereal Mascots). I prefer this to the reading-the-headline-only Onion. The content on Cracked is much more in line with my type of mind-wandering, where I'll be doing some vaguely work-related, say, editing PDF file names to match my arcane filing techniques and it'll occur to me, "I wonder how many other famous people are Scientologists that I don't even know about." Voila! The Top 10 Secret Celebrity Scientologists to the rescue!

Labels: Funny to Me, Good Stuff, Web