It’s Wednesday, y’all! And this is a special edition of WWW dedicated to good, readable, entertaining blogs that I like to read regularly.

Puntabulous - Good. Dorky. Fun. Craig is a pretty big nerd that writes about his life and his argyle sweaters.

Diabetes Mine - Amy Tenderich runs this blog that is a great resource for people living with diabetes. She doesn’t just focus on one thing like new meds, or research. Amy also gets into her own personal struggle to maintain a healthy BGL, and she talks about the emotions and struggles of the day-to-day.

Cheap Blue Guitar - Brian is a Phoenix-area guy that I wished wasn’t so busy. It’s selfish, I know but I wish he would blog more because I really enjoy reading his stuff.

When Good Robots Go Bad - This is my friend Celeste’s blog. She’s pretty busy studying linguistics, and she doesn’t blog as much as I wish she could either. I haven’t seen her since August, and I’ve been missing the hell out of her…so the sporadic blog updates have been good for me.

Inside The Head of a Television Junkie - This is Mr. D’s blog. I like his site because he’ll often introduce me to random songs or YouTube videos I hadn’t known before.

Are You There Buddha, It’s Me Gary - Gary is from Minneapolis and I really enjoy his small posts with inspirational quotations and some other zen-related things.

Boscardin.org - This is Maria Boscardin’s blog. She writes a lot about blogging and just life.

Lemonade Life - Allison is a Type I Diabetic and she writes mostly about her life as a PWD. She doesn’t get too much into the medical/technological side of things.

The Liberal OC - This is the political blog that I started back when I was in Orange County. There is a solid team of progressives there that have maintained the blog since I’ve left. I still check this site out daily to see what’s happening in my old neighborhood.

Promenade Through Change - I found Jake’s blog through an ad that he placed here through Entrecard. His stuff is pretty entertaining. He’s a college freshman voice student, and he blogs about many things including adjusting to college life and musical theater.

As I mentioned in the Traffic Blog that I posted this morning, I covered the benefit concert in Peoria last night for a Phoenix-area newspaper.

I’m not going to link to the story here because I don’t want my personal blog address to show up in the referral log of the paper…but if you’re clever and you use google you can probably find it.  Just use the technology that is so great in these NEW TIMES, and look for a Superbowl blog.

I have a little moleskine notebook that I carry around with me, and I will occasionally jot down things that I hear that I’d like to remember, or ideas that I have for blog posts or stories that I would like to write.

The moleskin that I’m writing in right now is pretty old. I usually can fit four or five notes on a single page, so I’ve been using it for about five years; they are pretty sturdy little things. I was flipping through the notebook today and wanted to share some of the notes that I have jotted down but haven’t had the opportunity to use.

I hate day-after-Christmas clothes people.

I used to work with a guy named Scott who would come into work the day after Christmas vacation in a brand-new outfit. I get it, you got new clothes for Christmas. Annoying.

Mom thought she was on the twilight zone.

Mom went to jury duty on September 11th, 2001. When she arrived they had her park in some strange parking lot because all of the local federal/state buildings were under watch. She told me that after checking in to jury duty and getting told she could leave 10 minutes later, she walked into a very empty downtown Phoenix and seriously thought she was in an episode of the twilight zone.

Porn bibles.

The bible has some raunchy stories in it. Wouldn’t it be cool to create an illustrated, x-rated version of the bible?

“Furious the kid skipped out into the pewter-grey L.A. sky. He’d come west. Sunset-neon-orange haphazardly blinked. Rain drenched his dance of doom.”

???

ideologue

I was listening to NPR and heard someone use the word “ideologue” repeatedly. And I had to come home and look it up. How sad.

Literary laxative.

I was talking to a friend about writing, and about how I would get super-inspired by a particular author’s short stories. I said that she’s like a literary laxative, and I wanted to remember that term.

I wonder how long it will take for people to look back on our odd ceremonies (like marriage) the way that we do to old African rituals.

???

You’ve got it all wrong…death comes before life. One cannot live until he sees death.

Heterosexuals are lucky because they get to re-vist the womb.

Story starts with the 2nd Great Depression.

When Jesus wrote the constitution…

Janeane Garofalo said this one on her Air America radio show. She was mimicking some of the extreme right-wing rhetoric and she slipped in that funny line.

Every life is precious? What are you doing for the 7 million homeless people in this country?

I was listening to an anti-abortionist talk, and he said “every life is precious.” And I started thinking about every life, and how I’d doubt he truly believed what he had just said.

I hear they save a lot of money on refreshments since Leyes termed out.

I wrote that note to a guy that was sitting next to me at a city council meeting. Mark Leyes is a big bag of hot-air that got a job working for Governor Schwarzenegger after he termed out of the city council.

I’m happy that I have now blogged some of those notes that were just sitting in the moleskine for years. Now I can forget them.

The sidebar on the left of this page has given me a headache for a while.  It was never quite right.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday tweaking the design and giving it a little more of an organized feel.  And once I started messing with the sidebar, I had to change the header to match, and then the background didn’t look right, and then I had to mess with some colors for the top menu buttons.  If you give a mouse a cookie…right?

If you’re reading this from an RSS reader, click through to see how things look.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching the past few weeks. As I wrote here, I’m really in love with the Google Reader service, but I am also in love with the good old-fashioned newspaper. Is it possible for one man to love two news-delivery methods?

I’d like to settle this debate once-and-for-all, so I brought together the Google Reader and The Old-Fashioned Newspaper to see if we might conclude which news-delivery service is superior.

Hello, and thank you for having me.

Hi. Thanks for inviting me Mike.

Alright guys, why don’t you start by telling me in one sentence why you are a superior news-delivery service over your opponent. Old-Fashioned Newspaper, you start.

The newspaper, the only news-delivery system that is as old as this great country of ours, is the only news-delivery system that can be picked up at the corner market or delivered to your doorstep or read on the toilet.

What does history have to do with it? We’re talking about the here and now. And my free service is even better than having to run down to a market or step outside to retrieve a paper from the doorstep (which you paid to have delivered, by the way). And who is to say that Mike doesn’t occasionally read his RSS feeds on the toilet?

Guilty.

I thought we were supposed to give our answers in one sentence. The Google Reader’s last answer was 4 sentences! That’s another flaw with this new technology. They can’t understand the value of space limits.

There was a fire on Main Street, and I’ve only got 500 words to tell you all of the really important details. I’m not going to bog you down and bore you with superfluous information.

That’s why I’m better than you, Mr. Old-Fashioned Newspaper. I can deliver all of the details (even what you call the superfluous information) and let Mike decide how deeply he wants to read into a story. I’ve got unlimited space.

Next question: Why is your service an important part of our culture?

I can deliver the news just like a newspaper. But what I can do better than a newspaper is give you up-to-date information.

As soon as Britney runs into a church, I’m letting you know.

When the results from New Hampshire came in, I was the first to tell you about it.

Unlike your newspaper, that will tell you about it tomorrow morning, I can keep you in the know.

If newspapers die, America will die. Who will defend your freedoms? Will the police decide who is guilty or innocent? Who will act, like the Philadelphia Inquirer did in 1977?

Or what if federal scientists tell doctors what drugs and dosages are best for the people, and are secretly taking salaries and stock options from drug companies? Will we ever find out if you have no investigative reports like the one in The Los Angeles Times in 2003?

Or when a U.S. President decides to nullify the law and spy on American citizens without warrants—who, if not the New York Times—will let the people know?

This question is for The Old-Fashioned Newspaper: The Google Reader claims to be able to do everything you can…and then some. Are there any functions you provide that the Google Reader cannot?

I’m glad you asked that. The answer is definitely “YES.”

One thing that I do, that the Reader doesn’t, is that I can deliver all of the news to all of the people. Sure, this only-deliver-the-news-you-want stuff is cute and convenient for now, but this is just a fad. And really, at what cost does it come?

I know, Mike, that you like to read political and pop-culture news. If you opened up a newspaper you could get all of that information, plus you would be able to scan some of the headlines about stories you might not be too interested in. I help you stay informed in areas that you aren’t exactly passionate about. For example, what four teams are in the running for this year’s Super Bowl?

?

You see, if you had at least scanned my headlines today, you’d be privy to this kind of stuff. I makes you a better, more-rounded person.

Okay, this question is for The Google Reader. Your service requires an internet connection and also a small-amount of technical know-how. How does this not hurt your chances at becoming the number one news-delivery service?

Let me start by saying that setting up a Google Reader account is incredibly easy and doesn’t require too much “technical know-how.” We’ve made everything really easy and accessible to everyone.

And yes, my service requires an internet connection. But think about something: The internet was born in January 1985. Super Mario Brothers was released in 1990. The first SMS message was sent in 1992. Amazon and eBay launced in 1995. Hotmail in 1996.

People under 30, like you Mike, have been socially conditioned in a universe that requires an internet connection. People your age play computer games with mind-blowing complexity. You guys are natural users of computer and communications technology. You are digital natives—accustomed to creating content of your own (like this blog) and publishing it. Broadcast yourself, right YouTube?

Here are the top Technorati tags from yesterday:

1. Scrabulous
2. Ron Paul
3. Oracle Bea
4. YouTube
5. OpenId
6. ModBook
7. MySpace
8. Noelia
9. Cars
10. Mark Driscoll

These are topics young people care about and write about. How many stories about Scrabulous are you reading in newspapers today? Old-Fashioned Newspaper, how many of these topics were covered in today’s edition?

I’ve heard of Ron Paul.

Newspapers are dying (along with their readers). Journalism is important, but thanks to the internet its face is changing. You can find the important news and the latest celebrity gossip all on the internet. Come to me to read stuff from professional journalists and from citizens’ media in the blogosphere.

Okay, thank you both. If you could just give me a second to tally your scores.

Google Reader takes it.

It’s really true that as long as you have an internet connection, the reader can do everything your newspaper can do…and then more.

And the oh-so-humble reader didn’t even mention up above that the reader allows you to share content with your friends, add fun widgets to your own website like the one on the left of this page, use the powerful google search features, and it’s loaded with a bunch of keyboard shortcuts.

My money goes to Google.

My dad’s birthday is on Sunday, and he asked me to spend the weekend with him camping.  4 days in the middle-of-nowhere.  4 days.

He is bringing his hunting stuff…which means I’ll be spending a lot of time alone.  If I were to hunt with him I’d probably yell, “Run!  He’s going to shoot you!” if any animals came near.

He’s telling me that deer and havalina are in season right now.

Luckily I’m getting ready to start the fourth Harry Potter novel…so I can read during the day time.  And I can hike and take some photographs too.  Expect to see some of the photographs here and on my flickr page.

I won’t be blogging again until early next week.

I’m about to nerd out, but even if you are computer-dumb you might get something out of this post.

I use Google Reader as my choice for an RSS aggregator. Short definition of an RSS aggregator: it’s software or a web application that collects syndicated web content that you pick (like news, blogs, podcasts) in a single location for you to see.

Here’s the list of the 16 blogs that I have subscribed to using Google Reader:

• Cheap Blue Guitar
• Diabetes Mine
• D’s Picture Blog
• Faggoty Ass Faggot
• Inside The Head of a TV Junkie
• In The Dog House
• Pro Blog Design
• Puntabulous
• Queerty
• The Liberal OC
• The Mangina Monologues
• The Mechanic & The Muse
• When Good Robots Go Bad
• Wish Jar

The fun part about the Google Reader is that you can click on the trends link and find out some fun trends about your own reading habits.

Here are some interesting things that I’ve learned about myself and the blogs that I read:

Out of all of the blogs that I read, most of them I read 100% of the time they are updated. I’m a loyal fan.

Subscription trends tells you a little about the bloggers that I follow. You’ll notice that most of the sites post less than once a day. Boo on them. What Some Would Call Lies averages 1.5 posts a day (granted I’m not working right now).

And you can see that I like to check the reader in the late afternoon or really late at night.

And for some reason I read a few more blogs on Mondays and Tuesdays…Fridays are just behind that.

Google Reader is really one of the best web-based (free) aggregators out there right now.  If you’re not using it, think about changing (you can even import your OPML files if you’re using New Gator or something of that nature).

If you’ve already fallen in love with Google Reader, you should click into your trends and play around a little.  You should also learn the “J” and “K” shortcuts…pushing “J” will go forward through your items and “K” will go backward.  Neat, huh?

What some would call lies.

Joan Didion wrote in her short story “On Keeping A Notebook” that she has trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened. That’s a distinction that I sometimes grapple with as well.

This blog will contain, in no particular order, stories from my life that I will retell as accurately as possible. This blog serves the same purpose as Didion’s notebook.

No names have been changed…since no one is truly innocent.

From “Keeping A Notebook”

I tell what some would call lies. “That’s simply not true,” the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. “The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn’t that way at all.”

Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters.

The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my father came home from Detroit in 1945 must certainly be embroidery, worked into the day’s pattern to lend verisimilitude; I was ten years old and would not now remember the cracked crab. The day’s events didn’t turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt.

Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.