Another one of them link-thingies. this is Trawl #12, for those of you playing along on the home game.

You know, by the time I get around to posting I never remember the damn links I meant to point out to you guys, or if I saved the links, the bookmarks are old, stale, and musty. And typing in links gets to be a pain in the ass if we're talking about more than just 2 or 3...

So this time, instead of a batch of funny links, I'll show you where I find the crap, and you can go see new & fresh articles for yourself. (this also means that this entry should be my last links-collection that I'll bother to post.)

My daily "newspaper" consists of several web pages and news sites that I check regularly, plus the occasional link trail that'll take me off my accustomed track and out to some norwegian or new zealandish newspaper's web site. (wait, new zealandish? that can't be right.)

Primarily, it's the beeb. Thank several gods and the British tax payers for the BBC. I'm not saying it's the best news organ out there, but it's a damn sight better than the crap I get here in my hometown.

(best of the beeb for today: mmmm.... tastes like global warming)

My second line consists of Yahoo, which as an aggregator of other news sites is comparable to google news, or msn or netscape or any other portals; mine just happens to be yahoo. I follow that up with NPR, Wired news, and then the Weather Channel & local lotto numbers. (I don't play every week, but it's nice to see the jackpots climb up, if only to daydream...)

The third tier is the fun stuff, and the sites I usually spend the most time on. Oddly, Fark.com isn't on that list. (there's no digg, del.icio.us, or slashdot in there either.... eh, just as well, I waste enough time online as it is)

Lastly, If I get to it, there's also the blog roll. Not my tabulas friends-- those I try to catch up with at least every other day-- but some other random odds and ends and local street-level stuff.

(if I get around to a dead-tree newspaper, it'll be the Loaf which is not only free, but better than the AJC. 'cause the AJC sucks.)

Since I use a tabbed browser, I just click the bookmark for a group of tabs and all the sites pop up. (it's handy. if you haven't already switched you need to try firefox or netscape 7.2) So here, read my 'local' newspaper [cut, paste]:

section A: the Beeb.
BBC NEWS | News Front Page
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature
BBC NEWS | Technology
BBC NEWS | Health
BBC NEWS | Europe
BBC NEWS | Americas
BBC NEWS | Business

section B: news - 2nd line.
Yahoo!
NPR : National Public Radio
Wired News
weather.com - Local Weather page
Georgia Lottery
BuzzFlash - Daily Headlines and Breaking News

section C: alternative 'news'
BoingBoing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
Neatorama
Needcoffee.com (needcoffee is the best site I've found since, well, BoingBoing.)
NPR : Mixed Signals
Drawn! The Illustration Blog
MAKE: Blog
Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools
BibliOdyssey

section D1: comics page
Schlock Mercenary
PvPonline.com
Websnark.com

section D2: the bad habit
Netflix
RentAnime
AnimeOnDVD
Anime News Network
The Right Stuf International

(speaking of the bad habit, I need to finish up that last anime-thingy I was writing. I've started and stopped like 3 times already...)

section E: blog roll.
(kind of a random selection, actually. I know I read more than this, I guess I just don't have them all on this set of tabs yet.)
Metroblogging Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia Livejournal
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here
Bookslut
Book Lust
life of riley mccarthy

So have fun. And if you know of something else that I just have to be reading every day, throw up a link in the comments.

My deep and abiding love of all things funky ("play that funky music, white boy") can apparently be ultimately traced back to Sesame Street. This is a fact I knew, but was recently reminded of.

aside: I seem to recall from one reading or another that Henson, in addition to his puppetry duties, also created/directed a number of these animated bits. I can't corroborate any of this at the moment, but it would indeed be cool if my favorite bit was a creation of the Great One himself.

funky educational goodness

Found via needcoffee.com
But while we're at it...
check out this fantastic list o' links over at foldedspace.org. Highly recommended. I mean it. Go over there next. (well, not if you have work to do this afternoon... but if that's the case, bookmark it. You need to see this.)

Of course I keep a budget.

Known expenses, billing dates, paychecks going in, purchases going out...

However, the title of this little spreadsheet file is "the fuse", (prev. cited: exhibit A, B, C, D) and the tally column, where others might throw in something prosaic like "total" or "balance", I've got a label that reads "Running Gag"

I like to keep it in perspective.

(You wouldn't believe how long this post ran in the first draft)

(written at 4:35AM this past Sunday)

"what, is the renfest in town again?"
Not so much.
"then why that title?"
A small celebration seemed in order; that's what popped into my head.
"your head is a weird place, dude."
You should know, you live there.
"eh. [shrug] well, if we're celebrating... [*cshk*]"
Hand one of those over here, will ya?
"what? it's 7am, dude."
And it's my day off. Fork one over, already.

Hell of a buildup for what is, essentially, just a one sentence post: Eric over on websnark is updating again.

"Huzzah! break out the grog and cakes!"
"do we have any cake?"
"I'll go check"

I've said it before, but I can repeat myself. Eric Burns is the wordiest mofo I've ever run into, on or off the 'net, and no matter what topic he cares to pick up, I find myself intrigued (almost always; at the very least I'm interested) in how he manages to illustrate, elucidate, and prevaricate on whatever the subject du jour happens to be. More often than not, it's comics. I like comics.

If you haven't yet read any snarks over on the 'snark, why, I'd recommend you get over there today, if only for the pointer Eric gives us toward Cheshire Crossing.

##

no, I'm not really sure where that entry title came from.

##

c'mon, how could you miss it? it's been one of my standing recs up there in the stickied post for like, ever.

##

"We don't have any cake. or grog for that matter. We've got ramen, leftover burritos, and Icehouse."
" ...is the Icehouse cold, perchance?"
"well, yeah."
[in stereo] "Huzzah!"
mmmm.... burritos and beer for breakfast.
"That really isn't healthy, sir"
No. My burrito recipe is quite healthful, outside of the high sodium content.
[mumbled 'round a mouthful] " 'sgood, too. have some."

"Oh well, if you can't beat them..."
[*cshk*]

On the To Do List:

- Write 2 dvd reviews
- ...so I can apply for another writing job. The app. is due today, and I only found out about the opening on Friday-- so yeah, a bit of a crunch
- Work tomorrow AM, 7-3.
- Finish the last anime-thingy I was posting
- ...and write the next one. I'll answer your unstated question: because I'm a didactic, wordy, self-important bastich who likes to hear himself talk. Or likes talking to himself. something like that.
- figure out a budget for the rest of the year (and new spending habits) so I can rebuild the savings that got wiped out last year. (ref: car repairs, medical bills, alcoholic habits...) I'm still hemorraging cash and I really need to stop that, soon.
- find and then download (&upload) new user icons for my tabulas. tho' this is a low priority.
- settle on one book project (out of, um, is it 6 now?) and finish the sucker. Just... yeah, finish one.
- take time to eat, sleep, bathe-- you know, the unimportant crap that keeps the machine running.

I've two days off coming up (wed/thur) so we'll see what sort of direction and directives emerge then.

...until next week.

To replace the inconsistent and variable web trawls, at least in the form we last saw them, here is a new feature which I will call, "Best web site name of the week," which collapses down into the handy acronym BWSNotW. (a small non-monetary prize goes out to the person with the best pronunciation for that.)

Anyway, the recipient of our first BWSNotW award is

Who the sh*t drank all my beer?

Ah yes. a timeless classic. wish I had thought of it.

Please note: it's not about content, just the name. Though in this case, and most fitting for our premeire award winner, the site looks fantastic too.

future awards to be, um, awarded each Tuesday Monday evening, typically between beers 3 and 4. (that's a subjective scale; no I can't tell you exactly what time it'll be. oh wait. I did: Mondays. I'm not getting more specific.)

and for those of you endeavoring to win your own BWSNotWA, let me just say that invoking profanity and mentioning beer is a great way to ingratiate yourself to our panel of judges.

As some who read this blog might have guessed, my mind bounces around like a 7-year-old-ADHD-kid on meth, never settling on one topic long enough to, you know, actually get some work done.

--A stark contrast to my outward appearance, which is always calm. My voice rumbles low, and quiet. And slow. I have the uncanny ability to appear relaxed no matter what the situation.

Below the still waters of my public persona, the ol' grey matter is usually churning quite fast. Occasionally this means I can't get to sleep, even if I am bone tired, because the brain still has stuff to think about. I was fighting with a bit of this insomnia last night, between 12:45 and around 2am. I was running down topics for the non-fiction project (prev. cited the draft, working title) and found things advancing to the point where I was actually writing a (short) chapter on renter's insurance inside my head. (I suppose I should have fired up the laptop then and just typed that out.)

Given that my brain appears to be circumventing my will, I suppose this is the book that is going to be written first. Novels will wait. There is also an almost unique (well, once-yearly) opportunity coming up this Saturday, with a football game.

Let me 'splain: First, it's the season opener. 2nd: Home Game. 3rd: televised, so the kickoff is like 8pm. 4th: the opponent is Notre Dame. and finally, on Labor Day Weekend. If we add these up, it means I'm going to see just about every one of my college friends, and we're going to be drinking beer fairly steadily from about 10am until kickoff. (gotta love all-day tailgating)

This is a great opportunity for me to pick the brains of folks I know for things that should be in my 'survivial guide'. With this much source material I should be able to knock out 120 or so pages in no time. And I think I may just blog the crap outa that crap, too, so ya'll get to read it.

(reminds me: I need to write a query letter just as soon as I have the table of contents set and a couple of sample chapters; I need to shop the book around to publishers before I write it. With luck I'll get responses just about the same time I finish the book.)

The recipient of our second BWSNotWA is the noble, upright

Shrine of the Holy Whapping.

Lovely. A bunch of Notre Dame alumni, apparently, so who knows-- one of them may end up mooching some Guinness off of me this upcoming Saturday.

In fact... here's an invite: Your BWSNotW Award is in fact one lovely, lovely pint of Guinness. (each; since it seems there are 5 of you) All you have to do is track me down on the Tech campus sometime before kickoff. Offer expires at midnight, 2 Sep 2006, or whenever we kill the keg-- which may be 11am.

Starting over on the creative commons site, and using a couple of their search tools, I found a nice little clip art library that just so happened to be open-source & copyright free.

...and I guess you'll see the fruits of that search, over time as I get around to using all the spiffy new icons. Most are line art, black-and-white, some reminiscent of airport and road signs, others more like computer icons. Clean, simple; I like the look.

Credit where credit is due: my new Avatar (We miss you already, Bender! I still think of you as my personal life coach...) is a little paste up job I did from 2 icons, both of which I liked and which work well together; not coincidentally, they were both by the same artist.

So here's a shoutout to my new Romanian friend, Nicu! Not that Nicu has any idea who I am, or why I might be linking to him, but that is the beautiful thing about Le Grande Intarweb: it'll bring people (and little bits of art) together in ways no one might have thought of before.

Futzing with the template a bit: the background up top is my new "window on the world"; I'll likely be swapping it out for pictures of other pubs and bars at some point, and on an on-going basis. (finding images to beat GasPanic, though-- with the odd name and all that happy neon-- is going to be tough)

If I get a decent digital camera, I might just get around to using snapshots of the local, and some of the other places near here that I keep talking about.

hmm... while I'm housekeeping, any other changes need doing around this place?

I volunteered to pick up the *other* keg for this weekends festivities, too. My only concern (no, not the GA keg laws, which are a royal bitch and her mother-in-law; but that's another rant) is having to cough up somewhere in the rough neighborhood of $300.

$80 is for deposits. I'll get that back. I called Mac's (purveyor of choice since 1993) and got a quoted price on the two kegs at $214.90, tax inclusive. One Guinness, one Budweiser-- I'll have to check the receipt for how that breaks down, but last time the Guinness ran ~$140. I think I may be getting a cash and/or volume discount from Mac's.

(wow. it's really been 15 months since we last used that rig. At this rate the initial investment will amortize out just in time for others to use the draft setup at my wake.)

Next time (assuming there is a next time) (well, there likely will be, as long as tailgating before football games remains fashionable) to raise the money I'll sell advance shares in the keg. There may be some speculation, folks buying an extra share either out of the kindness of their heart, or perhaps to resell to thirsty people who won't realize they want beer until they see us drinking black and tans right in front of them.