Cheap and Easy

Well, it's GW Bush's inauguration day. I have been hearing a lot about how this means that cowboy boots will now be "in." At least that won't be true in Minnesota, because if we wore cowboy boots here we'd fall and break our hips on the ice. It hasn't snowed more than a quarter inch now for about two weeks. Since these snowfalls were next to imperceptible while they were happened, I failed to get the snow shoveled off the sidewalk. Coupled with some nasty cold, that has led to a bad crust of ice forming on the walk outside our house, making it a real adventure to get to the car. It's frozen so solid that the shovel won't really cut it, and I think we'll have to get some ice remover to get rid of it (I don't want to use salt on account of Relffits). It won't probably break freezing again ever.

I follow pop culture only tangentially. Eschewing this aspect of our society is a mark of honor among many of my friends, especially those in the Northwest. Me, I just don't pay much attention because I'm not terribly interested in the personal lives of stars (until it gets very interesting -- nice tautology). Saying that, it's difficult to come up with a scandal more juicy than this one, where former tennis giant Boris Becker is being sued by a Russian model over allegations that he fathered a child on the side. No, that's not the juicy part. Speaking of giants of pop culture, you may recall hearing stories about the Shepard Farey, the guerrilla artist bombing the world with pictures of Andre the Giant as a sort of ironic post modern statement about iconography and consumerism in our society. (Boy, that was a hell of a sentence) Well, his website is pretty cool. In a double-ironic twist, if there was indeed such a thing, you can buy the stickers using Paypal.

Lesser known blog review

I've been reading through some of the Metafilter member links and have been surprised by the relative paucity of true weblogs in the bunch. Most are just traditional "home pages." One that I have liked is this one by Mefi member (John) Thirteen. It's a collaborative blog named after the blogger that posts the most, if I understand it correctly. I would think it to be peculiar to be a blogger not named Thirteen on the Thirteen Labs site. It would be like being a member of the Dave Matthews Band if you weren't named Dave Matthews.

I stumbled on this Peruvian blog straight from the Blogger front page. It's in English, it's well written and concise in presentation, and presents much information on Peruvian and some other South American politics, presented by the international press. Very fascinating, especially since Peru is a country that does not get much press. It's pages like this that make me think that the internet really does have the power to make the world more interconnected. Another good genre of sites that contribute to this argument are webcams. Check out Munich. Sorry for the tangent.

Finally, I also liked this one found via the Mefi list. Those who consider my blog fixated on liberal political causes should consider this for comparison. Nonetheless, the design on this one is really neat and, well, I am in agreement with most of what is said. Seeing this nice site punctuates my growing dissatisfaction with the layout of Hobbsblog II and I think it's about due for an overhaul. I think I'm going to need to about triple my coding skills to do so, however. I want it to be simple but not look like the default Blogger template that it is.