Blog Recommendation

My friend Taxmom, a connoisseur of mommy-blogs, recommends Mimismartipants.  Link, link. Sounds like Sandra Tsing Loh, except without the self-admiration.

Dogs and Moving: A Breakthrough Post?

My friend Nancy and my daughter Katy--who do not know each other--both at the same instant recommended "Dogs Don't Understand the Concept of Moving."  A few hours later it popped up as the primo recommendation at The Browser, primo web-writing aggregator.  Katy adds:

I've been following this woman occasionally for a while.  Her link is on the sidebar of a blog I read regularly (Belgian Waffle) and I sometimes remember to click through.  I think she is actually brilliant.  I wonder if this is her breakthrough post.

"Belgian Waffle," news to me, looks pretty good too.
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Update:  Last time I looked, the "dogs" post had 1,923 comments,  not all from dogs.

Meta Meta Meta

From Ashley Parker’s Sunday NYT piece (Style!) on the Florida Avenue Bloggers’ Lair (link):

Sometimes, Mr. Capps will send an instant message to signal when dinner is ready. Or, as Becks explained, “We’ll all be in the same room having meta-conversations online about conversations going on in the room, a running commentary on the other conversations.”

Let’s review the bidding: there’s a conversation. Becks is conversing about the conversation. Parker is conversing about Becks. And now I am conversing about Parker.

May I be excused if I recall the last scene of Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the rude mechanicals are performing a play, watched by the King and Queen, watched by the fairies, watched by us?

Oh, right. And now you are watching, too.

Journalism as Imitation Blogging

This is interesting if you really care that much about Don Imus, but perhaps even more if you don't. That is: Carr seems determined to anticipate and distill every conceivable blob of blogger snark into a single convenient summary. As an imitation of a compendium, it’s pretty good, but if Carr this will save his hide comes the revolution, he’d better think again.

Gale of Creative Destruction Wings Tony Snow

I had lunch a while back with a guy who manages hotels and motels in trouble—receiverships, or bankruptcies, or whatever. I was picking his brains on a hobbyhorse of mine: the indisputable fact that the actual cost of “turning the room” is peanuts, and that if the motel is otherwise empty, you ought to be able to get the room for peanuts-plus-one. Isn’t it true, I pressed, that everybody discounts?

Sure, he said, everybody discounts. Well, he added, the fancy places used to say that they would never discount because they had to protect the brand.

But, he added … everybody discounts. And then, after a pause, almost in a whisper:

“It’s the internet!”

Sure it’s the internet. We get our prices on line, we bid and bargain. Not just in hotels but in so many places, the internet has dramatically shifted the informational advantage towards buyers/consumers, which means we get stuff better and cheaper.

The purveyors fight back, of course: I fully expect the clerk at the supermarket to tell me to put the sixpack back, because my profile tells her I won’t like that brand of beer. And don’t get me started on that annoying little gnome. But on the whole, I bet the informational advantage is still on our side.

I thought of this just now when I read this matched set of stories (link, link) about the late love-in at the National Press Club between the President’s Press Secretary and the Pooh-bahs of the press.

Part I is the mostly an unvarnished series of direct quotes from the festival of mutual congratulation and self-pity (plus a video link and, as of this writing, 274 comments). Takeaway point: these guys all agree that bloggers are pestilent little sacs of pus. Part II is Glenn Greenwald’s inimitable smackdown. Greenwald, for his part, doesn’t use harsh words (okay, he uses a few harsh words); rather, the bulk of it is just chapter-and-verse, a series of direct quotes to match Then with Now. It’s a lot like watching Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall.

This is great in itself, but I want to put it in a larger context: these mugs are like a bunch of hotel-keepers, complaining they can no longer get top dollar for their rooms. Gales of creative destruction, baby, you gotta love it.

Grumpy, We Hardly Knew Ye

One of the great ones hangs up his, um, whatever. More or less (link).

Holy Toledo!

Also Brasilia, the Canary Islands, and Irkutsk! I don't think I've had so many visitors -- well, cumulatively, as show up on the meter today. I assume this is cross-traffic from my guest-blogging stint at CreditSlips? Anyway, welcome to all: come to scoff, stay to pray.

Bear With Me Here...

Light posting at the moment because I'm putting stuff together to showcase starting Jan. 2 when I guest-blog at Creditslips. I've got 15 on the shelf so far, many with a "bankruptcy and literature" bent. Watch for 'em, at Creditslips, and cross-posted here.

Hiatus

Off to visit grandkids, perhaps little or nothing until Mon night.

Hacked?

My friend Peter thinks I've been hacked. He says that this link seems to have been hijacked for a time yesterday by a link that has nothing to do with me. He sent me a copy of the link, although I won't republish it here: I have no inclination at all to give these hackers, if it is a hack, any extra publicity.

I have no idea what's going on here: whether it was an accident or intentional or whether, God forbid, Peter somehow pressed the wrong key. But the problem seems to have gone away, and I trust it will stay away. If you do run across any further seeming hacks, I hope you'll tell me, in comments or otherwise.

Meanwhile, this site remains all Underbelly, all the time.

These Guys Link to Me

...so it is only fair that I link to them:

Books, Inq.

Nice, non-quirky survey of literary stuff.

Welcome, Taxmom

Welcome, Taxmom at Domestic Economy, and a particular welcome to Pilgrim B*rbie. The high heels are great for traction.

My Friend Toni Gets a Blog

My friend Toni has got herself a blog. It's everything you would hope a blog to be: thoughtful, original, and imimitable, one person's effort to put her own stamp on the universe. Toni has had more time than one would wish for over the last few years to attend to this sort of thing, and it is a pleasure to see her put her talents to such a good end.

The F Word

My friend The New York Crank says he’s not posting these days because he is busy working for money.

“You are,” I responded with imagined suavity “a feuilletonist.” And then because I couldn’t help myself, I added: to be a blogger, you need to be a flâneur.

I spoke, as is my wont, unencumbered by any real knowledge. It turns out I was at least a little bit right. Indeed it appears that a feuilleton is “A short literary essay or sketch,” which is pretty much what NYC writes. That sort of thing take enough effort that you really can't bring it off in competition with a day job.

But with flâneur, I am in deeper tapioca. Somehow I had thought that a flâneur was “writer of short paragraphs,” a mini-feuilletonist, a blogger. Wrong: a flâneur is “an aimless idler; a loafer”—in short, someone who doesn’t really have the time of the discipline to write anything, big or small. And certainly not my good friend NYC.

This completes our message. Readers may resume idling; or for valuable prizes, they are invited to opine whether this entry qualifies as a feuilleton.