I Take Pride In My Humility

My very good blogpal Whim has tagged me with an award. It's about goddamned time someone did.
I mean, I get awards all the time in real life, what's up with the blog snubs?
In 2005 I was named Radio Volunteer of the Year, mainly due to an incident in which our studios were washed into the James River during a flood- with the power still on! The late, legendary DJ V.U. Meeter was on-air at the time; I could hear his SOS in the headphones of my Sony Aquaman as I swam out to rescue, but the 10,000 foot extension cable connecting the transmitter to the city's power grid dipped into the rising water before I could reach him .

There was a blinding flash.

V.U. was killed by shrapnel from an exploding RE20 microphone, god rest...by the time I pushed upstream through the raging, debris-choked river, poor VU was toast, but I did salvage two Orban transmitters, a burlap sack full of wet kittens and a mated pair of Siamese fighting fish before the entire building sank like Atlantis.

The Award was actually supposed to go to V.U., but he was dead- so I took it, er, accepted it for him. It's in my kitchen.
Just last week , the City Police gave me an award for being so good at parking.
So I get lots of awards.
I should, because I am such an awesome person.
I really am.
I'd tell you all about it, but that would be bragging, and part of my perfect character is my unsurpassed humility- I have the sort of modesty that disallows boasting.

Besides, it's unseemly and it makes lesser mortals feel inadequate.

So it's a good thing Whim sent me this award, because I was gettin' exhausted just thinking of new ways for me to be great...maybe I should take a break from working on the screenplay for my memoirs- negotiations have bogged down. I am unhappy with the Lucasfilm studio decision to have Jason Alexander cast in the leading role as myself...I have lost a lot of weight and worked out more than a little bit and I was really hoping for Vin Diesel to play me.

OK...enough of my troubles. If I wasn't so busy being humble, I'd read some other blogs. I do try to read a lot of blogs, though with varying regularity. There really isn't much pattern to it...sometimes an exchange of comments or email will dictate my visits, sometimes I'm looking for a laugh, a smile or soothing picture from a faraway land. Sometimes it's just random. Some are daily.

I was asked to pick five blogs that make me think. Some of the blogs I like have already received one or more such awards, so I'll point out a few that haven't. Not that they need them, they are good blogs , awards or not.

I'll approach this from a DJ's perspective: When doing a show, just because I play five songs , it doesn't mean I think those are the best songs ever, and my favorites tend to change anyway...I like different songs for different reasons.
Easy peasy and in no special order, some blogs I like and what they make me think of :


1) Eye of the Storm. This is Crispin Sartwell's blog. I first encountered Sartwell during my early blog days. He turned me onto Voltairine DeCleyre , DeCleyre became my first internet crush, which didn't work out so well since she died in 1912.
Our failed love would be a harbinger of things to come, but I still thank Sartwell for the introduction.

He writes (mostly) brief rants, sometimes just a single statement or observation that sounds sometimes crazy but makes a point - he also writes great books. Pictured here is Six Names of Beauty, a collection of essays on aesthetics and what beauty means to different people and what it means to us all.

He makes me think of elegance and anarchy.




2) Crows and Daisies:
This is Polona's blog, and it features beautiful pictures accompanied by poignant haiku that are updated quite often. She lives in Slovenia and once corrected me on an article I had pasted from the U.S. news about the change in Slovenian currency. Our news had the facts wrong and I was able to get the correction direct from a local source. That made me think the intertubes might be useful after all.
Her photographs sometimes take my thoughts away. Like drugs, but without the harmful side-effects.

3) Dialogic.
This is Thivai's blog. Thivai, like Sartwell, gets paid to educate people. In my brief attempt at college , I never had a professor I liked, but if I'd had teachers like Thivai and Sartwell I might have stayed in. If I read very slowly and take lots of breaks, I can always learn something from the articles, essays, opinions and observations offered here. Again, here's a link to the excellent on-line magazine , Reconstruction, which provides a look at blogging from many different perspectives.
He makes me think of ideas and how they all fit together if you look for the patterns.


4) HI-WATT cha doin?

This is the newest blog on my list. At first I thought I was lapsing into fugue states and writing another blog under the identity of a Canadian woman. Her blog is chock-a-block with loving posts dedicated to music, pop culture and best of all, guitar pedals. Guitar pedals! How much cooler can it get?

Reading about all the great music and gear helps me think of all of the truly wonderful things music has brought into my life and helps remind me that without music, life would be flat. The author is also a drummer - so I imagine she'll understand the album scan above- for some reason her exuberance reminds me of the way Robert Wyatt played drums on this record. (That's a compliment for those of you who don't know Robert Wyatt. )
Any gal that calls herself a 'gear slut' is OK in my book.
She makes me think that I'm a humbucker on a vintage Les Paul.

5) CityMouse:
Citymouse is one of two bloggers that I have actually met in real life. We had lunch in Chicago on my 40th birthday. I have seen her blog evolve from a somewhat subdued start into a journal of what are often very deep and personal insights told in such a way that the reader can easily relate- sometimes she's just silly, which is good too, but I am partial to her more edgy posts.
And I have a weakness for red-headed Scorpios...I imagine one day a red-haired Scorpio will stab me to death in my sleep but it's unlikely to be Mouse. She would probably use a garrote.
I have always admired her practicality. "Spelling doesn't count"!
The story of a Swiss exchange student's stay with her family offers some enlightening insight into the hidden side of American prejudice and parenting.

She makes me think of strength.

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UPDATE: Info and rules for the Thinking Blog meme can be found here.

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OK. Are we done yet? Can we go back to talking about me now?