Writing without a thesis

I'm not happy with this post. I was playing around with Blogspot's "Next Blog" button a few days ago and started collecting various items I ran across, hoping I could massage them all into another sort of "Found Objects" post. The main problem is that I don't really see a common thread among the stuff I collected, and what's more, I don't really have a lot to say about any of it. Even if I did, posting another "random tidbits" post so soon after the last one -- with cute animals in it, no less -- seems like cheating. It's too easy.

I figured that instead of just deleting this post-that-didn't-jell and discarding all of my, uh, hard work, I'd add a lame explanation/apology about how it came to be, and post the damn thing and be done with it. This thing isn't up to my usual high standards, and I'd like to think that other people would notice the difference as well. I'll try to do better next time, probably.

So first off, here are two pictures of cute cats, both of which link to their blogs of origin. I came across these in quick succession, and if I believed in fate I'd blather some nonsense about how I was somehow meant to cover these. Really all this tells us is that cats show up on personal blogs a lot, so the odds of running across two in close succession are pretty reasonable.



Another pseudo-fated item is an interesting blog titled "It's a numeric life", which I actually ran across twice during my little "Next Blog" excursion.

One curious observation: I was surprised by the sheer number of blogs in Portuguese, both from Portugal and Brazil. One I came across discussed (I think) the blogger's recent experiences at Carnaval in Rio. Unfortunately I lost the URL for that one. Probably wouldn't be safe for work anyway.

A small unordered list of other blogs I thought were interesting:

• No More Mister Nice Blog, a good political blog.
  
• studiosavant, a blog maintained by a group of sculptors up in Edmonton. One recent post marvels at the odd sculpture-related news you stumble across when you sign up for Google news alerts on the topic.
  
• TopEnd Tales, a photo blog from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
  
• Food GPS, a food blog apparently from the SF area.
  
• Xooglers, a blog by+for ex-Google employees.
  

Here's the part where I insert a lame joke along the lines of "What rhymes with Xoogle? Koogle, of course". It's supposed to be funny because you'd be thinking "Google", the actual obvious choice, and then I go and spring "Koogle" on you, leaving you wondering what the heck a koogle is. Not a very good joke, is it?

Anyway, I'd go on to note that the Koogle I have in mind is not the "kosher search engine" by that name, but rather a peanut-butter-like concoction from the early 70's, which combined artificial "peanut butter" with various other artificial flavors, like vanilla, chocolate (both pictured below) or my personal favorite, cinnamon. Yes, I actually liked the stuff, I think I was the only person on earth who did, because it soon disappeared from grocery shelves without a trace. I remember meeting the Koogle mascot at a local grocery store, goo-goo-googly eyes and all, and I was heartbroken when my mom explained to me that Koogle was gone and there wasn't going to be any more. That was quite a difficult concept for a small child to grasp. Out of spite, I refused to eat anything containing cinnamon for a good while afterwards, because it wasn't the thing I really wanted.




Finally we get to an editorial cartoon I found, again linking to its blog of origin, which in this case is in Norwegian. I originally had this baby at the top of the page, but today I changed my mind. I think the Jesus-with-a-shotgun thing would give the whole post a sort of sour and shrill tone. I've done a lot of complaining about political and religious nuts lately, and I don't want it to seem as though I'm just droning on and on about it. But still, I think it's an ok cartoon, and here it is.