It's Official

I've finally been granted some blogging credibility— www.breakingmurphyslaw.com, a site devoted to staving off disaster when giving presentations, referred to my recent post about Andrea Zittel's lecture at PSU as "snarky." Truly one of the most highly coveted monikers in the blogosphere, I have written so many posts in the past hoping to attain the distinction of snarky that I'd completely given up on it ever happening. Now all I have to do is put up a post about my pet and/or child and I'll have a chance at being called "insipid," which is another distinction I long for. With a new cat in the house it can't be long before I will be a blogger with a capital "B."

All of the hits that have resulted from the link on breakingmurphyslaw (to date, five, which is a veritable landslide of visits on my blog) bring to light another way that I have failed in my duties as a blogger. I rarely link to other sites, comment about other sites, or in any way indicate that I'm at all connected to internet culture apart from using it as a way to subject my ideas and experiences to those poor few who fall upon my page. 

If, up till now, you believed that I log-on to the internet only to type messages on Blogger you would be only half right— I also neurotically check my account balances and the most recent lotto numbers. And every few days I look at the following sites. Most of them have a fairly narrow focus (which displays a single-mindedness that I have difficulty understanding, but certainly can appreciate), while one is more akin to my blog, in the sense that it eschews a single subject and operates more as a personality dissemination platform. So without further ado:

Fruit Slinger— Two teens work on a newspaper (this is not a lead-up to a joke): one teen goes on to attend a prestigious university and obtain a degree in journalism. The other teen goes on to become me. 

Prestigious degree in hand my friend becomes first a copy editor, then a freelance writer, then a freelance traveler who writes, and finally the author of the best written blog I've come across. Now, it's almost entirely devoted to fruit, and his experiences selling fruit to a motley assortment of locals at a farmers market, but it is so exceedingly witty that this seemingly narrow focus is not limiting in any way. Dan could write a blog about peeling paint and it would still be the first blog I visit. 

Photoshop Disasters— Everything that can go wrong when good software is put in the hands of aesthetically incompetent people. The flubs are often jaw-droppingly bad and the accompanying text is appropriately, um, snarky. If you're new to using Photoshop then I strongly encourage you to learn from what others have not.

Drawn— A blog managed by a number of people who troll the internet looking for exceptional bits of illustration, animation, drawings, and typography. While the focus here is much more on the commercial end of the spectrum than the conceptual end, the artists and designers who are featured tend to be very talented and I always find something that I end up bookmarking or smiling about. If you need a way to gauge the pulse of contemporary illustration/design, Drawn is your best bet.

Stuff White People Like— I'm white.

Bunny With an Artblog— Hilary Pfeifer has made a living as a professional artist for years. If that fact alone doesn't inspire awe then you are clearly not an artist trying to make a living with your art. 

Envy isn't the only reason I visit her blog however; take a look at her "Some of the Things I've Blogged About" sidebar on the right side of her page. It turns out that Hilary is also a polymath with relevant things to share about both the Pacific Northwest art scene as well as the larger art world. There are quite a few artist blogs out there, but most of them are simply postings of recent work or upcoming publication and show announcements. I appreciate that Hilary offers more of herself than simple self promotion.

So there you have it. I've linked to something other than my previous posts. I'd like to think that this signals not just my growing maturity as a blogger, but as a person. Enjoy!