A blog day afternoon

Remember when you were a kid, you’d sit on the floor and scratch the back of the person in front of you while he was scratching the back of the person in front of him; and so on and so forth in a big blissful circle of socialist back-scratching harmony?

Yeah, me too. Those were the days. In fact, just last night, I was lamenting to Alex the fact that you can pay for a massage but not for a luxurious back-scratching, which in my opinion, is almost equally sensational. Untapped market if you ask me.

Instead of actually setting up my own shop (besides, I have a list of about 20 other Credit-Crunch Careers that don’t involve potentially touching gross people’s bodies), I’m going to flash my poetic licence and approach the matter in the more metaphorical sense.

I began this whole back-scratching conceit with the expectation that it would lead me to a discussion of the Seven-Month Itch. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, this is the phenomena that your average expat experiences in between The Arriving-in-a-New-Country Excitement Stage and The Holy-Sh*t-I-Actually-Have-to-Live-Here-Now Acceptance Stage.

Buuuuttt…..then I decided I wasn’t up for over-analysis on this fine Thursday eve. So, in an astounding demonstration of the versatility of my metaphorical skillz, I am going to instead make this a post about bloggers….and how, in my limited experience of them, they seem to have a whole you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours approach to getting the word out about their stuff.

Some of the people I know who blog have already put a link to the OckleShow on their sites, and so now it’s my turn to return the favor. Plus, dear readers, you get the added benefit of finding new ways to waste your work day and tempt the gods of redundancy with your unwavering commitment to procrastination.

A quick note: Some of these sites are from friends of mine, and might not interest you if you’re not particularly curious about seeing the daily goings on of their 3-year-old children. Others are just general blogs that I follow because I’m a Millennial-Gen Y cusp baby who needs information like I need oxygen, man.

News: I tend to be a bit of a newshound, so I check these sites regularly. They are just informative enough to keep me up-to-date and just fluffy enough to appeal to my short attention span and even shorter short-term memory.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/: Ariana Huffington is a genius for keeping this composite of all things news, from Barak and Michelle to Brad and Angie. It’s a one-stop shop of digestible nuggets of just slightly over-sensationalized news with lively bloggers who help you sound smart at dinner parties. Also, Republicans, it’s not for the faint-hearted, so you’d best be a card-carrying ACLU member to attend this party.

http://www.politico.com/: This is what I read when I want to feel smart. It’s totally aspirational in that I’m-a-person-who-reads-politico kind of way. I check it every day, but some days, I only log about 2 minutes because inevitably, in the middle of some article on the GOP’s rocky road back, my mind starts wandering and I begin to wonder what Maddox and Shiloh are up to.

http://www.salon.com/: I discovered this in grad school and I still read it regularly. It’s good journalism prettied up for the smart kids.
http://www.slate.com/: Good journalism prettied up for the cool kids.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/: An institution. You can’t argue with greatness.

Celebs: I considered putting all things celeb in the news section, cuz, you know, it is news, but I reconsidered. Before I begin, consider that my daily digest of tabloids has been cut back sharply with my move. Judge me not for what I do but for how far I’ve come.

http://www.perezhilton.com/: Nuff said. It’s like crack to my American-celebrity-deprived brain.

http://www.gofugyourself.com/: I want to lobotomize the women who keep this site and transplant their brains into mine. They are wittiness incarnate, even though they are just talking about fashion.

Friends: These are the aforementioned sites kept by a sampling of my worldwide poss. These people are not just my friends, but are also endlessly entertaining both on “site” and off.

Swiss Family Mac: My former co-worker Meghan and her lovely husband Brian moved from Baltimore to Switzerland around the same time I moved to London. Meghan’s often funny, always touching accounts of raising a 2-year-old and being pregnant in a country where she can’t speak the language are a great read. Her sister, Colleen, a fellow Londoner, also keeps a blog formerly called Design This.

Rich and Creamy: This endlessly entertaining blog from my Irish Londoner friend JJ is a daily digest of the best of the blogosphere. It’s where you go when you don’t want to do your own scan, but still want to keep up on the day’s funny, thought-provoking or downright ridiculous cyber-happenings.

Aside: I realize I’ve slipped into promotional copy mode. My apologies.

Finndustry: Another former co-worker and friend, Derek keeps this very cool design and design industry blog.

Amalah: Okay so she’s not my friend (I don’t know her) and I’m not a mommy (it’s sort of a mommy blog), but this is one of the most reliably funny things I read on a regular basis. Plus, she’s my hero for making blogging a full-time paid job.

Not on the Moon Yet: My good friend Blake rarely updates his blog (the cheek of it!) but when he does, he’s damn funny.

I'm sure there are more, but those are the standouts. Feel free to post a comment if you have some other ideas or if you are a secret blogger yourself (geek!). And for those of you whose blogs got shout-outs today, consider your backs scratched, courtsey of the O Show.