Sentential Links #85

OK, here we are, a couple of days late. I got my story done and submitted last night; when it predictably loses the competition, I'll post it here.

Anyway, this week's links. My randomly applied rule for this week is that none of these blogs are on my blogroll, and most of them are blogs I've never read before. I've picked blogs that are on my blogroll and looked at their blogrolls. (I think that makes sense.) Not one of these blogs has ever been linked here before! So here we go:

:: And this is why I think Brooklyn is such an extraordinary place right now. Take a walk from the North Slope across Grand Army, then down Eastern Parkway. Where else in the country can you go from the houses of world-famous authors and movie stars to Hasidic Jews and working-class African-Americans all in the space of about twenty blocks? And all with the lowest crime rate of any big city in the country.

:: I don't think the world outside academia knows what offprints are any more, if they ever did. (I sure didn't. Interesting!)

:: That said, here are some things I think you should know if you want to get a small college job: (Ah, academia! Once I thought I was headed there. And then I headed instead for the world of retail and power tools.)

:: For reasons I don't fully understand, Damage's new costume - that of a Mexican wrestler themed after a combination of Hourman and Atom Smasher, apparently - rocks the internationally recognized warning sign for biological hazards instead of his old go-to costume design element, the symbol for radiation.

:: If you can find a local radio station that plays new music (or, even rarer, one that fits the original mold of radio, cycling old stuff with new hits), you're not going to find a lot of "pretty" music. It's either rap, repetitively mind-numbing (and usually crude) hip-hop, or cookie monster vocals over banks of droning steroidal guitars.

:: As I thought over the email from my friend, it occurred to me (as I suspect she intended) that I wasn't really a "blogger" as much as I was a "storyteller". Blogging just provides me a vehicle to reach a bigger audience.

:: I understand as the game MVP God will get a 2007 Honda Element and an Hawaiian vacation.

:: Quick, mark your calendar! January 25 is Rabbie Burns’s birthday—-St. Andrew's Societies all over the world will be celebrating. (Heavens, that's tomorrow! One of the gapingest of holes in my personal library is my lack of a collection of Robert Burns poetry and song. Maybe I'll make that one of my first purchases at the new Borders when it opens...or maybe I'll just grab one at the old Borders, seeing as how I'm not picky about such stuff.)

:: Friends of Jane Yolen (another wildly prolific writer) used to speculate that Jane had a magic watch capable of stopping time, putting everyone else in suspended animation while she obtained a few extra hours for herself each day.

:: Kev tagged me with the "5 things you don't know about me" meme last week. I considered doing an "Amazing...But False!" selection (as the set of things that people don't know about me encompasses more than just true facts), but I eventually decided on a David Cronenberg body horror version. (GAHHH!)

All for now. Man, is there an embarrassment of riches out there in Blogistan. I need to travel more!