Introducing Saturday Morning Blogroll

The ground rules for Saturday Morning Blogroll are pretty simple: I’ll spend half an hour every Saturday morning on a “next blog” browse, and see what I find. Some Saturdays, I’ll spend that half an hour looking through tags to see what people are thinking about, say, Life, or Buttons, or School. (I know, there’s no tag for the Button-obsessive blogger, not yet anyway.) On Saturday, then, the search tool for locating best blogs will be, basically, serendipity. The rest of the week, the fine editors at Best Blog will continue to adhere to the highest of standards and the most finely honed of methods. Which is to say, I have no idea how they go about this.

As for my own standards, like all of us, I’m a sucker for good writing, for pictures of food and far away places, and for distinct voices, so that’s the kind of thing you’re likely to find here any given Saturday. There’s so much talent in this community that it would be a sad Saturday if I couldn’t find at least two Best Blogs in half an hour.

Without further ado, this is what I found when I woke up and began to click on the “next blog” button:

distraction no. 99. For every writer out there who’s working on getting something published and hasn’t yet broken through, this woman articulates what that feels like — mostly, it seems to involve finding creative ways to handle rejection. (For now anyway. I’m guessing she’ll find an agent one of these days, as long as she doesn’t move to L.A.) There’s lovely writing here, particularly about New York City. It was just her birthday. Check out her site and wish her a happy day.

Deskbound. Deskbound’s post, Everything’s Lovely in all its Lovely Gloriousness (May 22, 2006) is a masterpiece, something I will commit to memory and repeat every Monday morning on my way in to work. The voice of this blog is so wonderfully pissed off and the captions of some of the photos are so funny, that he deserves a really wide audience, people who read him because he’s good, rather than because they are searching for blogs that feature the words “poo” and “incest.” I can think of a number of people who would be offended by this blog, so up front I warn you that he makes fun of, in no particular order: the pope, incest, defecation, Charlie Sheen, and members of the Bush administration, including the head guy himself. There is a very funny post about members of the Bush administration who wear moustaches. Deskbound also makes fun of his colleagues, his workplace, and the world. I’m sorry he’s deskbound, but we’re lucky this is how he’s chosen to exact his revenge.

See you next Saturday.