Cap'n Nasty, your Zen is slipping! Me, in spite of tempting e-mails from various people suggesting new rant topics, I'm holding fast to The Way.

In my egocentric way, I thought blogging was a fandom thing. Imagine my surprise as blogging gets more and more international press to find out that in most people's mind's, a blog is a sort of freelance, amateur journalism effort. A system whereby the Average Joe/Jane can scope out the latest news, gather up relevant links from all over the place, and add their own commentary on the subject. To the big, wide world, a blog is a news reporting entity.

I feel ashamed that I haven't commented on any current events. I mean, besides mocking Eye Spy. Let me say, for the record, that I read today that Tanya Harding, of figure skating fame, was arrested for drinking while on probation. Bad girl. Somewhere in the world, someone taught a crow to take a piece of wire and bend it into a hook on the end to fish food out of a tube. It was a girl crow. Boy crows apparently just hang around waiting for someone else to fish out the food then they take it away.

Note the complete absence of any rude commentary about Typical Male Behavior.

This zen thing is tough.

Anyhow, enough of current events. Before I get onto the subject of blogging, let me recommend that those among you who have always wanted to diss Big Oil to their faces, try Shell Oil's website. They've opened a forum that's a free-for-all. The general public can come in and say just anything they want about the company, ask questions, quarrel, whatever. Any employee of Shell who feels the urge can post responses and they say whatever they want.

I just bookmarked it and I haven't had a chance to read it yet but I do think it's an interesting experiment in making contact with your customers. The article I read said it was a pretty lively place.

Okay, now to the topic. Blogs you oughta read.

Links removed because I checked the sites and didn't personally find them interesting.

I'm bored with that topic. Good websites are more fun.

How Stuff Works has always been a favorite topic of mine and the website is very cool so you should all check it out.

Am I the only person on the net who surfs random words and phrases that aren't dirty? Checking for "nice," I found Smile and Act Nice, which is apparently a site for girls. Can't say I find the name particularly appropriate for the post-1950's world, but whatever.

I Play Nice is...I'm not quite sure, but it might be a boys and girls version of "Smile and Act Nice." Maybe it's for older people, it was hard to tell from the stuff I read but I can tell you that some of the stuff I ran across in the "just for guys" section was scary.

Ona more frightening note, I found a scary website announcing that dressing your hapless offspring in matching ensembles is "Twice As Nice!

And, specially for Cap'n Nasty, there's Wilson and Alroy's Record Reviews, who say, "We listen to the lousy records so you won't have to."

I think it's pretty clear that I didn't really have anything to say tonight.