Norman Brannon is an author who wrote the book The Anti-Matter Anthology: A 1990s Post-Punk & Hardcore Reader. He’s also a musician and blogger. His personal site, Nervous Acid, showcases his thoughts on culture, design, and often times, you guessed it, music.
I am a sucker for a list. Don’t get me started. And while Norman and I on the surface have very dissimilar music tastes (me listen to hardcore? ha!) I have been pleasantly surprised by and eagerly await the finish to his Top 50 Albums of the 2000s. He’s gone through 50-31 and already he’s listed Aphex Twin, Lucinda Williams, Feist, and Antony. His essays are thorough and thought out. He links audio and video to wet the appetite. And the choices, thus far, are diverse, eclectic, and spot on. He says Feist’s album is resistant to criticism” because “it’s so entirely a Feist album that it’s difficult to even conceive anyone else writing it.” Same could be said about his blog.
Categories: Music
“Dear Old Love” is a Tumblr blog (celebrating its one-year anniversary) which collects short, anonymous notes to romantic interests both past and present, requited and unrequited. Reading them will crack you up/break your heart/make you wonder if they’re from your own S.O.s or exes:
- Tuned In — I hope you took acid this past weekend and realized the universal truth of what a fool you are.
- Can You Picture That? — Whenever someone tags a flattering picture of me, I hope you’re signing in to Facebook at the same time so it’s at the top of your news feed.
- Now Sea Here — There are many fish in the sea. And sharks and whales, too. But I don’t want a thing that swims. I only ever wanted you.
- What They Say About Chocolate — Your name sounds like my favorite chocolate. Dark, fruity, nutty. No wonder I love it, and no wonder I love you.
But we suspect the true value of the site is not in reading it, but in submitting your own notes to it, whether they be celebrations of current romantic successes or much-needed closure to toxic relationships long-gone.
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Categories: Naked Love
For visual learners, like myself, using cookbooks can be troublesome. All those words and no pictures? This is not how I learn or work.
It is wonderful then that the folks over at Recipe Look have taken a new approach to cooking in their online recipe collection. Their blog features plenty of recipes. The kicker: they’re all images and not text. And anyone can contribute. Just sketch out your favorite recipe, scan it in, and internet fame is in your future. I especially loved Matteo Oliverio’s Keith Haring pancakes, below.
Categories: Culture
We were once fond of telling people who’ve been dumped to buy a box of red wine and watch some good mindless action movies. But we’ve now got a better idea: buy a box of rose (it is summer, after all) and spend a few hours scrolling through the archives of FAIL Blog. (If you have yet to visit this site, we’re jealous, because there’s nothing like the magic of one’s first time.) It’s a photo and video archive of shit gone wrong in the world. We don’t care if your now-ex cheated on you with your best friend since grade school and then told you that those pants actually do make you look fat — you’ll still laugh at the Chocolate Chip Muffin Fail. Here are a few recent sex-related gems:
Kid’s Slide Fail: “Mommy, what does ‘vagina dentata’ mean?”
Aisle Information Fail: Clean up in aisle 5!
Curiosity Fail: Why it’s not nice to stick your tongue out, kids.
Parenting Fail: “Daddy, I’m scared.”
Massage Chair Fail: We’re really hoping this chair doesn’t fulfill the promise of its name.
Name Win: She just beat out Ben Dover and Craven Morehead.
MORE FROM EM & LO
Categories: Naked Love
Think of a blogger as some crazy guy/gal who sits around in their pajamas all day composing half-sane rants? OK, that’s probably not far off in some cases; most of us, though, do get dressed, and do give a lot of thought to the ideas we share.
No matter how passionate we are about those ideas, though, that’s where many of us stop — it’s our version of “doing our part.” David Quilty, founder of the long-running blog The Good Human, recently noted “As writers, we know that part of good stewardship is sharing information, but even the most intelligent among us can not make change without DOING something.”
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Categories: Green
“Happy Mother’s Day!” photo from Awkward Family Photos
Just in case one of your friends hasn’t forwarded you this new website yet, check out AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. In the awesome tradition of FAILblog and The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, Awkward Family Photos aims to “spread the awkwardness,” in their case by collecting some of the most horrendous displays of familial unity — and hilariously captioning them.
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Categories: Naked Love
comic by Dani Lurie
This is what the internet is for: How Fucking Romantic is a brand new, wicked cool blog that’s illustrating the Magnetic Fields album “69 Love Songs,” one by one:
We are a loose collection of mostly London-based comic-artists, illustrators and writers, who have grown up listening to the Magnetic Fields and got together over a mutual love of the songs. One day, on Twitter, a couple of us decided that illustrating – or writing a comic – or a short story – inspired by all 69 songs was a worthwhile and exciting pursuit, so here we are!
They’ve only got a handful done so far — e.g. “Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits” (excerpted above), “If You Don’t Cry,” “Reno Dakota,” — so it should be a fun space to watch over the next few months.
Categories: Music, Naked Love
Sunday is Mother’s Day. Take a look at some other blogs written by moms, for moms. Those without kids probably need not apply, but if you’re a mom interested in reading about other mothers’ adventures and misadventures, check these out:
1) Her Bad Mother – from author Catherine Conners. Bad is the new good.
2) (This) Girl’s Gone Child – from Rebecca Woolf, author of Rockabye: From Wild to Child, a “heartfelt and often hilarious account of what happens when an irrepressible young city girl gets pregnant by accident and decides to keep the baby and marry the boyfriend.”
3) Sweetney – from Tracey Gaughran-Perez, a self-described “geeky Gen-X writer from Baltimore. I believe in early afternoon cocktails, the greatness of John Stewart, and that being a smartass is a virtue.”
4) White Trash Mom – Molly Wendland and Michelle Lamar want you to know that perfect moms don’t exist, and real motherhood is messy.
5) Immoral Matriarch – Maria was named after the Virgin Mary, but knows she can never live up to that legacy. She is the Immoral Matriarch.
Categories: Culture
