BloggodomeVille
OK.
Usually, I ignore Heckfire Canyon's Deepest Double-Toothpicks out of these things.
But when both Alison and Cathie tag you, you know your time has come.
So, given the fact that all the best kick-ass Lotuslandian Poli-Bloggers have already been tagged I'm going to offer up a different breed here, b/w a taste of the work of each showing why they belong*.
First, a pro who occasionally likes to cross over to the wrong side of the tracks where the amateurs work:
Paul Willcocks......
"One of B.C.'s great health care successes has been its management of spending on prescription drugs. A major factor has been the Therapeutics Initiative at UBC, which assesses the benefits and risks of new drugs, providing the information needed to determine whether they're worth adding to the list covered by Pharmacare.
It's a success story that has attracted praise from around the world and saved the public hundreds of millions of dollars. Now the government, pushed by Big Pharma, wants to gut the Initiative.
A Victoria doctor in family practice offers a view from the frontlines here."
Second, another real pro who has recently given herself more time, space and room to move:
Frances Bula.....
"I posted my basement suite on craigslist Tuesday at about 2 p.m. It’s on okay suite, not the worst, but not the fanciest. I’m not one of those homeowners who’s raised the house to create higher ceilings. It’s about 540 square feet and the stove is at least 15years old. I charge $650, which I thought was reasonable and in the ballpark for the part of Mount Pleasant I live in.
The calls started coming in at about 2:01 p.m. After the first 10 calls in half an hour that effectively prevented me from getting any work done, I put a message on my machine telling people to send me emails instead. By 9 that night, I pulled the ad off craigslist because even the emails were overwhelming me. In all, I’d say I’ve had almost 100 calls (some from the newspaper ad that I couldn’t get pulled for a day). One young guy offered me $100 over whatever anyone else was willing to pay so that he and his girlfriend could get out of the 340-square-foot basement hole they were in on Fraser Street. One couple described themselves as professionals in their early 30s, who were dying to get out of their bachelor apartment on a busy intersection nearby. People who worked at galleries, in publishing, at talent agencies called. So did lots of graduate students. And then, slow off the mark, towards the tail end of the 100 calls, so did lots of men with the accents of various locales around the world. And this was all happening in the middle of the month, not at the beginning, when presumably most of the vacant apartments had already changed hands.
The whole experience was actually scary. I felt like the helicopter pilot in the evacuation of Saigon, someone whose whimsical choices about which of the supplicants I would call back would alter their lives. It made me feel like going out and buying an apartment building, just so I could rent it out to all the desperate and very nice people who called and emailed......"
Third, the craziest Dog and Blogger Show in Sliverville:
Mr. Beer 'N Hockey.....
"While walking the Hammer this fine evening my dog stopped so she could say hello to a girl with a skateboard walking behind us. The two knew each other from the park. I asked her, "New board, eh?" The deck did not yet have a scratch on it. "I got it for my birthday," she told me. She was some proud of her new wheels and glad someone had noticed her present. "I was hoping for something a little darker," she went on as she showed me the backside of the board, "but I still love it." It was definitely girly. "Main thing is it gets me around," she concluded before she walked ahead of us into the last two weeks of summer....."
Fourth, my favorite Ukefeliast:
Jon.....
"....On the sidewalk in SF, someone wrote the words, "I love Diana Rigg." It's an old piece of sidewalk and the words were etched in it long ago. When last spotted Diana was a guest host on Masterpiece Theater. She looked great, but the leather thing wouldn't work anymore.
The really big news is that I figured out the little strummed riff at the beginning of "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better". I used to know how to play it on guitar, but the guitar is not the same as that most perfect of instruments, the ukulele....
Fifth, a guy a whole lotta folks (but not likely Tony Clement) are rooting for (who also just happens to have one heckuva "gimmick"**):
Frank.....
"I regret deleting my blog. I missed writing. I love to write and wish I could do it better. Someday, I'll take some classes and become a modern day Nabakov. I should have done something to save all of my prior posts. Does anyone out there know if it is possible to undelete it?......"
OK?
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*'On the list', of course, not 'In the club', because I'm pretty sure that none of them would want to be in any club that would have them.
**Like the original late-night blogger HST once said, back in 1967 when asked what separated him from the subjects of his first book, his gimmick was that he could "write".
Would have put another old pro, Harvey O, on the list too, but he's hit the free ranges running and doesn't need any help from the likes of me.
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