"Next Blog" of the Week (April 25-May 1, 2010)

This is like this because that is like that.

   --Thich Nhat Hanh

I haven't been able to figure out the pattern (if any) for the Next Blog link at the top of Blogger/blogspot.com pages. Often enough I'm taken to photo collections of nice clean white-bread families (of any color) and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason.

On clicking through this morning, my first hit was along the lines of the above. My second hit (always from the TOTF home page, mind you) was more interesting for a couple of reasons, everything being somehow connected to everything else across the multiverses.

The Lost Albatross is a blog by Emily Mills of Madison, WI. The site layout and albatross logo held me just long enough to notice the Wisconsin connection. A substantial contingent of my family on the "black" side live in Milwaukee [if you can call that living, insert rim shot] and I do check on their environs now and then to see whether their reports align in the slightest with news from the rest of the state.

So Emily's latest post (as of this writing) is about warm weather, it finally being a facsimile of Spring up in them parts, and a rather nasty photo of a rather nasty blister. Compared with injury stories from my family it's not that impressive, but then they don't post actual photos of their boo-boos.

The next thing I saw on her page was a March 18 post that referred to her other writing, Emily's Post, at something called The Daily Page. I clicked through and read this article on the difficulties of getting a club license in Madison if they even SUSPECT you'll book hip-hop acts, and I recommend it. It's on topic for us here at TOTF, and a reminder that the North can be just as mean and sneaky as the South in race-connected matters, so I don't feel I'm leading you astray at this point.

Lastly, the serendipitous "whoa" aspect of this particular Next Blog, which was not the Wisconsin connection after all: The post that sent me off to The Daily Page also contained an embedded video of Amanda (f) Palmer. You may be aware that she's no Amanda Plummer. (Personally, I like Amanda Blake better than either of them. It's a generational thing.) My colleague over at after the flood just commented on Amanda Palmer the other day, combining a dream sequence and hipster racism in an interesting mash-up that ended up in an unfavorable review for Ms. Palmer.

OK, that's full circle for this Next Blog entry. Thanks for being here!

P.S. Hipster racism deserves its own linkout so here ya go.