Saturday, January 23, 2010

Volume 5, Number 3: Web Sites I'd Like To Introduce You To

I have bookmarked a whole lot of web sites over the years, and I thought I'd share some of them with you:

News/Information
News Inferno - Here's a blog for those of you who want to keep on top of the latest in product recalls, food poisoning, and other consumer safety-related issues.
The Red Tape Chronicles is a blog by MSNBC's Bob Sullivan, specializing in consumer fraud and security.

Bargains & Discounts
Sweet Free Stuff - A blog with lots of freebies you can get (mostly free samples of stuff)
Sunday Coupon Preview - I clip coupons for anything I either use or would consider buying. Coupons are the #1 reason why I buy a newspaper on Sunday. But this site helps me in two ways: First, it gives a sneak preview of next weekend's coupon inserts; second, and more importantly, there's a schedule on the site that shows which weeks have NO coupons so I know when not to waste $1.50 on a paper with no coupons in it. (There are eight weeks in 2010 where there will be no coupons, so when this year is done, this web site will have saved me $12.)
The Cheapskate - Rick Broida's blog on CNET highlights some serious bargains in electronics and software. In the past, he's found deals on HDTVs, GPS systems and Blu-Ray players.
Hot Deals Digest is another site that lists more bargains, mostly in the way of electronics.

Entertainment
Awful Library Books - This blog is good for a laugh because it discusses books that are, inexplicably, still being found in libraries. These books are either severely outdated, or were useless to begin with, and should have been "weeded out" ages ago. Like the one about horses doing drugs. What, someone actually thought that anthromorphed animals would be more effective at telling people not to do drugs than, say, human characters?!?
Bone The Fish - Remember jumptheshark.com, the site where people could discuss the point in the course of a TV series where that series went downhill? Well, the owners of jumptheshark.com decided to sell that site to TV Guide, and TV Guide basically trashed it and replaced it with some useless blog. A group of justifiably angry jumptheshark.com users started up their own site to fill the void, so now bonethefish.com is where you can tell people that American Idol will "bone the fish" when Simon Cowell leaves, or The Tonight Show has "boned the fish" now that Conan O'Brien has left. I've left comments on a whole bunch of TV series; you can read them here if you so desire.
Elbo.ws - This "music blog aggregator" is a good first place to stop if you're looking for the MP3 of a song (look for the search box near the top right corner of that web page). It indexes hundreds of thousands of music-related blog posts and MP3s. Mind you, you'll have better luck finding newer songs than older ones; for example, I couldn't find a blog that had an MP3 of "That Girl" by Steve Wonder, but I did find at least one that had an MP3 of "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash.
Shit My Dad Says - Wait, some of you may already have this one among your bookmarks. This site has freaking hilarious quotes from a 73-year-old man who won't hesitate to share his wisdom with his son, no matter how painful it is. His quote from January 19, rocks: "No, I'm not a pessimist. At some point the world shits on everybody. Pretending it ain't shit makes you an idiot, not an optimist." I'd love to hear Harvey Keitel and/or Christopher Lloyd read these quotes (both are actors who recently turned 70 themselves). Thanks to Kirk Herlitz for introducing me to this site.
Fail Blog - A great blog with pictures of all kinds of things that FAIL--badly labeled products, things being used for purposes other than what they were intended for, poorly written signs, and more. Kirk introduced me to this one as well.
Lucy Knisley's Blog - One fine day a couple of years ago, YouTube had, in its "Featured Videos" section, this really cute video of this equally cute original song played on a ukelele. From that point, I made it my business to find some more stuff by the creator of that video, Lucy Knisley. This blog features lots of Lucy's wonderful drawings, comics and writings. She's published a couple of books and a CD, too (just search for Lucy Knisley on amazon.com). I like a couple of the 29 videos she uploaded to YouTube (Supervillainy and Preventive Plans for the Paranormal, both of which deserve more views than they've had; it's been a while since she's done any new videos, though).
There, I Fixed It - Kludge at its best. (For those who are asking what "kludge" is, it is generally a clumsy, hastily-improvised repair or solution.) To give you one example of kludge, check out this photo of a chair being used as a basketball backboard--just take off the legs and the cushion and attach it to a pole.

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