anything you can do i can do better

Watch closely as PM attempts the highest difficulty trick in his repertoire--the post-feminist intellectual deadpan:

PM: the subjugation of women by men might be man's greatest achievement, since it allowed us to invent all the really cool things
PM: we're crafty!
mikaydee: thank you, for summing up the entirety of radical feminism, albeit in a perverse, mysogynistic way

10!

there ought to be tableaux

My siblings and I, through rigorous hypothesizing, game theorizing, and quantitative and qualitative testing, have come up with the four major motivations for eating. They are: (1) hunger, (2) boredom, (3) principle*, and (4) spite. As an example of the last, I present the following:

MP: omg are you home?? i'm totally making you take me to the airport. i'll take you to chipotle!!
mikaydee: haha, no. i'm at work!
mikaydee: [RM] could take you to the airport
MP: fine i don't know how you can pass up an offer like chipotle
mikaydee: i'm at work!
mikaydee: and can get chipotle on the way home
mikaydee: which i will now
mikaydee: just to spite you
MP: >:-o
mikaydee: a spite burrito!
mikaydee: mmmm, the most delicious kind....

*Often accompanied by observations such as "wasting food is a sin," or "there are starving children in [generically poor developing nation]"

valley of the historically accurate dolls (yet another experiment in excessive footnoting***)

Happy St. Lucia's Day!

When I was around 9 or 10 I was heavily into American Girl books* and I used to wish I was Swedish so we could celebrate St. Lucia's Day just like Kirsten's family. The celebration seemed to combine the joys of hair-centric ethno-religious pageantry, pyromania (candles on your head!), and every child's innate desire to eat cookies for breakfast.

*Say what you want about the American Girl franchise, but before it morphed into a creepy fetishization of upper-middle-class faux-erudite girlhood, a sure sign that your parents are going to get slammed by the Alternative Minimum Tax in April, in the beginning there were books. And the books were short. And the books were unapologetically formulaic. And while they didn't tell the most compelling or original stories ("Gee, being a girl was really hard back then, unless you were SPUNKY, in which case it ROCKED!") they were jam packed with neat little historical details, which, while stagnant from a narrative standpoint, completely fascinated me in and of themselves (Felicity had to scrape her sugar from a loaf! Butter was a rationed commodity during WWII!). If seven seasons of Star Trek: TNG have taught me anything, it is that I can enjoy even the most prosaic story if set in a well-drawn world with weird costumes and unfamiliar foodways**. Excuse me while I go get some mincemeat and apple butter from the replicator....

**My new favorite hippy-dippy-earthy-granola social science word, having recently surpassed "menstrual narratives."

***And excessive parentheticals! Behold the dizzying post-modernism of my grammar, and TREMBLE!

neither social utility nor socialist utopia

Rejected Facebook "How They Know Each Other" Details:

- They exchange strained pleasantries at the water cooler.
- They dated the same guy and now loathe him for similar reasons.
- People drunkenly mistake them for each other because they are of the same sex and non-white race/ethnicity.
- They exchange money and drugs.
- They exchange money and sex.
- They exchange sex and drugs.
- They see each other every day but are separated by an invisible yet impenetrable class barrier.
- They were set up by a well-meaning but misguided friend, and the approval of this detail will likely be the last communication that passes between them.

caught red-handed shaving Schroedinger's cat

Political Scientists Introduce Theory of Quantum Politics

by mikaydee, additional research by PM

Political Scientists have recently developed a revolutionary new theory explaining the behavior of political bodies. Known as "Quantum Politics," the theory was developed after political scientists made several puzzling observations.

"It started with a study published by some colleagues at the USC Center for International Studies," explains Dr. Nina Lavinskaya, credited with the first formulation of the theory. "They couldn't quite figure out whether Taiwan was a country or not. Sometimes they would look at it, and it seemed just like a country, with a flag and a government and missiles and everything. And then, they would look at it again in a different light, and see a province of China. It just didn't make any sense." The same was true when Taiwan interacted with the countries around it. "If you tested for diplomatic relations, you'd find a province of China. If you tested for trade, you'd find a separate country."

Lavinskaya was struck by the similarities to her work on Pakistan. "One minute, I see an ally in the War on Terror, and the next, I observe the declaration of martial law and the jailing of dissidents. That's not how an ally is supposed to behave."

At the same time, researchers at Northwestern University began charting the position of a body known as "Mitt Romney," and found that he constantly changed depending on who was looking at him. The same was found to be true of similar bodies known as "Rudy Giuliani" and "Hillary Clinton," prompting the observation by Dr. Lavinskaya that "you can never tell where they stand until you look at them, and by looking at them, you change them." This soon became known as the Reuters Uncertainty Principle, a cornerstone of Quantum Politics. "All we can know for sure about them at any given moment is that they exist, and are negative," says Lavinskaya.

Quantum Politics promises to shed light on a number of puzzling phenomena that have baffled political scientists for years. For example, experts have long argued over whether illegal immigrants behave more like a dangerously volatile wave or an individual hard-working nanny or gardener. Equally confusing was why they didn't seem to exist until they ran up against barriers. Lavinskaya is confident. "With the tools of Quantum Politics, we will now be able to effectively analyze behavior that has heretofore seemed to transgress all basic rules of both logic and decency."

in which i roll 1d6 against a +4 social construct, to no avail

Sometimes I wonder when or if ever I will be able to do adult things and have them just be "things" without the telling modifier. Like going to tea or brunch at some expensive place without feeling like an undercover, voyeuristic interloper, all well-mannered and please-and-thank-you and do-pass-the-bellini, while my internal monologue is going "OMG, don't let on that you are still hungover from your night of Bud Light, Jello shots, Nintendo, and Dungeons & Dragons, or the maitre d' will make you wear a dunce cap and put you at the plastic kiddie table in the corner." I still refer to my big work purse as my "mom purse" because it is big enough to hold things like a hairbrush and handiwipes and extra shoes, and smells like leather (because it IS leather), and I realize, MY GOD, at the age of twenty-blah with two graduate degrees, I still associate the smell of a big leather purse with the place from which I used to retrieve my baggie of Cheerios during the boring, non-singing part of church (aka the sermon).

Then, my inner graduate student* takes hold of my insecure, adultlescent yuppie shoulders and shakes me like you're not supposed to shake a baby, declaring self-righteously, "listen, square, the childhood/adulthood dichotomy is, like, this bourgeois invention for, like, selling Barbies and breeding Organization Men," and then she slaps me across the face and I am about to shiv her because I have been empowered by years of watching Buffy and Alias, but then I say "eff it" and we do a mental Jello shot.

*Some people have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I have an intellectually indignant, antinomian, armchair revolutionary on one shoulder and a frugal, civicly engaged, easily shamed, midwestern schoolmarm on the other. Sometimes they cuddle while listening to NPR. It's hot.

Speaking of civic engagement and transgressing maturity paradigms....

RM and I use our respective talents and interests to enrich the spiritual life of the community:

RM: i made us a cyber santa to protect the house
mikaydee: i don't know what that means, but i really like the sound of it
mikaydee: oh!
mikaydee: lego cyber santa?
RM: yes
mikaydee: yay!
RM: he has a glock
mikaydee: i will build him an altar
mikaydee: we will have a party for him on december 6
RM: and now he has a dagger
mikaydee: blood sacrifice to saint nicolas!

a series of unrelated lists, because prose is so two weeks ago

I. Actual news headlines that sound like Onion headlines, but aren’t, and so are that much scarier:
(1) Former Press Secretary’s New Tell-All Has No Comment
(2) Army Adds “Fix Army” To Petraeus’ To-Do List
(3) I Was Homeless Once

II. Fun with grammar, inspired by my new TV obsession and a vat of chocolate pudding:
(1) "Eat shit and die!" - An enraged yet wistful imperative, paradoxically evocative of either menacing, godlike omnipotence ("You'll do as I say, worm!"), or whiny, ineffectual weakness (because gods may rely on people punishing themselves, but sissies must).
(2) "Eat, shit, and die." - A Sisyphan, almost Nihilistic musing on the futile transience of the physical life, on par with Hamlet ("To be or not to be?") and the Bible ("'All is vanity!' sayeth Koheleth.").
(3) "Eat; shit and DIE!" - Terrifying. And not in that good old-fashioned, paranoid 1950s, the-amorphous-Other-is-coming-to-eat-your-girlfriend way, but in that millenial, painfully self-aware, you-may-think-it's-me-killing-you-but-it's-really-you/society-killing-you way.

III. Highlights from mikaydee’s family Thanksgiving:
(1) “My brothers cut their own goddamn mangoes!”
(2) “Well, the subject came up while we were thinking of funny things to write on the baby’s forehead.”
"Ah, okay."
(3) “Spreading holiday cheer is a lot more fun with someone who takes it as seriously as I do.”
(4) "It never hurts to be too careful."
"Yes, it does! That's what the 'too' signifies!"
(5) “We’ve both been trying to make mom’s noodles from the recipe she gave us, but it never turns out the same. He thinks the missing ingredient is love.”
“…I was gonna say criticism.”
“…Does mom know the difference?”
"I dunno. Do you?"
"Nope."
(6) “Sage and garlic do NOT count as vegetables.”
(7) “Do you think the baby would get mad if we dressed her up as Kuato from TOTAL RECALL?”

mutually assured deliciousness

Ich bin ein Frankfurter
mikaydee: that hot dog saved my life last night
mikaydee: how many people can say that?
PM: it was the perfect solution
mikaydee: perfect and DELICIOUS
mikaydee: more solutions need to be both effective and delicious
PM: if congress served cocktail weenies with the bills they brought to vote they'd actually get something done
mikaydee: haha
PM: cocktail weenies are bi-partisan
mikaydee: i'm working on a middle east peace plan that involves flooding jerusalem with fudge
PM: see! effective AND delicious!
PM: you have to appeal to the tastes of the people!!
PM: now THAT'S a campaign slogan
mikaydee: hahaha
PM: "your slogan harkens to a grass roots style politics..."
PM: "actually, i mean that literally. appeal to the ACTUAL tastes of the people. like chocolate. everyone likes chocolate. lets make bus tickets out of chocolate."
mikaydee: haha!
mikaydee: instead of death by chocolate
mikaydee: detente by chocolate
PM: haha
PM: i think we're tapping into a golden idea here
mikaydee: nobel peace prize 2008, you and me!
PM: also, on an equally prestigious note, a zagat culinary arts award!
mikaydee: hahaha
PM: the double-banger
PM: take THAT, mahatma gandhi
mikaydee: ha!
PM: i don't see him winning any culinary awards anytime soon
mikaydee: nope, ascetics aren't really known for their epicuran skills
mikaydee: and hunger striking is sooooo 50 years ago
PM: when food wasn't really anything to write home about anyway
mikaydee: haha, yep
PM: i'd like to see them try that in the world of double-doubles with animal sauce
mikaydee: hahaha
PM: (haha... when you say it like that, it seems to fly in the face of every religious belief they hold)
mikaydee: LOL
PM: probably won't be any in-and-out chains opening in new delhi
mikaydee: hmm, yes, we'll have to tweak the strategy for India/Pakistan, considering that a sandwich with beef and cheese will likely piss them BOTH off
PM: and then you add animal sauce to it... they're BOUND to ask questions
mikaydee: hah
PM: then again, this is the same place that serves tiger penis puree as an aphrodisiac... or is that aparitif?
PM: either way, i ain't eating it
PM: if it's used for excrement... and isn't a colon... then it's not going in my mouth!!
mikaydee: ....i fully intend to quote you on that
PM: my mother don't raise no fool!
mikaydee: no, but she did raise someone who inexplicably draws the line between penis and colon
PM: ... and chooses colon
PM: it's silly that that's part of the body that we readily eat
mikaydee: hahaha
mikaydee: yep
mikaydee: we probably ate it yesterday
mikaydee: (i love when the conversation comes back around)
PM: that colon stuffed with pig parts saved my life last night
PM: (i think we just had a conversation out of a one act play...)
mikaydee: haha! totally
mikaydee: add to our nobel and zagat a pulitzer!
PM: solving the world's problems...one joke at a time
mikaydee: *high five*
mikaydee: (curtain)

because it takes a village

An Open Letter to My Cousin AJ, Who, at the Age of Two, is Already an Emotionally Manipulative Alpha Girl

Dear AJ,

I called your dad yesterday to wish him a happy birthday. When the conversation turned to you, as it inevitably does, I sensed a weariness come over his voice, but a weariness tinged with gratitude, like that of a self-flagellating monk, gratuitously suffering in the service of the highest cause. He sounded, in short, like a man under the thumb of an emotionally manipulative alpha girl. To which I say to you: brava, Wunderkind, brava.

So permit me, if you will, to impart to you the following advice, which I wish someone had told me when I first discovered my near super-human powers of getting people to do what I want by attacking the soul rather than the body:

- You seem to have already mastered the art of offensive withholding: telling your dad you don't love him because he was at our grandfather's wake and therefore didn't tuck you in like he usually does, telling your mom you wanted to live with your Nana when she tried to make you take a nap. That's all well and good, but the next step is learning to parry using the Defensive I-Love-You. This can be applied pre-emptively, such as before you ask your dad (and later, significant other) for something far too expensive for what it actually is, like a purse dog or a private college education. It can also be applied retroactively, like after your dad bails you out for your first stimulant-related misdemeanor. Measured application of both techniques is the best way to keep your opponents off-balance and vulnerable.

- In the next 8 to 11 years, you will probably hit the slippery patch of pre-adolescent ice known as "the awkward phase." If you're LUCKY, this will involve gangliness and possibly braces and acne; if you're unlucky, it will involve fat. Either way, this will be a time to milk your dad for all he's worth; having more expensive things than everyone else is the only way to keep your iron grip of power during these few years between cuteness and hotness, so be prepared. (You may want to think about pushing your dad toward the private sector pretty soon.)

- It is ESSENTIAL that you peak sophomore year of college and NOT sophomore year of high school. Just trust me.

Yours Ever,

mikaydee

since i have nothing interesting to say, but others do (also known as an M.A. degree)

A Few of My Favorite Things:

- Who puts Marx in for Wittgenstein? A guy who thinks that faith
alone saves*, that's who.

- The Uruk-hai need to autoethnographize their own subjectivities in
order to avoid becoming complicit in their own oppression.

- The vending machine in the basement of Fiske used to be like this
(typical lefty-pinko media building).

*My sister and I once came up with this great t-shirt we wanted to make saying: "I fought a counter-reformation and all I got were these Third World countries." I still think this t-shirt should exist....Maybe, come Christmas time, it WILL exist, in a box, under the tree, with my sister's name on it....Or her BABY'S NAME! (mikaydee: best or worst godmother ever? Discuss.)

in the spirit of mischief

Seemingly innocuous, child-appropriate Halloween costumes, made into heavy-handed political statements through the simple use of props:

- Bum + Tattered Copy of The Communist Manifesto = Disenfranchised Prole

- Princess + Death Warrant signed by Revolutionary Committee = Victime du Terreur

- Poodle Skirt and Sweater Set + Tear-Stained Copy of The Feminine Mystique = Original Desperate Housewife

as joyfully i lark about, and go crazy with the hyphenates and parentheticals

I was at church this morning (go me!) and I have to admit that a large part of the reason I go to church is because I like singing, and most (good) church songs have simple, repetitious, and soothing melodies that can make even amateurs like me feel like they have some musical chops.* (I also love Jesus and stuff, but I can love Jesus at home.)

As much as I heart the individual songs at church, I do wish sometimes that the musical director would pick a musical theme and stick with it. Otherwise, the aesthetic experience of church (on which my particular religion places what some would consider an idolatrous amount of importance, a disagreement which has led to, oh, I dunno, centuries of war and the creation of the modern, Westphalian nation-state system) can be pretty schizophrenic. One minute, we are all high-church organ chords marching along with a slightly caesero-papist militant undertone ("We all do extol thee, our leader in battle, ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine!"), and the next we are multicultural ("Señor! Me has mirado a los ojos; sonriendo, has dicho mi nombre."), and the next, we are recently freed slaves ("Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, Precious Lord, and lead me home!"). And that is on a good day. Occasionally, you'll get an overly ambitious musical director who ventures into the choir-only lands of youth-Mass-guitar-rockin'-4-Jesus** (makes peace sign with fingers and solemnly head-bangs) or experimentally-atonal-but-it's-Latin-so-it-must-be-extra-holy (Faure, I'm looking at you), or, on a particularly weird day, both.***

Or maybe I should just quit my nit-picking and be thankful to Jesus for aforesaid job, aforesaid laptop, and below-referenced friends and family.


* A friend of mine has been using the word "chops" in the context of music a lot lately and it has crept into my vocabulary, as such things tend to do. I actually feel silly using this word in this context, calling to mind as it does some sort of church-inappropriate musical throwdown between me and another congregant. ("You wanna piece of me? He who sings prays twice, beeotch!") But I am too tired to look for an alternative, since looking-for-the-right-word is like 80% of my job-that-pays-for-laptop-for-blogging/facebook/AIM at the moment, and the fancy verbiage part of my brain needs a rest.

**Have you ever noticed that commercials for these albums tend to crop up during late night TV, in between ads for Girls Gone Wild 7 with additional bonus features, like Sorority Hazing 5, for just $1.99 extra if you call in the next hour?

***University churches are particularly apt to try this strange pairing, as the congregation is generally dominated by the youthful and the music ministry is generally dominated by the music majors, or those who wish they were.

in which i make a most unusual display

My friend, MH, and I have been on this kick about Pride and Prejudice sequels, which PM was good enough to point out are basically a step above fan fiction. And how right he was! For example, MH recently made the amusing/disturbing discovery that Austen sequels partake in that common fan fiction indulgence: GOING WHERE THE ORIGINAL MEDIUM COULDN’T. Aragorn’s latent homosexuality! Mal and River's May-December romance! Hermione's struggle against cutting!

Apparently, while perusing the Austen-esque (Austenique? Austenapalooza?) selections at her neighborhood B&N, MH found a lovely passage wherein a Bennet sister describes those activities, then traditionally reserved for the wedding night, using words like “member” and “nonny-nonny” which, geez, manage to make me more uncomfortable than the time I watched that episode of Coupling with my mom.*

Which got me to thinking, there MUST be, somewhere out there, in the vast and quickly clogging tubes of the Interweb, some full-fledged Austen Erotica. The Darcys discover oral sex. Jane turns to her chambermaid while Bingley is away on business. Mary gets naughty with the vicar and returns slightly less annoying. It must be out there!

And yet…and yet I cannot bring myself to look for it. Here it is; I’ve finally reached it: the limit of my search engine shame. There are things that should never be typed into that Google box, things you should not even Ask Jeeves. This is one of those things.

* The one where Susan forces Steve to describe, in a reasonable amount of detail, the plot of Lesbian Spank Inferno.

in praise of neologisms (rescued from various other annals)

Faux-ductivity, noun: the deliberate avoidance one's most pressing obligations in favor of perennially necessary but comparatively unimportant tasks (usually involving cleaning and/or organization), resulting in a superficial obviation of the guilt that generally accompanies procrastination.

a series of vignettes, for your contemplation or enjoyment, but not both

Over a period of years, my mother discovers the internet:

I.

Mother: I asked your cousin to look for information about this on the internet, but could you do it too?

Me: Um, I could....but why?

Mother: His internet could be different!

II.

Mother: [Your aunt] just emailed me a story about a man who died of a ruptured colon.

Me: Ew!

Mother: (sotto voce) It was because he was having sex with a horse!

Me: MOM!....Oh, I think I got that email, too.

Mother: At first, I thought maybe he died because the horse kicked him in the head when he tried,...you know....But it was because the horse was the one that--

Me: I'M LEAVING NOW!

III.

Mother: Could you set up our universal remote?

Sibling{2/4}(professional IT guy): Sure, do you have the manual? Otherwise I can't find the right codes.

Mother: Can't you just look it up on the internet?

Sibling{2/4}: (stunned silence....looks around to see if he just stepped through a wormhole)

FIN

rescued from the annals of my gmail account (yeah, i just wanted to say "annals")

So a while back, I sent this email to a friend, who suggested I make it into a real piece and publish it. He should probably know that I am not nearly ambitious enough for that sort of thing, but I do have just enough initiative to post it as a blog entry.

------------------------------------

I know how you love stories about my insane mother, so here's one I
just got from my sister, who is in the hospital with pregnancy-
induced hypertension.

Pregnancy-induced hypertension is just that; it's caused by pregnancy
and there's nothing you can do about it but lie in bed until you're
not pregnant anymore. My mother, being a nurse, should understand
this. However, she suffers from that misconception, common to all
busybodies, that you can NEVER DO TOO MUCH in the pursuit of solving
a problem. There are no aggregate utilities for my mother, no
multivariable problems, no parabolic functions of any kind. More is
better, less is worse; there's no such thing as diminishing returns.

Her solution to pregnancy-induced hypertension? Driving 2 hours
every weekend to sit around for 48 hours, telling my bedridden sister
to relax. Urging her to relax. Berating her to relax. Reminding
her that it's really better for the baby to just relax. RELAX.

My sister prepares for these visits by making lists. She provides
tasks upon tasks for my mother to do, hopefully enough to keep her
busy until she has to go home. She sends our mother out with a
credit card and a series of baby-related missions. Luckily my sister
is one of those oldest-child, A-types for whom making lists
constitutes relaxation. If she didn't do this, our mother would park
herself on the pullout bed in my sister's hospital room, alternately
nagging her and napping. My mother snores. Loudly.

[My sister] calls me every so often to complain about Mom. She's not really
a complainer; I think she likes calling me about it because we always
end up laughing, in sympathy, and empathy (Mom called me 4 times in
one hour tonight, and left 3 messages. All of them were the same,
but with escalating hysteria: "It's mom; call me back."). How
ridiculous is it when talking for 20 minutes about something that
completely stresses you out is more relaxing, more FUN, than dealing
with someone who really, sincerely wants you to relax and have fun?

-- [mikaydee]

------------------------------------

Update:
Docs decided to spring the baby 2 months early. Baby, Sis/Mom, and Mom/Grandma are all doing well.

wherein i display various kinds of nerdiness, and not for the last time

I'm sure I have mentioned this elsewhere, but various (though not sundry--dear heavens, NOT SUNDRY) Discovery/History/Learning Channel programs carry a viewer discretion warning about "indigenous nudity," by which I assume the producers mean public nudity sanctioned by autochthonous norms, e.g. it is hotter in this damn jungle than in the frakking* womb, so why on God's steaming hot, green and humid earth would you waste resources fashioning a means by which to trap your own body heat, you crazy paleface!** However, if one can be indigenously nude, then the opposite would naturally be exogenous nudity, nudity that reveals you to be some sort of inappropriate miscreant who missed all of the social cues about modesty growing up, leading you to do things like having sex on camera or not wearing underwear in a limosine. Warning: Exogenous Nudity! This nudity, unlike that other kind of nudity we show on TV, is not okay! Mmmm, cultural relativism.

On a similar note, while relating a story about my office to PM the other day, I was suddenly struck by the awesomeness of the concept of a "tranquilizer."*** It forces you into tranquility! It mandates that you calm down! By extension, would it be okay to characterize a tranquilizer gun as a weapon for peace?....Crap, I am now approaching Human Condition territory, a topic I had better leave to minds superior to my own, such as Michel Foucault or Joss Whedon (SERENITY!)*. I will stop now.

*Yes, I am aware that I have just revealed myself to be THAT kind of nerd in addition to the Discovery/History/Learning Channel kind of nerd. But anyone who can read this has also seen my profile, and should already be well aware.

**Irony/Hyperbole alert. I don't want to get into a whole Caliban/Miranda-type, Edward Said, Reverse-Racism, Can-The-Subaltern-Speak thing. I'm just trying to talk about naked people!

***The underlying story is much less interesting than this decontextualized detail would make it seem.

Post-Script:
Somebody, somewhere has to have written something connecting Foucault's geneaology of punitive violence in Disciplinir et Punir to Whedon's critique of conformity as peace in his seminal work, SERENITY. Please, please tell me someone has written that. If not, I will.

Post-Post -Script:
Pursuant to the above, I Googled "Michel Foucault Joss Whedon" and came up with this:

http://www.sfsite.com/03b/jw244.htm

which is now officially on my Christmas wish list, thank you dear Baby Jesus.
Doesn't look like there is any actual Foucault in this, so I can still write that seminal work. (Did you giggle when you read "seminal?" Because I giggled when I wrote it. Both times.)

in which our over-caffinated heroine has too much time on her hands

Welcome to mikaydee's nerdgasm, where the sentence structure is Byzantine and the tags mean nothing. Enjoy the Brownian motion of my thoughts and occasional impressions of myself in college ("Gawd! Way to reify social constructs, jerkface!"). Heyre be monsters.

Other blogs I heart:
http://smartypants.diaryland.com/
http://xkcd.com/
http://deathisgay.blogspot.com/
http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/ (David Plotz blogs the Bible)
http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/ (Geoffrey Chaucer hath a Blog)