Five Blogs of Interest

There is a lot to like and maybe love in New York City, but there is also a lot of crap—especially in the outer boroughs. I live in Ridgewood, Queens, and there is always something in the neighborhood that bothers me. Sometimes the public school lets their garbage roam all over the street, sometimes the public library is closed for months at a time for worthless and needless renovations, and oftentimes the M Train, which runs through Ridgewood, is delayed. And these are just some of the bureaucratic boondoggles. And my favorite Queens happening is endless supply of 99-cent stores selling their 99-cent store crap to people who leave the 99-cent store garbage all over the street. Thankfully there is a blog for people like me to complain about all these crappy happenings in Queens. At http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/ the average citizen can grieve their New York City complaint. It is user generated and updated daily.

Sometimes, when I get really fed up with Queens, I like to find out what kind of b.s. is going on in my home state, Oklahoma. Here is an Oklahoma City-based blog where I go to get the scoop: http://www.thelostogle.com/. The Lost Ogle is written by three 30-somethings who are a little left of center, thereby making them flaming liberals by Oklahoma standards. They mix the news with satire—and sometimes parody. The blog posts make me laugh, and keeps me informed, all without exposing me to the right wing new sources that dominate Oklahoma media.

My hometown, Mcalester, is much smaller, and here is a blog dedicated to it: http://www.mccooler.net/cgi-bin/index. The Mcalester Watercooler blog format is quite outdated and difficult to navigate, but it’s about the only place going to read about and discuss Mcalester events. If you click on it, you will probably find it difficult to believe the blog has played such an important role in local politics. A couple of years back, the District Attorney pressed bogus charges against the blog’s owner in regards to the blog. The charges were later dropped, but the damage to the D.A.’s reputation had already been done. In another incident, a local politician’s relative physically assaulted the blog’s owner, over something the politician must not have liked on the blog. Mcalester politics are warped, but this blog at least attempts to hold the crooks accountable.

Another blog I like to read for the news is the Huffington Post, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/. This is one of the most well known news blogs on the planet, for good reason. It has a great mix of hard news, opinions, sports, and even popular culture items. The Huffington Post is said to be one of the most profitable blogs, probably because the contributors are all unpaid.

I couldn’t think of a fifth blog that I regularly visit, so I Googled blogs until I found this gem: http://www.newyorkshitty.com/ The name is a good indication that foul language may be displayed on the blog. This is a collection of photographs of different pieces of New York graffiti, vandalism, and debris collections. Scroll down the main page to see the “Fone Home” entry; that one really cracked me up.