New And Improved!

Howdy folks, just wanted to chime in real quick with a list of things new and improved 'round this way:

• One, obviously, is my beard. Now, even though I might be tooting my own horn, I still don't want to count any unhatched chickens yet, but--I shit you not--I got a short email reply last week from Chris Cooley's blog regarding his beard contest, and I quote:

  This is fantastic growth. We are still giving away some tickets. I will let you know but you are definitely int the running. Thanks

• The right sidebar (it's a little farther this way------> )
  has a few new improvements as well:
  
  
• In the "I didn't even know you could do that until just now" department of A Lonely Ghost, I have finally added post-labels to all my old posts. Now stuff I write here is searchable by category or topic, a few of which I'll translate here:
  
  
• Youtube = net video from sites that aren't necessarily youtube.com, but often are. Saturday mix series = any music mix I post, which sometimes happens on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays too. FSE = any song I deem to be a "favorite song ever" of mine, usually accompanied by its lyrics, but not always. PPP = Points, Lines & Polygons and the rest is self-explanatory.
  
  
• Wanted to give a few shout outs to some of the newest members of the ALG blogroll, the first of which is Appetite For Equal Rights, a blog for the modern feminist. As a human being who doesn't believe people deserve to be treated better or worse than others based on factors outside of their control, like whether or not they have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome, I found a lot to like on this website. Further, as someone who enjoys bashing Rush Limbaugh's assholery whenever possible, which is often, their post on his reaction to the Edwards scandal a couple days ago was particularly enraging. Right on...
  
  
• Keep It On The B-Side is, yes, you guessed it, a music blog. It's run by a fellow South Lakes High grad and current resident of the city of angels, Ethan Z. He's writes insightful stuff and you can tell he's got a real, deep love for music. Especially liked his take on Okkervil River's last album, and not simply because I adore the band myself.
  
  
• The Stone's Colossal Dream is a blog I found randomly while searching for Robley Wilson's "I Wish In The City Of Your Heart" so I could re-post it about a month back. So obviously, the lady--her name's Tania Rochelle--likes poetry, so I kept going back. Tania's interested in a wide variety of topics, turns out, so that's a bonus too. Couple weeks ago she had a running couple of fascinating posts about the nature and origins of the yellow ribbon symbol and what else, besides war of course, it means or has meant in our American lexicon of symbols.

Check out the links, lemme know what ya thinks.