Just a few notes and links to my friends’ blogs today.

My pal James Eric has just begun his own Top 100 Albums project. I’m fascinated by these right now – if you’ve done one, let me know in the comments and I’ll link to it, it’ll be great. If you’re thinking about doing it, you should. I really appreciate the way these can be used as a sort of external autobiography, tracing growing up via the influences that you sought out during that time. A similar list wouldn’t be all that interesting to me about movies, because I don’t take them all that seriously and don’t care much about the broader context there, but if you’ve got one for books or – I dunno, ex-girlfriends or boyfriends or something – comment about that, too, please.

Also, my friend Jimi has a new blog that he started recently that’s full of the sort of weird conceptual jokes that I like. His latest one distills a bunch of “How to blog” articles that he read into a masterlist of sorts called “How to become Batman from blogging alone”. Some highlights:

7. Use swearwords. Swearwords make you look grown up and tough, especially the really good ones. You know the ones - get using them.

18. Get a tattoo. If you’re not tough enough to have a tattoo, why should I care about your opinions?

24. Be more intimidating. By making the competition feel uncomfortable, you will be in a stronger position to corner the market. If you can get yourself a guest slot on someone else’s blog, use it as an opportunity to bring them down from within.

Finally, my friend Cindy started a new blog a couple weeks ago. She’s an exceptional writer, but this is like the fourth new blog she’s started in the past year, and she hasn’t updated it in a week now, which means it’s in danger of dying off like the others. I have resorted to publicly shaming her on my own blog in an attempt to make her update. It’s called Lonely In Japan, but that’s an inside joke involving members of At the Drive-In and AIM instant messenger about which I’ve said too much already – she actually lives in London with her husband, whom she met two days before she returned to Chicago while visiting me last year. They kept in touch and he flew to the States to spend a week with her a couple months later, and they decided to just go ahead and get married before he left. It turned out to be a good decision, and you can read more about it if she ever updates her fucking blog again.

Nothing more to report.