Used to be that when I googled myself in moments of abstraction, one of the results would be this thing called (I think) byliner.com that offered to ‘track your favorite authors’. And I always thought, huh, because if you’re someone who reads a lot, and especially if you read a lot online, you quickly realize that the secret to being a happy reader is not to read articles about subjects that are interesting to you, but instead to pay attention to bylines and read everything – no matter what it is, unless, of course, if it is sports-related – by writers you like, but I never looked at the byliner thingy, because at the time I had all the time that time contains to read all the whole blogs on the internet entire.

But I don’t have that time anymore, and also, I’ve gotten really bored with the internet (this happens sometimes) and byliner.com has been in the news, but now it appears to be a different byliner.com, which is all about helping you discover yet more things to read.

And, as this Techcrunch blogger says:

I just don’t think people are sitting around waiting for more long-form pieces to read. . . . My problem has never been finding more great long-form stuff to read– my problem is finding time to read it. I think there’s a niche group who will love this site. But largely, I think it’s designed for a mass audience that reporters like me wish existed. It’s one of those sites designed for the way we wish we were and the time we wish we had– never a great starting point when it comes to the consumer Web.

The whole thing about the information age is that we mere mortals need help sorting through it and weeding it down to something manageable, yeah? This has been a thing for awhile now. And I can’t zero out my feed reader every night like I once did.

So, what I really want, young smarties who develop such things, is something that looks and acts exactly like a feed reader, but into which I can plug the names of every author that I love and every subject that I’m particularly interested in, and when I get home at night, there will be a nice list of articles (or, on beautiful, lovely days, no articles at all) by my favorite people and/or about my favorite subjects, and that is all.

So, there might be, say, essays by Sarah Cottonmather and Bill Ford Abbott, a blog post by Ginger XX and four articles about cows, and that’s it. Except not that, because those are fake authors and I don’t find cows interesting, but you get the idea. So, I can read the stuff by the one really witty person on the mean hipster site, without having to subscribe to the site itself and scroll past all 500 daily posts about Friday Night Lights and Tinsley January and the Mumuu Initiative and deodorant commercials. And I’d like to skim the news every morning without ever having to see a single headline about Casey Anthony or sports.

“Good God, stupid,” you’re probably about to comment. “You can totally already do this, and everybody does, and why don’t you look into advanced forms of internet browsing the slightest, smallest bit before writing some whiny entitled post about why can’t you just read your precious Katha Pollitt and go home?”

At least, I hope this is what you’re about to say, because I’m pretty sure this thing I want already exists somewhere – can someone please clue me in about it? Thx.

When you guys have cracked this one, I have a really specific type of integrated desktop (for laptop, tablet or smart phone) that I’ve been mentally designing for years now, that pulls all your shit from everywhere and sorts it into four quadrants – ‘to read’, ‘to do’, ‘to watch’ and ‘to listen’ – with more specific folders under that, that you can divide up by date and category and other things if you want, or just leave in a big, long stream, and there’s more to it than that, but it’s something that I lie awake and fantasize about when I don’t have anything else going on, which is always.

Actually, maybe byliner.com is this thing that I’m looking for, so I’m going to look into it now, and I will report back.

UPDATE: It sort of is! You can follow your favorite authors, but it’s limited. For one thing, it’s a limited list of mostly established authors – no funny young things who are big fish on the smaller sites – and also, it’s not really a search engine-type thing that monitors those authors’ online publishing in real time. It’s more like, ‘User Bob submits that so-and-so published this essay in this journal in October of 2005!’ Um…helpful? What I want is a cross between a feed reader and google alerts. And it might be nice if it had an optional social component (although I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of virtually reading over each other’s shoulders), so you could see the list of your really smart friends’ favorite authors, so you know who to pretend you read, also.

UPDATED UPDATE: Actually, upon further investigation, Byliner is pretty much pointless for my purposes.

UPDATED UPDATED UPDATE: So, I found this here thing, uFollow, which is a lot closer to what I want, but it still fails to recognize a lot of the authors I like. I might try this for awhile, though.

UPDATED UPDATED UPDATED UPDATE: Yeah, no, uFollow? Also not the answer to my prayers.

(image via)

Titles of Less Interesting Books

1. Sense and Stability

2. Elizabeth Urello’s Diary

3. Infinite Pun

4. A Visit From the Pep Squad

5. To the Outhouse

6. The Daily Routine of Kavalier & Clay

7. Eat Pray Sleep

8. The Phantom of the Office

9. The Sound and the Comprehension of That Sound

10. The Long Well-Adjusted Life of Oscar Wao

11. Let Me Go Immediately

12. Calvin & Susie

13. Tender Is the Chicken

14. The Mortgaging of Hill House

15. The Bearable Lightness of Being With Jesus

What do you guys think of Twitter? Are you long-form or short-form interneters?

And by ”that would be really interesting,” I of course mean, ”I just scared the crap out of myself by suddenly realizing that this probably already exists, and that the editors of blogs I respect have been reading my inarticulate, unedited and ignorant kneejerk reactions to their posts for years now.”  But that’s just me being paranoid, because that technology doesn’t exist, right?

Right?

The other thing I’ve done recently is I’ve started a Tumblr blog, entitled Pictures of Food, Daily Outfits, Celebrity Gossip and 10 Productivity Tips!  It is basically an extended joke about the internet generally, and it is also the polar opposite of Accismus.  I think those of you who will find it hilarious are already reading it, but I wanted to let the rest of you know, too, in case you’d like to check it out.

__
*Laugh if you want, but I bought that computer for around $400 when I repatriated in spring 2007, expecting it to last me a year until I was employed again and could buy a real one, and instead, it lasted for four years of heavy use with no problems, so, you know.

At some point in my early 20s, I suddenly realized that I was dumber than shit, and so I started making myself read a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have bothered with before, trying to absorb it.  The Atlantic was one of the first of these things that I actually enjoyed.  I began working through it with an effort, but I quickly developed a true appreciation for its long-form political journalism, which was extremely well-written and involving, even for someone with very little context.  So, I’ll always have a soft spot for The Atlantic, and I’ll put up with a lot of bullshit from it, because in the end, despite its frequent misses, when it’s good, it’s great.

Apparently, the magazine is on track to turn a profit this year:

The Atlantic, the intellectual’s monthly that always seemed more comfortable as an academic exercise than a business, is on track to turn a tidy profit of $1.8 million this year. That would be the first time in at least a decade that it had not lost money.

Getting there took a cultural transfusion, a dose of counterintuition and a lot of digital advertising revenue.

“We imagined ourselves as a venture-capital-backed start-up in Silicon Valley whose mission was to attack and disrupt The Atlantic,” said Justin B. Smith, president of the Atlantic Media Company, who arrived at the magazine’s offices in the Watergate complex in 2007 with a mission to stanch the red ink. “In essence, we brainstormed the question, ‘What would we do if the goal was to aggressively cannibalize ourselves?’ ”

They’ve basically embraced the internet and free digital content, as opposed to fighting it, and it seems to be paying off. 

My only issue with their web presence is that you can’t get an RSS feed of just the monthly issue.  I refuse to read anything that won’t show up in my RSS, because I can’t be bothered to remember when things publish, so I haven’t looked at The Atlantic in years, unless something else in my feed has linked to it and reminded me of its existence.  You can get feeds for other, more frequently updated web-only content from them, but not of the actual monthly issues.  I don’t know why.  They’ll send you a weekly or monthly email with a list of links to the magazine contents, but I’m never going to read something out of an email.  My feed is where I read stuff, and if I want to read a longer article, I’ll star it or keep it unread and come back to it, but I don’t come back to old emails looking for stuff to read.  So, until The Atlantic makes that extremely simple fix, I’m not reading it, because I’m a Millennial and I’m entitled and lazy.

Related Articles

• The Atlantic Turns a Profit, With an Eye on the Web (nytimes.com)

I enjoyed this article about a rent-a-friend service.  I’m not at all surprised such a service exists now, and also, of course, various people are absolutely obligated to react to it as if it is the next horribly scandalous step up from rainbow parties and ritual sacrifice, but as someone who has routinely moved to an entirely new location where I have no friends or contacts, I can certainly see the use of such a thing.

It is nearly impossible to make friends as an adult, at least in this country, at least in my experience.  If you’ve never had to try it, here are the problems you run into:

For one thing, people do not talk to each other, or at least people don’t talk to me.  I never understand it when others rhapsodize about how easy it is to meet people, how everyone’s so friendly and outgoing.  Perhaps I give off some uncomfortable vibe I’m not aware of, but my conversations with strangers are never successful.  They usually go about like this:

Stranger:  ’Hey, is anyone sitting here?’
Me:  ’No.  Go ahead.’
[Long, awkward pause, carefully avoided eye contact on both sides.]
Me:  ’Have you heard this guy read before?’
Stranger, jumping as if I’ve just announced I have recently really gotten into cannibalism:  ’What?!  Oh.  No.’
[End of all possible conversation forever.]

This is what happens if you go to readings or mingle-events or shows or craft’s fairs or volunteer events or whatever trying to meet people:  other people hang out with their scads of friends, trying to strike up a conversation with a stray will likely get you maced, and before very long, a bizarre and smelly old, old, old man will begin a conversation with you from which you will never escape.  You will spend your entire night listening to a very, very old man’s political conspiracy theories and theories on women and he will lean far too close into your face and you will go to the bathroom and then sit in a far-away place and he will come over and find you and sit by you there, too, and when the event is finally over, he might even follow you to the train station.  True, sometimes he is younger, sometimes he is female, sometimes the drift of his conversation varies, but always, always he is obnoxious and boring and completely deaf to social cues.  I mean, avoiding this old man alone is reason enough to rent-a-friend:  to buy some out of work actor two beers to come to the reading with you and sit next to you and make jokes with you all night.  If you met that same unemployed actor at the event and tried to strike up a conversation with them in the old-fashioned way, they’d probably piss themselves from the social impropriety of it all.

I think my generation has been raised to be overly suspicious of strangers and the implied message we’ve internalized (if you wind up talking to some loser, everyone will think there’s something really wrong with you) is making it really difficult for all of us to meet new people.

In fact, I’ve paid hundreds of hundreds of dollars to make friends.  On the dotted line, I was paying for improv classes, but you know what I really didn’t need at the time?  Improv classes.  And some classes, you drop you hundreds of bucks and get there, and then you spend weeks doing something you’re not that interested in with a bunch of people who never go to the bar after class, because they need to get home to their families.

Also, like the rich getting richer, those with friends get more friends.  Once you manage to make one friend, you’re pretty much out of the woods.  It’s a lot easier to meet new people when you’re out with friends you already have than when you’re out by yourself.  In our society, unattached people are viewed with suspicion.  People are rightly afraid that if they’re nice to you, they’ll never get rid of you (see:  old man above).  But when you have friends along, other people know they’ve nothing to fear from talking to you – you won’t demand a commitment at the end of it all – plus these other people don’t find you crazy, so you must be alright.  So really, if you don’t have any friends, then renting a friend might enable you to meet new, actual friends.  Sort of like a wedding band gets guys hit on, because, hey, some woman thinks they’re worth sleeping with.

I’ve always made friends the same way:  I pony up for classes I don’t want until I locate a likely target, and then I force myself on them.  I invite them places and invite them places and invite them places, and I invite myself places with them, and when I meet their friends, I do the same with their friends, and I just keep at it until somehow I am in the midst of their friend group, even though I’m the only one who didn’t go to college with them all.  I’ve done it twice now, in two different major cities, in the exact same way.  It works for me, but it takes about 6 months to a year, plus money and time for whatever classes, and I can certainly see how some people would prefer to just pay $25 or so for a stranger to come to the movies with them.

On an only slightly related note, the article above has some people spouting off about how a “friend” you have to pay is no “friend” at all, which obviously.  This has become a trend in cranky cultural commentary lately, with the most frequent lament being “thousands of Facebook ‘friends’ aren’t really friends at all!”  Well, no shit.  Nobody thinks they are.  People who complain about this are saying, ‘I define a friend as someone with who you have a long-lasting, personal and caring relationship over a period of years based on mutual respect and shared experiences, and I will apply that definition to any usage of the word ‘friends,’ no matter how casual or commercial, and cry the end of civilization accordingly.’  We all still know what a friend is.  Nobody really thinks a blog ‘friend’ is a friend in the sense above, or that a rented ‘friend’ is, either.  By ‘friends,’ Facebook means ‘networking contacts,’ and this rent-a-friend site means ‘companions’ or ‘people you can pay to go to dinner with you, so that you can enjoy yourself and not have to feel like a self-conscious loser the whole time, and that’s fine, even if these people are clearly not going to attend your wedding or your funeral.’  It means, basically, escorts from back before escort became a coded term for prostitute (was there such a time?  There was, right?).  There is a need for a paid, platonic companion, and I can think of many situations where it would be helpful to pay for a fake date, in order to make a social situation less awkward for any number of reasons (for example, even after you have friends, sometimes showing up somewhere with a “date” is a quick, easy, no-hurt-feelings fix to a brewing problem, but somehow, you never have a date to bring just when you really need one).

My hair grows thick and lustrous red,
Most everywhere but on my head.

My eyes are wide and clearest blue,
And ooze the most entrancing goo.

My laugh is like a birdie’s tweet
When it’s been crushed ‘neath someone’s feet.

My chest is pert, my tummy flat
Beneath three hundred pounds of fat.

My breath smells sweet as breeze in May
In New York on trash pick-up day.

I know about the birds and bees –
I have a dozen STDs,

And am as skilled and fun in bed
As any corpse that lies there, dead.

My sense of humor is a wonder,
The cause of many a social blunder.

Kind and patient, loyal and true…
These words don’t describe me! How about you?

I am as talented and smart
As is a football player’s fart.

Guys say I could be thought pretty
If the last girl in the city.

My date last night did not even retch -
So message me quick, for I am a catch!

–

Why am I still single?  Thoughts?

Q: Have had Pook for two years about, doe, want to breed her butt she is not intrsted in Thomas (male lop). Can she be gay? Or mebe Thomas is not male?
14 replies

Q: My dwarf rabbit, Bun-Chums, keeps biting me whenever I pick him up to cuddle. Help! Should I pull his teeth out?
47 replies

Q: My son gave rat poison to Tibbens, and when I tried to make her throw it up (went to put pencil down her throat), she bit me. Is this normal behavior? She’s never bit me before! Also, should I feed her something to get the poison out?
25 replies

Q: If I wanta et these rabbit, should i make him deworm fust? Anny advise on home to do – can’t pay vet!!!
114 replies

Q: To the ‘Anonymous’ person who responded that breeders are terrible and cause the death of countless unwanted bunnies in shelters, may I just say that I am a proud breeder of rabbits, and that I am very careful with my rabbits, and responsible, and make sure they all go to good homes. And so, it is not my fault that there are unwanted shelter bunnies. That is of course very sad, but this is my hobby, and everyone has a hobby. Do you can’t enjoy your dinner because you worry about Africa? So why shouldn’t I enjoy my hobby? And for the record, I am aged 5 and sign my real name, so ‘Anonymous,’ have some courage. – Cindy Peters-Rogers, Age 5
6 replies

Q: My bun leap around and roll onda floor. Do thismean he happy? Whatchoo think?????
0 replies

Q: My husband died two days ago, and I think my lop, Misty, is in mourning! She is listless, sad, won’t eat…What can I do to help her get back to her old happy, hoppy self?
5 replies

Q: Jiggles has been lying still for three days, in his own urine and his hay, not eating or pooping. But he is breathing. Is this be something wrong? Time to call vet?!?
2 replies

Q: Well, Cindy Peters-Rogers, Age 5, you have an EVIL hobby, and you are a HORRIBLE 5-year-old BUNNY MURDERER!!! I hope you enjoy your HOBBY, CINDY!! Don’t let all those dead bunnies bother you, just keep adding to the pile!!!
P.S. FYI, I NEVER enjoy my dinner, and am ALWAYS worrying about Africa, so don’t ASSume, get it, ASS???
-Anonymous, Age 43
56 replies

Q: My rabbit, Periwinkle, just exploded, spraying fur and blood in all directions, and now I can’t find anything left of her. Is this something to worry about? Should I consult my vet?
20 replies

1. Gail Collins. The New York Times was long overdue for a female columnist who wasn’t Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins is more than the Times deserves: tart, smart, funny and perceptive, her takes on the issues of the day are both informative and cathartic. I just checked out one of her books, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, but have only read the first chapter so far. I’ll let you know how it is. Also, in addition to her columns, Collins’s conversations with David Brooks are a treat. I have to confess, in the past, I have occasionally liked David Brooks, but he’s been heinous lately, and as his tenure at the Times goes on, he contradicts himself ever more blatantly. I dearly love a good journo fight, and Matt Taibbi (an occasional guilty pleasure for me, I’ll admit – his reportage may be spotty, but sometimes you just need a good, unapologetic rant) has lately been picking Brooks’s columns up in his teeth and shaking them back and forth until their necks snap.

2. The public library. I like to write in my books, dogear them, and read them in the shower, so for years, I insisted on buying books and keeping them in piles along my baseboards. But I don’t make that kind of money these days, and have finally learned to make good use of the public library. Yes, the inability to write in the books is a serious handicap, but otherwise, I am a total library convert. There’s a small branch near my house, and I can order whatever I want through the system to be delivered there, and they notify me by email when my holds are ready. Best of all, you can renew your books on the computer, and as long as nobody puts a hold on them, you can renew them indefinitely (I’ve renewed one 12 times already). And all for not one red cent (not counting city taxes). Beat that, Kindle.

3. Susan Schorn’s McSweeney’s column. I go back and forth on McSweeney’s, and particularly on their columnists. Some are good, some are boring, many have long outlived their original gimmick, good for only a post or two, but weirdly extended. But one of their new columns, Susan Schorn’s meditations on martial arts, self-defense, anger, weakness, and related topics, is fantastic – and not just because I’m into karate lately. I agree with Schorn about everything, and wish she lived next door to me, so that I could bother her all the time (and all of her other humor pieces are great, too). Speaking of karate:

4. Shotokan karate. I have been training at a local dojo since August (I’m currently a yellow belt), and I am obsessed. Fantastic exercise, and a wonderful outlet for pent-up aggression, karate is sport, art form, self-defense training and a study in focus and discipline, all in one. I try to make three classes a week, and, while I still couldn’t beat up a four-year-old, my kiai has deepened from Chihuahua to Rottweiler.

5. Jezebel and The Awl. I am putting these together, because my enjoyment of them is similar. For some reason, when Jezebel debuted, I immediately decided that I didn’t care for it. I can’t remember what about it offended me, because I’ve really been enjoying it lately. In addition to the progressive and feminist news alerts, there are hearty round-ups of celebrity gossip. And while I am not interested enough in celebrity garbage to actually read up on it, I must admit, do I want to know when Brad and Angie finally break it off, or when Lindsay Lohan ODs in a club bathroom, or when somebody has a major weight reversal? Yes! Yes, okay? I do want to know that! I admit it! But I don’t need to know the deets – I just want a headline and a photo, and that’s what Jezebel delivers. Now, The Awl, helmed by former Gawker editor, Choire Sicha (aka the only person who ever wrote for Gawker that I actually liked), is a hilarious, well-written chronicle of all things that would particularly interest…well, Brooklyn dwelling, underemployed pseudo-writers like moi. Plus, it is one of those lovely, rare blogs in which the commenters expand on (and often outshine) the posts. Kinder than Gawker and sharper than The Gothamist, The Awl fits just right.  If I could only read one blog, this would probably be it.

6. Amanda Palmer. The former Dresdan Doll has an awesome solo album. Plus, she’s engaged to Neil Gaiman, and showed up at The Golden Globes with her boobs and her pit hair out. She’s a fucking badass.

7. Small, well-done, original blogs. Tiring of sprawling, massive, constantly updating blogs, I have lately been discovering small, creative, focused sites that do one thing and do it well. Edith Zimmerman writes hilarious very short stories. Tom Oatmeal (who I found through EZ) makes milk come out my nose. And firmuhment is continually brilliant and original – scanned documents that inspire essays, short stories, and humor. I’m not sure if firmuhment is a single author deal or a team effort, but every post has obviously had a lot of work put into it, and I appreciate that.

8. Firefox’s new skins. I spent the lion’s share of my day staring at my browser, so anything that makes it more visually appealing makes me happy. Firefox’s new skins are a small adjustment that, surprisingly, makes a big difference. Currently, I’m enjoying Spring II. Goes well with my igoogle theme.

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I resisted getting into this back in high school when everyone was super into it, and haven’t gotten into it since, because I didn’t want to consume seven seasons of TV. But my coworker has them all on DVD. Uncle, okay? I’m through six seasons already, and ready to register as an official member of the Joss Whedon fanbase. In addition to the overall awesomeness of the series, I enjoy identifying basic karate moves in the fight choreography.

10. My new phone. After three shameful years of hitchhiking on my parents’ family plan, I finally ponied up and got my own phone plan, and a phone with a full keyboard and a camera. And man, it makes a huge difference! I no longer wince at the sound of a text message arriving: it doesn’t take me a year to peck out a response anymore, and my phone looks cool and is really fun to use. And yesterday, when my brunch coffee came in a giant bowl with no handle, I was able to document it quickly and easily, no forethought required.

11. My rabbit, Thomasina. Thomasina is so freaking adorable!! And I love having a pet! This was a good move. She’s my little pal, and she does hilarious things and entertains me, and she’s cuddly and fun. Right now, for example, I am trying to write, and she is collapsing her little grass hut on top of her head, and making eyes at the rabbit she thinks lives in my closet mirror! OMG, she’s a gas. I won’t work at all today.