Agony Blogs -- Via Via

Third and last blog recommendation for today: Via Negativa posts a whole list of what he calls agony blogs -- blogs that compile anecdotes of suffering, from the quirky to the misadventurous to the artistic to the schandenfreudenous to the "unnecessary" to the gloriously, gloriously New York.

And many more. They're all cruelly funny: the characteristic humor of our time.

Invaluable for the student of contemporary life. A goldmine for future historians.

Is hell exothermic or endothermic?

Find the answer here. (Scroll down to the italicized section.)

When people recommend something to me as "hilarious," I'm usually disappointed, but this one is.

I'm enjoying linking to old-favorite blogfriends today. This one's Lucy at Box Elder, an Englishwoman who lives in Brittany with her husband and posts richly detailed descriptions and crisp bucolic photos of her travels through France.

"They know everything's bullshit. They find it funny, challenging, stimulating."

My very good blogging friend True Ancestor only posts once in a celestial convergence these days, because in middle age he's attending the University of Chicago Divinity School -- an academic height that somewhat dizzies me -- but his first year has successfully ended and he's put up a couple of communiques which, true to form, are insightful and cogent and smoothly styled. His latest is a sharp-eyed, admiring portrait of fellow students who are a generation younger than him ("he," for you grammar fans).

He does something all good writers should: makes me want to be there. Also he makes me proud to have played a part in the raising of this generation. I recognize the portrait.