Ocelopotamus

So yesterdoodle, as part of my ongoing efforts to get the Ocelopotamus back to full health and vitality, I finally got around to overhauling the blogroll (that’s that tall snaky thing over to the right that looks like a list of nonsensical words and phrases!) with some links that I’ve been accumulonimbusing for a stoat’s age or seven.

Having done all that (and gotten sawdust all over the Ocelopotamus so that I had to hose it down and then rub soothing emollients and jellies into its hide), I figured I might as well introduce the new kids in the class.

In the CHICAGO section I’ve added long-overdue links to a couple of my compatriots from The Nod last fall: Clever Title by not-a-fourteen-year-old-girl Nat Topping, and Lindsay Lives Here, written by the fabulous Lindsay Muscato of the fabulous Neo-Futurist administrative team gear fab. (Lindsay consistently cracks me up with stuff like this post.)

Also new in CHICAGO is Shoeless James, who you might recognizes as frequent Ocelopotamus comment-section dandy “James S.” James is one of my old dancing pals from Planet Earth, possibly the biggest Steven Patrick Morrissey fan EV-er, and these days he writes for the Sun-Times. Right near him is Instant Comma, a blog about writing by my friend Marck Bailey who technically is in Evanston not Chicago, but hey, it’s Earth Day so let’s not get too hung up on arbitrary man-made geographical boundaries.

In NEWS & POLITICS I’ve added Informed Comment by the terrifyingly smart Juan Cole (don’t really know why I didn’t have him there all along, but have been meaning to add him at least since he paid Theater Oobleck a visit last fall).

Tales of the Freeway Blogger is always good for a vicarious thrill or two.

Living Cruelty Free is a blog I discovered last year when I was scouting for info on pet food. It’s a great resource for info on animal-friendly products and businesses. In fact, thanks to LCF, yesterday I learned all about the CCIC (Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics) and the Leaping Bunny logo, which I’d seen on products but didn’t know all the ramennoodlefications of.

New in CULTURE is Read Roger, a blog by Roger Sutton who is the editor of The Horn Book and a very clever man. He blogs about children’s lit from a very grown-up perspective, as well as books and publishing in general, all with a snappy wit and a fresh lavender scent, and I’ve been getting a huge kick out of his blog since Jane Hyde pointed it out to me. (Thanks, Jane!)

Also in CULTURE is One Joy, One Sorrow by Genevra Gallo, alumnus of The Neo-Futurists, whom I would have liked to put up in CHICAGO with the other various blogging Neo-Futurists except these days she’s in Carbondale which is just too dang far away, regardless of what I wrote about Earth Day above.

And just below Genevra is Memory Machine by my old pal Scraps (who has turned up in the comments here once or twice), whom I bonded with on the Neo-Futurists’ 1995 tour to NYC (well, actually the launch of the first NYC production) when he turned up in the audience wearing a Bone t-shirt.

In the NEW WAVE category I’ve added a link to the new Lost in the 80’s feature at Popdose.com, just above the link to the original Lost in the 80’s which is still worth visiting because John rotates out stuff from the archives every week and freshens up those Mavis Pickles III links.

Down at the bottom I have added a new category. Being the big silly New Wave drama club queen that I am, I love having a music category with the tres defiant heading NEW WAVE, but there are some music bloggity links I just can’t really force into that construct. So below it I have added the MORE MUSICAL MUSIC category.

First up under that heading is Mike Scott’s MySpace blog, which he constantly updates with magical meditations on all sorts of topics, from Bowie lyrics to poetry and politics to Waterboys touring stories, and the whole thing is just as charming and entertaining as the man himself, whom you might recall me mentioning a few times on this blog before.

Partly Dave Show favorites Even in Blackouts were on the blogroll before but I moved them into this category since it seemed like a better home for them.

The above-mentioned Popdose is just an amazingly prolific source of interesting music blogging and Mavis Pickles goodness and I can hardly keep up with the place they crank it out so fast, but I try, I try.

Just below Popdose is Brooklyn Vegan, whom you probably don’t need me to tell you about. Apparently whoever is behind this blog lives in Brooklyn and is vegan, which yay for that, but what you’ll mainly notice is that they’re just all over the contemporary music scene, daddy-o, and I usually learn something when I go there.

In general these categories of mine are pretty flimsy — just a way to break up a long blogroll. Lots of things could easily go into more than one category or other and sometimes the ocelot and the potamus get into a slapfight over whether a given blog more truly belongs in NEWS or POLITICS or CULTURE.

Within those shaky categories things are arranged kind of like my bookshelves at home — I’m just trying clump things together that I might reach for in a similar mood, and the system probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to anyone else — but let’s face it, Ocelopotamus will always be more like one of those musty old labyrinthine used bookstores with the cats and the tottery ladder and the stacks of dire chaos and the grumpy guy up front (remember those? Farewell, 20th century!) than say, a well-run modern library on the Dewey Decimal System.

Lastly, down under the FOOFARAW heading, I’ve added a Google Reader button. During the recent long period of notsomuchblogging, I noticed (via the magic palantir known as Sitemeter) that a lot of the folks who were still showing up here when I did post something were arriving via Google Reader, and though I’d never really gotten my head around the whole RSS thing before, I figured that if it could be used to effectively stalk the wild and capricious Ocelopotamus, then this must be powerful magic indeed.

So I set up a Reader account and have in fact found it very useful for keeping track of unpredictably updated blogs such as my own. Thanks, OcPot readers! And for anyone else who wants to try out this newfangled science, you can now automatically subscribe to the OcPot RSS feed just by clicking that “+ Google” button. I encourage you to make use of it. It will help us stay close, like sisters.

P.S.: Happy birthday to Bite and Smile by Joe Janes, one year old today and a close contemporary of Ocelopotamus (which turned one year old last month).